Standing from left to right Jawaharlal Nehru, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Krishna Hutheesingh, Indira Gandhi and Ranjit Pandit. Seated: Swaroop Rani, Motilal Nehru, and Kamala Nehru.
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi was an Indian stateswoman and central figure of the Indian National Congress.
Background
Gandhi was born as Indira Nehru in a Kashmiri Pandit family on 19 November 1917 in Allahabad. Her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, was a leading figure in India's political struggle for independence from British rule, and became the first Prime Minister of the Dominion (and later Republic) of India. She was the only child (a younger brother was born, but died young), and grew up with her mother, Kamala Nehru, at the Anand Bhavan; a large family estate in Allahabad.
She had a lonely and unhappy childhood. Her father was often away, directing political activities or incarcerated, while her mother was frequently bed-ridden with illness, and later suffered an early death from tuberculosis. She had limited contact with her father, mostly through letters.
Education
Indira did her pre-schooling at the Modern School in Delhi followed by her primary school in a variety of institution in India and also in Non-British Europe schools. She graduated from the pupil’s own school in Poona and Bombay. She later attended Santiniketan University and Somerville College, Oxford University, in England.
Career
In the 1950s, Indira, now Mrs. Indira Gandhi after her marriage, served her father unofficially as a personal assistant during his tenure as the first Prime Minister of India. She became president of the Indian National Congress in 1959. The Congress had led the country to freedom and had then become its major political party. She had joined the Congress in 1938 and subsequently served as a member of its Youth Advisory Board and chairman of its Woman's Department.
Prior to assuming the presidency of the organization, Gandhi was named to its 21-member executive Working Committee and was elected with more votes than any other candidate to the powerful 11-member Central Election Board, which named candidates and planned electoral strategy.
In June 1964, following her father's death, Gandhi became minister for information and broadcasting in the Cabinet of Lal Bahadur Shastri and instituted an Indian television system. In January 1966, when Shastri died, she was elected leader of the Congress party in Parliament and became the third prime minister of independent India. She assumed office at a critical time in the history of the country. A truce had ended the 1965 war between India and Pakistan only a week before. The nation was in the midst of a two-year drought resulting in severe food shortages and a deepening economic crisis with rising prices and rising unemployment.
The political repercussions of these difficulties were profound. In the fourth general elections of 1967 the Congress retained majority control (and reelected Gandhi as its leader) but lost control in half the state legislatures. After 20 years of political dominance, the Congress party experienced serious difficulty. Gandhi immediately set about reorganizing the party to make it a more effective instrument of administration and national development. Her goal was to achieve a wider measure of social and economic justice for all Indians.
As her left-of-center policies became clear, the Congress party split, with the younger, more liberal elements coalescing around Gandhi and the older, more conservative party leaders opposing her. This division came to a head in July 1969 when she nationalized the country's 14 leading banks in a highly popular move meant to make credit more available to agriculture and to small industry. The split was formalized when Gandhi's candidate for the presidency of India, V. V. Giri, won over the party's official nominee.
Although Gandhi took 228 members of Parliament with her into the New Congress, this was not a majority in the 521-member house, and she held power only with support from parties of the left. In December 1970 when Gandhi failed to get the necessary support to abolish the privy purses and privileges of the former princes, she called on the President to dissolve Parliament. Midterm elections were set for March 1971, one full year ahead of schedule. A coalition of three parties of the right and an anti-Congress socialist party opposed Gandhi, who made alliances with parties of the left and some regional parties. Her platform was essentially one of achieving social and economic change more rapidly in an effort to improve the quality of life of India's people. Her party won a massive victory with over a two-thirds majority in Parliament.
Gandhi faced major problems in the areas of food production, population control, land reform, regulation of prices, unemployment, and industrial production. The problems were exacerbated by the influx of almost 10 million refugees as a result of the civil turmoil in East Pakistan. In November 1971 Indian troops crossed into East Pakistan to fight Pakistani forces. On December 6 Gandhi announced diplomatic recognition of the Bangladesh government set up by East Pakistani rebel leaders. Ten days later Pakistan's commander in East Pakistan surrendered to India. In the state elections held in India in March 1972, Gandhi's New Congress party scored the most overwhelming victory in the history of independent India; however, her opponent accused her of violating election laws, and a high court upheld the charge in 1975. Because of this development, as well as domestic unrest, Gandhi declared a state of emergency and postponed elections.
In the 1977 elections Gandhi and her party suffered major defeats; Gandhi lost her seat and the premiership. The following year she headed the Congress party faction as she returned to Parliament.
In 1979 she again became prime minister. In efforts to prove India's non-alliance in the global community, she visited both the United States and the USSR. Internally, riots broke out among Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh religious sects. Sikh separatists secured weapons within their sacred Golden Temple in Amritsar, assuming religious protection. Gandhi ordered government troops to storm the temple, leading to many Sikh deaths. This led to her assassination on the grounds of her own residence and office October 31, 1984, by her own Sikh security guards.
Gandhi was one of India's most notable and controversial political leaders. She wanted to take her country into the modern world and oversaw it becoming a nuclear power. She wanted to eradicate poverty and realized that population reduction was an essential part of this. Her eagerness for change sometimes saw her act in ways that seemed to compromise democracy. Speed was of the essence for her. There is little doubt that she wanted what she believed was best for her people. Her assassination by one of her own Sikh bodyguards was a tragic act. However, while her government had traditionally stood for equality across India's communitarian divides, Sikhs were becoming increasingly discontent. Communitarianism remains a challenge for India to overcome.
Her charisma as the daughter of the founder of independence Jawaharlal Nehru, her secularist outlook, her identification with the poor, her commitment to socialism, and her image as a strong national leader had made her the only politician of all-India stature acceptable across regional, religious, caste, and class lines. Mrs. Gandhi was devoted to national unity, secularism, self-reliance, reduction of economic disparities, and to democratic processes. She repudiated the methods of Marxist class struggle and thus strove to combat India's poverty without changing the structure of society. She was willing to use coercive measures if necessary, however, to achieve economic progress and social reform; she defended the emergency, for example, as necessary to protect the economy from the disruptive activities of the opposition and to assure the poor the benefits they were entitled to as equal citizens under the law.
In foreign affairs during the Cold War, Gandhi relied on good diplomatic relations and with the Soviet Union to protect India against a possible US-China-Pakistan alignment. She purchased modern arms from the Soviets, which made possible her greatest achievement, the quick, decisive victory by the Indian army in the 1971 war with Pakistan. Victory ended the refugee crisis and led to the creation of independent Bangladesh from the former East Pakistan. She was sympathetic to liberation movements in the third world and often supported neutral movements.
Views
Quotations:
In 1952 in a letter to her American friend Dorothy Norman, Gandhi wrote: "I am in no sense a feminist, but I believe in women being able to do everything. .. Given the opportunity to develop, capable Indian women have come to the top at once. " While this statement appears paradoxical, it reflects Gandhi's complex feelings toward her gender and feminism. Her egalitarian upbringing with her cousins helped contribute to her sense of natural equality. "Flying kites, climbing trees, playing marbles with her boy cousins, Indira said she hardly knew the difference between a boy and a girl until the age of twelve. "
"At about eight or nine I was taken to France; Jeanne d'Arc became a great heroine of mine. She was one of the first people I read about with enthusiasm. "
Gandhi's advocacy for women's rights began with her help in establishing the Congress Party's Women's Section[citation needed]. In 1956, she wrote in a letter: "It is because of this that I am taking a much more active part in politics. I have to do a great deal of touring in order to set up the Congress Party Women's Section, and am on numerous important committees. "
Gandhi spent a great deal of time throughout the 1950s helping organize women. She wrote to Norman in 1959, irritable that women had organized around the communist cause but had not mobilized for the Indian cause: "The women, whom I have been trying to organize for years, had always refused to come into politics. Now they are out in the field. "
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
As one writer said: "The Indian people were her children; members of her family were the only people capable of leading them. "
Another historian recounts Indira's comparison of herself to Joan of Arc: "Indira developed a fascination for Joan of Arc, telling her aunt, 'Someday I am going to lead my people to freedom just as Joan of Arc did!'"
Connections
Gandhi married Feroze Gandhi in March 1942. Shortly thereafter they were both imprisoned for a period of 13 months for their part in the nationalist political agitation against British rule. Feroze Gandhi was a lawyer and newspaper executive and became an independent member of Parliament. He died in 1960. They had two sons, Rajiv and Sanjay.