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}

B.R.P. Bhaskar

Sketch by Artist Nambooditi

Attack in Srinagar: "my head is bloody, but unbowed"

In the SMHS Hospital, Srinagar

This picture was taken by a local press photographer and appeared in The Motherland, New Delhi daily, along with a report from its Srinagar correspondent, Avtar Kishan Watt

On January 30, 1974, I jotted down these lines in a diary: "Writing after a gap of seven days spent in hospital. Looking back, it all appears like a dream, or a movie, not quite real." 

I was in the office (UNI bureau in Srinagar), working on a "Christ in Kashmir" story, based on a book by Aziz Kashmiri, for release on Sunday. It was a story I had heard of earlier.  Sir Muhammad Zafarullah Khan, Pakistan's Foreign Minister, had narrated it at the UN while participating in a debate on Kashmir. 

According to this story, Jesus Christ did not die on the cross. He was brought down alive, and after the wounds healed he travelled east to spread the gospel among the lost tribes of Israel. Thus he reached the Kashmir valley. 

On the outskirts of Srinagar there is a tomb which, according to local tradition, is Christ's. 

I looked at the watch. The time was 8.35 p.m. I put the story aside and left for home. 

I was staying alone in a government accommodation in Jawahar Nagar, allotted to me as an accredited journalist. My wife and daughter were in New Delhi. (When UNI transferred me from New Delhi to Bombay in December 1972 I knew I was entering an uncertain phase and decided not to disturb the family immediately.) 

When I reached the house I found the gate unlatched. I presumed my part-time cook had forgotten to put the latch on. 

I stepped into the compound. The lock on the front door was missing. Was the cook still in the house, I wondered. No, he couldn’t be, for the lights were out. I stood there for a while asking myself whether I should go in or go out and seek help.  

Eventually I decided to go in. Pushing the front door open, I moved in cautiously and switched on the light. I then opened the cupboard in that room to see if there was any sign of a break-in by burglars. The camera I had kept in the cupboard after taking pictures when my wife and daughter came to spend the Christmas holidays was still there. So there had been no burglary.

Pictures taken when my wife and daughter came to spend Christmas holidays in Srinagar

As I stood there I heard the sound of footsteps from upstairs. Obviously, there was someone inside the house, possibly in the first floor bedroom that is heated at night using a bukhari. He couldn't be a burglar. If he were, he could have quietly slipped out through the back door as I stood outside the house. Apparently he was waiting for me. 

I again thought of going out and seeking help.  My house was a unit of a twin house. The adjoining unit was locked as its occupant, R K Thakkar, IAS, Legislature Secretary, was away at Jammu, the winter capital. One unit of the next twin house was occupied by Muzaffar Ahmed Khan, Assistant Director of Information. I could go there and get help. But, then, the intruder who was on the first floor could see me go and would know that I had gone to seek help. He could get away before I returned with help. If he was a potential attacker I may have to face him later at some other time and place of his choosing. I often walk home at night through deserted streets. I decided it was best to confront him there and then and meet whatever fate awaited me. 

I went to the store adjoining the kitchen where logs bought for winter heating were kept. I picked up a handy piece of wood and went into the rooms one after another and switched on the lights. There was no one on the ground floor.

Then I walked up the stairs. As I pushed open the door of the heated bedroom using the stick in my hand, a man wearing the traditional Kashmiri phiren jumped out and tried to hit me on the head with a heavy instrument. I dropped the piece of wood and tried to get hold of the weapon. I noticed that one more person was there. He remained in the unlit bedroom. I told myself I could handle the attacker if other man didn't join him. 

For a while, both the attacker and I had our hands on the heavy metallic instrument. He repeatedly brought it down on my head, causing bleeding. Then he let go the weapon and ran down the stairs. The other man immediately came out of the bedroom and ran out with him. I now knew why he had stayed back in the unlit room. He did not want me to identify him. 

With the weapon in my hand and bleeding profusely, I walked to Muzaffar Ahmed Khan's house. The entire household gathered in the drawing room to find out what had happened. Someone suggested that I be given a cup of hot milk. Muzaffar's mother quickly produced a bowl of boiled milk.

Muzaffar telephoned the police. He also called a taxi to take me to the hospital. Soon some policemen arrived, and one of them started asking questions about the incident. I told him I must first go to the hospital. Muzaffar's younger brother, Basharat Ahmed Khan, and his friend, Ghulam Nabi Azad, who happened to be there at the time, took me to the hospital in the taxi.

At the hospital, the doctor put 11 stitches on my head. He said the X-ray did not reveal any fracture. The wounds were not deep but the possibility of internal damage could not be ruled out. I must remain in the hospital for a week. 

The police took my statement at the hospital. They told me the metallic instrument used by the assailant was a heavy crowbar used to open truck tyres.

Lying in the hospital I put the pieces together and solved the whodunnit mystery to my satisfaction. I had landed in Kashmir as I earned the displeasure ofUNI General Manager G.G. Mirchandani. First, he transferred me from New Delhi to Bombay. Then he sacked me. A six day strike by UNI employees in New Delhi and Bombay forced him to rescind the order terminating my service. I moved to Kashmir in terms of the settlement he had worked out with the Union with the help of the Indian Federation of Working Journalists.

Although I had been in Kashmir for only six months, I had already earned the displeasure of two powerful politicians, Chief Minister Syed Mir Qasim and Agriculture Minister Trilochan Dutt.

The fallout with the Chief Minister occurred when I accompanied him on a tour of Ladakh. In the Buddhist region, he ran into demonstrations, and there was a protest hartal in Leh. Towards the end of the Ladakh visit, there was a reception which was attended by senior civil and military officials and Buddhist leaders. During the party an official informed me that the Chief Minister wanted to see me. I went up to him. He was furious that I had mentioned the local protests in my reports. "This is a border area. You have to keep the national interest in mind," he told me. I told him, "I decide for myself what is in the national interest. I don't intend to take dictation from anyone on what is in the national interest."   

Newspapers took several days to reach Leh. Mir Qasim’s reaction to my reports was based on what someone had conveyed to him on phone from Srinagar.

As the CM continued with his diatribe, I told him,"You have not seen my reports. You are reacting on the basis of what someone else told you. When we get back to Srinagar I shall show you the reports UNI put out and we can discuss the matter then". A senior minister who was beside the CM immediately said, "Yes, let us discuss this in Srinagar" and led him away. 

Before leaving the venue of the party a military officer conveyed to me an invitation from Major General S. P. Mahadevan, the army’s chief in Leh, to join him in his quarters. When I met him, Mahadevan told me he had read my reports and was impressed with my objectivity. I asked how he could see my reports when papers which might have carried them were not available in Leh. He said air force planes which flew supplies to Leh daily from Chandigarh brought in the Delhi newspapers also. 

I earned the displeasure of Trilochan Dutt when I reported the arrest of his son, Bharat, on a rape charge. Other correspondents did not report the event, some of them by choice and others because the telecommunication channels were down on that day. As Delhi papers played it up, all the correspondents were compelled to follow up the story.

A senior journalist told me a few days later that Trilochan Dutt wanted to see me. When I met him, Dutt said,"You are the instrumentality through which I am being destroyed. You are the only one who reported the arrest. If you had not reported, no one else would have touched it."

I explained that when police arrested the son of a powerful minister like him on rape charge I had to report it.

Facsimile of first take of UNI report on Bharat Dutt's arrest

"The report was all about Trilochan Dutt," he said. I pointed out that my report mentioned his name only once, and that was to establish Bharat's identity as his son. 

In my mind, the first piece of the jigsaw puzzle fell into place when I recognized the assailant's associate as he ran out of the house. He was R. P. Gupta, the UNI technician. A native of Jammu, he was working in Rajkot. Mirchandani transferred him to Srinagar when I moved there. I had assumed his task was only to report to him on me. 

The second piece fell into place when I remembered my meeting with the CM in the winter capital a few days earlier. 

I was in Jammu on January 12 to see off my wife and daughter to Delhi. Before starting from Srinagar the previous day I had sought an appointment with the CM to discuss the government's move to discontinue its subsidy for the scheme under which UNI supplied an abridged service to small Urdu newspapers.   

As I entered his room, the Chief Minister came forward, shook my hands and said he was sorry to hear of the burglary in my house. I told him there had been no burglary. If a burglary took place after I left for Jammu the previous day I was unaware of it. He said, "Maybe I got it wrong," and quickly moved to the subsidy scheme.

He knew of the burglary 12 days before it took place!

The third piece fell into place as I was trying to figure out why the attacker carried a crowbar, and not a gun or a knife. One explanation was that there was no intention to kill. Another possible explanation was that he was using a tool which he used in his workplace. 

Trilochan Dutt owned automobile garages in Jammu and Srinagar.

I was convinced that the plotters had instructed the assailant only to wound, and not to kill. They might have thought that was enough to get me out of Kashmir. A few years earlier there was a burglary at the house of The Statesman’s  correspondent in Srinagar. When he and his wife returned from an outing, all their belongings were gone. They left the city for good soon afterwards.

I decided to stay put. I reckoned that it would best for all concerned if I did not share my solution of the mystery with any one.

EPILOGUE

On discharge from the hospital, I took two months' leave for rest and recuperation in Delhi. Just before my return to Srinagar, Mirchandani transferred R.P. Gupta back to Rajkot.

Incidentally, Mirchandani was the only one, apart from Mir Qasim, who thought I was the victim of a burglary.  

Mirchandani's letter saying he had heard I was the victim of a burglary

Telegram from B.R. Vats, Secretary General, Indian Federation of Working Journalists, expressing deep shock over assault 

The Srinagar police concluded that I was injured in a burglary attempt. They pinned the case on a gang of robbers, which took the name Jugnu from a popular Hindi film. They did not cite me as a witness in the case.

Ghulam Nabi Azad, Basharat Ahmed Khan’s friend, was handpicked by Sanjay Gandhi for the post of President of J and K Youth Congress. He climbed steadily in the Congress hierarchy and is now Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha.  

Trilochan Dutt resigned from the State Cabinet. He had earned Indira Gandhi's displeasure at the time of the Congress split by not giving an affidavit in favour of her Congress (I). She used Bharat Dutt's rape case as an excuse to force him out of the government. 

I spent five more years in Jammu and Kashmir, including the Emergency years, without suffering any further physical damage. 

In the fell clutch of circumstance                                                                                                           I have not winced nor cried aloud.                                                                                                         Under the bludgeonings of chance                                                                                                        My head is bloody, but unbowed.

   -- Lines from William Ernest Henley's Invictus