Prasoon Sharma
India’s Indira: Although I have been listening about Indira ji since my childhood, but it was only in class 11th that I became fully conscious about her posthumous presence, when I defended her gravely during an argument on operation blue star with one of my senior chemistry teachers. I seriously felt it to be my moral responsibility to do so, as if someone spoke against my own mother. What was the big deal about her? Why not Mahatma or Pandit ji? Why not anyone else? Why only her?
I started reading about her and I met a lady who was completely dedicated to a nation, that was not just a country, but a dream that her father and her ultimate inspiration Mahatma Gandhi had dreamt of. I encountered a lady who considered it to be her moral responsibility to fulfil all that her father and Mahatma had thought about India but could not do or left unfinished. In doing so, she often took some tough decisions which were largely opposed or criticized, but at the end, the intention behind that matters and it was purely for the good of the citizens of India.
My obsession grew more and more as I read about her and for the first time I felt gratified when I visited her memorial at 1, Safdarjung Road, New Delhi, during the celebration of her 100 years, under the tag line “I Am Courage”; And I felt just as a devotee feels when he enters the temple of his idolized god.
The first dilemma I encountered in my path of discovering Indira was: Was Emergency wrong? Or was it justified? The 25th day of June 1975, just a few minutes before the clock struck midnight, witnessed a great, rather infamous verdict by then President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, on the advice of Prime Minister, that was the proclamation of the state of emergency against the internal disturbances. People often ask me “Why didn’t she step down and resign? Why did she continue?” To which the only answer I give is, because of her moral responsibility towards this dream called India. She could not have handed over this dream to a bunch of aggressive and falsely motivated people who were blindly opposing her. Well, this was justified with her massive victory in 1980, as people back then also must have realized the same! No doubt, the emergency was undemocratic, but so was the attempt to bring down a democratically elected government.
Whatever may be the dilemmas, but all these dilemmas were overshadowed by her earlier participation and contribution to the freedom struggle and the massive progress she made during her prime ministership. May it be the farmers’ progress, the great victory of 1971 and the subsequent creation of Bangladesh, or the Sikkim capture or the Garibi Hatao program or nationalization of banks, or abolition of privy purses or any other thing, as the list goes on and on! I may be entirely wrong in many of my justifications to the dilemmas, but I know, that she was not. At least not in her intentions!
This is all about her political image, this was about the iron lady, as the world saw her, but I wanted to know about the real woman, the woman behind this image of a Goddess. And as I was researching, I came across a biography written by a renowned journalist Sagarika Ghose and she perfectly summed up Indira, the woman, in her words- “I discovered a young girl both protective of her constantly ailing mother and cowed by her accomplished, haughty aunt. I discovered a teenager struggling to keep up with the expectations of her illustrious and demanding father. A woman torn between an unhappy marriage in Lucknow and the thrill of being near the action and her father in New Delhi. A mother compensating her son for her bad marriage by overindulging him, creating a Frankenstein’s monster in the process. And finally a paranoid, battle-weary woman whose survival and political instinct were dulled by personal loss.” This was entirely contradictory to her political image that was of “all powerful-confident-courageous iron lady”, but was true and maybe this was the reason that made her so insecure and a tough dictator that she was.
Not many people know, but Indira ji was also a nature lover. In one of her speech, given on the inauguration of 10th general Assembly of International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, she said “As only child whose childhood was invaded by the turbulence of a vast national upheaval, I found companionship and an inner peace in communion with nature. I grew up with love for stones, no less than trees and for animals of all kinds. I have always felt that closeness to nature helps to make one a more integrated personality.” Also, among all the Indian prime ministers who preceded her, she was perhaps the first one to raise the issue of environment to make it a part of national policy.
Summarizing entire Indira in such a short span is next to impossible, as, for a lady with such a giant persona, words can go on and on. But invariably, she’s the only stateswoman India has ever produced, whose legacy still resonates and never ceases to amaze in the world’s largest democracy!
Whether she was right or wrong, that I am still not sure about. One can hate her, one can love her, but one can’t simply ignore her. Perhaps, the most accurate reading was done by author Mary Carass- “She had a singular ability to evoke both hate and love, to alienate and to charm, to frustrate and simultaneously to delight!”
How I see my relationship with her is very complex to explain, but how people see it, that I understood during a conversation with two of my friends, in which we were discussing about my study-cum-bedroom, when one of them asked “Don’t you have anything else except books in your room?” To which the other one replied, “Yes, he does. And that is a big photo of Indira Gandhi!”
As, time and again I say “Indira never died. Indira never dies.”
(The author is a medical student based in Jaipur)
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