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Today's
A Moment In
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05-041 Indira Gandhi II
Lead: Cloudy were the political fortunes of India's longtime Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the late 1970s. Unfazed, she engineered a vigorous comeback.
Intro: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.
Content: Her political intuition--which in the past had seemed infallible--was failing. Power was slipping from her grasp. In June 1975 the High Court of Allabahad found the Prime Minister guilty of irregular and illegal election practices. Economic decline was forcing many Indians further into poverty. When rising public disorder threatened the government, Gandhi declared an emergency, sent political enemies to prison, rescinded constitutional rights and censored the press with unusual harshness. Confident that her actions had cowed the opposition, Gandhi called a snap election--and the people gave the Prime Minister's Congress Party a sound thrashing.
There was no Indian politician, however, who was so widely accepted across regional, religious, caste and class lines. When the opposition coalition which had defeated her fell into disarray in 1980, she returned as Prime Minister. The last four years of her tenure were punctuated by increasing friction between India's religious and ethnic factions, with the most violent conflict in Punjab involving Sikh extremists who sought independence for the province. Gandhi sent units to root out extremists who were occupying the Golden Temple, the holiest of Sikh shrines. The temple was damaged and many died in the skirmish. Four months later, while walking in her garden, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh security guards.
A secular moderate in an age of religious extremism, a practical politician able to reach out to many factions, a diplomat capable of playing the great powers against each other, Indira Gandhi made her mark on modern India and was genuinely mourned by a nation that valued her leadership.
The Producer of A Moment in Time is Steve Clark. At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.
Resources
Malhotra, Inder. Indira Gandhi: A Personal and Political Biography. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1991.
Moraes, Dom. Indira Gandhi. Boston: Little Brown and Company 1980
Vasudev, Uma. Indira Gandhi: Revolution in Restraint. New Delhi, India: Indraprastha Press: 1974.
Copyright 2010 by Daniel M. Roberts, Jr.
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