The debate rages on ...

A NEW biography of Indira Gandhi is likely to re-ignite the debate on whether she was a democrat or an authoritarian and whether the present ruling elite in India is a product of the process of "political debasement" that her critics believe began under her. Questions about her commitment to secularism, about her "real" motives for clamping the Emergency and about her "self-destructive" role in Punjab are bound to be raised again as her admirers and critics look back at her years in the light of the biography.

Katherine Frank is an American academic who now lives in England and her credentials for tackling the life of India's first woman Prime Minister seem to be no more profound than her empathy for strong women. This is her fourth biography-the previous three being also of women - Emily Bronte, Mary Kingsley and Lucie Duff Gordon.

Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi is, in large parts, a one-dimensional portrait of one of independent India's most complex political leaders. It portrays her as a crusader, though with a touch of ruthlessness when painted into a corner, who paid with her life as she sought to build on the Nehruvian vision of a modern secular India. Her excesses - the imposition of the Emergency, indulging Sanjay Gandhi - are explained either as knee-jerk responses to situations thrust upon her or in emotional terms.

On the Emergency, Frank clearly suggests that she was forced into it by a combination of circumstances, wrong advice and her own conviction that the JP movement was pushing the country into chaos and anarchy. And, to stress the point that Indira Gandhi was a democrat at heart, she points to the 1977 elections which, she insists, Mrs.

Gandhi ordered in defiance of Sanjay Gandhi and the rest of the coterie."For Indira, the Emergency had been a means to an end. But she was no Bhutto or Mujib. For all her failings and despite her irrational belief that only she could lead and control the country, on some level she remained committed to democracy. She was guilty of hubris but not megalomania," Frank writes.

This sums up Frank's approach - yes, the lady had her downside, she bore grudges, indulged Sanjay Gandhi to excess and suffered from other human failings but, in the end, what counted was her commitment to freeing India from poverty and sectarian prejudices.

Much of what went wrong with the emergency is laid at the door of Sanjay Gandhi with Indira Gandhi herself emerging a victim of her son's excesses. There is a dramatic moment, minutes after the decision to impose the emergency was taken, which highlights her helplessness. The incident was narrated to Frank by Siddhartha Shankar Ray and, according to him, the prime Minister was shocked to learn that Sanjay and Bansi Lal had decided to cut power supply to newspapers and close the courts though this was not envisaged in the emergency provisions. On Ray's suggestion, she spoke to Sanjay and "when she returned ... her eyes were red and she had obviously been crying.

She said: 'Siddhartha, it's alright; there will be electricity and no courts will be closed.' Ray took her at her word and finally departed for home - falsely reassured."

On the Punjab issue too, Indira Gandhi is shown as going along with the dirty tricks department of Sanjay and Zail Singh creating a "Frankestein" in Bhindranwale, though Frank does blame her for relying on the "inexperienced and far from diplomatic Rajiv, Arun Nehru and Arun Singh" for advice as the crisis in Punjab deepened. But it is a piece of Frank's softly, softly approach to her subject that even here it seems as though she is a victim of wrong advice rather than a partner in the "crime" that finally consumed her.

On Kashmir, Frank is a little more critical of her but, largely, it is an uncritical work - a journalistic account based on existing biographies with very little original research. It is a hugely apolitical project focussed more on Indira Gandhi's persona - often cluttered with avoidable details of her household - than on her political agenda and offers no fresh insight into what made her tick.

For Indian readers, there are few surprises, though it has some little known sidelights about her pre-marital relations with Feroze Gandhi, her disastrous stint at Oxford where she failed repeatedly, her plans to leave India and settle down in London after Nehru's death and her difficulties with Maneka. Her poor health as a young girl - she spent several months at a Swiss sanatorium for tuberculosis - is discussed at length and it might interest a lay reader to learn that her relations with Nehru came under some strain in his last days as she felt oppressed and claustrophobic under his shadow.

In Britain, the book has provoked a minor controversy following an extremely idolatory review in The Guardian. It has provoked a strong reaction from Indira Gandhi's critics who have lashed out at attempts to portray her as "Mother India" but, interestingly, there is a consensus that India's current political masters are "lesser figures" compared to her.

The disagreement is on whether they are also in some way her "true heirs", as one critic put it, accusing her of encouraging a climate which would inevitably lead to the sort of political opportunism that characterises the Vajpayee coalition. "The appalling circumstances of Indira Gandhi's assassination should not blind us to the fact that she debased Indian politics," he wrote in a rejoinder to The Guardian.

Geoffrey Moorhouse, a well known British journalist, in his review had said that Nehrus were "dedicated to the notion of a secular state in which creed or caste would dominate anyone else; where the religious card that had beggared and bloodied the country's history ... could no longer be played." India, he argued, was now in "very different hands and all who care about that country must tremble for the future of its secular democracy."

Moorehouse has been accused of trotting out an "apology" for Indira Gandhi and ignoring the fact that she "could not tolerate rival parties winning state level elections and (mis)used article 356 of the constitution to impose president's rule."

The initial reaction to the biography confirms the enduring interest in Indira Gandhi and the strong passions she still arouses among her admirers and detractors alike. It would be interesting to see how the book is received in India though Frank seems to have bought insurance against a negative reaction by producing a list of acknowldgement that reads like a "who's who" of Indian academia and the media - the main sources of book reviews.

HASAN SUROOR

Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi, Katherine Frank,HarperCollins, £19.99.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : Certainly not history
Next     : Thank God for Dennis