India After Independence: 1947-2000 by Chandra Bipan

Author:Chandra, Bipan [Chandra, Bipan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9789351181200
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2000-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

Indira Gandhi—An Evaluation

Any assessment of Indira Gandhi has to acknowledge that she was a highly complex person, full of contradictions, and which made her extremely controversial. During her twenty years in power she made immense contributions and exhibited many remarkable features of her political personality and approach. Of course, there were major weaknesses, but these, as well as her strengths, are to be seen in light of how she changed over the years.

Indira Gandhi possessed great political skill which she continuously developed over time as she faced new situations and challenges. Though in the habit of soliciting opinion and advice from all around her, she herself invariably made the final decision. For all of her political life, Indira Gandhi conducted herself with fierce courage. She, as also her political opponents, were quite conscious of this quality of hers. Possessed of extraordinary will, as a political fighter Indira Gandhi was tough, resolute, decisive and, when necessary, ruthless. Though quite cautious by nature and temperament, when necessary she acted boldly, swiftly, with a superb sense of timing, and decisively, as for example, in the case of the Congress split in 1969, the Bangladesh crisis in 1971, the defiance of the US decision to send the Seventh Fleet to the Bay of Bengal in December 1971, the creation of the Punjabi Suba in 1966, the imposition of the Emergency in 1975, and the Janata’s persecution of her through Enquiry Commissions during 1977-79.

A major feature of Indira Gandhi’s politics was her identification with and her passionate love of the country and its people, her pride in India’s greatness and confidence in its future. Indira Gandhi was acutely aware of India’s national interests and commited to maintaining its prestige among the community of nations.

Fully realizing that real national greatness and independence lie in a country’s inherent strength, she strove hard and successfully, in the face of many dire domestic economic and political problems, to make India economically, politically, culturally, technologically and military self-reliant and independent and to give the country confidence in its ability to do so. India under her leadership was one of the few countries to overcome the oil-shock of the seventies. The success of the Green Revolution made India self-sufficient in foodgrains and broke its dependence on food imports. Throughout the Nehru and Indira Gandhi years India was shielded from the recessionary cycles common in other capitalist economies.

Indira Gandhi used her firm grasp of world politics to ensure that there was no successful overt or covert foreign interference in India’s internal affairs. She kept India free of both the Cold War blocs and the two superpowers. While adhering to the policy of not going nuclear, she refused to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty even though it was sponsored by both the United States and the Soviet Union. She strengthened the foreign policy carefully crafted by Nehru.

Indira Gandhi also actively promoted the process of nation-in-the-making, strengthened the country’s unity, held it together during a difficult period, and in the end gave her life for the purpose.

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