Indira Gandhi

Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi (Hindi: इन्दिरा प्रियदर्शिनी गाँधी) was the Indian Margaret Thatcher and the 3rd Prime Minister of India. She held the office from 1966 to 1977 and from 1980 to 1984. Indira was the daughter of , India's first Prime Minister.
==Administration and policies==
The time she spent in the office was controversial, involving the formal establishment of India as the regional hegemon of . The 1971 India-Pakistan war that led to the liberation of Bangladesh happened under her reign. 1971: Pakistan intensifies air raids on India, 3 December 1971, BBC India conducted its first nuclear detonation in 1974.Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi examined a rock at a nuclear test site in southeastern India in 1974. Chicago Tribune
Even before she became dictator, Indira was fairly notorious for her authoritarian rule from her majority government between 1967 and 1971. One famous case came when the ruled that the Parliament could not amend the Constitution if it affected basic issues such as fundamental rights; thus safeguarding the Constitution's basic structure. Indira's parliament, dominated by her party, passed the in 1971, which nullified the ruling. Her party members quickly realized that their progress within the ranks depended solely on their loyalty to Indira and her family, and ostentatious displays of sycophancy became routine. In the coming years, Indira's influence was such that she could install hand-picked loyalists as chief ministers of states, rather than being elected by the legislative party.
She was so popular because she was very helpful to the poor. She nationalized several major banks in July 1969, abolished the privy purse in September 1970, and doctored New Deal-esque socialist policies that made her the darling of the poor, women, (the untouchables in the Indian caste system), and minorities of the subcontinent. Her secularism was especially well-liked. However, as one might expect, these policies were often done suddenly, via ordinance, to the universal shock of her opponents. You know how, from Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping, pseudo-dictators manage to keep power by making sure the voters have money in their wallets? Indira Gandhi perfected it long before any of them even conceived of it. Defeating Pakistan and separating Bangladesh from it also helped her popularity.
On the other hand, ever since she took charge as prime minister in 1966, Indira's government faced a total of ten no-confidence votes in the . After the on 12 June 1975, found her guilty of election malpractice, she got the then President, , to declare a state emergency on claims of a conspiracy against her.1975: Region Of Terror, India Today, 2 July 2007 The state emergency mechanism allows the government to sidestep several constitutional restrictions and deny basic rights to citizens.
In 1974, the opposition-led protests and strikes caused widespread disturbance in many parts of the country and badly affected the government and the economy. On 25 June 1975 following an adverse court decision against her, Indira Gandhi declared a national emergency, delayed elections, censored the press, dismissed several government officials, imprisoned dissident leaders, and suspended some constitutional freedoms in the name of national security.
One of her more infamous policies included a forced mass sterilisation campaign spearheaded by , her son, who feared overpopulation would wrangle his country. In 1976–1977, the program counted 8.3 million sterilizations, up from 2.7 million the previous year. She made use of public and private media institutions, like the national television network , for government propaganda, destroyed the slum and low-income housing in the and area of the , and arrested 140,000 people (about 40,000 of which were Sikhs) without trial during the twenty months of Indira's Emergency.
After January, the Sikhs remained virtually alone in their active resistance to the regime. Hailed by opposition leaders as "the last bastion of democracy", they continued to come out in large numbers each month on the day of the new moon, symbolizing the night of Indian democracy, to court arrest.
This period lasted until 1977, and has been frequently described as a dictatorship.Indira Gandhi's Dictatorship Digs In, Time, 14 July 1975 (archived from May 18, 2014)Assassination in India: A Leader of Will and Force; Indira Gandhi, Born to Politics, Left Her Imprint on India, 1 November 1984, The New York Times On 18 January 1977, Gandhi called fresh elections for March and released all political prisoners. The Emergency officially ended on 23 March 1977, and Indira lost her seat in the general election; the rest of her party suffered huge losses as well. A tribunal was held, but the overly complex nature of the trial ended up with very few convictions, least of all Indira herself, who got off eventually.
The had become intensely unpopular due to its internecine warfare, and the fact that it offered no leadership on solving India's serious economic and social problems. Consequently, Indira returned in 1980 as Prime Minister. In June 1984, under her authorization, the Indian army launched an operation on the of to flush out (i.e. massacre) Khalistani terrorists who had taken residence there since 1982 and who had heavily fortified the complex. The operation was called Operation Blue Star. On 31 October, Indira Gandhi was shot dead by two of her Sikh bodyguards. This was followed by anti-Sikh riots across India, including large-scale organised pogroms in and around .Why 1984 Golden Temple raid still rankles for Sikhs by Poonam Taneja, 1 August 2013, BBC Modern Hindutva proponents online like to point to and the anti-Sikh pogroms in 1984 as examples of brutality by the sickular Congress Party to try and excuse the numerous similar communal riots committed in the name of their ideology, or at least try to minimise their significance.
==Belief in woo==
Although her father was a rationalist, Column: From Nehru's temples to just temples by Jaithirth Rao, The Financial Express, 19 August 2013 she was reported to be a firm believer in woo. She gave her patronage to a yoga guru called and an astrologer called . Dhirendra Brahmachari has been compared to Rasputin. My kingdom for a goat by Ravi Shankar, The New Indian Express, 12 May 2013
==Conspiracy theories==
There are several conspiracy theories built around her. A few notable ones have been listed below.
* She was a Muslim: There are several people who claim that she and all her descendants are Muslims, as she converted when she married .Indira Gandhi? No… ‘Maimuna Begum’!, Save Hinduism However, during a legal dispute between her and her daughter-in-law, , regarding the inheritance of Indira's dead son Sanjay's estate, Maneka had argued that Indira was a Parsi by marriage. She was also denied entry to the at which allows entry only to the orthodox and pure Hindus.Controversies over Jagannath Temple's entry rules, 3 August 2012, Hindustan Times
* She killed her son: People claim that she got one of her sons, Sanjay Gandhi, killed. Conspiracy Theory India - Death of Sanjay Gandhi Sanjay Gandhi died in a plane crash on 23 June 1980. There are claims of growing rifts between him and his mother, with one incident being where he allegedly slapped her due to some issue regarding the guru Dhirendra Brahmachari.Sanjay’s men and women by Kumkum Chadha, 4 January 2011, Hindustan Times According to US embassy cables leaked in 2013, he was a prominent figure during the emergency and had already faced three assassination attempts by September 1976.Three attempts were made to kill Sanjay Gandhi: WikiLeaks, 11 April 2013, The Times of India
* She had a paramour: There are claims that Sanjay Gandhi was fathered by , a diplomat, and not Feroze, which had made him and his descendants Muslims.Mystery of Sanjay Gandhi, Save Hinduism , the author of the book Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi, has claimed , (a cabinet minister) and Dhirendra Brahmachari were also her paramours.The Truth About Indira, 21 May 2001, Outlook IndiaThe Wonder That Was Indira, , 9 April 2001, Outlook India 
==References==
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Category:Dictators
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Category:Hindus
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