INDIRA GANDHI: An Intimate Biography - Hardcover

Jayakar, Pupul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679424792 ISBN 13: 9780679424796

Publisher: Pantheon, 1993

Synopsis

An intimate of Gandhi describes how she grew from the shy daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru to political leader and reveals her thoughts, feelings, prejudices, insiights, flaws, strengths, loves, and emotional entanglements

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Reviews

Jayakar, who was Indira Gandhi's friend for 30 years, draws on her notes of meetings and conversations for this empathetic biography of India's prime minister who was assassinated in 1984. Scanting on political analysis, she offers a vivid, unusually insightful look at the emotional and familial factors that transformed a silent, withdrawn girl into an assured, far-seeing leader who was closely attuned to her country if at times obsessive and arrogant. Indulged yet also neglected as a child, Indira Gandhi (1917-1984) was prepared for leadership by her proud, expansive father, Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister. Jayakar, biographer of Krishnamurti, is especially revealing on Indira's unhappy marriage to Feroze Gandhi, on her key role in freeing East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) from West Pakistan's bloody rule and on her relationship with her sons Sanjay, killed in a plane crash in 1980, and Rajiv, assassinated in 1991. Photos.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An intimate friend of Indira Gandhi's offers an eloquent, revealing, and balanced look at the private and public lives of India's longtime leader. Granddaughter of anti-British patriot Motilal Nehru and daughter of Jawarharlal Nehru, Gandhi (1917-84) was born to Indian politics. Relying on taped interviews, as well as on her own memories and contemporary diaries and correspondence, Jayakar (Krishnamurti, 1986--not reviewed) draws the young Gandhi as proud, withdrawn, and lonely, but tremendously ambitious. Indira married Feroze Gandhi (no relation to the Mahatma) in 1942, and threw herself into the activities of the Indian National Congress, assisting her father in organizing resistance to British rule until independence came in 1948. When Nehru was elected PM, Gandhi devoted herself to Congress Party activities and world travel--with the intense strain of her political career eventually causing her marriage to unravel and her relationship with her sons Rajiv and Sanjay to suffer. Upon her father's death in 1964, Gandhi became a member of the cabinet of the new PM, Lal Shastri, succeeding him when he died two years later. As PM, Gandhi pursued a path of modernization, even socialism, as she attempted to rid Indian society of its ancient ways; she also wrangled with China, Pakistan, the Soviet Union, and the US over territorial and other issues. Jayakar criticizes Gandhi about the 1975 Emergency--during which the PM suspended democracy and imposed censorship--calling it her ``monumental error.'' But she's sympathetic in describing Gandhi's 1977 electoral defeat, her brief imprisonment in 1978, and her grief at Sanjay's death in a plane crash. In 1980, Gandhi reassumed office as PM and sought to heal India's deep cultural divisions at the same time that she became a leader of the nonaligned nations. In 1984, she was murdered by a Sikh bodyguard. An absorbing portrait of a complex, troubled woman who was driven by both idealism and ambition, and who both personified and threatened the ideal of Indian democracy. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Jayakar has indeed written an "intimate" biography of Indira Gandhi, a warm and personal book that serves as a welcome counterpoint to Pranay Gupte's Mother India: A Political Biography of Indira Gandhi. As a woman and one of the few friends India's most powerful woman ever had, Jayakar has rare insight into her subject's heart and soul. Gandhi shared some of her earliest memories with Jayakar: her love of climbing trees and hiding among the leaves and her sense of "fierce responsibility" when her grandfather was arrested for his role in instigating India's struggle for independence. Jayakar's access to Gandhi at crucial turning points in Gandhi's tumultuous life enabled her to recognize and articulate the subtler aspects of Gandhi's complex relationships with her powerful father, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru; her neglected, sickly, and religiously inclined mother; her philandering husband, Feroze Gandhi; and her two sons who, like Gandhi herself, came to violent ends. As Jayakar examines Gandhi's astonishing life, she reveals how adept Gandhi became at internalizing and concealing her fears, wielding meaningful silences as a negotiating tool, and ignoring flattery. This is an almost unbearably dramatic and "doomswept" life story. The personal intersects with the national; spirituality and politics tangle, and the will of one brilliant, resilient, and passionate woman is set against the collective desires of millions. Donna Seaman

Noted Indian intellectual Jayakar knew Gandhi for over 30 years, and his numerous interviews, discussions, and interactions with her help shape this biography. One of the first women to govern a major country, Gandhi belonged to a family that has ruled India for most of its recent history; she herself was the daughter of a prime minister and was succeeded as prime minister by her son after her assassination in 1984. Significantly, Jayakar moves away from the earlier paeans of praise to a more critical assessment of Gandhi's contributions to the Indian polity. The 1975-77 Emergency and subsequent events are not treated with the same depth as the earlier period of Gandhi's career, but this will unquestionably become one of the standard biographies.
- Donald Clay Johnson, Univ. of Minnesota Lib., Minneapolis
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679424792
• ISBN 13: 9780679424796
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 410