On her 40th death anniversary today, I would like to reminisce about Indira Gandhi purely on the basis of my first glimpse of her as a 13-year-old.
My enduring image of Indira Gandhi is most likely circa 1974 in Ahmedabad. As frequently happens with my memory, it is entirely visual.
Any prime minister visiting anywhere in those days was a largely joyous event for children. Since she was the prime minister throughout my formative years (1966-1977 in her first stint) I thought Indira Gandhi and prime minister were synonymous. I used to think she was born as a prime minister.
If memory serves, it was sometime during peak summer in 1974 that she visited Ahmedabad. As school children we were taken to stand along the path of her convoy from the airport to wherever she was headed. I think we were told to dress impeccably for the morning. I did not know what that meant because we had school uniform of blue shorts and a white shirt and shoes. Perhaps they meant to starch and iron our uniform. I don’t think my mother Snehlata did that, but they were freshly washed. I had a pair of canvas shoes—we used to call them tennis shoes—which were blue with white toe cap and other trimmings. I remember having applied Blanco on it. It was much later that I found out that blanco in Spanish meant white. In this case it was a shoe polish brand name, I think.
We were given the Indian flag to wave when Gandhi’s convoy drove past us. It is cinematic in my mind 50 years hence that she rode in a ceremonial white and blue Impala standing with her head covered. She was dressed in a blue cotton sari and wore Jackie O sunglasses. The convoy went past rather quickly but left an indelible mark on my mind. Eight years later I became a journalist in Bombay and two more years after that I reported the aftermath of her assassination in the city, particularly the targeting of some Sikhs.
On the 25th anniversary of her assassination, I had written the following post on my blog.
October 31, 2009
It is strangely ironic that the 25th anniversary of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination on October 31 falls on the watch of India's first Sikh prime minister. This remarkable coincidence is unlikely to be lost on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as well as millions of Sikhs. Gandhi, who served as India's prime minister for 15 years in two separate terms, was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984.
Journalists are suckers for such landmarks because they give them a perfect opportunity to reclaim some of their own dwindling relevance and once again assert their own place in history. The Indian media is already coming alive with reminiscences and retrospectives to mark the upcoming anniversary of this staggering murder that fundamentally altered India's polity.
Seen from the perspective of the elaborate security apparatus that today guards leaders around the world, and particularly in South Asia, Gandhi's assassination appears remarkably easy. Beant Singh, one of her two Sikh bodyguards, walked up to her with his .38 revolver and fired three shots into her abdomen. He was followed by the second bodyguard Satwant Singh who fired another 28 bullets giving the 66-year-old Gandhi no chance of survival. That the assassins fired 31 bullets on October 31 was dismissed as a mere coincidence.
Initially, the bodyguards made no attempt to escape. In fact, Beant Singh was reported by Gandhi's faithful assistant R K Dhawan as saying in Punjabi, "We have done what we needed to, now you can do what you have to" as he put his revolver down. But a while later he was shot dead by other guards as he tried to escape. Satwant Singh was hanged five years later.
That Dhawan did not suffer even a cut during the killing inevitably aroused suspicions about his role. His accusers made a specific point about his change of guard duties at the last moment. However, a commission of inquiry exonerated him.
If on November 1, 1984 someone had predicted that India would witness the rise of its first Sikh prime minister barely two decades after Gandhi was killed in the midst of such intense animus among the Sikh community it would have been treated with disdain. And yet adding to the list of ironies, the woman in whose lap, namely Sonia Gandhi, that Indira Gandhi died on way to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, went on to take her political position. Not only that, she appointed the country's first Sikh prime minister.
