From running PM’s kitchen to ruling India: How Indira Gandhi never ceased to reinvent herself

Tough and controversial, Indira Gandhi in 1999 was adjudged ‘greatest woman’ of the 20th century ahead of Queen Elizabeth, Mother Teresa, Margret Thatcher, Marie Curie or Joan of Arc. The greatest woman tag was not without a reason.

For most part of her life, Indira preferred to answer political developments with silence and surprise counter-moves.

Indira’s political opponents often underestimated her abilities to make do with less like most of the country’s populace, which had prepared her well to run a kitchen as large as India. Writer and filmmaker Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, a close friend of Nehru’s, witnessed Indira’s economic acumen first-hand in August 1954. Abbas had just screened his film, Munna, the first songless Hindi movie, for a select audience including Nehru.

Nehru, a film buff, was so moved by child star Master Romi’s performance that he invited him for breakfast the next morning. Abbas asked Nehru if the entire unit, including the other actors and technicians, could accompany Romi. Before answering him, Nehru called up Indira and asked her in a lowered voice, ‘Indu, have we got enough cereal and eggs to invite this whole gang for breakfast?’ Later, Abbas met up with Indira and asked her why she had not said an outright yes to her father’s query.

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To the filmmaker’s surprise, the prime minister’s daughter, who ran the household at Teen Murti House said: ‘It’s no joke running the house of a hospitable and large-hearted man like my father on the fixed salary that he gets!’ Indira told Abbas that quite often the prime minister’s salary was not enough to pay the grocer’s bills and that, at the end of the year, Nehru owed a substantial amount to various creditors. The debts were paid when the prime minister received his yearly royalties from the foreign publishers of his books.

In 1969, Indira had famously split the Congress party to get rid of the old guard and announced far-reaching populist measures, such as the abolition of privy purses and the nationalisation of banks.

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The move to nationalise 14 leading banks won the nation’s heart and mind. The “Shoe-shine Boys Union” offered to shine for free the shoes of all AICC delegates as a show of their gratitude towards the party. With a single stroke of her pen, Indira nationalised 14 leading banks. The biggest was the Central Bank, controlled by the Tatas, with deposits of over Rs 4 billion; the smallest was the Bank of Maharashtra with deposits totalling Rs 700 million.

Indira struck a severe blow to other big business houses, too, such as the Birlas who were running the United Commercial Bank; the Dalmia-Jains with Bharat Bank and its 292 branch offices; the Punjab National Bank set up by Dyal Singh Majithia, Lala Harkishan Lal, Lal Lajpat Rai and others, and some Gujarati entrepreneurs who had big stakes in Dena Bank. An economic survey of 20 leading banks of that era showed that 188 people who served as directors were also directors of 1,452 companies. The large funds they had used to acquire private profit and privileges were now open for public welfare — measures such as financing the rural sector of the economy, to lend money to farmers to buy tractors and taxi-drivers to purchase cabs.

Indira returned to power in the early polls of 1971, with the powerful slogan “garibi hatao”. Emerging as a towering, powerful Prime Minister, her greatest moment of glory came when Pakistan was split into two. The surrender of thousands of Pakistani troops in Dhaka and the creation of Bangladesh capped her triumph, earning her the title of “Durga” from none other than Atal Bihari Vajpayee of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh.

India’s decisive victory in 1971 over Pakistan restored the national pride that was damaged in 1962. President VV Giri awarded Indira the nation’s highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna.

In an article titled Kiski Puja Kar Rahe Hain Bahujan (Whom are the lower castes worshipping?), Prem Kumar Mani, a Dalit, recalled that Vajpayee had called Indira an “Abhinav Chandi Durga” for defeating Pakistan. Communist leader SA Dange protested strongly, saying that Vajpayee did not know what he was saying and Indira could not understand what she was hearing, and that they should know that Chandi Durga had massacred Dalits and the backward classes.

Modesty may have prevented Indira from accepting Vajpayee’s compliment but she admitted to Jayakar, her friend and biographer, that she had had some intimations of “supernatural powers throughout the war and even previous to it, having had strange experiences”. Jayakar thought that all doubt had left Indira and she was filled with a sense of euphoria that left little space for any other emotion.

The Pokhran nuclear tests in 1974, which made India the world’s sixth nuclear power, further enhanced Indira’s stature in India and abroad. The annexation of Sikkim in 1975 turned her into a towering personality who could do no wrong.

Indira had been bitterly opposed to the creation of a Punjab state on linguistic lines as she closely identified with her minority Hindu supporters in the state. Barely six months before her assassination, the Prime Minister had sought to assure the majority community that, “if there is injustice to them or if they did not get their rights, then it would be dangerous to the integrity of the country”. (Cited by AG Noorani in the EPW on 3 November 1990.)

Indira had just taken over as Prime Minister for the first time in 1966 when a demand for the creation of a Punjabi suba was conceded. In her book, My Truth (Vision Books), published in 1980, Indira had recalled her concerns of 1965 when she was minister for information and broadcasting in Lal Bahadur Shastri’s cabinet and a committee under the then Lok Sabha Speaker, Sardar Hukum Singh, had favoured the creation of a Punjabi Suba. Indira wrote that she was opposed to the formation of Punjab on the basis of language as it had let down the Congress’ Hindu supporters. “To concede the Akali demand would mean abandoning the position to which it (the Congress) was firmly committed and letting down its Hindu supporters in the projected Punjabi Suba… this startling reversal of Congress policy was totally unexpected.”

In this context, Indira’s solicitude for Hindu sensitivity was significant. Even in 1980, when she was back as Prime Minister, her recollection of the “startling reversal of Congress policy” in letting down the party’s Hindu supporters during the formation of a Punjabi suba reflected her deep concern for the Hindu community. Some of Indira’s biographers like Katherine Frank, SS Gill and Pupul Jayakar noticed that when she had returned to power in 1980, Indira had turned a lot more sensitive towards the Hindu community than towards Muslims or Sikhs.

The Jana Sangh’s dominance over the Janata Party, the formation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and an en masse conversion of 1,300 Harijans to Islam in Meenakshipuram, Tamil Nadu, in April 1981 had made the Prime Minister worried that communal issues would dominate the political narrative.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh had recognised Indira’s concern for Hindus living in Punjab. Soon after her assassination, veteran RSS ideologue Nanaji Deshmukh wrote a piece, Moments of Soul Searching (published in the Hindi magazine Pratipaksh), where he described Indira as a “great martyr”.

“Indira Gandhi ultimately did secure a permanent place at the doorstep of history as a great martyr. With her dynamism born out of her fearlessness and dexterity, she was able to take the country forward like a colossus for over a decade… she alone had the ability to run the decadent political system of our corrupt and divided society…,” Deshmukh wrote.

The reviewer is a Visiting Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation. A well-known political analyst, he has written several books, including ‘24 Akbar Road’ and ‘Sonia: A Biography’. Views expressed are personal. Read all the Latest News , Trending News ,  Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.