Book Review: Indira - The life of Indira Nehru Gandhi

INDIRA -The life of Indira Nehru Gandhi

Often it is reckoned that a particular hobby runs in the family. Though I doubt the generality of this statement, I am happy to announce that my family falls under the bracket. My sister too has a liking for reading/writing and here is a guest post by her.

Author: Divya Rao

“India is Indira and Indira India” – This was how the Indian National Congress branded Indira Gandhi. Indira Nehru-Gandhi is the daughter of India’s freedom fighter and the first prime minister of Independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru, but to the world she was known for much more than just being the daughter of a famous personality. Indira Gandhi led India, the world’s largest democracy, for nearly two decades. She was voted the Woman of Millennium. In  1983 commonwealth meeting, Indira Gandhi looked the most regal and powerful of the three women present. The other two were the Queen of England and Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister of UK.

The book INDIRA – The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi is a biography written by Katherine Frank. It is an exhaustive, well-researched and revealing biography of Indira Gandhi. It is a 500 page thick book of extremely small print. Katherine has to her credit three other biographies and Indira’s biography is her fourth. This former experience provides author the confidence and thoroughness in her work.

The book starts with Indira’s father Jawaharlal Nehru ‘s family details, his education and his marriage to Kamala. The book explains in great detail the turbulent and disturbed childhood of Indira amidst her father’s freedom movement and his arrests, her mother’s illness and the world war. The only real education she received was from her father through his letters and by travelling around the world. Indira’s passionate relationship with Feroze Gandhi is also given some focus.  Around the time of India’s Independence she returns back to India with Feroze on tow. After India’s Independence Indira’s life is all consumed by politics, first as her father’s hostess and then as the prime minister of India. The role of Sanjay Gandhi and later Rajiv Gandhi in Indira’s term, as prime minister, forms the remainder of the book. The events leading up to her assassination is very interesting and well handled.

The initial days of Indira Gandhi where she was mostly traveling with her sick mother and she herself in bouts of depression was hardly interesting. This part of book feels almost like a history academic textbook with facts and figures and nothing else. Author couldn’t have made justice here because during Indira’s initial days she was completely overshadowed by her father and she herself showed no personality. Nehru intimidated her and she merely followed him everywhere he went. The book picks pace only after Indira returns to India, around the time of Indian Independence and gets involved in politics. The drama begins and story unfolds only after she becomes the prime minister of India – around 300^th page of the book. This is when her life becomes ‘Not a Normal, Banal, Boring Life’.

The author does a brilliant job in portraying how Indira metamorphoses from a docile, dumb doll into the Great Dictator describing her insecurities, her fears and her struggles throughout. This makes the book very convincing. However, as all biographies, the book is partial to the subject and her views. All other’s view gets a mere mention or passed off as baseless rumours. Some of the well-known rumours of Indira’s life are not mentioned at all. The author has also restrained from expressing her own interpretations and judgment on Indira’s life.

I recommend this book as a good read for those who want to know the history of India, about what transpired after India’s freedom, how politics and corruption became synonyms of power at the Centre. Pre-requisites of this book include knowing about India’s freedom struggles and partition of India.

After reading this book I am mighty impressed by Indira Gandhi. She was great in foreign relations, thanks to all her travels and influence because of her family background, getting the attention and aid that India needed. Her beliefs were leftist and she sought order over democracy. The public’s experience of emergency was that daily life seemed less erratic and stressful, prices fell, peace and order restored. Off-course, she had her weaknesses, Sanjay Gandhi being the biggest threat. I am convinced of what Indira believed – only she could take care of India, without her India would fall apart.

About the author:

Divya is a busy working mother and a total prankster at heart (though she pretends to be otherwise). You can find the result of her recent writo-mania here.

Love and hate relationship with Gandhi!

I still remember a very huge paper cutting of Mahatma Gandhi's picture on the back of my room door. That was in 2004 on his 135th birthday celebration and the clipping turned yellow having stood there for almost 6 years (removed when the whole house was painted). I did not look at it often and neither did it bother me. It just had to be there ( like I had A.P.J Abdul Kalam's email ID stuck inside my wardrobe for years). 

I was quite a Gandhian myself during childhood (although my close friend liked to argue that I was more of a Subhash Chandra Bose kind) in that I was fascinated by the ideals such as swadeshi, brutal honesty and simplicity. This influence was by a language teacher in our school V.Ganesh who was a hilarious speaker and whose preaching affected me the most. I was all gaga over Gandhian stories, principles and philosophies. My young immature mind was blown away in the words of a very powerful teacher! I was eagerly waiting to lay my hands on Gandhi's autobiography 'The story of my experiments with truth'. No sooner I came out of school than I began to form my own opinions about Gandhi.

While it was indisputable that Gandhi's way of Ahimsa and non-cooperation won us our independence from British, it is also true that Gandhi could have mended his ways to save a lot of lives, resources and money. I slowly came across articles and discussions which made me wonder should Gandhi be considered as saintly as I previously believed him to be. There were movies shouting at me that my doubt is just. When seen through revolutionist's perspective it feels Gandhi erred with his ways. Sarojini Naidu reckoned "it costs the nation millions to keep Gandhi living in poverty". I started to feel that Indians in general and people close to him in particular paid a dear price to let Gandhi live his life his way.

Did Gandhi not break a pledge that he would rather die than witness partition? Did he not practise unethical and questionable things in the name of Brahmacharya and chastity? How couldn't the father of nation be good to his own family? Why did his noble and saintly decisions always wreak havoc in public life? Did he patronize dalits without empowering them? Did he give away whatever muslims asked for without thinking of the consequences? Why did Indian government wipe out from the face of earth, controversial Gandhi's letters and problematic articles about Gandhi? Was it too essential to keep up an image and not give the citizens naked truth?

I can hurt my colleagues and the entire world for the sake of truth. 

M.K Gandhi

I fail to understand what truth he speaks of.

I tried reading "The story of my experiments with truth" but even with my nature of finishing every book I couldn't complete it. It was utterly boring and at many times revolting. Being a 21st century girl I couldn't fathom the fact that 'Mahatma' couldn't be brave enough to allow individualistic freedom for his wife. Just because she was his ardhangini she had to put up with his outrageous demands apparently termed simplicity. Reading his explanations for everything, at a point of time I witnessed a drain of interest for this man. In his prime youth Gandhi enjoyed all the worldly pleasures and only in mid age did he renounce them and boast of his saintliness to the world.

After a gap of 3-4 years I chanced to read 'Brahmacharya Gandhi and his women associates' by Girja Kumar, a research scholar. From the self explanatory title one could guess what this book speaks of. I was disgusted beyond measure at the blasphemy in which Gandhi involved numerous young women in his experiments of chastity. About his practice Gandhi often said "the greater the temptation; the greater the renunciation". How would sleeping with young naked girls without touching them help beat his carnal desires? Why did it even matter to him that he exhibit to world the highest sanctity of his brahmacharya? Isn't such every single act of his, a mad passion to seek glory?

The great historian of all times, Will Durant has declared Gandhi's life to be on par with that of Jesus. This is beyond my understanding and I have repeatedly failed to admit this. How do I even begin to explain that Gandhi was wrong in thinking that British were excellent administrators and they failed only in India? I could never feel right about him approving Indian soldiers fighting on behalf of British in world wars.

As I respect every Indian who has contributed to our independence and hence even here my respect goes to Gandhi for many good things he did for India (since our teachers have quite exhaustively covered these good deeds in our schools I don't intend to bore you with those details). I just refuse to accept that he was a saint and flawless. I am against the glorification of his personality even though I salute each of his sacrifice for the nation. I bow my head before the half-naked man who gave Indian subcontinent a strong psychological sense of oneness and I raise my voice against his immoral deeds as a person.

Many great thinkers and scholars are of the opinion that a great man's personal life shouldn't be used to belittle the grandeur of his achievements. While I agree to this, isn't it Gandhi himself who claimed that he has no distinction between his private and public life and that he was leading a life for all to see! So the right to question his ways is given to me and many others like me by Gandhi himself.