topics: |  india | modern | history | biography | nehru | indira

Biography of Motilal and Jawaharlal Nehru, and Indira Gandhi / Rajiv
Ganchi.  History of India from pre-independence to the 1970s

Quotes

The Ganga is the liquid history of India.	 p.1

Origins of the word chamcha: Prior to the [British rule] everyone
in India ate with their  fingers. When the landed gentry in the north
began to invite the new conquerors to their homes ... they needed
cutlery. ... chamchas of the English.

The prospect pleases, only man is vile.
	- Bishop Reginald Heber of Calcutta, on Sri Lanka

The moon, ever a companion to me in prison, has grown more friendly  with
closer acquaintance, a reminder of the loveliness of this world, of the
waxing and waning of life, of light following darkness, of death and
resurrection following each other in interminable succession. Ever
changing, yet ever the same, I have watched it in its different phases
and its many moods in the evening, as the shadows lengthen, in the still
hours of the night, and  when the breath and whisper of dawn bring
promise of the coming day.
	- Nehru, written from Dehra Dun prison, 1931 (p.49)

The first serious Hindu-Muslim riots had already taken place in  Cawnpore
in 1930; 66 people had died...
	- p.61

Memorization in Indian education

We pass examinations, and shrivel up into clerks, lawyers and police
inspectors, and we die young ... Once upon a time we were in possession
of such a thing as our mind in India. It was living. It thought, it felt,
it expressed itself. But it has been thrust aside, and we are made to
tread the mill of passing examinations, not for learning anything, but
for notifying that we are qualified for employment under organisations
conducted in English. Our educated community is not a cultured community,
but a community of qualified candidates.
	- Tagore, p.89 (Tagore was a firm supporter of the need to learn
	English.)

ABCDEFG
Ismensey nikley pandit-ji
	- schoolchildren couplet, possibly referring to Nehru, p.90

[In the runup to the Bandung Conference] An Indian aircraft, the Kashmir
Princess, was flying from Hong Kong to Jakarta, ferrying delegates. The
plane blew up en route and crashed into the sea; three crew members were
the only survivors. Their account was clear: there had beentwo explosions
in the baggage  compartment. An investigation confirmed sabotage. The
intelligence agents responsible were tracked down to Taiwan, but
Washington refused to support Indian demands for extradition. The Bandung
Conference, despite the use of Pakistan as a Trojan horse of the
Pentagon, was a limited success... and it was at Bandung that the non-
aligned movement was born.
	- p.100
	[The Bandung Conference a conference of newly-freed nations,
	was the high point of the NAM, an unprecedented gathering of
	Asian and African Heads of State in Bandung, Indonesia, on
	February 15, 1955.]

Comrades, you should always bear your own responsibilities. If you've
got to shit, shit! If you've got to fart, fart! Don't hold things down
in your bowels, and you'll feel easier.
	- old princeiple of Mao Tse Tung, p.106
	[The Chinese invasion of India, in which they overran large
	tracts in the NE, lasted from October 20 to November 21, 1962.
	At the end of it China declared an unilateral ceasefire and
	withdrew to the border as it was in 1959, which was in one
	sector fifteen miles north of the formal McMahon line. Tariq
	Ali surmises that this war was merely a sideshow in the Sino-
	Soviet dispute, intended to damage Soviet strategy in the Third
	World. The land dispute with India, if any, was over a large
	uninhabited tract in Ladakh. See also discussion between K.
	Damodaran and Chou-En-Lai, p.105]

 		If the indispensable man frowns
		Two empires quake.
		If the indispensable man dies
		The world looks around like a mother without milk for her child
		If the indispensable man were to come back a week after his death
		In the entire country there wouldn't be a job for him as a hall-porter.
			- Bertolt Brecht,
			  On hearing that a mighty statesman has fallen ill
			    (quoted in Tariq Ali, p.109)

Indira Gandhi: Conflicts with Feroze Gandhi

[until 1948, IG commuted regularly from LKO, where Feroze was editor of the
National Herald, to Delhi to help her father, often] acting as his official
hostess. 131

[After Gandhi's death in 1948] IG, Rajiv and Sanjay moved to Delhi, Teen
Murti house. ...
Indira regularly took the children to Lucknow so they could see their father,
but Feroze soon realised that it would be easier for him to come and  see
them, which he did regularly.  J always treated him correctly, but there was
and unspoken tension, which was, in the case of Feroze, soon to reach the
point of explosion.  [Tensions re: N was Harrow/Cambridge in dining manners /
limited convesations, F was] by contrast, somewhat loud - he enjoyed his food
and liked a lot of it, he an enormous reserve of off-colour jokes. ... Indira
was caught in the crossfire between the two men. 134

[In 1952], when Feroze decided to contest a parliamentary seat in Rae Bareilly,
near Lucknow, Indira went to canvass support for him... [after winning, he
moved to Delhi, but he] refused to stay at the Prime Minister's house.
Instead he accepted a small bungalow provided at a subsidised rate in Delhi
to all members of parliament.  Indira continued to stay with her father, thus
putting the final seal on the separation. 134

Indira's role at Teen Murti House

At her father's side, Indira would help:
a. she was responsible for the functioning of the entire household [after N
   returned from a Buckingham Palace visit, he decided that in his house
   too, milk and sugar should be poured before the coffee.]  Also could
   control his temper.
b. travel with father, esp abroad, effectively as "first lady"
c. when N was faced with a constant demand for interviews, most would be
   deflected by his secy Mathai, but occasionally, visitors would ask to see
   Indira, and she would help sort out these problems.  Once in a while she
   also started to stand in for JN in some speehes etc. and realized that she
   had considerable drawing power (6 AM speech in winter-cold Punjab village,
   but immediately the field started filling up) 135-7

[when they visited Winston] Churchill was amazed that a man the British had
locked up for so many years seemed to harbour no ill will.  Indira remarked,
"We never hated you personally." Churchill interrupted, "But I did, I did!" 137
In 1946, G.B. Pant sugg that she stand for parliament, but she turned it
down (pregnant at the time, and commuting between husband's and father's
households).  1n 1955, U.N. Dhebar, and L.B Shastri nominated her to the CWC,
and she was elected.
1957: elected to the Congr Election Committee (getting more votes than Nehru
himself) - the body that chose candidates.
1958: elected to Congr Parliamentary board.
1959: elected President of the Congress Party, apparently asked by GB Pant;
      she said she needed to consult her father. GB said, no, it depended on
      her. So did JN.  Finally when the press opposed the move, she decided
      that she would go for it. 137-8

Indira comes to power

In her presidential speech, Indira quoted from a popular Hindi song of the
time:
      We are the women of India
      Don't imagine us as flower-maidens,
      We are the sparks in the fire.  p.139

Naturally, as generals who had won a decisive battle, they wanted to
finish the war in their way. I lectured them on my position, which was
based on a political appreciation of the overall situation. They choked
and spluttered, but I informed them that I was speaking with the authority
of a unanimous cabinet. Well, they saluted and said they would carry out
our instructions. Now this could not have happened in many countries
and I don't just mean the Third World.
	- Indira Gandhi, in conv to T.Ali, after '71 war

It appeared to many that she was not so much trying to remove poverty
as get rid of the poor.
	- Of the Garibi Hatao slogan in 1976 elections

The parliamentary elections are not suited to our needs.
	- J.R.D. Tata, p.187 (supporting the emergency) "... strikes,
		boycotts, demonstrations. Why, some days I could not
		walk out of my office."

I am an Indian
Not because I am a Hindu or a Muslim or a Sikh or a Christian or a
	Parsi or a Jew
I am an Indian
Because if I am not
Who am I?   - Gandhi

Other Reviews: Kirkus

An Indian journalist and author, based in Britain, has written an astute and
sensitive political biography of the Nehru/Gandhi dynasty, framed by the
assassination of Indira Gandhi and the accession of son Rajiv and tellingly
introduced (Indian "obsession" with the family, their own myth-making) by
novelist Salman Rushdie. 

The individual portraits are distinct, modulated, involving -- and
historically resonant.

Here is austere young Jawaharlal Nehru, forced into a loveless marriage and
deadly lawyering, escaping/plunging into full-time work for Indian
independence (1919) and coming into conflict with foxy, pragmatic Mahatma
Gandhi over control of the Congress Party and "the future of the
subcontinent": betterment for the masses (socialism) vs. smooth passage on
capitalist terms; all-Indian secularism vs. mysticism and
(religious/linguistic) communalism. Accepting a unified movement as an end
in itself, and Gandhi as the indispensable cement, Nehru capitulated: in
Ali's view, inevitably but tragically. The Muslim League gained adherents,
and partition ensued (as well as periodic riots and massacres, the eventual
murder of both Mahatma Gandhi and Indira Gandhi by religious extremists).

In independent India, under Nehru and the Congress Party, land reform was
limited by the political dominance of the rural rich; while state control
of private industry (far from erasing inequality or constituting a "middle
path") opened the way to massive corruption, "even during Jawaharlal's
lifetime." For all his domestic prestige, Nehru's success was in foreign
affairs--in fathering non-alignment.

At home, worse was to come--foreshadowed by the heavy-handed obstruction of
local communist-government reforms ("Nehru favored a soft approach") by
Congress President Indira Gandhi. . . whom her father, in Ali's view, did
not groom as a successor. Indira doesn't get villain-treatment,
however--though Ali does tend to heroicize husband Feroze Gandhi, a
political idealist in the original Nehru mold but neither couth like the
Nehrus, nor a trimmer. (Of this pair, Indira is the Mahatma Gandhi
counterpart--with a fatal authoritarian streak.)

Indira's regime then shapes up as a drama of self-destruction: she would win
elections "as the champion of the underprivileged," but succumb to
disappointed popular hopes, and her own penchant for overreacting to any
opposition. All finds little good to say of younger son Sanjay (or vengeful
widow Maneka); he depicts Rajiv as a decent, intelligent, secularized unknown
quantity. As regards The Raj Quartet/The Jewel in the Crown (to which Ali
makes interesting reference) or public affairs: the right book at the right
time. - Kirkus Reviews