Notes
Q he was a lady who played Joan of Arc
as a child, and who often spoke of the danger that foreign agents such as the CIA Would destabilise India: there was a grim irony in the fact that Mrs Gandhi's assas- sins turned out to be her own bodyguards, Sikhs outraged by her policy and keen to avenge what they felt was the 'desecration' of their Golden Temple. But while Mrs Gandhi's assassination may have appeared Inevitable ever since she ordered the Indi- an Army into the Golden Temple militant Sikhs vowed such revenge and distributed sweets in 'Southall on hearing the news — political assassination is a very un-Indian thing. In the near 40 years since the British left only one other Indian figure has been gunned doW'n, Mahatma Gandhi, and his killing also' anise out of the terrible religious passions engendered by the parti- tion of India. For all the violence of Indian Political rhetoric, Indfari'Politics and politi- cians are much less paranoid, and security- conscious, than comparable American politicians. Home telephone numbers, for instance, of Indian politicians and civil servants are listed in the telephone direc- tories. Mrs Gandhi's political style was, of course, extremely divisive — she twice split the Congress Party that her father and grandfather had built. And the personality cult she shamelessly' encouraged — the latest version of the Congress Party is even called after her — merely fed the natural Indian inclination to personalise every- thing. Indira Gandhi Murdabad (Death to Indira) rivalled Indira Zindabad (Long Live Indira) as almost constant slogans of the Indian political scene. But despite this Indira fixation, a part of the Indian politic- al scene since Mrs Gandhi's rise to power in 1966, it would be wrong to see her death as a major constitutional crisis. With Rajiv Gandhi already an elected MP and the Congress Party commanding a huge major- ity in Parliament, there was no bar to Mrs Gandhi's son succeeding her as Prime Minister, despite his total lack of minister- ial experience. What is more worrying is the state of India's politicians. The 20 years of Mrs Gandhi's highly personalised, often unprincipled rule — she moved away from her father's Fabian socialism but never acknowledged it — has left a Congress ,Party and political scene composed of thugs, where Denis Healey would be a saint. In fact, doubts about Rajiv arose because he was considered far 'too good' to run the mindless, materialistic mob that is the present Congress.
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