On this day, 105 years ago, a girl was born to Jawaharlal and Kamala Nehru. She was named Indira Priyadarshini by her parents and would later become a 3 term Prime Minister of India as Indira Gandhi, a name she took after she defied her family to tie the marital knot with her beau Feroze Gandhi.
Indira Gandhi became a widow at a very young age of 32. Per the writer Khushwant Singh who once upon a time was very close to the her family, especially to her favorite son Sanjay Gandhi, Indira had many affairs. She had a long time relationship with Nehru's moon faced Private Secretary M.O. Mathai before she got bored with him and shifted to her Yoga teacher Dhiren Brahmachari who was much younger and stronger with a slim, yogic body with a flat stomach. It is rumored that her elder son Rajiv Gandhi was old enough to know about his mother's affairs with Dhiren Brahmachari. No wonder the controversial Yoga teacher died in a mysterious plane crash few months after Rajiv Gandhi becoming India's Prime Minister.
Indira Gandhi was a legend of her time. She earned the tag of "Iron Lady". Though a woman, she is the only manly Prime Minister India ever had. Unlike her illustrated father, she was poor in academics. Her known qualification is High School Matriculation - her division unknown. As a student she dropped out of several institutes, from Santiniketan to Oxford, failing to acquire a post High school degree. She also had a failed marriage. After her husband's death she moved with her two kids to her father Nehru's Prime Ministerial residence.
Politics was in her blood and she carved her niche in it. She was made the Prime MMinister in 1966 after the untimely death of Lal Bahadur Sashtri by a bunch of old faddists and obscurantists leaders in Congress. The ruling Syndicate of Congress Party, a cabal which included the likes of Morarjee Desai and Atulya Ghosh sarcastically branded her as GUNGI GUDIA (dumb doll) so that they can rule by pulling the string from behind.
But she proved them wrong by taking over the party and then the country - using her charisma and powerful oratory skills to single handedly sweep the National elections of 1971, destroying all her detractors in her party. She was hard working and a tireless campaigner. Post India's victory over Pakistan and carving out a new country named Bangladesh under her leadership she was branded as Goddess DURGA not just by her supporters, even by then opposition stalwart and later PM of India, Atal Vihari Vajpayee who extolled her then as part of Jan Sangh, precursor to current BJP.
Soon Indira became a cult figure. In South India she came to be known as "AMMA INDIRAMMA (mother Indira) and stood by her even during her electoral losses elsewhere. With cult status came sycophancy - the Congress style. D K Barooah, a party leader from Assam famously said "India is Indira, Indira is India". He also said Congress will never lose as long as ALLI and COOLIE vote for it. Muslims and poor class people formed the backbone of Congress party's votebank then.
An insecure Indira (she had an insecure, lonely Childhood as her mother died young and father was jailed) imposed Emergency in 1975 when the court declared her election as illegal. She lost the election that followed, again making a comeback in 1980 as the Janata Party experiment at center failed miserably.
But after her young, favorite son Sanjay whom she groomed to follow her in politics killed himself in an air crash, Indira was never the same decisive leader. She dithered on Punjab where terrorism peaked in early 1980s and ultimately paid for her life.
One fine Fall morning of October 31, 1984 she was shot dead by her own Sikh bodyguards. It came like a bold from the blue, shocking the entire nation. More aftershocks were to follow in the form of riots in Delhi and other places where hundreds of Sikhs were made Sikh KABAABs (Barbrcue) as they were doused with gasoline and burnt alive by Congress goons. The inept and corrupt authorities turned a blind away to this massacre. It was ghastly.
In 38 years after her death a lot of water has flown under the bridge. Yet in her life and death, she was a significant figure, a newsmaker. Love or hate her, you can't deny her space in India's history.
Her tenure was a mixed bag, a saga of lack of vision and missing opportunities when China and many Asian nations took the path of Capitalism and moved droves out of poverty when she steadfastly stuck to her brand of socialism, accentuating poverty in India. But her biggest contribution was her single handendly disfiguring India's perennially pugnacious and obnoxious nation called Pakistan, keeping it at bay. On her Birth Anniversary, she duly deserves kudos for the astute boldness and leadership she showed in handling the Bangladesh crisis - India's one and only one manly woman Prime Minister.
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