Opinion Sad legacy
Shekhar Gupta has drawn an objective portrait of Indira Gandhis complex persona with all her strengths and failings.
• Shekhar Gupta has drawn an objective portrait of Indira Gandhis complex persona with all her strengths and failings. To me,an ordinary citizen interested in Indias march towards all-round advancement,social justice and zero tolerance of corruption,Indiras legacy,despite some pluses,looks rather sad. Political and bureaucratic immorality and non-accountability and the licence raj punctuated her tenures. The victory over Pakistan,resulting in Bangladesh,settled nothing; in fact,it spawned grave challenges of cross-border terrorism and demographic invasion. She gave away the gains in Shimla. She humiliated and jailed her political opponents during the Emergency. We are still to emerge out of the economic and political mess she left behind.
M. Ratan
New Delhi
A giant,nevertheless
• Shekhar Guptas The Idea of Indira should go down as a very factual and politically correct piece of history. His breaking up of Indiras tenure into three compartments shows how a docile girl grew into the Iron Lady. Her reign had all the trappings of a Greek tragedy. She did what she did to establish that her authority was unquestionable. Her blunders,she did feel at some point of time,were wrong decisions. But for those too she took the responsibility. At least,history will record she had the courage to take her decisions to fruition even if they were the wrong ones. Today,we are left with non-decisive leaders who talk more than act.
Roda D. Hakim
Baroda
Iron non-democrat?
• While The Indian Express did a wonderful job appraising Indira Gandhi on her 25th death anniversary,what surprised one was that so much money was spent by the Union government on publicity,despite the austerity drive. Everybody such as Pratap Bhanu Mehta,Shekhar Gupta,Tavleen Singh,even Arun Nehru avoided being too kind to Indira Gandhi,and rightly so. Perhaps Gupta put it best that she was,in effect,three prime ministers. If she battled successfully the old guard in her first stint,she laid the seeds of her end in her second stint. She did everything to remain in power,and ordered the 1977 elections hoping to return to power. But the electorate had other ideas. She may have been the Iron Lady,but,by the same token,was she democratic in her mental make-up?
Prasad Malladi
Nidadavole
Falling short
• Mihir S. Sharmas Recalling Indira attempts to come to terms with Indira Gandhis legacy. Not only the Congress but also the nation at large finds it hard to accept that legacy. Bangladesh is her great achievement. But in economic and foreign policy she found the going tough. Her detractors were many. To steal her opponents thunder she imposed the Emergency. She squandered her political inheritance from Nehru,falling short of authentic statesmanship.
John Alexander
Nagpur
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