Assassination of Gandhi Ends Political Dynasty That Shaped India
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Tragic Turn: Assassination of Gandhi Ends Political Dynasty That Shaped India --- With Elections in Turmoil, Troubled Nation Faces New Wave of Uncertainty --- The Latest Violent Outbreak By Anthony Spaeth and Robert S. Greenberger 22 May 1991 The Wall Street Journal (Copyright (c) 1991, Dow Jones & Co., Inc.) NEW DELHI, India -- With the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, India has lost another generation of the only modern dynastic family that ever managed to impose a semblance of stability on this land. It has also brought the formerly idealistic realm of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru to a new brink of uncertainty. The latest political tragedy strikes at a time when Indian democracy is under unprecedented strain. For the past two years, India has seen new levels of instability, with a succession of central governments that could barely rule, law and order crumbling in the poverty submerged states, and raging separatist movements in Punjab, Kashmir and Assam. The economy too is spiralling out of control, with prices rising, default on external debt looming, and the government unable to submit a budget plan. Further exacerbating the situation has been the decline of the country's historic sponsor, the Soviet Union. Mr. Gandhi, who became prime minister at the age of 40 in 1984, after the assassination of his mother, Indira, was killed yesterday by a bomb blast just as he stepped from a car in Sriperumpudur, 25 miles southwest of Madras. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. But India's official news agency, Press Trust, said that law enforcement authorities suspected that Sri Lankan Tamil separatists were involved, because Mr. Gandhi had sent troops there to crush an uprising in 1987. At the time of the killing, Mr. Gandhi was campaigning on his longtime platform: that India should modernize and join the outside world. He had also spoken out pointedly yesterday against the rising violence that had marred the election. India's elections, which began on Monday and were to continue this Thursday and Sunday, have now been postponed until June 12 and June 15, according to the United News of India. But without Mr. Gandhi, who was thought to be on the verge of a successful political comeback following his ouster from power in 1989, the outcome is up in the air. Indian politics without him -- without a strong leader of his Congress Party - - is unimaginable to many political analysts and most Indians. "The situation was already uncertain," says Arun Kumar, an economist in New Delhi. "Now, who knows?" Polls showed that Mr. Gandhi's Congress Party, which in various forms has governed India for all but four of its 43 years of independence, would gain the largest number of seats in the lower house of the Indian Parliament. But it might not have been enough to form a government. The Congress Party has deteriorated in recent years and two parties have rushed to fill the vacuum, including a pro-Hindu party, which could alter India's long-standing nondiscriminatory, nonsectarian rule. With Mr. Gandhi's death, the election prospects are even more clouded. Some analysts say a wave of sympathy could sweep the Congress to power, if a credible leader steps into Mr. Gandhi's shoes. Several have been standing in the wings for years. Possible candidates include Congress veterans N.D. Tiwari, Vasant Sathe, and P.V. Narasimha Rao. But they will inherit a deteriorating party and a country with intractable problems. Unless a truly popular leader emerges, many believe the Congress Party is finished. "There's no obvious heir apparent and no family member ripe for stepping in," says a U.S. official. The only direct heirs are young children, and as for other political leaders, a U.S. expert says, "There are only a lot of important local figures, but they haven't coalesced thus far into a clear pecking order." John Kenneth Galbraith, ambassador to India during John F. Kennedy's administration, observed that, at least for now, Mr. Gandhi's death marks the end of a political dynasty. "The great grandfather, grandfather, mother and now Rajiv were the dynasty. At least for the short run, this is the end." Rajiv's great grandfather was Motilal Nehru, a close associate of Mohandas Gandhi (not a relative), and his grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, was prime minister from 1947-64. U.S. analysts believe that the deep roots of Indian democracy will nonetheless hold. As Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, (D., N.Y.), a former ambassador to India put it, "You can blow up a leader; you cannot blow up a democracy." Yet U.S. analysts worry that a weak coalition government will be even less able to get a grip on the increasingly urgent problems that face the country. On top of this, India now confronts the specter of the kind of violence that erupted after then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's 1984 assassination by Sikh bodyguards. After that killing, Hindus retaliated against the Sikhs, killing thousands. A senior U.S. official says that whether there is a similar outburst this time may depend on who takes responsibility-or who is blamedfor Mr. Gandhi's killing. Yesterday President Bush called the killing "just appalling," and added that "I just don't know what the world is coming to." For a period after he took over in 1984, Mr. Gandhi was viewed as the possible savior of the country. He was young, modern and idealistic; he was a reluctant politician, having abdicated political ambitions to his younger brother, Sanjay, who was killed in a plane crash in 1981. Mr. Gandhi's wife, Sonia, born in Italy, pleaded with him to reject the prime ministership and once even wept in public. But Mr. Gandhi chose to lead the Congress Party in the 1984 elections and won the largest majority in Indian history. After gaining power, he set India's hopes soaring. He talked about the need to bring high-technology to India. He boldly criticized the laziness and corruption of India's bureaucracy and promised a clean government that "works." To the astonishment of the entire country, he also criticized his own party, which had led the struggle for independence from the British. "Instead of a party that fired the imagination of the masses, we have shrunk, losing touch with the toiling millions," he said in a speech in 1985. He admitted corruption in Indian politics, as no Indian leader had ever done before. He talked about "the brokers of power and influence who dispense patronage to convert a mass movement into a feudal oligarchy." Yet Mr. Gandhi didn't promise unrealistic feats. He didn't claim that he could bring an end to poverty, a promise that Indian politicians had made for decades. Instead he promised two things: to end pervasive, low-level corruption and bad administration. On top of that, the middle and upper classes were electrified by the notion of India modernizing, a concept no Indian politician had ever deemed important to its political base: the poor. The early days of the Rajiv Gandhi administration were thrilling on both political and economic fronts. He signed agreements with the Sikhs, whose battle for an independent state had led to his mother's murder, and with separatists in Assam. He pushed through groundbreaking economic liberalizations, which cut income taxes and started a deregulation of India's creaking, heavily state-controlled industries. But in 1987, to win a round of state elections, Mr. Gandhi went back on some of the promises he'd made the Sikhs. His economic liberalizations got mired in bureaucratic tangles and he decided to delay new ones until he got a fresh mandate. Then, an arms scandal arose in which he was accused of taking kickbacks. No proof was ever produced, but it ruined his reputation as "Mr. Clean." His sidestepping of the Indian game of politics ended. He even re-employed some of his mother's most disreputable political agents. The middle class immediately turned against him. In the elections of 1989, the masses showed their disenchantment. Local corruption and brutality hadn't changed, as Mr. Gandhi had promised. They voted the Congress Party out of power. It won the largest number of seats in the parliament but couldn't form a government. Mr. Gandhi's failure in 1989 was a watershed. He managed to keep the party under his control, against widespread expectations that it would split. But political analysts suggest that the average Indian, who respects strong leadership, lost respect for the party and for him. In Asalatnagar, a village 45 miles from New Delhi, the villagers sat on string beds last weekend, drinking tea and nibbling biscuits, talking about the deterioration of the Congress Party. "We'd vote for Mrs. Gandhi, or even Sanjay Gandhi, if he was around," said Khenchand, a 70-year-old farmer. "They knew how to get things done. But Rajiv is a pawn in the hands of a certain structure that doesn't let him function. He's a good guy, but he's a puppet. He doesn't have the brains." It's an unfair evaluation: by many estimations, Mr. Gandhi was intelligent, charming, hard-working and knew how to lead the highly complex government. He was clumsy at times. But more important, he lacked the ruthlessness of his mother in striking down competitors. In India, this is considered a sign of weakness. And the popular perception is that the political instability of the past two years, much of it provoked by former allies of Mr. Gandhi from within the Congress Party, would not have been allowed to occur under his mother.