Gandhi Under the Gun
D'MONTE, DARRYL
KILLING AND CORRUPTION Gandhi Under the Gun By Darryl D'monte Bombay On October 31,1984, immediately after Sikh terrorists assassinated Indira Gandhi, her eldest son succeeded her as...
...The Prime Minister's Parliamentary inquiry —conducted largely by Congress-I faithful—will hardly assuage opposition members who might very well boycott Parliament until a proper investigation is made...
...His mother's unwillingness to respond to Sikh moderates—who sought a settlement of territorial and water disputes with the neighboring Hindu state of Haryana, an end to having the Le Corbusier-designed city of Chandigarh serve as a joint capital, and a constitutional amendment recognizing Sikhism as a distinct religion— had fed the flames of separatist extremists...
...Unless he jettisons dubious allies of this sort, "Mr...
...Barely a day passes without a fresh allegation about Gandhi's confidants, the Bachchans (Ajitabh has sought residence in Switzerland...
...In any case, that is precisely what happened...
...On the other hand, that he has surrounded himself with too many objectionable lieutenants is viewed as betraying his sheer inexperience in dealing with the vast and tangled skein of Indian politics...
...But he was not prepared to disappear into the woodwork...
...Gandhi was implicated: popular film star Amitabh Bachchan, a Congress-I member of Parliament and longtime confidant of the Gandhis, and his brother Ajitabh, were named in the press as probable violators of the foreign exchange laws...
...Rajiv tends to rely on a coterie of individuals who are like himself Western educated, or at least "Westernized," yet know little of the machinations and maneuverings of Indian politics...
...When Gandhi demurred, Zail Singh met with opposition leaders and Congress-1 dissidents like Vishwanath Pratap Singh to solicit their endorsements for a run against the Congress-1 candidate, Ramaswamy lyer Venkataraman...
...That finally resulted in her sending troops into the 72-acre complex considered the holiest Sikh shrine, the Golden Temple at Amritsar, where the top fanatic agitators had established their headquarters...
...On the contrary, having paid a price for fighting corruption in the face of opposition from Gandhi and his close aides, he has emerged as a political figure in his own right...
...a sinister move by the forces of imperialism"—thereby implying that the ubiquitous CIA was once again stirring up trouble for the ruling party...
...From the time Indira Gandhi had the Army storm the Golden Temple, Indian President Giani ZailSingh, aSikh, has denounced the force the government brought to bear...
...That December the world's largest democratic electorate (300 million) gave his Congress-I (for Indira) Party 401 of 508 seats in the Lok Sabha, or Lower House of Parliament—a majority even his illustrious grandfather, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, could not have dreamed of...
...Now Rajiv, armed with a popular mandate and shaken by Hindu reprisals against Sikhs in New Delhi as well as elsewhere that cost thousands of lives, set out to keep his word...
...To further complicate matters, following the kickback charges relating to the submarine purchase, Finance Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh announced an inquiry...
...The Indian middle class hailed him as a hero...
...The latest setback for Gandhi was his party's recent electoral defeat in the state of Haryana at the hands of the Indian People's Party (Bharatiya Lok Dal...
...Clean" will be poh tically demolished...
...It was recently the 12th anniversary of the internal "emergency" that Indira Gandhi declared upon finding herself confronted by a national upheaval against her policies...
...The most blatant example of this may have been his raising an old, familiar bogey that was a favorite of his mother: He dismissed the corruption allegations and political infighting that have been plaguing him as " one more link in the chain of denigration and destabilization of our political system...
...He had enlisted the help of an American investigation agency called Fairfax he said, and it would particularly focus on the foreign exchange aspects of the affair...
...Clean...
...Under the Constitution, the President is elected by both houses of Parliament and the legislative assemblies of the 25 states of the union, which reflects the existing balance of power in the country...
...The predominant feeling remains that Rajiv Gandhi is the product of a more liberal mold...
...Moreover, he surely could not help remembering that opposition leaders had urged Singh to use his constitutional powers to dismiss the Prime Minister on charges of corruption...
...The Prime Minister has a little time left to read the hand writing on the wall: Instead of trying to rule Mogul-like from his citadel in Delhi, he has to build up his party apparatus and create a solid political base...
...Few expected Congress-I to prevail in a state that borders Punjab and has borne the brunt of Sikh terrorism...
...Triumphant visits abroad capped his domestic popularity...
...And the former Congress-I chief minister in Haryana, Bansi Lai, who during that emergency ordered forcible sterilizations and other atrocities, spoke during his state's latest election campaign of meting out "emergency-type" punishment to his opponents if they did not behave themselves properly...
...Meanwhile, still another controversy was dogging Gandhi...
...KILLING AND CORRUPTION Gandhi Under the Gun By Darryl D'monte Bombay On October 31,1984, immediately after Sikh terrorists assassinated Indira Gandhi, her eldest son succeeded her as Prime Minister...
...Until the Marxist, pro-Moscow Communist Party of India finally chose not to back Zail Singh, Gandhi was in danger of finding himself in the embarrassing position of having his mother's choice of President not only change sides but serve as a rallying point for both the opposition and Congress-I dissidents...
...And to the amazement of everyone, he managed to conclude an accord with the moderate Sikh leadership...
...Soon he was affectionately dubbed "Mr...
...During the December election campaign, Gandhi had promised to resolve the national tension caused by the turmoil in the Punjab, homeof India'sSikh minority (roughly 2 per cent of the population) and the country's most prosperous agricultural state...
...There is some fear these days that Rajiv Gandhi, taking a leaf from his mother, might reach for desperate remedies...
...Gandhi can ignore such deep rumblings of discontent only at his peril...
...At last, here was someone they could trust, a leader with an upper-class Indian public school education and a degree from Cambridge University who spoke of the importance of moral values...
...After the Haryana debacle, even the supportive New Delhi Hindustan Times complained that Congress-I is a "faction ridden party, a party where organizational elections have not been held for a couple of decades, a party where initiative at the grassroots is discouraged and a party where inner democracy is stifled...
...Amid a flurry of consultations and raging controversy, Singh realized he had incurred Rajiv's wrath and resigned...
...What radically changed the nature of the situation were the corruption charges that subsequently piled up on Rajiv Gandhi and many of his associates...
...Darryl D'Monte, a frequent NL contributor and a former assistant editor of the Times of India, is now studying environmental problems in the Third World...
...Riding a wave of sympathy, Rajiv Gandhi appeared for the next several months to be able to do no wrong...
...Probably the most successful was his trip to the United States where his modesty and candor won him many plaudits, not to mention the adulation of the American media...
...The first concerned kickbacks allegedly paid to the Congress-I Party by Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft AG, a Kiel-based West German submarine manufacturer, in return for a substantial order from India's Navy...
...It multiplied when the Communist Party (Marxist) won the state elections in West Bengal and Kerala, despite repeated assurances from the local Congress-I Party machines that they would trounce their opponents...
...Before the full impact of these allegations was apparent, a bigger scandal engulfed Gandhi: Swedish radio journalists claimed the Swedish gun manufacturer Bofors had paid an Indian middleman $30 million to $40 million to secure a $1.4 billion howitzer contract...
...Relations between the Prime Minister and the President thus soured, and Zail Singh leaked to the press a letter he had written Rajiv expressing displeasure over not being kept informed of vital government decisions—including those pertaining to Punjab—as the Constitution requires...
...Two years later he found himself embroiled in what would become a rapid series of political crises and scandals, until today it almost seems he can do nothing right...
...Losing Haryana so badly should be a sharp warning for Gandhi, given that it is in the politically sensitive and populous Northern " Hindi belt," a Congress-I stronghold...
...Over the past six months, however, as Gandhi has been plunged from one crisis into another, his suave, no-nonsense, progressive image has been sullied...
...The opposition parties already control all the major Southern and Eastern states...
...Rajiv Gandhi has visibly buckled under the mounting pressure of the last half year, and on occasion has lost his cool...
...Shortly afterward, the Prime Minister supplemented this victory by persuading rebels in the Northeastern territory of Mizoram to stop the guerrilla war they were waging against the Indian Army...
...Those developments, though, might ultimately have been seen as the setbacks any political head of a country as large and fractious as India was bound to experience...
...Trouble began when the Punjab accord— forged on the negotiating table rather than through party consensus—fell apart and terrorist killings of innocent people started to escalate...
...Although the Prime Minister issued the customary strong denial, he was forced to back down once the Stockholm government sent New Delhi an official report saying Bofors had indeed made the disputed payment...
...Nonetheless, with his five-year term of office expiring in late July, Zail Singh tried hard to gain Gandhi's support for a second lease on the Presidency...
...Her eventual violent death was their revenge...
...Since his resignation last April, he has rallied to his cause many other Congress-I dissidents worried about the Prime Minister's inexperience...
...When Rajiv initially took office at age 40, his boyish countenance dominated television sets virtually every evening...
...More immediately, with Gandhi reeling under the successive blows he has sustained, the opposition will no doubt seize the opportunity to press for a thorough probe into the Bofors affair...
...Except for a couple of faithful editors, the charge was treated with the derision it deserved...
...The challenge actually gave Gandhi a scare...
...But the humiliating rout it suffered—capturing only four of 84 seats—is a blow Gandhi will not recover from for months...
...Perhaps Singh should have foreseen that an impartial foreign firm, likely to be unaware of the sensitive political and family ties of those under scrutiny, might do its job all too well...
Vol. 70 • June 1987 • No. 9
