Remembering for the 58th Republic Day of India-26 January, 2007:
By: Siva Sivapragasam
When Indira Gandhi became the Prime Minister of India in 1966 she was described as a”Dumb Doll”obviously referring to her inability then to tackle India’s domestic and international issues. But barely four years later she was hailed as an invincible goddess when India won her war against Pakistan.
This writer had the opportunity of interviewing her father the First Prime Minister of India - the Late Pandit Jawarhalal Nehru somewhere around the 1960s when he visited Sri Lanka for the Non-Aligned Conference at the height of the Indo-China war.One of the questions put to him by the writer was about his successor and whether he was grooming his daughter to succeed him.With a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his face Nehru said ‘this is a not a matter for me to decide but a decision the people of India have to take.’ The people of India did decide on her later when they made her the Prime Minister of the World’s largest Democracy.
Diverse Personality
Indira Gandhi was certainly a person with a diverse personality when she took decisions for her country.From the Olympian heights of victory after the Pakistan war she plummeted down into the abyss of electoral defeat.The last Prime Minister of India Atal Behari Vajpayee even referred to her as a person who has been ‘consigned to the dustbin of history’.But he was wrong.Within two years the Indian people brought her back with pride to lead their country and the Janatha party became history. But unfortunately the decisions she took for her country were mixed and thereby created a sense of bitterness among sections of her people. Even today people remember her as a person who introduced nineteen months of nightmarish emergency in the country. Such acts clouded the benefits she bequeathed to her country. Sometimes referred to as the ‘man in the Cabinet’she took bold decisions in the interest of her country.When she ordered Lieutenant Colonel Sunderji of the Southern Command to invade the Golden Temple in Punjab she did this not because she loved the Sikhs less but because she loved India more. For this act of her’s she made the supreme sacrifice with her life when she was gunned down by her own trusted Sikh body - guards. In later life her son Rajiv too had to lay down his life for politics.
Concentration of Power
Critics of Indira always dub her as a person who wishes to have an iron grip with concentration of power in her hands.Some say that this was due to the large influence that her playboyish younger son Sanjay had on the mother and perhaps her love to ensure dynastic succession.But unfortunately she could not achieve this due to the untimely death of Sanjay who died in a helicopter crash.
Her pride of achievements was of course the liberation of Bangla Desh in 1971 and Indians are so proud of this that she was looked upon as an incarnation of Shakthi,the Goddess of Power.Her interest for the Tamils in Sri Lanka was no less. During the July 1983 riots when Tamils in the country specially those of Indian origin were being burnt, massacred and their belongings looted there was an uproar in the Indian Parliament.Members were questioning her as to why India was silent. It is said that she walked out of the Lok Sabha proceedings, went into her room , telephoned the Sri Lankan President Jayawardene and told him that if the riotimg is not controlled within the next 48 hours Indian troops will fly down to Sri Lanka to stop it. It was also rumoured that she had ordered the War Book be opened to invade Sri Lanka if the necessity arose. Jayawardene knew the seriousness of it and assured her that the rioting will stop. Both he and his Prime Minister immediately took steps to curb the violence.Gandhi also flew her Foreign Minister Narasimha Rao to Sri Lanka to ensure that Jayawardene kept his word.Thus another Bangla Desh type invasion of Sri Lanka was averted. She did not end her interest in the Tamils with this. When Appapillai Amirthalingam, the leader of the Tamil United Front was in exile in India soon after the July riots she called him to New Delhi from Madras to attend India’s Independence Day celebrations and introduced him for international exposure to the top-notch diplomats from all over the world as the Elected Leader of the Tamils in Sri Lanka. In fact she had requested Amirthalingam to purposely come a little late for the function so that he would be the cynosure of all eyes present.
A secular country
If History is to analyze the merits and demerits of Indira Gandhi both her faults and flaws may be long but at the same time her achievements and victories are even longer and impressive.The poison that was embedded in the form of the Emergency rule is now a thing of the past and the present younger generation knows little about this and cares little about it. In an irony of fate and paradox it has done some good to the Indians to realize that India has to be a secular country with its multi ethnic, diverse nationalities and has to be governed democratically.
India’s rise under Indira was dazzling and in a way the meteoric rise had even surpassed that of her predecessors including that of her father who was a man of great vision and wisdom. Her sudden and tragic removal from the scene of politics like Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar was indeed a great loss to the Indians and was perhaps a greater loss to the Tamils in Sri Lanka. [monsoonJournal.com]