Indira Gandhi: As Prime Minister

Indira will be remembered not only as a gracious and dynamic personality but as one of the great politicians and stateswomen of the twentieth century. She guided the destiny of India’s millions for nearly two decades and tried to lead them to a better life.

It would seem appropriate to say that Indira was born into politics.

Politics grew within her, and matured with experience. She explained, “Politics is certain world trends where humanity is going, what it is doing. And that is the part of politics that interested me, because politics is at the centre of everything. If you don’t have the right politics, how can you be anything? If you are living, say, in some of the dictatorships which we have heard about, you can’t be an artist, I mean, you can’t do what you want. You can be an artist as they want you to be. You can’t be yourself, which means you can’t really be free as I understand freedom. My idea of freedom is not licence. My freedom goes as far as your freedom goes… I am interested in politics more in the broader sense. One can do something to have the sort of atmosphere in which people can be better.” Politics should not overwhelm, but shape events, personalities.

“Congress is very dear to me… because I was born in the Congress. There was no time when my home was not the centre of all the major political movements.”

Though her first steps into active politics were hesitant and cautious, she soon took the whole of it in her stride.

When Indira first came to power in 1966, the country had not yet recovered from the trauma of the Chinese invasion, followed three years later by the Pakistan misadventure in 1965. India was going through a crucial phase. Following its success in the general elections to the Lok Sabha in February 1967, the Congress Parliamentary Party re-elected Indira Gandhi as its leader. She again became the Prime Minister on March 12, 1967. Dr. Zakir Hussain succeeded Dr. Radhakrishnan as the third President of India on May 13.

Indira, whom many opposition leaders in Parliament had dubbed as ‘goongigudiya’ (dumb doll) showed her mettle before long.

Even earlier, Indira had shown that as the leader of the ruling party and as Prime Minister, she had, slowly and steadily, developed a mind of her own, independent of the thinking of the Party caucus. This came to be reflected in some of the major policy decisions which she took to give her Government a new direction. Indira had, over the years of her political preparation, evinced a deep concern for the minorities and the deprived groups. She appeared to be impatient for achieving a new social and economic order that would benefit the masses, particularly the weaker sections. She felt poverty could not be removed unless the economy was made self-reliant and self-generating through a massive investment in the public sector and a much wider distribution of the fruits of planned development. She made many changes in the basic strategies to attain the goals. Poverty became the main issue of the national debate.

Indira had thought these basic policies, which she intended to follow, were involved in the Presidential election, and that she should not be fettered by the Party machinery. A little earlier, on July 19, the Government, through an ordinance, had nationalized fourteen commercial banks.

The bank nationalization was a pre-emptive move to checkmate the orthodox groups within the Congress. It appeared to be a harbinger of many more daring decisions. There was no mistaking about it. Therefore, after the Presidential election, the Congress split into two, Indira leading the ruling Congress party. This was inevitable.

Thereafter, Indira made many policy departures and took far-reaching decisions. With a comfortable Parliamentary majority, she addressed herself boldly and confidently to the tasks ahead as she saw them.

What followed have had profound meaning for Indian democracy and for the world. Indira’s dominance over the politics of India and its shaping so resolutely as she did has had few parallels in parliamentary democracy. In fact, many observers seemed to think - India was Indira! Like India with its fascinating blend of contrasts, Indira herself became an enigma, symbolizing the nation’s politics, image, stability and variety.

When it came to the manner of functioning, she had a style of her own. She was deadly earnest while tackling matters relating to the State or her Party. Her dictates and fearless actions as the Prime Minister led people to quip that she was the only ‘man’ in the Cabinet! She was inclined to be well-nigh ruthless if she felt that the ultimate result would be beneficial to the national cause.

It was possibly in this mood and spirit that in June 1975, Indira Gandhi, through the President, declared a state of internal Emergency in India. She wanted to defeat the ‘forces of disintegration’… ‘communal passions’ that threatened the country. During the Emergency, fundamental rights were curtailed, and the press came under censorship. Indira felt that the nation needed a ‘dose of bitter medicine’ to recover its health.

Things did not work quite that way. Indira took the country to the polls in March 1977, after the emergency was formally lifted. In the general elections to Parliament, the ruling Congress was impressively defeated by the Janata party which combined many opposition parties. A Janata Government under Morarji Desai came into office. But very soon, the constituents of the party developed internal differences and conflicts, and the Janata Government fell. A ‘caretaker’ Government under Choudhary Charan Singh functioned until the country went tothe polls again for elections to Parliament in January 1980 in which Indira Gandhi’s Congress (I)Party won with an overwhelming majority. Both the elections underscored the people’s abiding trust in the method of democratic change.

Back in power, Indira reverted to her policies. But for the brief interruption, these represented a continuity, and we need to look at these in perspective.

Indira ardently promoted the green revolution, which was already on. She helped agriculture with many inputs. These included modern agricultural machinery, tested scientific techniques of farming, organic fertilizers, better seeds, high-yielding varieties of a large number of crops, improved irrigation practices and more rational cropping patterns. These were employed on a massive scale, which revolutionized India’s agriculture. We owe much to the millions of our farmers who adopted the new techniques, and to Jawaharlal and Indira in providing the leadership. Indira kept her priorities. She addressed herself spiritedly and imaginatively to the task of upgrading India’s defence technology. She put faith in our armed forces. National security was one of her prime concerns. Credit goes to Indira for making India’s fighting wing one of the best in the world today. With the latest in weaponry, supersonic jets, tanks, planes, submarines, detection equipment, she strengthened the nation’s defence. The defence machinery was streamlined, and more importantly, she saw to it that every soldier and his family were well cared for. She attended to the problems faced by ex-servicemen and gave them incentives to work in useful areas. Indira believed that the country’s security was in capable hands. And they too were sure that she would not let them down.

Indira’s courage and outstanding leadership came to the fore when she dealt with the Pakistan war which began on December 3, 1971. In a broadcast, she declared that ‘the aggression would be met… aggression must be met, and the people of India will meet it with fortitude and determination and with discipline and utmost unity’. The Indian army, on entering East Bengal, supported the Bangladesh freedom fighters, the Mukti Bahini. On December 12, Indira announced the surrender of the Pakistani troops. The instrument of surrender was signed on December 16. She had given India a great military victory! Bangladesh became an independent country. In January, Indira was conferred with the ‘Bharat Ratna’ by President V.V. Giri. A 25-year Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Peace between India and Bangladesh was signed.

The strength of a country in the new context depends on the advances in science and technology. The Pakistan war proved it. Confidence and strength were needed to pursue peace effectively. Indira knew this. Therefore, she gave great importance to the cause of science and technology. India demonstrated her first peaceful nuclear explosion at Pokhran in the Rajasthan desert on May 18, 1974. But she made her government’s goal clear when she said, “We have no intention to make a nuclear weapon… we want to make the desert bloom and not to make the world a desert.” India’s first space satellite Aryabhatta designed by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) was launched from a Soviet cosmodrome on April 19, 1975. Other achievements followed. In August, India launched the SITE (Satellite Instructional Television Experiment) programme, which enabled us to take television, via the satellite, to the remote villages. In February 1977, Indira inaugurated India’s second Earth Satellite Communication Station at Dehradun for improving overseas communication facilities. On July 18, 1980, India entered the space age when its second experimental satellite launch vehicle SLV-3 was blasted off from Sriharikota. Indira dedicated a national satellite system to peace and service of the people, at Hassan in Karnataka, on February 11, 1984.

While addressing the Federal Assembly of Yugoslavia on June 9, 1983, Indira drew world attention to the alarmingly high level of armament in the Indian Ocean and to the importance of preserving it as an area of peace.

The 20-point programme, which Indira announced in July 1975, laid stress on the Government’s programme of assistance to landless labourers, a small and marginal farmers, artisans, slum-dwellers and other weaker sections.

We owe our active national health policy to Indira. The family welfare planning programme encouraged smaller families. This was vital to improve the availability of food, education and health for the people. Though she welcomed the strides taken by modern medicine, she did not underestimate the value of Indian systems of medicines. In an interview to a popular periodical, she said, “Here in India we are so enamoured of western medicines that we are not bothered about our own herbs….”.

Indira had experienced the richness of life, and she learned much outside the books, from fellow human beings. This learning on a wider scale, as she conceived it, was the purpose of education. “Education does not mean only refining manual, vocational and intellectual skills. Essentially, it is a process of deepening the spirit…”

Every sportsman, sportswoman and every child of the country, who was on the threshold of entering sports in a big way, admired Indira for hosting the Asian Games. Her earnest thought for encouraging Indians to take to sports that promoted health and, more importantly, excellence and team work, led her to open a new Ministry of Sports, which continues to work with keen interest towards the betterment of sports. Yoga also became a part of the school curriculum. As a result, we have now an all-round and wider awareness of the importance of sports. To encourage the feeling of oneness and friendship not only amongst her countrymen but all peoples of the world, India hosted the Ninth Asian Games in New Delhi in November 1982. Indira was severely criticized for ‘wasting’ our scarce resources, but she had a wider vision of India being placed on the sports map.

Indira believed in the nation’s unity, and its cultural variety. She visited different places of worship and enthused in the people the importance of living together in harmony as one large family. Secularism, socialism and democracy were really interrelated values or concepts. Without one, the others were not possible. We needed to work for a fuller realization of all the three together. Only then would we be able to make our people strong and take our country forward, she felt.

Indira stimulated changes in all spheres, some of them drastic. Her idea was to make India self-reliant, strong. By effecting a series of simultaneous social and economic transformations, Indira tried to direct the country’s economy towards growth, with stability and strength. To put it in her own worlds, “A large country like India must act with an inner conviction of its strength. I have tried to devote my life to build a tolerant India, a secular India and a peaceful India. I wish to continue to work for it and devote all my energy to it and, if necessary, die for it. Let us not be bogged down in petty squabbles which diminish the nation. Let us deploy our strength to face the issues which affect the long-term interests of our people.”

Archives from the book ‘Indira Priyadarshini’ by Alaka Shankar