Solitude is an occupational hazard in politics. One hundred years after her birth, Indira Gandhi’s solitary perch in history as India’s seminal dynast continues uninterrupted. She trusted nobody except her family. Nobody trusted her, except her family. So what made this woman one of the most powerful of her time, a defining figure in Indian history?
A century after her birth, the key to understanding Indira’s complex personality lies in one word—Family. For over 38 years from 1952 to 1984—with three non-G Prime Ministers in between—Nehru and his descendants ruled India. Indira elevated Nehruvian iconography to a political cult. From the Scaramouche of freedom, Nehru’s King Lear had become a lamentable figure, rendered helpless by the storms of history. Indira used her power as a tool of her father’s redemption—she avenged his defeat by China and in Kashmir by dismembering Pakistan and creating Bangladesh. She annointed son Sanjay as her successor, and then Rajiv—a Hamletian ghost with a regretful attitude to power, a trait inherited by his son, Rahul.
Rahul’s mother, Sonia, is Indira’s photocopy persona, who imitated her remoteness but failed to acquire the mass aura of the original. Rahul, too, is doomed by disconnect, even as he tries to reach out. It explains his ‘Now You see me Now You Don’t’ politics, giving Congress leaders nervous breakdowns. The merciless social media has also prevented him from donning a mysterious persona. Sonia excelled at not being an easy read. Her authority was drawn from Indira’s legacy, minus any vote catching clout of her own. Her haughtiness arises from her discomfort in politics, while Indira’s was a poison ivy that flourished in the venal ecosystem of Indian public life.
Indira’s unpredictability was the source of her power. Nobody expected her to split the party in in 1969 and destroy the almighty Syndicate to emerge as India’s most poweful woman. She abolished the privy purse, leaving India’s influential princes fretting. Surprise made her mystique. She nationalised banks. She declared the Emergency and jailed national leaders to protect the future of her dynasty. Then she declared elections and lost, and was surprised that the people could discard the dynasty. She was rewarded for her belief when she was voted back in 1980.
On Indira’s charisma rode the hopes of her party. The Congress is today traumatised over Rahul’s inability to lead. In public, Indira’s sycophants were obsequious. In private they conspired against her. It was not loyalty but the need to survive and flourish that led them to cling to her keel like barnacles. The dismal fate of her enemies, from Kamaraj to Jagjivan Ram, forced them to be her supplicants. By extension, they became courtiers of the dynasty itself. Indira’s efforts were meant to perpetuate her family’s alpha role.
It is an irony that many mass leaders who are the most unapproachable are loved the most by the people. Also, feared the most by their peers. Indira Gandhi was both.
Rahul, on whom rests the tattered hopes of Congressmen, is neither loved nor feared by his partymen or the people. He and his party are ploughing a lonely furrow in a harvest without land. Indira trapped the Congress in a dynasty time loop. And the Gandhis are discovering its not lonely just at the top, but at the bottom of the heap as well.
Ravi Shankar
ravi@newindianexpress.com