By Dr Jay Dubashi
Smt Indira Gandhi not only brought violence but also corruption. Twenty-five years after her death, we are still trying to cope with both. The Naxalites are a direct end-product of the Emergency. If it is not wrong to use violence to put down your political enemies-which is what the Emergency was all about-why is it wrong to use violence against those who have stolen your lands and your livelihood and are now busy stealing your homes in the name of progress?
"Had she lived on, she would have been 92 years old this year," wrote an old colleague of Indira Gandhi on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of her violent death. He was wrong. Had she not been killed by her bodyguards, she would have been killed by someone else. She was destined for violent death, like Charles I of Britain and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan.
Mrs Gandhi was not a nice person to know or work for. I doubt if she had any friends. There was a twist in her temperament that kept her away from the rest of the society. I once watched her at a public ceremony over which she presided. A man, a foreigner, wanted to speak to her; so he sent her a note. Mrs Gandhi nodded and the man approached her and was with her for three or four minutes. But not once did Mrs Gandhi look at him, let alone shake hands with him. He left a note on the chair next to her and walked away.
Mrs Gandhi was at odds with every one, or almost every one, in her circle-her husband, her aunts, her cousins and almost her entire cabinet. She was not on speaking terms with any of them. She walked out on her husband, or maybe her husband walked out on her, within five years of getting married. She hated her aunt, Vijayalakshmi Pandit so much that she would have sent her to jail to keep company with two other women she disliked, Rajmata of Gwalior and Maharani of Jaipur, had some friends not intervened. These two ladies were sent to Tihar Jail out of personal pique. If they were maharanis, Mrs Gandhi was an empress in her own right. And the only way to show them their place was to put them behind bars.
She had no friends, only hangers-on, and she made sure they knew their place. One of the toadies was Khushwant Singh, who went out of his way to defend the Emergency-he was not the only one; there were other toadies too-hoping to earn her favours, but he fell foul of her when he started boosting her daughter-in-law, a Sardarni.
Another toady was PN Haksar, a communist, who had managed to get into the foreign service with postings around the world, but not in the US. Haksar was related to the Kauls of old Delhi, whose daughter had married Jawaharlal Nehru. The Kauls and the Haksars were also neighbours. Haksar later became Mrs Gandhi's principal secretary-so did another Kashmiri, PN Dhar-and as a good communist, did whatever the commies wanted him to do, including abolishing private purses and nationalising banks.
But as happens to toadies everywhere, Haksar fell foul of the empress and was shifted to the Planning Commission, a useless posting meant for pensioners. One day, I went to see him at his house on Race Course Road, Haksar sat alone in his vast dark drawing room with curtains drawn at the height of winter, wondering what he had done to draw Mrs Gandhi's ire.
Haksar's uncle had a big showroom in Connaught Place, known to every shopper as Pandit Brothers. It is, I think, still there. There was also another showroom in Chandni Chowk. One day, Mrs Gandhi's police or may be Sanjay Gandhi's goons descended on the two showrooms and sealed them. For good effect, they hauled Haksar's uncle to jail to keep company with other traders. Haksar had nowhere to turn to, for all his relations-which means Mrs Gandhi's relations-were either in jail or had decamped to places far from Delhi to escape the clutches of Mrs Gandhi's favourite son. I do not know what Haksar did to escape the net, but he died a broken man.
There was also a strong streak of violence in Mrs Gandhi's character. In fact, I should say that she injected violence into the Indian political system. We shall always remember her for the dismemberment of East Pakistan-her and India's finest hour-for I doubt if any other Prime Minister would have done what she did. She never believed in the nonsense about non-violence--and also about truth-and absolutely had no compunction about using force where force was necessary. Nehru would have dilly-dallied and talked about Hindi-Paki bhai bhai. For Mrs Gandhi, there were no bhais. Violence had to be answered by violence, gun by gun, for at stake was the very existence of a nation under her charge.
It was perhaps her exaggerated faith in violence that undid her. She asked the army to enter the Golden Temple and that very day signed her own death warrant. But she did it with her eyes open.
What I do not forgive her are the ranks of riff-raff she gathered around her, men and women of no substance, whose only job was to feather their own nests and draw a veil over the dark goings-on at the heart of the administration. Mrs Gandhi not only brought violence but also corruption. Twenty-five years after her death, we are still trying to cope with both.
The Naxalites are a direct end-product of the Emergency. If it is not wrong to use violence to put down your political enemies-which is what the Emergency was all about-why is it wrong to use violence against those who have stolen your lands and your livelihood and are now busy stealing your homes in the name of progress? The Emergency too was supposed to have been imposed in the name of progress and growth. Didn't the Emergency-wallas claim that the trains ran on time? So, what is wrong in using force in clearing your lands and your homes of marauders who are arriving from thousands of miles away in search of your minerals, your water, in fact, your very life itself? And it was Mrs Gandhi who started the rot in the name of the Emergency, with her friends in the media egging her on, the same friends who are asking to put down the Naxalites and the others, also in the name of law and order-and, of course, discipline with capital 'D'.
Why did she do it? As I said, there was a kink in her character which ultimately took hold of her and those around her and perverted the very foundation of the republic. This is why we shall never forgive her. For all that she did in Bangladesh, there is a big black mark in her copybook, which time cannot erase. The legacy of violence, which is her special gift to the nation, has wiped out all the good she did or tried to do. This is a pity, but the riff-raff she surrounded herself with are partly responsible for it. Some of them are still active, now singing a new tune of secularism under a new conductor, who now speaks with a foreign accent!
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