India's Iron Lady

GYAN PRAKASH examines an innovative study of the political transformations experienced in India under the rule of its only female prime minister

- GYAN PRAKASH

Indira Gandhi looms large in the history of postcolonial India. The story of her oversized impact on Indian politics is familiar from the previous writings of biographers, journalists, political scientists and historians. Unlike previous biographies, though, this new study is based solidly on extensive consultation of primary sources. Although Indira Gandhi’s papers remain inaccessible, Srinath Raghavan draws on numerous private papers of her advisers and adversaries, correspondence, and archival records both in India and beyond to offer an account grounded in historical evidence. From these, he argues that the period of Indira Gandhi's political dominance constitutes a distinctive era - “the long 1970s”.

A superb work of political history, this book places the crisis and transformation of that period in the global context of the youth revolts of the 1960s and the political, economic and energy crises of the 1970s. While convulsions of the Vietnam War and the oil crisis were felt across the world, India experienced them in its own specific way, Raghavan argues.