Remembering Indira Gandhi

Nazeer Waris

On Sunday (November 19), the nation celebrated the birth anniversary of Indira Gandhi, the third prime minister of India. She was India's only female prime minister.

It was a rare privilege that she was daughter of a prime minister (Jawaharlal Nehru) and her son (Rajiv Gandhi) too became the prime minister of India.

Indira became PM after Lal Bahadur Shastri's sudden death in 1966 in Tashkent, then in USSR. She led the nation to victory in the India-Pakistan war in 1971 which saw the birth of a new nation, Bangladesh.

She took several courageous measures during her first tenure. These included nationalisation of 14 large banks and cancellation of privy purses to the Rajas of former principalities that had joined the Indian Union.

She coined the famous ‘Garibi Hatao’ (remove poverty) slogan. In 1977, she was voted out of office following the general election in the aftermath of the Emergency imposed by her but returned to power in 1980.

The Emergency was a dark phase in Indian history when basic civil liberties were suspended and the press was censored. Another dif ficult time she faced was in 1984 when a section of radical Sikhs led by Bhindranwale revolted and demanded a separate Sikh nation.

Indira ordered Operation Blue Star, which involved military action in the Golden Temple and resulted in bloodshed with hundreds of Sikhs killed.

In what is considered an act of revenge, Gandhi was assassinated by her own bodyguards, both of whom were Sikh nationalists on October 31, 1984.

In 1999, Indira was named "Woman of the Millennium" in an online poll organised by the BBC. In 2020, Indira Gandhi was named by Time magazine among the world's 100 powerful women who defined the last century.