Indira Gandhi: from a diffident politician to a confident stateswoman

When Indira Gandhi was killed by her bodyguards on October 31, 1984, my former UNI colleague, Abraham Tharakan, who was running the popular Bangalore tabloid City Tab asked me to write a piece based on my recollections of her.

I wrote about her transition from a hesitant leader to a powerful ruler and recounted the experience of a tempestuous 1969 tour of Northeastern States which I had covered for UNI.

Memories come crowding into the mind. Memories of close encounters of the professional kind. They form a kaleidoscope of images which  reveal the transformation of a hesitant politician, unsure of  herself, into a powerful personality who was to leave a deep impression not only on her countrymen, but many in other lands too.

Indira Gandhi held no office in the party or government when I interviewed her for Patriot in August 1963. She had agreed to contribute an article for the newspaper’s Independence Day number. Not having found the time to write, She suggested that she might be interviewed instead.

In an austerely furnished room in the stately Teen  Murti house. I waited for her with a stenographer and a photographer. As she entered the room, she quickly pulled the pallav of her sari over the head. She reminded me of a shy, demure bride as she settled in a large chair and waited for me to read out the questions which had been given to her in advance on request.

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}