Interviewing Indira Gandhi at Teen Murti on August 12, 1963, for Patriot
's Independence Day number. Seated at the left is the stenographer who took notes as she answered questions. Photo: V.M. Saluja
She
answered all questions, some briefly, some at length. When fresh questions were
put in the light of answers to previously submitted questions, she answered
them readily.
On occasions her answers ended
abruptly. Expecting more to come, we waited in silence. There was nothing more.
So we moved on to the next question. At other times, she would become very
voluble and words poured out in a torrent.
I wondered if some of the replies
would not embarrass her when they appeared in print. Three times I stopped her
to enquire whether she would be able to stand by what she had said. Each time,
she asked, "What did I say?" and the stenographer who took notes read out what she had said. Twice she thought it prudent to retract,
saying, "No, don’t print that".
On the third occasion, she said “You can print
that”. The question was about groupism in the Congress. It was standard
practice for the party’s leaders to deny the existence of groups. Mrs Gandhi,
who had already served several terms as Working Committee member and one term
as Congress President, was ready to go on record as admitting that there were
groups in the party. The Congress had suffered from groups even in the pre-Independence days, she said. "Do you think my father had an easy time in UP?
He had to fight his way all along "
The overall impression one was left
with, at the end of the hour–long session was not that of a powerful
personality, but of one not sre of herself. Little wonder that the mighty party
bosses presumed she would make a pliable prime minister.
Indira
Gandhi was already a different person when she addressed a press conference as
prime minister on New Year’s Day 1969. She came under considerable needling
from a correspondent who plied her with questions designed not so much to elicit information as to show she
wasn’t telling the truth. At one stage she decided she had had enough of his cross- examination. Raising her voice, she told him, "I will not be talked to like
that." So stern was her look and so firm her tone that the questioner’s
enthusiasm evaporated and he tendered a meek apology. After that she never had any trouble
with the Delhi press.
Indira Gandhi presented yet another
picture as she answered questions at a luncheon meeting of the Foreign
Correspondents Association in Tokyo
during a State visit to Japan later that year.
The Associated Press bureau chief, who
welcomed her as president of the association, brought the house down repeatedly
with a humour–packed prepared address which contained a life–sketch of Mrs.
Gandhi and much else.
Mrs. Gandhi had a mischievous sparkle in her eyes when she rose to reply. “Your
president has been good enough to say that my father and grandfather and were
great fighters in India’s freedom struggle.” she said. “Let me tell
you my mother and grandmother were equally great fighters in India’s
freedom-struggle.” Mrs. Gandhi went on in this vein, making the hard–boiled
correspondents roar with laughter.
The question–and-answer session that
followed revealed her in the best of elements. Serious questions fetched
straight answers. Frivolous questions were met with light-hearted banter.
Embarrassing queires were deftly parried with delightfully vague responses.
There was not a trace of the hesitancy
and diffidence one had seen six years earlier.
Memories of an eventful week spent
covering a tempestuous tour of the northeastern states compel attention.
The day before the tour was to begin
there were doubts whether it would take place at all. Assam, the first state on
the prime minister’s itinerary, was in flames over the issue of a second
refinery in the state. Manipur was in the throes of an agitation on the issues of statehood and a university. Armed
insurrection in Nagaland was in full swing.
Late in the evening word came from the
Prime Minister’s Office. “The tour is on. Please be at the airport at 6 a.m.”
At Jorhat airfield the governor of Assam and
Nagaland, B.K Nehru, and the chief minister of Assam , Sarat Chandra
Sinha, greeted Mrs. Gandhi. Both of them
advised her to abandon the tour. She insisted on going through with it. After a
brief discussion it was decided that they would all go to Shillong, then
capital of Assam, to sort out then capital of Assam, to sort out the matter. We
four pressmen who had accompanied Mrs. Gandhi from New Delhi were asked to wait
at Jorhat.
When Mrs. Gandhi returned to Jorhat we
were told of a change in her programme. She would not tour Assam but would
proceed to Tripura. The Governor, who was her kinsman, was generally given
credit for dissuading her from going ahead with the Assam tour.
After a successful tour of verdant
Tripura, Mrs. Gandhi flew into turbulent Manipur. Early the following morning
we took off in two helicopters for Ukhrul, a Naga stronghold. It was supposed
to be a 40-minute flight. More than an hour a later we were still airborne. An
air force officer explained that we had to turn back because of bad weather in
Ukhrul.
It was much later that we discovered
that it was not only the physical weather which was bad. A party of security personnel who had left Imphal by
road for Ukhrul the previous day had been ambushed. Two security personnel had
been killed and Manipur’s Security
Commissioner, who led the party,
wounded.
The air was thick with tension when Mrs. Gandhi briskly climbed the steps
leading to the rostrum to address a public meeting in Impal. Trouble appeared inevitable. Her
security officer followed her up the rostrum pleading with her all the way
to abandon the meeting. Alone on
the rostrum with Manipur’s home minister Thombi Singh, who was to be her interpreter, she was a sitting duck for a marksman. And everyone knew there were plenty of rifles
left over from the World War in and
around Imphal.
Indira
Gandhi began her speech. She spoke one sentence and asked Thombi Singh to translate it. He rendered her
words into Manipuri and then told her that was enough. It was too risky to go
on with the meeting. The security
officer still stood at the top of the
steps, his hands folded imploringly.
She spoke another sentence and ordered
the reluctant Thombi Singh: “Translate”.
While Thombi Singh was struggling for
words, from the rostrum she could see flames leap up behind the rows of
crowds. Demonstrators had stopped a bus and set fire to it.
Raising her voice, Indira Gandhi
said: “Some hooligans have just now set fire to a bus. Who suffers? Not me.
Tomorrow you will have one bus less on the road.” Turning to Thombi Singh, she
commanded again:“Translate.”
Seconds later shots rang out We gathered
much later that a shot was fired from a roadside house and the police returned
the fire.
Unperturbed, Indira Gandhi appeared
determined to go ahead with her speech. To the immense relief of all around,
she wound up her speech speedily, ran
down the flight of steps and got into
her waiting car. The accompanying
pressmen barely managed to plough
through the crowd and jump into the last
vehicle of the prime minister’s
motorcade as it sped away.
A little later the Manipur Assembly building was set on fire. With rioting and arson raging, the authorities clamped down a 24-hour curfew and called out the troops.
Truckloads of troops provided escort
as the prime minister’s party drove to the airport the next morning. Indira Gandhi reached the airport
by helicopter from Raj Bhavan.
At Dimapur we had to board helicopters
to fly to Kohima, capital of Nagaland. But Kohima reported poor visibility
forcing us to wait indefinitely.
The
prolonged wait made Indira Gandhi impatient. Yashpal Kapoor got a dressing down for not having arranged to start early, despite her instructions. In the
hills, the mornings are generally clear and the sky becomes cloudy later, she
said.
Defence authorities hurriedly made
arrangements to provide lunch for the prime minister at an officer’s mess
nearby. Indira Gandhi, however, decided to wait at the airport itself so that we could take off the
moment the clouds cleared.
Suddenly Mrs. Gandhi asked Kapoor to
get her suitcase. She had decided to change her sari.
The suitcase was opened on the tarmac in the shade of the aircraft. Indira Gandhi spent a few minutes
going through the saris before she picked one. Unknown to her, a Films
Division photographer clicked away,
capturing on film portraits of the prime minister as a woman choosing a sari to
wear.
She then went into the aircraft and
changed. As she emerged from the aircraft she announced that we would go to
the army mess for lunch after all.
The lunch ended quickly as
word came that the weather was clear in Kohima.
We ruched to the airport . Boarded our helicopters and were safely in
Nagaland’s picturesque capital before the clouds gathered again.
The public meeting on the Kohima football ground was another tense affair. Security personnel kept a wary eye on the distant hill where hostile elements
were entrenched. The venue of the meeting was
within the range of the hostiles'
guns.
The scene in the football ground could
well have been a Cecil B De Mille spectacle. The twelve tribes of Nagaland
were represented there, dancers from each tribe forming a circle as they danced in her honour. Mrs Gandhi moved from one group to another, dancing with
each group, much to the discomfiture of the uptight security officials, before
she returned to the dais to speak.
While in Kohima Mrs. Gandhi received reports about the outbreak of communal violence in Ahmedabad.
She decided to fly to Gujarat the next morning
instead of returning to New Delhi as scheduled.
Ahmedabad was under curfew when we
landed there late in the evening, flying
from Jorhat with only a brief halt at Lucknow’s Amausi airport
for lunch. From the airport she drove straight to the riot-affected areas. The
riot victims poured out their tales of
woe to her. The prime minister’s
dramatic airdash across the entire
breadth of the country while the embers
were still glowing had an electrifying
impact on the trouble-torn city. She
had administered a healing touch.
1969 saw Indira Gandhi maturing into an
outstanding leader. Her detractor’s efforts notwithstanding, she continued to
grow in stature until the Emergency.
Indira Gandhi of 1969 was a taller
figure than Indira Gandhi of 1963 and 1967, and it was a still taller Indira Gandhi who was cut down by assassins' bullets.(The City Tab, Banaglore}
