Twenty years after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, India is remembering with strong emotions the woman who holds the record as the longest serving prime minister of the world's largest democracy.
When India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru died in 1964, his daughter Indira was not seriously considered as a successor.
However just two years later, when prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri died suddenly, she was chosen to fill the void.
Dismissed infamously by the opposition as a "dumb doll", Indira Gandhi eventually wielded staggering power, ruling India from 1966 to 1977 and 1980 to 1984.
"She went through various phases from healthy left-leaning populism in the late-1960s culminating in her 'garbi hatoa' (remove poverty) drive, then she went through a terrible phase of paranoia in imposing a state of emergency on the country," said political analyst and writer Praful Bidwai.
Fiercely socialist, Gandhi abolished privy purses - personal allowance payments to India's erstwhile maharajas - which she felt were anachronistic.
But after re-election in 1971, she stunned the world by declaring a state of emergency in the mid-1970s and in her own words brought democracy "to a grinding halt." Her opponents were jailed, the press muzzled.
"Gandhi over-used force not only during the emergency but later to put down the Sikh separatist rebellion in Punjab," said Madhumita Roy, a professor of political science in Delhi University.
In 1977, misjudging her own popularity, Gandhi called elections and was routed. But three years later she was re-elected and proved less authoritarian.
"Despite the emergency, Gandhi remains genuinely popular and people remember her as a decisive, determined leader devoted to people's welfare in her own way," said Roy.
She spurred India's "green revolution" between 1967 and 1978 and is credited with making the country self-sufficient in food through the use of seeds that were more genetically resistant to pests.
However, economists argue that while agriculture was saved, nearly all else "an insecure Gandhi wrapped in her fist", nationalising banks, increasing import controls and raising trade barriers.
"The Indian tragedy is not that we adopted an anti-export bias in the 1950s when all developing colonial countries did, but that we didn't change in the 1960s when world trade grew by leaps and bounds," Rakesh Mohan, deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India, told Outlook magazine.
Gandhi presided over a struggling, closed economy, contributing to decades over lacklustre growth that ended only after India introduced sweeping free-market reforms in 1991.
India's economy grew by 8.2 percent in the last fiscal year, one of the highest rates in the world.
However, she did help prepare the ground for India to boast the third largest reservoir of scientists and technical manpower, allowing the country to be the chief beneficiary of the Western corporate passion for outsourcing.
"A lot of people admire her for her bold foreign policy and her opposition to the United States and global hegemonisation of the big powers," said Bidwai.
In late 1971, Gandhi gave military support to a successful attempt by East Bengal to secede from US-backed neighbouring Pakistan.
After invading eastern Pakistan, the Indian army almost overran western Pakistan invoking US anger.
India subsequently withdrew from west Pakistan but independent Bangladesh was created in the east.
A surge in national pride won Gandhi the adoration of the masses. A Gallup poll gave her the title of the world's most admired person in public office.
"I left the army to join the Congress under Gandhi because I was so impressed by the tenacity and courage with which she led India during the 1971 war," said Major Dalbir Singh, a Congress Party committee member.
"We will remember her on Sunday with special prayers ... It is hard to forget her as she was larger than life."
On October 31, 1984, Gandhi was shot dead by two Sikh bodyguards four months after she ordered troops into the Golden Temple in Punjab to flush out Sikh militants fighting for an independent state.
Her tragic death triggered a bloodbath in which at least 3,000 Sikhs were massacred.
The Nehru-Gandhi legacy survived through her son Rajiv who became prime minister, only to be killed by a Sri Lankan Tamil Tiger suicide bomber in 1991 in revenge for another military adventure.
Rajiv's wife Sonia and their children today carry the weight of the India's greatest political dynasty.
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