Indira's tryst with Emergency

In spite of its research and keen attention to detail, Srinath Raghavan's book fails to capture the voice of its protagonist

- Swarna Rajagopalan

I am a child of the Indira Gandhi era. Through my formative years, she was Prime Minister. Until 1977, it never occurred to me that men could aspire to this position. Consider what an amazing reversal this is in a patriarchal, misogynistic society—that a little girl thought that only women could lead her country. Of course, this was always with the chorus of Indian male voices saying derisively, "That woman (this or that)..." Even back then, I knew that tone was reserved for women—women drivers, women managers, women entrepreneurs and, of course, women Prime Ministers.

No matter, as that little girl, I still wanted to be "that woman."

This book is not about "that woman." The title, Indira Gandhi and the Years that Transformed India, is misleading. What it is, is a history of India from 1966-84.

The prologue sets the stage, moving between Indira Gandhi's biography and a potted history of the first one-and-a-half decades after independence. In the first chapter, Srinath Raghavan traces the simultaneous decline of the Congress party's dominance and Gandhi's attempt to consolidate her position. It accounts for the economic crises of the mid-1960s and narrates the backstage machinations within the Congress, when Gandhi proved to be not such a "gungi gudiya" (or "dumb doll," as the socialist leader, Ram Manohar Lohia, called her) after all. The fractured mandate of 1967, the split in the Congress party and the 1972 election move the story forward. The detailed reconstruction of all of the attendant intrigue and controversy is quite remarkable.