When Sagarika Ghose, whom I have greatly admired over the years both as a TV anchor and as a print journalist, came out with her book on Indira Gandhi last month, I was quite indifferent and almost skeptical.  I thought here goes another book out to so many that are already available on Mrs. Gandhi in the market.  After all, she has been one of the most scrutinized and reported on individuals in India in the last 50 years.  What more can we be told that most of us already don’t know?  I thought of it as one of those vanity projects on the part of the author, and I was resolved not to buy this book.  Then one night, I was watching a discussion on NDTV where Nidhi Razdan was talking to Sagarika about her latest book, and since I am quite fond of both these women, I thought I would give this a try.  And I am so glad that I read this book.  This has been a terrific effort by Sagarika Ghose.  She has come up with a really engaging and penetrating portrait of some of the most defining years of post-independence India.  But what I found most fascinating is how beautifully she has managed to get through the façade, and captured the true persona, the essence, if you like, of the woman who was at the helm of affairs during those years.  You acutely get the sense that her controversial legacy continues to cast an enduring shadow on politics in this country even more than 30 years after her death.  The thing with powerful and authoritarian leader in a country like ours is that, even though your opponents will loathe you when they are at the receiving end of your stick; but as soon as the fortunes are reversed, they will employ the same tactics from that powerful leader’s playbook, almost as a backhanded compliment.  Something very similar is happening in India today.

   Since the assassination of Mrs. Gandhi in 1984, a whole new generation has come of age.  This book should be read by not only those who were born after 1984 but also by everyone else who is interested in finding out arguably the most compelling political narrative of the second half of the 20^th century in India.  The book reads like a thriller and gives you a really engrossing picture of the kind of complex individual Indira Gandhi was.  Even though the author is somewhat sympathetic towards her subject, it has at no felt like a hagiography, in fact, far from it.  Neither has it been a hatchet job either.  Rather, Sagarika Ghose brings out a clear-eyed and lucid understanding of the real Mrs. G by speaking with all the available dramatis-personae of the time.  She uses her incisive journalistic skills to lay out a comprehensive and complex picture of the kind of woman both as an individual and as a powerful Prime Minister Mrs. Gandhi was, warts and all.  One feels almost a fly on the wall, how from the confident, strong, and unchallenged leader in the first half of her long inning as prime minister, to the vulnerable, shaky, and increasingly paranoid leader of the second half.  A kind of prime minister who was beginning to see demons all around her.  You feel as if she was sleepwalking into one blunder after another, and eventually paying with her own life.  What I also feel is that no matter how grand and glittering your political career has been, when the end comes, it will look like an utter failure.  Indira Gandhi was a true patriot.  But she was not a true democrat like her father.  For her, political power was not a means to an end, but the end itself.  All through her time in office, she remained under the mistaken belief that the people of India were her one big extended family, and as a mother, it was her solemn duty and obligation to take care of this humongous family.  Little did she realize that sometimes even motherly love can be too much, and India got suffocated in this maternal embrace somewhere along the way. 

   I also see it as a cautionary tale for us as citizens.  We must be vigilant at all times, because these powerful and supreme leaders with authoritarian impulses, be it Narendra Modi at the moment or Indira Gandhi all those years ago; when they do or do not do something, it does not just impact that particular moment, but the repercussions can be felt for the next 50 years and more.