India After Indira

Paul H. Kreisberg

From Foreign Affairs, Spring 1985

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Summary:  Indira Gandhi?s assassination on October 31, 1984, marked the passing of the generation that brought India to independence. Mrs. Gandhi was nourished, almost from birth, on the Congress Party?s struggle against the British, and was particularly influenced by her party?s close links with British socialism in the 1930s. She was deeply suspicious of the business class, even though it supported her with millions of rupees. She was convinced that only if the nation?s industry, agriculture and services were closely guided by the state would equity and justice be assured. Wary of ?imperialist? pressures on India?political, educational and economic?she never relinquished her belief that ?foreign hands? sought to undermine not only Indian stability and independence but her personal political power as well. Although the United States seemed most often to be the target of her concern, the Soviets, British, Chinese, French and most of her South Asian neighbors were also frequently suspect.

Paul H. Kreisberg served several tours of duty in India since 1952 as a Foreign Service officer and was Deputy Director of Policy Planning in the State Department in the late 1970s. He is now Director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Indira Gandhi’s assassination on October 31, 1984, marked the passing of the generation that brought India to independence. Mrs. Gandhi was nourished, almost from birth, on the Congress Party’s struggle against the British, and was particularly influenced by her party’s close links with British socialism in the 1930s. She was deeply suspicious of the business class, even though it supported her with millions of rupees. She was convinced that only if the nation’s industry, agriculture and services were closely guided by the state would equity and justice be assured. Wary of "imperialist" pressures on India—political, educational and economic—she never relinquished her belief that "foreign hands" sought to undermine not only Indian stability and independence but her personal political power as well. Although the United States seemed most often to be the target of her concern, the Soviets, British, Chinese, French and most of her South Asian neighbors were also frequently suspect.

Mrs. Gandhi shared the concern of her father’s generation that India’s unity and integrity were fragile and under continuing threat. The partition into two states, India and Pakistan, was the first great trauma for the independence politicians. Then, in the 1950s, came the integration of hundreds of small princedoms of the old British Raj and the struggle to prevent India from collapsing into a babel of independent linguistic and ethnic states. In the 1960s and 1970s, Mrs. Gandhi fought against political rivals at the national level, and sought to weaken and destroy politicians with strong regional bases who threatened to shift the political balance of power from New Delhi to the state levels; such a shift, she believed, would inevitably weaken the unity and authority of the central government.

Mrs. Gandhi was proud of India’s technological progress but remained close to the traditions and customs of the countryside. Unlike her father, who openly disdained traditional religion, she regularly visited and worshipped at temples and shrines, and privately sought the counsel of astrologers. Her empathy was strong for the concerns of ordinary villagers, even though she herself never lived in rural India. Only once did she lose her grip on the pulse of her country, when a mass compulsory sterilization campaign got out of hand in 1975-76, arousing popular fears and anger, and resulting in her overwhelming defeat at the polls in 1977.

The confusion, division and incompetence of Mrs. Gandhi’s political opponents (despite their strength in some regions), her determination to ensure that one of her sons would succeed her, her drive for vindication, and her sheer political grit and shrewdness, all led Indira Gandhi back to power in 1980. But her last four years were difficult, marked by growing internal political unrest, increasing public cynicism about politics and politicians, and the dangerous religious violence which ultimately took her life.

II

Rajiv Gandhi, who succeeded his mother as prime minister only hours after her death, was three years old when India became independent in 1947. For most of his life, politics and foreign policy seem to have held ...

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