Nehru and the Gandhis - Implosion: India's Tryst with Reality - page 149

13
Nehru and the Gandhis
'We are distraught - what can we do but vote for her son?' 1 That was the cry I heard in the
run-up to the December 1984 general election that gave a landslide victory to Rajiv Gandhi
and the Congress party. A few weeks earlier, on 31 October, I had been in the Himalay-
an hill station of Mussoorie listening, along with British diplomats and other journalists,
to Tibetan refugee children singing at lunchtime for Princess Anne, who was visiting from
the UK as president of the Save the Children Fund. The drivers turned on their car radi-
os and heard the news - on Pakistan Radio - that Indira Gandhi, India's prime minister,
had been shot. We wondered if it was true, or did Pakistan Radio put such disinformation
out every day! Mark Tully overheard two policemen talking about the shooting, so drove
back to Delhi where his BBC colleague, Satish Jacob, had been the first person to broad-
cast news of her death over the airwaves. There were no easily available telephone links,
so the rest of us, including Michael Thomas of The Times , decided it must be true rather
more slowly, and started a seven-hour drive back to Delhi. Our cars were plastered with
news sheets mourning Gandhi's death as we passed through towns on the way south.
I was back in my Delhi office that evening in time to write the lead story for the front
page of the next morning's FT , reporting that Indira Gandhi's son, Rajiv, had been sworn in
as prime minister, and that violence was spreading. 2 The next day, I was among the crowds
thronging around the steps of Teen Murthi House, a museum that had been the home of
Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister and Indira's father, where her body, face un-
covered, lay in state on a gun carriage. 'Tears and Tear Gas, Fighting and Flowers ' was
the headline the FT put on my story reporting how thousands of young people had fought
and jostled for a view of the body. They were beaten back by police with vicious lathis and
eventually tear gas when the teeming crowds threatened to overwhelm the body.
An era ended that day and another began. One of India's most notable politicians and
strongest leaders was dead, shot by her Sikh security guards, leaving behind a controversial
legacy that is still debated. 3 Indira Gandhi was gone but in the spirit of 'the king (or queen)
is dead, long live the king', Rajiv Gandhi had quickly been made the Congress leader and
prime minister so as to ward off potential rivals. That succession established the Nehru-
Gandhi family far more firmly as a political dynasty than it had been before, leading to the
rise later of Rajiv's widow, Sonia, and their children Rahul and Priyanka.
While leaders of India's other parties have changed, with a flood of dynasties only ap-
pearing relatively recently, the Nehru-Gandhis have resolutely stayed at the top of the Con-