{"id":248737,"date":"2026-09-05T00:39:37","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T19:09:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=248737"},"modified":"2026-09-05T00:39:37","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T19:09:37","slug":"gopalkrishna-gandhis-fascinating-tale-of-independent-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/gopalkrishna-gandhis-fascinating-tale-of-independent-india\/","title":{"rendered":"Gopalkrishna Gandhi\u2019s Fascinating Tale Of Independent India"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Tissa Jayatilaka<\/a> –<\/span><\/p>\n

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Tissa Jayatilaka<\/p><\/div>\n

In his Prelude to The Undying Light\u00a0 A Personal History of Independent India<\/i><\/a>,<\/span> Gopalkrishna Gandhi (Gopal to his friends) shares with his readers how and why this tome came to be written.\u00a0 The text of the narrative, excluding its Prelude,<\/i> Epilogue,<\/i> Acknowledgements,<\/i> Endnotes<\/i> and Index, <\/i>is all of 579 pages, throughout which, the light that Gopal Gandhi sheds shines brightly until its end.<\/p>\n

The Undying Light<\/i> is a fascinating tale of Independent India which has elements of an autobiography, memoir and history woven together. The author\u2019s love of the arts, especially of poetry, drama, philosophy, film and music pervades the book. He claims that, The Undying Light<\/i> is not a \u2018history of India\u2019 as it does not itemise all events but offers, instead, \u2018a personal glimpsing of events\u2026. [His] grim bag of impressions\u2019 in which his \u2018earliest memories are overcast with images of the violent end of the man of peace\u2019, his paternal grandfather.<\/p>\n

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Screenshot<\/p><\/div>\n

Gopal Gandhi, whose paternal grandfather was the Mahatma (Bapuji) and whose maternal grandfather was Chakravarti Rajagopalachari (Anna or Rajaji) is, despite his illustrious antecedents, an unpretentious, modest and down-to-earth personality. Among the photographs included in the book, we see one in which the author is with the Mahatma in 1947 when he was two years old; another a year later at the funeral of his paternal grandfather; and yet another when he was four, seated on Rajaji\u2019s lap in the Yellow Drawing Room of Government House, New Delhi, when the latter was serving as the first Indian Governor-General of Independent India. The author\u2019s father, Devdas Gandhi, who died at age 57 in 1957, was the Managing Editor of the influential Hindustan Times.<\/i> Gopal Gandhi thus grew up in a setting in which he was privy to significant events and behind-the-scenes happenings related to governance, well before he was old enough to understand all that he heard and witnessed.<\/p>\n

This ringside view of events that Gopal Gandhi had been privy to in childhood, would have enabled him to adopt a nuanced approach to his own work, during his stellar career later, in the Indian Administrative Service and, thereafter on secondment, in the Indian Foreign Service.\u00a0 <\/span>Among the noteworthy positions he held in his public service career are the following: Secretary to President K.R. Narayanan (1997 to 2001); Secretary to Vice-President R. Venkataraman and later his Joint Secretary when the latter became President (1987 to 1992);\u00a0 Secretary to the Governor of Tamil Nadu S.L. Khurana (1985-87); Founder Director of the Nehru Centre in London, U.K (1992 – 1996); High Commissioner of India to South Africa (1996 \u2013 1997), to Sri Lanka (2000 \u2013 2002), to Norway (2002 \u2013 2004) and Governor of West Bengal (2004-2009), a position his beloved grandfather Rajaji held in the late 1940s. In the years 1978 to 1982, he served as First Secretary in the Assistant High Commission of India in Kandy, Sri Lanka where Tara, his wife, Gopal and their two very young daughters Divya and Amrita endeared themselves to Kandy society. This was the period during which I had the privilege of getting to know Gopal and Tara intimately. Not only did our professional lives bring us together but we happened also to be neighbours at Piachaud Gardens in Kandy.<\/p>\n

Two people are primarily responsible for inspiring Gopal Gandhi to write this book. One is David Davidar, the Initiator of Aleph Book Company and the other is, Ruskin Bond, an Anglo- Indian living in the Himalyan Hush of Landour Mussorie. Of the former, Gopal Gandhi, writes,<\/p>\n

David Davidar, Aleph Book Company\u2019s initiator, has a sharp eye for new books. Towards the end of 2020 he came by Finton O\u2019Toole\u2019s, We Don\u2019t Know Ourselves\u00a0 <\/span>A Personal<\/i> <\/i><\/b>History of Modern Ireland<\/i>. <\/i><\/b>He (Davidar) sent it to me saying I might like reading it, and if I did, would I be interested in attempting something along its lines for post-Independent India.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Gopal Gandhi tells us that he was struck by two words in the title of O\u2019Toole\u2019s book which are\u00a0\u2018personal\u2019 <\/i><\/b>and \u2018history\u2019 and he goes on to say that, \u2018the first was appealing, the second, scary\u2019. Even though he had read for a special degree in English Literature with History as his subsidiary subject at St. Stephen\u2019s College in New Delhi, Gopal Gandhi in his characteristically modest manner, tells us that he was daunted by the prospect of writing a history of India \u2018even under the alibi personal\u2019. <\/i>However, it was Ruskin Bond\u2019s essay, Scenes from a Writer\u2019s Life<\/i> (1997) which overcame Gopal Gandhi\u2019s misgivings and gave him the impetus \u2018to give the book a try\u2019.<\/p>\n

We learn from the author\u2019s Prelude<\/i> that among those who helped him find answers to the \u2018questions and dilemmas\u2019 he grappled with from childhood to the evening of his life today, are his maternal grandfather (Anna or Rajaji), his mother Lakshmi, his father Devdas, his English teacher and Vice-Principal at Modern School, Awadh Kishore as well as his siblings, sister Tara, the eldest and older brothers, Rajmohan and Ramachandra.\u00a0 <\/span>He learnt much from them all. However, he identified Rajaji (of whom we hear a great deal in the book) as \u2018the single biggest influence on my life who was 67 when I turned up in 1945 and 94 when he died\u2019.<\/p>\n

It was at St. Stephen\u2019s College in New Delhi that he first encountered those with \u2018such diverse views\u2019 as V.K. Krishna Menon, Moraji Desai and Jayaprakash Narayan (JP), another of the author\u2019s heroes, visitors to the college who addressed the students on invitation.\u00a0 Among the others who had a beneficial impact on him are Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Thomas Abraham, his boss for four years in Sri Lanka (1978 – 1982) and mentor for another forty along with his historian wife, Meera. Over and above all these figures and alongside that of Rajaji, hovers the Mahatma\u2019s legacy. It shaped his life and outlook to such an extent that Gopal Gandhi feels as if the Mahatma \u2018looms over his words\u2019 in this book.<\/p>\n

The Undying Light<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>begins with a general chapter that deals with the early 1940s. Thereafter, he devotes a chapter to each year from 1947 to 2009 in Books One to Seven, while Book Eight covers the Modi years from 2010 to 2025.<\/p>\n

He begins his personal survey with a brief chapter on pre-independence India, where certain crucial events of that period had horrific repercussions for post- independence India. The fact was that the Muslim League, headed by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, was working at cross purposes with those who were fighting for India\u2019s national unity. Jinnah\u2019s dream of Pakistan was the Mahatma\u2019s nightmare! The \u2018orgy of horror\u2019 that overtook Calcutta in 1946, where the Muslim league under S.H. Suharwady was in power, gave a foretaste of what would happen if Jinnah\u2019s \u2018supreme stubbornness\u2019 was allowed to prevail and India was split in two.<\/p>\n

In the lead up to independence, the British Raj set up a Constituent Assembly and an Executive Council headed by the Viceroy. The Mahatma\u2019s inner circle became members of the Constituent Assembly at first and, later in September 1946, members of the Executive Council. This was more or less the Cabinet of independence-eve India. The envisaged plan was that the Congress Party and the Muslim League would share power.\u00a0 The leader of the Muslim League, however, continued to dream of the establishment of Pakistan.<\/p>\n

Nehru as the Vice President of the Executive Council was the Prime Minister-to-be and in charge of External Affairs. Vallabhai Patel, the senior-most member after Nehru, was Minister of Home Affairs. Chakravarti Rajagopalchari (Rajaji) was offered the Ministry of Finance but declined the offer, opting instead for Industries and Civil Supplies. B.R. Ambedkar was elected first to the Constituent Assembly from undivided Bengal where, significantly enough, the Muslim League commanded a majority. Later, he was to be elected from Bombay.<\/p>\n

On the 15th<\/sup><\/span> of August 1947, Nehru became the Prime Minister of Independent India. Behind the scenes, however, Mahatma Gandhi\u2019s nightmare began to unfold for all to see. Jinnah\u2019s dream of splitting India into two, became a reality on 14 August 1947. The Mahatma referred to India\u2019s Independence day as one of both \u2018rejoicing and sorrowing\u2019. Echoing the Mahatma\u2019s words, Gopal Gandhi notes in The Undying<\/i> Light, <\/i>that \u2018the <\/i>midnight of 14 and 15th<\/sup><\/span> August was a moment of rejoicing at the birth of Independent India and a day of sorrow over the death of Undivided India\u2019. <\/i>Based on his later recollections, Rajmohan Gandhi, who was only eight years old at the time of Independence, observed that, \u2018[The] wails of Partition\u2019s victims seemed stronger than the cheers <\/i>for Independence\u2019.\u00a0<\/i>Rajaji was sworn-in as the Governor of West Bengal at 1.15 am on 15 August, 1947. In his biography of Rajaji written later, Rajmohan Gandhi observes that, \u2018[The] Mahatma was feeling the pain of fratricide not the thrill of freedom\u2019. Muslim Indians had begun moving to the two wings of Pakistan while the Hindus moved from those into India.<\/p>\n

With the gift of hindsight, would the Mahatma be viewed as an impossible idealist or a pragmatic visionary? The Mahatma that Gopal Gandhi presents in The Undying Light<\/i> is a mixture of both: idealist in that he was a passionate advocate for an undivided India in which the Hindus and Muslims could live together in amity and a pragmatic visionary in that he foresaw the tragedy that would unfold should partition come into being. On 30 January, 1948, a few months after partition, the seventy-nine-year-old Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated. He had become, as Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay described him, an icchhamarani,<\/i> one who meets the end he has wished for.<\/p>\n

The year 1948 was not only that of Mahatma Gandhi\u2019s assassination but also the one in which the traumatic life of Gandhi\u2019s eldest son Harilal came to an end. He passed away in Bombay aged sixty and so did Mohammed Ali Jinnah in Karachi, after a brief period as the helmsman of Pakistan. 1948, however, was not all doom and gloom. For on 21 June, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari (Rajaji) another formidable personality, comes into increasing prominence. He is sworn-in as the first Indian Governor-General of Independent India after serving briefly as the Governor of West Bengal (August 1947 – June 1948).<\/p>\n

Rajaji seems to have inspired more affection and respect than even the Mahatma, in his \u2018<\/i>grandfather-bitten grandson\u2019, Gopal Gandhi, who claims a little later on, \u2018I am biased and cannot but see him in larger-than-life terms\u2019.\u00a0 <\/span>Despite this declaration, he goes on to dispassionately assess his maternal grandfather\u2019s contribution to the newly independent India.<\/p>\n

On 15 August, 1953, the third anniversary after Independence, Rajaji, who was the Chief Minister of the state of Madras at the time, was invited to be Chief Guest at the Independence Day celebrations at Ethiraj College, one of the leading girls\u2019 colleges in the state.\u00a0 <\/span>Speaking without notes, he made a rather tame and conventional speech on a subject that touched on marriage, constancy and the \u2018duty\u2019 of girls. Reading the speech many years later, Gopal Gandhi was appalled, and concluded, \u2018Rajaji could be fascinating, he could be frustrating\u2019.\u00a0 Gopal Gandhi was also disappointed when Rajaji, as leader of the Swatanra Party he founded, opted to make a short-term alliance with the Bharatiya Jana Sangh Party during the general elections of 1967. To Gopal Gandhi, Rajaji had made compromises for short-term political gain. But what Rajaji did during the general elections of 1952 was even worse, we are told.\u00a0 <\/span>He allowed himself to be persuaded by the Governor of Madras at that time, Sri Prakasa, to enter the Legislative Council of the state, via nomination. Thus, the first and only Indian Governor-General took office as the Chief Minister of the state, an act that Gopal Gandhi views as \u2018one lacking in grace\u2019 and not worthy of a man of his background and experience.<\/p>\n

Rajaji, as Gopal Gandhi presents him, is a flawed being who is at the same time, \u2018wiser than most, sharper and more principled\u2019 than any person he knew.\u00a0 <\/span>Given his awareness of human frailty, his portrayal of Jawarharlal Nehru seems somewhat harsh.\u00a0 <\/span>Gopal Gandhi describes himself as, \u2018a Nehru-sceptic and a Rajaji-enthusiast\u2019. Reading between the lines of the book, one wonders whether the author was unduly influenced by the greater Nehru-sceptics, Rajaji, Vallabhbhai Patel, Jayaprakash Narayan and Acharya J.B Kripalani in forming his opinion of Nehru.<\/p>\n

Gopal Gandhi describes 1951 as a \u2018snakes and ladders-year in India\u2019s politics\u2019 as Nehru sidelined Purushshottamdas Tandon, Rajaji and Ambedkar, the Law Minister. In his view, Nehru manoeuvred to oust Tandon from the post of President of the Congress Party to thereafter be elected in Tandon\u2019s place. Another controversial issue was that of the Hindu Code Bill. This was a major piece of legislation meant to transform Hindu-dominated Indian society. Nehru, \u2018the passionate modernist\u2019 and Ambedkar, \u2018the impatient reformer\u2019, were the guiding forces behind this bill. However, the two had different notions as to when the bill should be presented. Nehru, the pragmatist, wanted to postpone introducing the bill until after the general elections of 1952. This so disappointed Ambedkar that he resigned from his post. Gopal Gandhi is justifiably critical of the manner in which Ambedkar was treated by both Nehru and the Congress Party in the immediate aftermath of his resignation.<\/p>\n

Rajaji, by this time, was becoming disillusioned with how Nehru was evolving under the influence of his colleague and adviser, Krishna Menon (who was at the time, India\u2019s High Commissioner to the UK). Rajaji felt that Nehru was leaning more and more to the left under Menon\u2019s influence.\u00a0 <\/span>Aware that his own relationship with Nehru was becoming \u2018increasingly mechanistic\u2019, Rajaji contemplated withdrawing from Delhi and heading back home to Madras.<\/p>\n

In the midst of these issues, a disturbing event took place in Kashmir in 1953. Siyana Prasad Mookerji, the leader of the Hindu Mahasabha and two of his companions were arrested and jailed while on a visit to Kashmir. \u00a0 They were initially taken to Srinagar and thereafter transferred to a residence outside the city. Mookerjee died of a heart attack while in custody and his death in 1953 remains a mystery to this day. To the consternation of impartial observers,\u00a0 <\/span>both Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah, the Premier of Kashmir, agreed that there was nothing in the circumstances to suspect foul play. Less than three months after Mookerjee\u2019s passing on 8 August, 1953, Abdullah was dismissed on the trumped-up charge of \u2018conspiracy against the state\u2019 by Dr. Karan Singh, the constitutional head of state.\u00a0 <\/span>Abdullah was denied the opportunity to challenge his dismissal and his Home Minister, Bakshi Gulam Mohammed, the chief dissident, was appointed Prime Minister. The latter went on to rule the state for eleven years. Abdullah was jailed for these eleven years that Mohammed was in office. This episode came to be known as the Kashmir Conspiracy Case.<\/p>\n

It is now an established fact that Nehru had known all along exactly what was going on in Kashmir at the time.\u00a0 <\/span>However, no one knows to date, precisely why Nehru acquiesced in such a patently undemocratic step being taken against such a trusted friend and colleague as Sheikh Abdullah.\u00a0 <\/span>Nor do we know the truth behind the mysterious death in custody of Syama Prasad Mookerji.<\/p>\n

Nehru had been a Prime Minister for 12 years when E.M.S. Namboodripad became the Chief Minister of Kerala in 1957, for the first time. Namboodripad\u2019s was the first ever non-Congress government in the whole of India to take office after the general elections of 1957. This Communist government had defeated the revered Congress Party, in a free and fair election, while all the other states in India were ruled by the Congress Party. Calling this unique Namboodripad government \u201can astonishing failure\u201d, Nehru dismissed it in 1959, citing Article 356 of the Constitution of India. This was the time when Indira Gandhi had been elected President of the Congress Party and it was believed that she had much to do with this ruthless political act. Knowing how Indira Gandhi conducted herself in the office of the Prime Minister of India several years later, this early act of hers seems merely the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps\u00a0 <\/span>Prime Minister Nehru, who had the authority but did not use it to prevent this political misadventure, could be held responsible for this fiasco.<\/p>\n

Another reason why Nehru has been found wanting by his detractors, was due to the invasion (or the liberation and reunification, as some prefer to call it) of Goa in December 1961, code named Operation Vijay as well as for his left-of-centre politics, influenced, it is thought, largely by V.K Krishna Menon, India\u2019s Minister of Defence from 1957 to 1962.<\/p>\n

As the instances recorded in The Undying Light <\/i>illustrate, Jawarhalal Nehru faced criticism from both his admirers and detractors for certain decisions made during his momentous 17 years (1947 to 1964) as Prime Minister.\u00a0 For many, these policy choices were difficult to reconcile with the Nehru they knew – – as Mahatma Gandhi\u2019s prot\u00e9g\u00e9, a pivotal figure in the independence struggle and a man defined by innate decency and civility.<\/p>\n

However, Jairam Ramesh, a former Union Minister and at present a senior member of the opposition Congress Party, gives us a different perspective on Nehru and Menon in his biography of the latter titled, A Chequered Brilliance\u00a0 <\/span>The Many Lives of V.K Krishna Menon<\/i> (2019). That Menon had been a complex character is generally known. Jairam Ramesh, in an interview in December 2019 with Karan Thapar of \u2018The Wire\u2019, tells us that Nehru and Menon were \u2018soulmates\u2019 who were on the same wavelength, politically. They were both Anglophiles who were suspicious of the political motives of the United States and enamoured of the Soviet Union despite Stalin\u2019s excesses. Jairam Ramesh observes that Menon was \u2018an extraordinarily gifted, extremely well-read and charismatic figure\u2019 who carried many demons within him. In fact, he describes him as a man who, like the notoriously right-wing U.S Secretary of State at that time, John Foster Dulles, was \u2018a bull who carried his china with him\u2019. Menon\u2019s role as the Minister of Defence of India, according to Jairam Ramesh, was controversial as he weakened the morale of the Indian army by creating dissension and distrust among the senior officers in it. Regardless of such shortcomings, it is to Menon\u2019s credit that he had advocated for a negotiated settlement on the border issue between India and China. Moraji Desai and S.K Patil who led the right-wing segment of the cabinet and such Members of Parliament as Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Rammanohar Lohia and Acharya Kripalini opposed Menon\u2019s advocacy. In April 1960, when Zhou Enlai visited Delhi which probably was the last opportunity India had to seriously consider entering into a negotiated settlement with China on the border issue, those opposed to Menon schemed and conspired successfully to have him kept out of all meetings with the visiting Chinese Premier. Had Menon been listened to, argues Jairam Ramesh, the Indo-China war of 1962 could have been averted. Gopal Gandhi also attests to the fact that there was, \u2018substantial goodwill\u2019 in the 1950-1960 period between the two great Asian powers despite known differences over the border.\u00a0 <\/span>India\u2019s international credibility and effectiveness at the UN were mostly due to that goodwill between the two countries. Moreover Bandung (1955), Brioni (1956) and the subsequent blossoming of the Non-Aligned Movement which brought together the emerging nations of Africa and Asia, would have been impossible had there been no cordiality and unity of purpose between India and China at the time. \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Professor Howard Wriggins, a prominent scholar of Political Science and International Relations at Columbia University, New York, and a specialist in South Asian Studies, made the following observation in his book, Ceylon: Dilemmas of a New Nation<\/i> (1960):<\/p>\n

To my Ceylonese friends I would say that I have done my best with much sympathy, and I hope some intelligence, to convey to a foreign audience, the essential dynamics of social economic and political changes as I saw them. Those who feel dismay at what has been stressed should remember that a study of politics in any country is not necessarily a study of that country\u2019s highest philosophy or its most gentle arts. Though politics demands the\u00a0highest qualities of leadership and poised judgment, it is also the study of \u201cwho gets what, when and how\u201d, which is not likely to be the field of human endeavor where the best is always revealed<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Professor Wriggins\u2019 words go some way towards explaining the anomaly in some of Nehru\u2019s political decisions during his tenure as Prime Minister.<\/p>\n

It should be noted that none of those who disagreed strongly with Nehru like Chakaravarti Rajagopalachari (Rajaji), Sarvepali Radhakrishnan, Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) and Babasaheb Ambedhkar, among others, had to bear the onerous responsibility of being the Prime Minister of India for 17 tumultous years. None of them, therefore, had to experience being \u2018on the precarious perch of a tightrope <\/i>walker\u2019 to use Gopal Gandhi\u2019s words, as Nehru did.<\/p>\n

Gopal Gandhi describes Jawaharlal Nehru\u2019s daughter, Indira Gandhi, as a dramatically different kind of politician from both her father and her immediate predecessor, Lal Bahadur Shastri.\u00a0 Indira Gandhi, appears in The Undying Light,<\/i> as in life, \u2018the invincible iron lady of India\u2019. The consensus was that she was not a likeable person. Instead, she was a determined and, on occasion, a ruthless politician. Interestingly, when the question of Nehru\u2019s successor figured in conversations as early as in 1954, when the seemingly indispensable and irreplaceable Prime Minister was sixty-five, the names suggested were Jayaparakash Narayan (JP) as the first choice and Moraji Desai, as the second. Neither Lal Bahadur Shastri nor Indira Gandhi was on anybody\u2019s mind. A mere five years later, however, the latter became the President of the Congress Party.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Two significant events took place as Indira Gandhi succeeded the saintly Shastri as Prime Minister. On the day she was sworn in as Prime Minister on 24 January 1966, coincidentally or otherwise, Homi Bhaba, the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of India and close associate of the late Lal Bahadur Shastri, was killed in a plane crash. And in March of that year, the Mizos of the Northeast of the country, in what was termed \u2018Operation Jericho\u2019 demanded independence from India. The rebels had captured several installations including the Treasury in Aizawal. Indira Gandhi\u2019s response was to bomb Aizawal. In effect, the government of India bombed its own territory! Rammanohar Lohia, an opposition politician had described India Gandhi, rather crudely, as a \u201cgungi gudia\u201d or \u2018dumb doll\u2019. This was a grave misperception of the strong- willed personality that she was.\u00a0 It was not only this opposition politician and his colleagues who misperceived Indira Gandhi. Senior members of the Congress Party did so as well. They believed she was a pliant leader who could be controlled by them.\u00a0 <\/span>However, in 1969, she demonstrated that she was made of sterner stuff. Firstly, she ditched her own Party\u2019s candidate for President, Sanjiva Reddy.\u00a0 <\/span>Following much political manoeuvering, Vice- President V.V. Giri was elected President. This led to a major split in the Congress Party with Deputy Prime Minister Moraji Desai resigning in protest.\u00a0In the same year, she nationalised fourteen commercial banks and launched the \u2018Garibi Hatao\u2019 (Remove Poverty) scheme, to placate the rural and urban poor. Gopal Gandhi describes this measure as \u2018the beginning of realpolitik in <\/i>India\u2019. \u00a0 <\/span>All these events took place in 1969, a mere five years after Nehru\u2019s passing and in the year that the Mahatma, had he lived, would have turned hundred. No longer was an India-serving Nehru at the helm. Instead, India had now been transformed into an Indira- serving nation. Everything was now Indira-centric, not India-centric, as before.<\/p>\n

In the 1971 general elections, the Congress Party won 350 out of 518 seats in the Lok Saba placing Indira Gandhi firmly back in the saddle.\u00a0 <\/span>She had now been Prime Minister for eight years having won two general elections: narrowly in 1967; and effortlessly in 1971. Though unloved by the people, she was nonetheless a consummate politician who had mastered the art of winning elections.\u00a0 <\/span>But by 1974, Gopal Gandhi informs us, misgovernance, corruption and unemployment were rampant in India. Large numbers of people were unable to meet their living expenses. India was in turmoil. Unrest in Gujarat resulted in large numbers being injured and over a hundred being killed. The unrest spread to Bihar. A year later, tension mounted as violence was unleashed on peaceful demonstrators in Patna, Calcutta and elsewhere in the country. On 26 June, 1975, at the Prime Minister\u2019s request, the President declared a national Emergency. The night before the declaration of the Emergency both Jayaprakash Narayan and Moraji Desai were arrested and on the 27th<\/sup><\/span> of June, press censorship came into play, for the first time in India since Independence.<\/p>\n

The Emergency continued into 1976 and Indira\u2019s rule as a virtual dictator was now in full swing:\u00a0 <\/span>Jayaprakash Narayan was released from prison and sent to Jalok hospital in Bombay for emergency treatment before heading back to his home in Patna, for rest and recuperation; Moraji Desai continued to be stuck in jail; Karunanidhi the Chief Minister of Madras, an ally of the Indira Government in 1971, was dismissed by the end of January 1976 and 25,000 members of the DMK including Karunanidi\u2019s son, M.K. Stalin were imprisoned; Tamil Nadu was placed under President\u2019s Rule;\u00a0 <\/span>and George Fernandes, the prominent Indian socialist politician and trade unionist, was arrested in Calcutta, imprisoned in the Red Fort in Delhi and viciously ill- treated. Indira and her son Sanjay Gandhi were effectively running the show.<\/p>\n

By 1977, the economic situation had begun to worsen. Indira could not but be aware of her unpopularity. The term of Office of the Lok Sabha was extended to mid-1978 and there was talk of an Indira-raj. Ominously, Y.B. Chavan, the Minister of External Affairs in Indira\u2019s cabinet told his countrymen on 2 November, 1976, that \u2018mere elections are not democracy\u2019. But on 8 January, 1977, to the surprise of all, Indira Gandhi announced that elections would be held in March. With this announcement, all political prisoners were released.<\/p>\n

The results of the elections held in March 1977 were disastrous for Indira Gandhi and Congress. Congress was decimated in the north with Indira Gandhi being defeated in her Rae Bareli constituency. Only the south stood by her.<\/p>\n

Moraji Desai became the new Prime Minister. Cast aside by the people, Indira Gandhi was a political nobody now but as Nehru\u2019s daughter, she knew she had a role to play. The very disappointing performance of the new government with Moraji Desai at the helm paved the way for a sensational comeback by the indomitable Indira Gandhi.<\/p>\n

In the elections held in 1980, Congress won 351 out of the 525 Lok Saba seats. Indira Gandhi won back the seat in Rae Bareli which she had previously lost in 1977. She also won in Medak, Andhra Pradesh, her back-up seat which she had contested in the event that she lost the seat in Rae Bareli. Sajay Gandhi won in Amethi, Uttar Pradesh, which had vigorously rejected both the mother and son in 1977 but voted them in, in 1980.\u00a0 <\/span>Indira Gandhi kept her new seat and handed over her Rae Bareli seat to B.K. Nehru. Indira Gandhi was back, stronger than before. Her son Sanjay was no longer the power behind the throne. He had become a powerful political figure in his own right. But destiny makes its own plans. Sanjay Gandhi, the chosen successor of the Prime Minister, was killed in a plane crash in June and succeeded by his brother, Rajiv Gandhi.<\/p>\n

Whatever one may say about Indira Gandhi and much has been said earlier on in this essay, her courage in adversity has to be admired. In the face of a personal tragedy of such magnitude as the death of her son and heir, Sanjay, she continued stoically, to lead the country with calm strength. From the early 1980s onwards, Indira Gandhi and her government were faced with threats to the political integrity of India.\u00a0 In 1980, extreme political violence led to the hideously brutal killing of prisoners awaiting trial in Bhagalpur, Bihar. Once again in Bihar, in late April of 1981, a riot between Hindu Yadavs and Muslims in the town of Bihar Sharif, left many dead and many more, seriously injured. Indira Gandhi, on learning of the dreadful events, visited the area, immediately. Gruesome events of a similar nature took place in Assam in 1983. There was little that the Prime Minister could do in these circumstances, except to show her concern.<\/p>\n

Trouble was brewing in Punjab as well. In 1983, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, leading the Sikhs, demanded a greater measure of independence from the central government, if not a separate state.\u00a0 <\/span>Bhindranwale, having made the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holiest shrine of the Sikhs, his headquarters, encouraged and fostered a hatred of Hindus, of Congress and of India in general, among the Sikhs. With his encouragement, violence against Hindus erupted on 6 October, 1983. Indira Gandhi responded by taking decisive action. She dismissed her own Congress government in the state, imposed President\u2019s Rule, declared Punjab a Disturbed Area, invoked emergency internal security protocols and ordered the Indian army to remove armed militants from the Golden Temple.\u00a0 <\/span>Operation Blue Star had begun. Contrary to what the military intelligence had led the Prime Minister to believe, there were many more followers of Bhindranwale within the Golden Temple Complex in Amritsar, than she had anticipated. Thus, despite orders to use minimum force, the storming of the Golden Temple resulted in heavy casualties on both sides. The result was that Indira Gandhi became a much-hated figure among the Sikhs. \u00a0\u00a0In 1984, two of her own trusted Sikh bodyguards assassinated her. She was succeeded by her son Rajiv Gandhi, who, like his mother, became the victim of a political assassin later on.<\/p>\n

While Indira Gandhi had veered sharply away from the policies of the governments headed by Nehru, the current Prime Minister of India, Narendra Damodardas Modi, discarded them altogether. Modi\u2019s political career began in December 2002 when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won in Gujarat and he became the Chief Minister of Gujarat. On 8 June, 2014, the BJP named the Gujarat Chief Minister as its Prime Ministerial candidate. Born in 1950 after India\u2019s independence, he sought the vote of a nation that appeared to have abandoned the ethos of those who fought for independence.<\/p>\n

In the event, Narendra Modi and the BJP won the 2014 election resoundingly with Congress reduced to a historic low of a mere 44 seats. The left parties fared as badly, losing power in their traditional strongholds.<\/p>\n

If the first four decades of independent India could be categorized as those shaped by the Nehru-Gandhi nexus, India after 2014 was being shaped by Modi. If the ethos of the former was \u2018democratic republicanism and secularism\u2019, the latter embraced \u2018majoritarian nationalism <\/i>and Hindutva\u2019.<\/i> By 2019, the Modi era was in full swing. Elections that year for the BJP were almost a mere formality, and the election of Modi for a second term, a foregone conclusion. To borrow Gopal Gandhi\u2019s words from 2019 onwards, the Modi era has been firm and strong, with \u2018its supporters a heaving ocean and its critics a still pond\u2019. However, some cracks have since appeared in Modi\u2019s popularity. A massive protest by the farmers of North India against certain farm laws and Prime Minister Modi\u2019s retraction of them, Arundathi Roy\u2019s persistent and searing one-woman criticism plus the most recent protest by the Cockroach Janata Party which demanded and secured the resignation of the Minister of Education, Dharmenda Pradhan in July 2026, are indicative of the fact that the Modi government, however electorally powerful it is, cannot suppress forever the will of the people of India.<\/p>\n

In his epilogue in The Undying Light<\/i>, Gopal Gandhi shares some concluding thoughts with his readers. Those which resonated with me are the following:<\/p>\n

1. The economic disparity of India where 220 million Indians out of a population of 1.428 billion live below the poverty line. This ranks India, 11th<\/sup><\/span> out of 125 nations in the Global Hunger Index; 129th out of 146 countries surveyed in the Global Gender report and 176th out of 180 nations surveyed in the Environmental Performance index. Ironically, however, it ranks 3rd<\/sup><\/span> in the Forbes billionaire list;<\/p>\n

2. The author\u2019s reference to Manmohan Singh whom he rightly describes as, \u2018<\/i>the last living Statesman I have known\u2019. On his passing at almost the end of December 2024, Gopal Gandhi observes that \u2018[the] Indian Sky had decidedly darkened at the departure of this good man\u2019, who had shown us all that there was space in politics for decency and for decency in politics;<\/p>\n

3, His reiteration of Mahatma Gandhi\u2019s prayer in the months before his voice was stilled: \u2018Grant, please, God, good sense to all\u2019. He then draws our attention to Babasaheb Ambedkar, the man who had crafted India\u2019s Constitution. who joined the Mahatma\u2019s funeral procession with no fanfare and, due to his poor health, walked in it for only a short distance. He then refers to the fact that Mahatma Gandhi and Ambedkar had had disagreements on matters political but that all of them \u2013 Subhas Bose, Nehru, Patel, Kripalini, Azad, Ambedkar and Gandhi, despite their disagreements and different views, stood for a united India based on the highest principles and values.<\/p>\n

4. Saroj Devi and Gukesh were two individuals who displayed on the world stage what it is to be generous and magnanimous to one\u2019s rival. The former, the mother of the javelin thrower Neraj Chopra was warmly appreciative of Arshad Nadeem of Pakistan who bettered Chopra\u2019s throw. Nadeem reciprocated in similar vein. Likewise, when eighteen- year- old Gukesh, became the world chess champion on 12 December, 2024, he paid tribute to his Chinese opponent, saying that he \u2018is a true champion\u2019. Had they been around, I feel that while Mahatma Gandhi would have been delighted to hear of the bond between the representatives of India and Pakistan, Krishna Menon and Jawaharlal Nehru might have rued afresh the missed opportunities to have forged a closer link with China before the war erupted at the border.<\/p>\n

5, In the course of his book, Gopal Gandhi says, \u2018The independent India that has surfed the moon, holds dark craters in its soul\u2019 and that, \u2018Just as perversion hides and is never suspected to exist until it is too late, human solidarity stays unseen and unknown to stir at a moment\u2019s notice. That is India, the theatre of strife between the hideous and the humane\u2019.<\/p>\n

The narrative of how India emerged from the shadow of Western imperial domination to be the proudly independent country it is today, is well known. But in Gopal Gandhi\u2019s masterly account, the reader is placed at the very epicentre of this evolution and made privy to behind-the-scenes happenings, when its leaders sought to heal the wounds of partition and build a cohesive new nation. \u00a0<\/span>Gopal Gandhi offers the reader insight into significant events that took place in India, from the time before independence to the present, while, at the same time, presenting a nuanced critique of key figures who played a part in shaping the India of today.\u00a0 <\/span>Despite its mammoth length, the book is unputdownable; and Gopal Gandhi\u2019s love for his country is plain for all to see. In the final reckoning, Gopal Gandhi makes it abundantly clear to the reader that no matter what challenges the future may bring, India will always hold its own.<\/p>\n

And so, it is appropriate for Gopal Gandhi to end on an optimistic note when he observes that:<\/p>\n

India\u2019s light can dim; it cannot, will not die.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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