The Daughter

The U.S. last week hoped to get a longer-than-usual look at Indira Gandhi, who in more ways than one is India's most intriguing woman. She attended the opening of the New York World's Fair, but before she had a chance to show off more than three or four of her exquisite saris, she was called back to India by her father, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The ailing Nehru wanted "Indu" (Moon), as he calls her, at his side for an important confrontation this week with Sheik Mohammed Abdullah, "the Lion of Kashmir," who has been demanding self-determination for his home state since his release from jail last month. Both Indira's visit to the U.S. as her country's representative and her abrupt recall as her father's aide define her importance.

Indira draws much of her influence from being Nehru's daughter, but she is extraordinarily able and talented in her own right. She has been particularly important to him since his stroke early this year, often functioning as his link with other officials and the world at large. At one time it was rumored that Nehru wanted to groom her as his successor, but that possibility, to all intents and purposes, is out. A more serious prospect is that she may become India's Foreign Minister; left-wingers want her in the job, hoping that she would follow the policies of her old but discredited friend Krishna Menon.

Magic Name. Holding no government office, Indira is nonetheless a member of the ruling Congress Party's powerful Working Committee, which guides all government actions. Voluble and imperious, she has had little experience of statecraft, and is noted, in a Western diplomat's words, for "thinking with her heart." Her foes predicted disaster in 1959 when she was elected president of the flabby, faction-torn Congress Party. But in her whirlwind year on the job, Indira showed considerable political acumen.

Though markedly willing to defend Russia internationally, she is an anti-Communist at home; it was at her insistence in 1959 that the government finally voted to dissolve the legally elected Communist government that had ruled Kerala state for 27 months. Her temper and her use of Nehru's magical name sometimes get her into trouble. On the hustings during by-election campaigns last summer, she threw temper tantrums when critical crowds heckled her, threatened on one occasion to report the "barbarians" to Daddy.

Moon herself caused Daddy a major headache on a visit to Moscow last year when she publicly denounced India's agreement to accept a Voice of America transmitter, aggravating a controversy that finally forced Nehru to renege on the deal. But Indira took a strong stand against the Red Chinese invasion and spent days, from dawn to dusk, in airplanes surveying the front.

Prison Education. India's struggle for nationhood has almost totally absorbed Indira Gandhi's energies. "My public life," she boasts, "began at three." At twelve, she banded other children together in the illegal "monkey brigade," whose task was to sneak political messages past British soldiers. One visitor to Nehru's Allahabad home was gravely informed by his daughter: "I'm sorry, but Papa and Mama and Grandpapa are all in prison."

Oxford-educated Indira (she studied history) was a disciple of Gandhi, worked as a girl among untouchables in city slums, joined the embattled Congress Party. In 1942, she defied her Brahman father by marrying an obscure Parsi lawyer named Feroze Gandhi (no kin to the Mahatma), with him was jailed by the British for 13 months on charges of subversion. She spent her prison term teaching illiterate convicts. After five years and two sons, she left Feroze to return to Nehru's rambling mansion in New Delhi; her husband died in 1960.

Despite her tough mind and tart tongue, Nehru's athletic, teetotaling daughter can brim with feminine charm. She constantly experiments with new hairdos (last week it was short and curly), can often be seen in a crowded New Delhi market munching ecstatically on the spicy Bengali yummy known as chaat. Though not conventionally devout, she always carries in her handbag a pocket edition of India's most sacred scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. She has always refused to run for Parliament, though she would be an unbeatable candidate, explaining that she considers "the role of mother more important." Nonetheless, Indira tilts tirelessly at the myth that Indian women are delicate creatures fit only for domestic duties--and she has done more than her share to disprove it.

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