There is a voluminous biographical literature available on Indira Gandhi—she’s been called a sluice gate from which has flowed a flood of writings. There are at least six major biographies and several other books on her life. All told there are over a hundred books on her, many written by those who knew her intimately or observed her closely. I am not a professional historian and this is not a book bringing to light primary archival investigation: This is from the author’s Preface.
Every book must be judged by the author’s intentions, not by what a reader wants an author to do. Indira Gandhi was one of India’s most powerful Prime Ministers and people have strong views about her, for and against.
In seven of the eight chapters in this book, Sagarika Ghose follows a chronological style, with timelines of 1917 to 1947, 1947 to 1964, 1964 to 1966, 1966 to 1971, 1971 to 1977, 1977 to 1980 and 1980 to 1984. Do these thresholds, such as 1964, 1966, 1971, 1977 or 1980, have to be explained? They are obvious to anyone familiar with Indira Gandhi’s life and times or India’s history, which presumably means, above a certain age threshold.
However, there are plenty of people below that age threshold, and I think Sagarika’s book is primarily meant for them. Her intention is not to unearth anything “primary”. But she has read those biographies and other books and talked to people who knew Indira Gandhi well, digesting the information and retelling it for the benefit of a younger audience.
Her empathy for, and predisposition towards, Indira comes across. Nevertheless, there is sufficient objectivity on many issues, such as the Emergency years. Though the book is written very well, there is one bit I think is rather juvenile.
From the Preface again, “In a fanciful attempt at a dialogue with her, I interrogate the ghost of Indira, as any citizen of India might want to do, I ask questions that I imagine citizens would want to ask. The questions I pose in my letters to her are questions that I am convinced many readers would like to ask too.”
That may well be true, but as a writing style, it doesn’t work. Imagine Macbeth with Banquo’s ghost in every Act. In any event, a ghost does not speak, not in Macbeth, and not in this book.
While seven of the eight chapters are written well, the eighth, done properly, could have raised this book to the level of the memorable. It is titled, “The Woman: Seeking the Real Indira Gandhi” and begins with a long letter addressed to the ghost and also ends with another such long letter.
Instead of the analytical probing one expects in a chapter with that kind of title, in a succession of paragraphs, we have statements like the following: “She was deeply Indian but she was also more westernised than her father. She loved Madhubani paintings and classic tanchoi saris. She liked to think of herself as a connoisseur of high culture in food, arts and thought. She didn’t believe in being dowdy. She loved wearing her sari in the Bengali style on days when she wasn’t working.
She was not as cerebral a reader as her father was. She may have lacked Nehru’s grasp of world history but her intellectual pretensions were not entirely skin-deep. She cultivated intellectuals yet was impatient with too much theory. She played politics with i-built expertise. She wrote scores of little notes to Usha Bhagat over the three decades that Bhagat was her aide. She planned official menus with great care, naming dishes according to the guest.”
It goes on and on. I am surprised the editors didn’t ask her to excise this chapter and also those letters. That’s how you should read this book, with the excisions.