Indira Gandhi Read online

  Indira’s choice of Feroze was influenced by her mother’s fondness for the young man who had nursed her devotedly at Bhowali during a phase of her illness. Indira’s own shyness and stiff uncommunicativeness, mistaken in her youth for hauteur, had never made friendship or close companionship easy. Feroze represented the known, comfortable and familiar. The relationship inevitably foundered on the role she later chose of being at her father’s side at the nation’s political centre. It compelled them to live apart substantially, and subjected the marriage to strains and stresses from which it never recovered. Her father’s house in Delhi remained Indira’s priority, a setting into which Feroze, with a career and personality of his own, could not conveniently be absorbed. A journalist who became a member of Parliament with a reputation for unearthing facts and figures, Feroze was responsible for instituting the inquiry leading to the resignation of Finance Minister T.T. Krishnamachari in 1958. He reacted bitterly and outspokenly to the unofficial separation, and it came to have untidy political and personal overtones. Those who watched this tragedy unfold, above all her father, felt their failure to work out a solution, either in complete separation or in compromise, would affect Indira in many and manifold ways and shut a door forever to the possibilities of normal living.

  Feroze was in many ways self-educated, with a gift for the mechanical as well as knowledge of classical music and fine china. He was an extrovert, generous with his help and money, popular with colleagues and subordinates. His sense of humour enlivened the Central Hall of Parliament. He was short and square in build, fair-skinned, with a face that reddened with laughter, and people warmed to him easily. Parliament came to have a healthy regard for his grasp and use of facts. He had green fingers, and, after the death of Ranjit Pandit in January 1944, Feroze took over the supervision of Anand Bhawan’s gardens. The prime minister’s house, where Feroze’s wife and sons lived, remained his domestic base, but his business was conducted from the parliamentary accommodation he rented, and no slur of political advantage was ever attached to him. Apparently they saw no way out of the growing chasm between them either in final break or in final healing, for it remained with them unresolved, until a reunion the summer before his death in September 1960.

  The shadows in Indira were in part a reflection of the mismatching of her parents. Their marriage, arranged by Motilal Nehru and Kamala’s aunt, was a grievous mistake for these two profoundly dissimilar people. Kamala’s problems of adaptation, from her orthodox, barely educated background to the liberal, emancipated, westernized environment of the Nehrus, built up into symptoms of illness, while the bruises of the relationship drove Nehru deeply into himself and strengthened his emotional and intellectual links with his sister. Since marriages in which the wife was not her husband’s equal in education or opportunity were the rule rather than the exception, the flaw in this one must have resulted from more intractable problems of personality. Ten years older than his wife, Nehru tried and failed to overcome the gulf between them. The national movement, claiming them both, performed this task to some extent but could never complete it, for Kamala died of tuberculosis after a long illness in February 1936. During his last vigil over her failing health, there seemed in him a foreshadowing of the event to come. Released from prison in September 1935 to join her at Badenweiler (Germany), he was shocked at the deterioration in her condition and moved into the sanatorium with her, leaving Indira and her cousin, Vidya Nehru, invited from Oxford to spend the Christmas vacation with them, at their pension. Trying to finish his autobiography, keeping an eye on Indira and Vidya and watching over his wife, his only outlet for solace and companionship lay in writing every few days to his sister, with news intended for the whole anxious family at Allahabad, yet reaching out especially to Nan.

  Badenweiler

  31-12-35

  Nan darling—Was it yesterday I wrote or the day before? I am getting mixed up. I have sent you a fair number of letters during the last four months or less, to make up, to some extent, for the long silences of previous months and years.

  I write to you again so soon because I feel like doing so. The old year is passing as I write—it is almost the stroke of midnight—and the desire to write to you on this coming of the new year became strong within me. To send you all my love.

  The bells are ringing and the sound rolls up the valley in waves which seem to envelop me. There is also gun firing going on somewhere. The New Year has come. What will it be, I wonder? I have just been out on my balcony and I saw in the distance the twinkling lights on the far side of the Rhine, in France.

  There was something oppressive in the air, or was it my imagination? The firing suddenly made me think of war and suffering and disaster.

  But whatever terrors the New Year may hold in its womb, why should we worry about them in anticipation?

  It is enough that a new year is born, and somehow a feeling of growth comes with it, and a shedding away of the past year’s burdens and sorrows.

  All my love to mother and you and Ranjit, and Chand and Tara and little Rita. Give my greetings to Upadhyaya also, and Hari, and all others whom Anand Bhawan shelters.#

  Your loving brother

  Jawahar

  One terror was soon realized. Kamala died in February 1936. Nehru’s dedication of his autobiography—published soon after her death ‘To Kamala Who Is No More’—was his deep mourning of a discovery cut short. His later writing movingly described her wasting illness and his admiration for the burning patriotism that had become so strong a bond between them.

  On the publication of her mother’s biography11 in May 1973, Mrs Gandhi said in an interview with its author that her mother had had the greater influence on her. In her teens she had felt her mother was being wronged by her father’s family and had fought for her. ‘I saw her being hurt and I was determined not to be hurt.’ With a chronically ailing mother, it may have been hard, too, for a child to forgive those in robust health around her, to feel part of an active household radiating energy and accomplishment. The effect for Indira was to range her parents’ families, even her parents at times, on opposite sides, with a gap in understanding, sympathy and culture between them. The distinction between the two ‘sides’ persisted in her mind. The Nehru name was a talisman she needed, and she had been deeply attached to her father. But her trust and instincts reposed in the simpler, uncritical background of her mother’s relations and her own preference was for them. Towards the Nehru relatives, those who had shared the family home and background at Anand Bhawan, her feelings were mixed and not often given full human play. The idea gained currency that she particularly resented the beautiful, vivacious elder aunt who occupied a special place in her father’s affections.

  Undeniably, the bond created problems for the less confident Kamala Nehru. Mrs Pandit recalled much later:

  the tensions the family lived through when Bhai insisted that he and I were going home by that route in his car. It seemed natural then. Now it seems fantastically wrong that eight months after his wedding Bhai should do this. Again, I was reminded of our early morning rides together in Allahabad—all this in 1917–18—breakfast together because the family had sometimes finished when we got home, and there was a complete sense of contentment in just being together. Perhaps Bhabi had a valid point in disliking me—not for anything I had done but for the obvious oneness that existed between Bhai and myself. Ranjit, shrewd and perceptive, got the picture in a minute but he was himself deeply absorbed in Bhai and loved him in an unquestioning manner, so no problem ever arose. Isn’t it strange suddenly coming back to me like this? It was the growing demands of the national movement that brought a balance into Bhai’s life. I was too little anyway and thought only with my heart and not with the intellect (of which there was not much!)12

  Yet simple formulas seldom tell the whole story of family relationships, where the immediate and personal often becomes blurred and mellowed by the larger cushioning of common living and common interests. Motilal Nehru’s family
was closely and loyally knit. If Indira resented her aunt, there was not much evidence of it during her childhood. Indira did not write frequently, but she kept in touch with her aunt, and, in the abundant correspondence between Nehru and his sister, her occasional paragraphs and postscripts are warm and spontaneous.

  On June 23, 1935 she adds to her father’s letter from London, ‘Darling Puphi—Just a very hurried line to send you my love. Just now the telephone takes all my time. I daren’t budge from it. It is glorious seeing Papu again. He looks well but thin… . There goes the phone! Love Indu.’ And a postscript on her father’s letter, two days later from Sir Stafford Cripps’s home, Goodfellows, at Lechlade Gloucestershire, ‘You would have loved this very charming house and still lovelier garden. Lots of love, Indu.’

  The family had its tensions, but perhaps because they were acknowledged and discussed, they did not affect the normal current of family life. From jail Nehru wrote to his sister:

  Little things sometimes touch and ruffle our tempers and disturb the cooperation that should exist. We lead an abnormal life—in and out of gaol—and those who are out have the more difficult time for they have to shoulder many a burden when their heart is not in it. And so sometimes tempers get frayed and a spirit of non-cooperation steals in and that of course is not only unbecoming but it makes matters worse. Almost unconsciously we allow ourselves to become victims of trivial circumstances and the harmony that should be life—even though it be tragic—becomes marred and we develop the hard look that is neither beautiful nor helpful. That is a true sign of age! If we presume to dabble in big things, we have to carry the shadow of bigness even in our little undertakings. We cannot control life, the joy and the sorrow of it, the achievement or otherwise, but one thing we ought to be able to control, and that is our attitude to it. We can, I believe, make a work of art of our lives, a song or a beautiful melody, even though that song may clutch at the throat and bring tears to the eyes. No one can deny us that artistry of living if we are ourselves capable of it. If we are capable; it is a big if! Not to reject life but to accept it in all its fullness, and yet to go through it finely and with light steps and refusing to allow it to besmirch us. That is a worthwhile ideal, a difficult undertaking, and the very few who may have the good fortune to approach it can never regret the choice. Success, if it comes, comes worthily, with no tinsel or vulgarity; failure itself approaches with noble and tragic mien.

  But … I was thinking of an occasional lack of harmony, a touch of non-cooperation that I had sensed in our household. That is a matter of sorrow for me and I write to you because you are very dear to me. There are very few people who really count in my life and you are one of them, and you have brought great comfort to me in moments of trial. I should like you therefore to remove any discordant notes that might have unwittingly crept in. It is futile to consider how they came, whose fault or carelessness permitted them. It is everybody’s fault. We have all to face nervous strains which are more difficult to bear often enough than actual physical pain. We must be tolerant of each other’s failings and help to lighten each other’s load.13

  On Ranjit Pandit’s death in January 1944, not long after his release from jail, it was Indira and Feroze who gave their aunt the support she needed, with Nehru still in jail. During the years of Nehru’s prime ministership, the family tie was manifest in shared concern for matters affecting all their children. Any early resentment on Indira’s part might have found its ordinary level in private life. The palpable difference, the cool, empty distance Indira established between herself and her aunt, came with her own entry into the cabinet.

  Her aunt’s victory in the campaign did not make matters easier, and the strain continued:

  Two days ago Indi asked me to see her in her office. I had asked permission to leave for Manila before the Presidential election¢ and she said it would be difficult to give me permission as there was going to be a grim struggle and every vote was needed. Could I get a day’s postponement of the convocation etc. She then said she wanted to say something personal. Her eyes filled with tears and she was obviously distressed. She said she knew I was being wasted. She wanted to use my talents. She kept thinking what she could do for me. But she kept hearing things which shook her trust in me. I told her there was nothing I could do to prove my real affection for her and my desire that she should succeed in the task she had undertaken. Trust, I said, was something intangible. It was there or it was not… . I would have been satisfied if I could have been associated in a small way with either the Government or the Congress. What was mortifying to me was to be left out in the cold year after year when so many things required to be done intelligently and honestly. I said I had been thinking of resigning my seat as I was tired of being an extra vote for an organisation which had ceased to have any use for me. This last shook her and she said, ‘You can’t resign—I wouldn’t let you. We can’t keep Phulpur without you.’ At this point I thought it best to leave and I asked her not to worry about me as I had infinite resources within myself.

  Mrs Pandit resigned her seat in the Lok Sabha in 1968.

  Spontaneity was not, in general, Mrs Gandhi’s style. Daring was. In 1962 she had gone to Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh to investigate Hindu–Muslim riots, though she was not in the government at the time. She could show a refreshing disregard for her own safety. During the Chinese attack that year, she had flown to Tezpur, headquarters of the sector commander, to meet soldiers and officers. She had gone to the front line at Haji Pir in Kashmir during the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965, inspiring the comment that she was the only man in the cabinet. Two years later, during an election meeting in Bhubaneswar, Orissa, she faced stone-throwers coolly, not losing her nerve when a stone struck her, cutting her lip and displacing a bone in her nose.

  Mrs Pandit’s resignation of her Lok Sabha seat in 1968 closed a domestic chapter. Nehru’s presence had been home for his two sisters, eleven and seventeen years younger than he, and for their children. When he became prime minister, his house in New Delhi continued the hospitable tradition of Anand Bhawan, providing a sense of warmth and embrace for the larger family. Perhaps few men at the centre of power and helm of affairs for so many years have had his talent for enduring relationships or his intimate concern for private problems. Deeply affectionate and considerate, he had friends, not just followers, and a grace in dealing with people that did much to soften controversy and make political combat a stimulating and civilized affair. His most virulent critics in politics and the press respected him. One of the most sensitive tributes to him, The Gentle Colossus, was written by Hiren Mukerjee of the Communist Party of India.

  Mrs Pandit had been passionately devoted to her brother, and they had shared an uncommon closeness. She was strongly traditional in her belief that her brother’s daughter was her own and that the family must be united after Nehru’s death, when Mrs Gandhi, in her new exacting position, needed support. Nehru’s death and her own entry into the cabinet, however, gave Mrs Gandhi the opportunity to dissolve the relationships that had surrounded her father. If she had indeed considered her elder aunt an obstacle to her mother’s happiness in the Nehru family, this had not affected the stuff of the relationship in her father’s lifetime, when close family bonds had been maintained. Yet now she was more comfortable once her aunt retired from politics and moved out of the capital to Dehradun. The family tie was not encouraged. In 1970 when Anand Bhawan was converted by Mrs Gandhi into a memorial, Mrs Pandit was refused permission to stay at the house overnight, as Mrs Gandhi was doing, for the ceremony the next day. Mrs Pandit attended the ceremony as a guest. Bequeathing Anand Bhawan to his daughter in his will, Nehru had written:

  In the course of a life which has had its share of trial and difficulty, the love and tender care for me of both my sisters, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit and Krishna Hutheesing, has been of the greatest solace to me. I can give nothing to balance this but my own love and affection which they have in full measure… . This house, Anand Bhawan, has become for
us and others a symbol of much that we value in life. It is far more than a structure of brick and concrete, more than a private possession. It is connected intimately with our national struggle for freedom, and within its walls great events have happened and great decisions have been reached… . [It] should always be open to my sisters, their children, as well as my brother-in-law, Raja Hutheesing, and they should be made to feel that it continues to be their home where they are welcome. They can stay there whenever they like and for as long as they like. I should like them to pay periodic visits to the house and to keep fresh and strong the bonds that tie them to their old home.

  On the occasion of Anand Bhawan’s conversion by Mrs Gandhi to a memorial, I was asked to recall my memories of my home for the Hindustan Times.14 This extract conveys my own feeling for the house and the atmosphere it provided for the children and adults it sheltered:

  I felt a special kinship with the house. It was as old as I was. It had been built when my grandfather gave his palatial residence to the Congress Party… . Our love and admiration for Mamu was inextricably entwined with the soil and stones of Anand Bhawan. Both seemed enveloped in a radiance of purpose, both wide open to the world, nothing in either limited to the purely personal. Nor was there anything grim or glum about either. Even the people who came and went, villagers, town workers, university students, the little known as well as the galaxy of leaders, had a buoyancy and gaiety of spirit. There was a lot of laughter in the house. Never was history made with the joy of living so amply woven into it… . Even a child felt it, sitting on the verandah after dinner, the floor still warm from a day of sun, looking up at the stars.