ABSTRACT

Academic Press, 1978; New Delhi: Vikas, 1979 Singh, Khushwant, Indira Gandhi Returns, New Delhi: Vision, 1979 Most biographies are based on interviews with Gandhi, information gathered from people who knew her, and the autobiographies of her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, and her aunts, Vijayalakshmi Pandit and Krishna Hutheesing. The focus is on her assuming dictatorial power in 1976, rather than on the significance of a woman’s coming to power. All of them recount the main incidents: her birth as the first grandchild of Motilal Nehru, the patriarch who changed his luxurious lifestyle late in life when the call of Mahatma Gandhi drew him and his son Jawaharlal into the nationalist movement; Indira’s childhood, when she organized the Vanar Sena, a children’s brigade that imitated the nationalist movement of the elders; the death of her mother Kamala when Indira was nineteen; her marriage to Feroze Gan dhi against the wishes of Nehru; the slow disintegration of the marriage, precipitated by Indira’s leaving their home in Lucknow to keep house for Nehru in Delhi when he became Prime Minister; and her entry into politics. She became uncrowned queen of India in 1971, but declared a national Emergency and postponed elections in 1975. She lost the elections she called in 1977, but came back to power in 1980.