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Tribute
Remembering
Indira Gandhi
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Professor Kishore Gandhi
 Memory
romanticizes and brings to mind some of the triggering points
of Indira Gandhi's personality who was operating at a razor's
edge to make India a united and vibrant nation. Combining
in her personality the idealism of Jawaharlal Nehru and
pragmatism of Sardar Patel, she had an insight into the
spiritual landscape of the country. She has reflected her
profound concern for Indian philosophy and wisdom, the India
of the imagination. She spoke of those human depths that
are beyond all superficial divisions, invoking the timeless
order, which holds urgent message for the spiritual renewal
of humanity. Fascinated by the creative writings of her
father Jawaharlal Nehru, Rabindra Nath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo
and J. Krishnamurthy, her perception of India extended beyond
a geographical or political landscape to a kingdom of values
which a Buddha, a Jesus Christ, a Mohammad, a Nanak, a Vivekananda,
Sri Aurobindo and Mahatma Gandhi was able to actualize.
Born
in bondage, socialized in the liberal and humanistic philosophy
of the west and the great freedom movement in which she
was not merely a spectator but a creative participant in
the saga of romance and an adventure in the making of a
new India. Educated in an idyllic atmosphere of Santiniketan
under the serene guidance of Rabindra Nath Tagore and in
Switzerland and England, she was able to imbibe in her personality
the alacrity of the west along with the illumination of
the East. Since her entire family was involved in the freedom
movement and her ailing mother was to be nursed, she was
compelled to abandon her regular education. What she missed
in the University milieu may be important but what she gained
from her distinguished father through informal education
was undoubtedly great in shaping and moulding her sensitivity
and mind.
In
the last letter of the series that her father had specially
written for her education is very significant. Jawaharlal
Nehru writes:
"What
a mountain of letters I have written … with all this
paper and ink convey message to you that will interest you?
You will say yes, of course, for you will feel that any
other answer might hurt me, and you are too partial to me
to take such a risk. But whether you care for them or not,
you cannot grudge me the joy of having written them, day
after day, during these two years." "You must
not take what I have written in these letters as the final
authority on any subject. And she remembered by heart the
lines from Tagore with which he had ended the letter and
the series":
Where
the mind is without fear
And
the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by
narrow domestic walls;
Where the mind is led forward;
Into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom;
My father, let my country awake.
Jawaharlal
Nehru fully equipped her with an awareness of the historical
forces, of the inevitability of change, of the grandeur
of a national liberation movement. She often remarked that
"Jawaharlal Nehru's autobiography was enthralling and
left a profound impact on her mind." But this was followed
up rapidly with Discovery of India which unfolded a new
world of the mind. She had of course, a generalized pride
in being Indian, but never before she experienced the long
and rich panorama of Indian history as it was unrolled by
this unique publication. She once said that she had an appreciation
for the rich diversity and almost miraculous unity that
had characterized India from the very dawn of human history.
She could clearly perceive that the western colonialism
were on the verge of ending and the movement towards freedom
of hitherto subject peoples _ the greatest of its kind in
the long panorama of human history was nearing a triumphant
conclusion with India in the vanguard. Something deep was
stirring in our vast and ancient land. India was rising
again, the miracle of renewal was once again ready to occur.
In
an essay on "A Page From the Book Memory" (published
in "Women on the March", September 1963, Indira
Gandhi had described vividly the pre-dawn arrests of national
leaders on the eve of Quit India Movement and her first-hand
experience of a tear gas attack at the flag-hoisting ceremony
on the 9th August, 1942.
"The
Swaraj Bhavan was fully occupied by the military when she
heard about her arrest. She packed some clothes and books
and went to stay elsewhere. She wrote that I emerged at
the scheduled meeting at 5.00 PM and crowds of people poured
out from all sides … I had already spoken for ten minutes
when truck loads of armed British Military drove up and
formed a cordon around us … At the sight of a gun barrel.
Just a yard away from my head, excitement and anxiety got
the better of him (Feroze Gandhi) and he came charging down,
yelling at the sergeant to shoot or lower his gun. The sergeant
made the mistake of touching my arm to lead to the prison.
It was like a signal, the crowd surged forth; my other arm
was grabbed by some Congress woman and I thought I would
be torn asunder … A large number of us, men and women,
including my husband and I was arrested. The ride to the
jail was rather an extraordinary one for the police in my
van were apparently so moved by my talking to them that
they apologized and put their turban at my feet and wept
their sorrow because of what their job compelled them to
do."
No
wonder, she had a superficial knowledge of the jail environment
flowing from her relations and friends because of their
involvement in the freedom struggle and its trials and tribulations
but "what a world of difference between hearing and
seeing from the outside and the actual experience."
This is not the place to discuss in-depth Indira Gandhi's
experience of life in the jail but what I need to articulate
is her remarkable insight into the shape of things to happen
in the future. The concluding portion of her essay "A
Page From the Book of Memory" brings to one's mind
instinctively the tragic death of her younger son, Sanjay
Gandhi. She writes:
"It
was war time and cantonment was crowded with not only British
but Americans and Canadians as well. A Canadian ace pilot
was struck by our Superintendent's attractive daughter.
Once he was flying low over her house, as he often did,
when his wing touched a telegraph wire and burnt into flames.
We saw it falling towards us at alarming speed but it just
skirted the jail wall and crashed into a half-built bungalow
not far away. All things pass and so did this. My unexpected
release was like coming suddenly out of dark passage _ I
was dazzled with the rush of life, the many hues and textures,
the scale of sounds and the range of ideas. Just to touch
and listen was a disturbing experience and it took a while
to get adjusted to normal living."
India's
freedom in 1947 was an event not only a local but indeed
of a global significance because it marked the end of the
colonial era and beginning of the new chapter in the world
of civilization. Immediately on the eve of India's independence,
Jawaharlal Nehru articulated the need for a self-renewal
and building a cohesive and vibrant India, committed to
secular and self-reliant policies. His faith in human friendship
was shattered by the Chinese aggression on Indian soil.
It, in fact, marked the beginning of the end of Nehru's
long and outstanding career. But more than the Chinese threat,
it was the factionalism within the Congress Party between
Krishna Menon on the one side and right wing of Congress
caucus on the other that frustrated his attempt to negotiate
with China on the boundary question.
Indira
Gandhi knew this and the first thing which she did on becoming
Prime Minister was to prepare the Congress Party for a major
split to defeat the rightist caucus permanently and make
them ineffective. She got the rich political counsel of
Surendramohan Ghosh _ a revolutionary and the President
of Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee as well as Deputy Leader
of the Rajya Sabha _ in transforming the monolithic structure
of the party and making it a vibrant movement for facing
the challenges that lie ahead. It was with the backing of
radicalized Congress Party that she got an unprecedented
mandate, engineered a number of socio-economic programmes
and was able to make a quantum jump by presiding over the
liberation of 70 million people from the brutality of a
cruel military regime. She captured over 50,000 square miles
of Pakistan's territory and 90,000 soldiers as prisoners
of war. The American Seventh Fleet hovering in the Bay of
Bengal could not unnerve her and she kept the spirit of
tranquility.
It
would be relevant to mention a brief dialogue between Dr.
Henry Kissenger and Dr. Karan Singh during his brief sojourn
to the U.S. as Ambassador about inflaming patriotism of
Indira Gandhi. Dr. Kissenger said that "he admired
her as an able and ruthless protector of India's national
interests and further added that President Yaha Khan had
assured the United States that East Bengal would emerge
as an independent country, but Indira Gandhi was not ready
to accept the United States being godfather to a new nation
on the sub-continent and wanted India to play the pivotal
role." (Karan Singh, Brief Sojourn: Seven Months as
Ambassador to the United States, B.R. Publishing, 1991,
p.23).
More
than anything else, Indira Gandhi was deeply upset by the
evolutionary crisis, a crisis of civilization which continue
to threaten our biological survival in this beautiful planet.
Such was her deep commitment to the human race that she
was always looking before and after as how to explore and
create socio-psychological environment in which human being
can actualize his maximum potentials and learn to live in
harmony with his self, community, laws of nature and the
evolutionary process of development. The major questions
which she addressed to some of the distinguished scientists
including Nobel Laureates like George Wald, Fritijof Capra,
Jonas Salk, Illya Prigogine and Andrew Huxley in her private
conversation were: How to liberate mankind from the spell
of multiple fears: nuclear, biological and psychological
which are threatening mankind's survival from this planet?
How to generate cultural momentum or a great leap forward
in the extra-terrestrial intelligence? How to accelerate
the pace of scientific and technological developments for
improving the impoverished rural environment who had suffered
socio-economic exploitation and deprivation for centuries?
How to build a climate of opinion for calling a moratorium
on the production of nuclear weapons and diverting manpower
capability and material resources for improving the quality
of life of submerged people of the Third World?
Indira's
life is an odyssey, full of obstacles, but she has the deeper
and powerful aspirations to mount even gallows with the
glory of India on her lips. Socrates has to drink the hemlock,
Christ to hang on the Cross, Joan of Arch to burn at the
stake, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi
and Indira Gandhi have to die at the point of the gun. Such
is perhaps the fate of luminous personalities whom the divine
commissions to liberate mankind from various kinds of bondages
and socio-economic tyrannies. They have to operate at a
razor edge and their struggle is so intense that during
such process they get crucified. But their spirits continue
to exhort us, to arise and awake and to guide the human
race towards the path of love and dedication to meaning:
the quest for the infinite in the finite, for the timeless
in time:
But
thought's slave of life,
And life's time fool,
And time that takes survey of all the world.
Must have a stop.
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GHULAM
NABI AZAD SWORN-IN CM
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 SRINAGAR:
Senior Congress leader, Shri Ghulam Nabi Azad was
on 2nd November sworn in the tenth Chief
Minister of Jammu and Kashmir. People's Democratic
Party leader Muzaffar Hussain Baig took the oath as
Deputy Chief Minister along with 11 Ministers, two
of them Ministers of State. Governor S.K. Sinha administered
the oath of office and secrecy to Shri Azad.
Besides
Shri Baig, his predecessor, Shri Mangat Ram Sharma
was sworn in Minister. Shri Peerzada Mohammad Sayeed
and Shri Taj Mohiuddin, both from the Congress; Shri
Abdul Aziz Zargar, Shri Qazi Afzal and Shri Tariq
Hamid Qarra from the PDP, Shri Nawang Rigzin Jora
from Leh and Shri Haji Nissar Ali from Kargil were
inducted as Cabinet Ministers. Shri G.S. Charka and
Shri Babu Singh, both from the Congress, were sworn
in Ministers of State with Independent charge.
Besides,
Shri Charka and Shri Singh, PDP's Qarra is the only
new face in the Ministry. The PDP dropped its seniormost
minister in the Mufti-led government, Shri Ghulam
Hasan Mir.
Union
Home Minister, Shri Shivraj Patil, his deputy Shri
S.P. Jaiswal and AICC general secretary, Smt. Ambika
Soni attended the function.
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