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by Inder Malhotra

Indira Gandhi looms large in India's consciousness, just as she had dominated the national stage for two decades irrespective of whether she was in power or out of it.

AFPIndia’s then Premier Rajiv Gandhi (2L), accompanied by his wife Sonia (3L) and his daughter Priyanka (C) looks over the cremation pyre of his mother Indira Gandhi, in New Delhi. October 31, 2004, marks the 20th anniversary of Mrs Gandhi’s assassination by her Sikh bodyguards, four months after she ordered troops into the Golden Temple in Amritsar to flush out Sikh militants fighting for an independent state. Twenty years after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, India is remembering with strong emotions the woman who holds the record as the longest serving prime minister of the world’s largest democracy.

Not just immediately after her assassination 20 years ago - that was preceded by Operation Bluestar and followed by horrendous anti-Sikh riots - but also for long years afterwards, it was virtually impossible, at any gathering of the middle class intelligentsia, to say a good word about Indira Gandhi, the country's third Prime Minister who has left an indelible imprint on this country's history.

To some extent, this situation persists because the inflamed polarisation of opinion about her has not ended. Even so, it is no exaggeration to say that during recent years the gap between the chattering classes' hatred and the masses' reverence for her has narrowed perceptibly.

The pendulum has been swinging from negative to positive and this has contributed to her party's return to power at the Centre and subsequent good showing in Maharashtra.

In other words, as during her life, so after her death her countrymen's evaluation of Indira Gandhi remains subject to fluctuation. Wasn't she first derided as goongi gudiya (dumb doll) and then hailed as the invincible goddess Durga?

From this Olympian height she had plummeted to ignominious electoral defeat, largely because of her imposition of the Emergency that delivered a hammer-blow to Indian democracy for 19 nightmarish months (1975-77). Had her political career ended then and there, her place in history would have been altogether different.

But she was back in power in less than three years after having been "consigned to the dustbin of history," in the words of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a former Prime Minister who was then Foreign Minister in the Janata Government.

To this high drama was added searing tragedy - her younger son Sanjay's death and her own life being snuffed out.

In my biography of hers, published in 1989, I had described the Emergency as Indira Gandhi's "cardinal sin," and I see no reason to change this opinion now. Her claim that she was only trying to put back on track democracy that had "got derailed" was, of course, disingenuous.

But with the passage of time, people are beginning to acknowledge that if she was sinning, she was also being sinned against.

Her ardent supporters are manifestly unfair in their attempt to transfer the blame for the imposition of the Emergency to Jayaprakash Narayan, the respected Gandhian who had led the political crusade against her.

More to the point is Professor Bipin Chandra's verdict holding both Indira Gandhi and JP responsible in almost equal measure.

With the benefit of hindsight, even some of her critics have started accepting that Indira Gandhi herself had called the 1977 election without any visible pressure on her to do so.

Moreover, though ugly and revolting Indira Gandhi's Emergency certainly was, New Delhi in 1976 was in no way comparable to Berlin under Hitler, Moscow under Stalin, Beijing under Mao or Islamabad under Zia-ul-Haq.

Above all, nearly half of this country's population is below the age of 25. It knows little about the Emergency and cares even less.

Only slightly less disturbing than the Emergency were Indira Gandhi's other grievous errors for which she paid grievously.

High among these was her penchant not to bother about means while pursuing her ends that included centralising all power in her hands first and then ensuring dynastic succession. This set democratic norms and political ethics firmly on the slippery slope.

Sadly things have worsened since then, not improved. In any case, why pillory Indira Gandhi for having established a dynasty when every political leader worth the name wielding some power anywhere in this country is busy doing exactly the same thing?

The pernicious pattern of the Mughal court culture of sycophancy, bred in her time, also endures.

As for Bluestar, Indira Gandhi's Himalayan Blunder was not that she sent the Army to the Golden Temple at the time she did but that she allowed a situation to develop in which military action became unavoidable.

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