The Red Sari: A Novel

by Javier Moro

  When the head of the Uttar Pradesh government found out what they were trying to with Vishwanath Gali, he was dumbstruck. He too did not know what was going on. Who had given the orders? Everybody knew they came from Sanjay, but his authority was vague and hard to trace. It was impossible to get any explanations out of him. He rarely spoke in public, hardly ever gave interviews and when he did, they were painful. His signature never appeared on official documents. He was the shadow that reigned in the darkness of the state of emergency. The civil servant subordinates, charged with carrying out his orders, redoubled their efforts in order to ingratiate themselves with him and interpreted the orders in their own way, being even more demanding than what was required. For many, the power went to their heads and they became tyrannical, sharp-tongued people, completely out of control.

  21

  During the time of the Emergency, Rajiv went from flying the Avro to co-piloting the Boeing 737, a plane which from that time on would make up the majority of the Indian Airlines fleet. After one of his flights to Bombay, as he was going to the hotel in the airline’s van to spend the night, a long line of police motorcycles and cars, with their sirens blaring and flashing lights piercing the hazy air, forced his vehicle to halt. The deployment was impressive. “VIP!” the driver told him, referring to an important personality going past. When he wanted to drive on, a policeman diverted him to a nearby turnoff. “Who is it?” the driver asked the policeman.

  “VVIP!” he answered. “Shri Sanjay Gandhi!”

  Sitting in the back, Rajiv raised his eyes heavenwards. That is how his brother was driven around, as if he were the most powerful man in India, even though he had no formal authority either in the Party or in the government. The driver did not miss the chance to tease his passenger: “Little brother goes by, big brother is diverted into the alleys… What do you think of that?”

  “That’s politics,” answered Rajiv humorously, satisfied really at not having to be part of that spectacle.

  Untouched by the dismay caused by the opposition’s criticisms, Sanjay and Maneka toured the country as though they were royalty, supervising everything, giving orders and instructions and being flattered by obsequious civil servants, ministers and heads of regional governments. The Press reported those tours in every detail. “His picture shines with a light of its own”, declared one weekly. “Sanjay is firmly settled in people’s hearts”, ran another headline. The reality was quite different: at that time Sanjay was perhaps the most hated man in India.

  Proof of his immense power was for example that Bansi Lal, the chubby head of the Haryana government and a henchman of his, who had been named as Defence Minister, took his two candidates to Sanjay for him to interview before deciding which one he should promote to admiral. Or when Sanjay visited Rajasthan and had to inspect 501 arches erected in his honour. A similar welcome awaited him in Lucknow, and there an incident occurred, very revealing of the aura emanating from his power. When he lost a sandal on the runway of the airport, it was the chief of the government of Uttar Pradesh himself who bent down, picked it up and reverently handed it to him.

  Maneka’s family, especially her mother, were suddenly catapulted into stardom. “From being nobody, she became the main lady in waiting to the empress of India, Indira Gandhi,” remembers the writer Kushwant Singh. “She became unimaginably arrogant.” He met her one Sunday when she went to visit him, accompanied by her daughter. They both wanted to start up a weekly news and entertainment magazine and Sanjay had suggested they should go and see him to ask for advice and to involve him in the project. Kushwant Singh accepted the commission, flattered at finding himself so close to Indira and her son. “I felt that Maneka was asking too much of Sanjay and that he wanted to involve her in any activity that would reduce the pressure on him,” the writer would say. The magazine, practically written, corrected and edited by Singh, was a success, and gave Maneka a power she had not had before as well as social standing that made her happy. Did not the success of Surya, as the magazine was called, confirm that she was a worthy wife for the most influential man in the country? At home, that success led to even more arrogant behaviour. Compared to her, who was that Italian woman who only liked cooking and staying at home? Now more than ever, she made her disdain of her brother- and sister-in-law apparent. Not even the children were free of it. A young member of the Congress Party witnessed a scene that revealed the character of the “first lady”, as some called her. The phone rang and this young man picked it up, but Mankea immediately snatched it out of his hands. It was a call for her nephew, Rahul. “There’s no Rahul living here!” she exclaimed, simply because she did not wish to be interrupted at that moment.

  “How can you both live like that?” a close friend asked Rajiv and Sonia. “Why don’t you move out?”

  “I can’t do that to my mother,” Rajiv answered.

  It was true, at that moment at least they could not. They could see that Indira was changing and about to react. Enough information had filtered through to her for her to finally admit the truth about the abuse committed in the name of her son’s campaigns. She began to doubt her advisors and started listening to outsiders. Affected by the growing anger she felt bubbling up amongst the people, she no longer found justification to go on with the repressive measures. She was also affected by the continual requests from different personalities inside and out of India to call off the state of emergency. Her uncle, B.K. Nehru, Ambassador to England, spoke to her frankly and without any beating about the bush about the poor image that India now had, no longer considered a star of civic responsibility shining among the dictatorships of Asia.

  Indira had already postponed the elections on two occasions, at Sanjay’s request, although the second time she had done it unwillingly. She thought that postponing them was sending the wrong signal to society, as though she were afraid of facing the people. She had proclaimed the state of emergency as a transitory measure, but she did not want to turn India into a dictatorship. The image of her as a “benevolent dictator” that came to her from abroad, concerned her greatly. What would her father say! Sometimes she seemed to hear Nehru’s voice coming from the depths of her being, pushing her into making a decision in accordance with her conscience. Furthermore, Indira noticed that she had lost the intimate connection she had with that “vast mass of Indian humanity”, and she wanted to get it back. She felt nostalgia for the crowds, she needed to vibrate again to the clamour and love of the people. She missed her earlier electoral successes… How far off now was that tremendous triumph of 1971!

  As was to be expected, Sanjay was totally opposed to his mother’s plans.

  “You’re making a huge mistake,” he stated. “You might lose the elections, and what will happen then? The report you received from the Intelligence Agency states that the Congress Party will lose…”

  “I don’t trust those reports,” Indira replied. “The Intelligence Agency has been infiltrated by Hindu extremists. They say whatever they feel like…”

  “Can’t you wait before you end the state of emergency?”

  “Wait for what?”

  “For some of the political prisoners to come out, and for things to calm down. It isn’t that we’re against the elections,” Sanjay was also speaking for his protectors and henchmen, Bansi Lal and secretary Dhawan, who were now afraid of becoming the victims of possible reprisals. “… But it would be better to release the opposition first and wait a year for the problems to be forgotten and the rumours to come to an end.”

  Indira stood looking at him, in one of her long silences, a dense silence which spoke of her determination louder than if she had answered him.

  This time Indira did not listen to him. The following day, January 18th, 1977, she surprised the entire nation by announcing general elections for two months’ time. “It will be an opportunity to clear up all the confusion in public life,” she declared. Sanjay was shattered. It was the first time his mother had undermined his authority. She did so again when
she ordered the immediate release of all the political leaders and lifted censorship of the Press. The opposition received these measures with suspicion. At this point, they did not trust Indira and were suspicious of her underlying motivation. They were sure it was a trap of some kind. But her old enemy J.P. Narayan, who had been arrested and locked up in a cell during the early days of the Emergency and who then, for health reasons, had been permitted to return home, confessed to a friend of the Nehrus: “Indira has been very brave. This is a great step she has taken.” Like him, many had not been expecting it.

  The decision to act so quickly, which left Sanjay feeling astonished, was actually the astute manoeuvring of an expert politician. It was a question of taking all of the weak and fragmented opposition by surprise, and not giving them the chance to get themselves organized. It was her best weapon for winning those elections, because not everything was on her side. She wanted to think that the magic that had happened on other occasions would also occur in this contest. She went from doubting that the people still loved her to being convinced of it, in spite of everything.

  As always, she launched into the campaign vigorously, touring all over the country, sleeping very little, travelling by any means of transport. As on other occasions, she could count on Sonia, always present, always prepared to help her get herself organized and to make her life easier for her. Sonia felt sorry for her mother-in-law. She could see she was exhausted and yet she was still chasing after a pipe dream: the love and veneration of the people. This time her seduction was not working. Indira came back crestfallen from the rallies. She told Sonia she had heard people shouting against her, voices that called for her defeat, sometimes insults. She had seen people walking away from the meetings, leaving her alone facing a smaller and smaller group of faithful followers. She had to hear many tales about the excesses of the sterilization programme, about the tortures, the arbitrary arrests… She did not know whether or not to believe everything people said, but she ended up realizing that the privileged contact she had enjoyed with the people no longer existed. “I can’t bear it,” she confessed one day. “They kept me shut up in these four walls.” Sonia did not dare to tell her that she had not wanted to listen.

  Fighting against the current weakened Indira and she fell ill several times, not managing to get over a kind of flu that gave her a recurring temperature. The blows she began to receive from her own colleagues in the party sank her even further into despair. Suddenly, her Agriculture Minister, a well-known leader in the untouchables community, deserted her ranks to join the opposition. The political life of the country seemed to become electrified. A wave of panic ran through the ranks of the Congress Party. Indira remained impassive in public, but Sonia could guess how hurt she was. That leader had been a personal friend, a companion on the road, a bastion of the party. His name was Jagjivan Ram and he had called for the immediate lifting of the state of emergency. Later Indira would discover the true reason that Ram had turned his back on her was his opposition to the age limit that Sanjay wanted imposed for standing for election. At the age of 68, Ram—and many others—were left out of the game. When Indira wanted to fix the problem, it was too late. Immediately afterwards, a horde of old comrades took the same path and then there were the defectors to follow. “How strange that you’ve all kept so quiet all these months…” Indira said to them, understanding that the rats were beginning to leave the ship… But she knew that politics was made up of betrayals, didn’t she? Hadn’t Churchill said that there were three kinds of enemies: those who are simply enemies; those who are deadly enemies; and party comrades? What hurt her most was that her own aunt, Viyaja Lakshmi Pandit, Nehru’s sister, came out of political retirement and charged into the ring to denounce that Indira and the state of emergency had “destroyed” India’s democratic institutions. After having made these incendiary declarations, she joined a coalition of opposition parties that had been formed under the name of Janata Party. For Indira, more than a betrayal, that was a humiliation. It was then that she got a herpes on her mouth which forced her to give her speeches with her face half-covered by the end of her sari. “What worries me is that I may have scars on my face afterwards,” she told Sonia as her daughter-in-law put some salve on her.

  “I’m tired of politics,” she said to her suddenly, without any drama or exaggeration, almost without emotion.

  Seeing Indira wounded deep in her soul made Sonia realize that high politics and low passions were two faces of the same world. It had never appealed to her, but now, seeing her mother-in-law betrayed and suffering, she felt complete rejection of it. Indira told her friend Pupul, “I’ll fight these elections and then I’ll resign. I’m fed up. I can’t trust anybody.”

  In view of the opposition gain in strength, Sanjay once again asked his mother to cancel or at least postpone the elections. But she stuck to her guns. So her son decided to stand as candidate MP for Parliament for the electoral constituency of Amethi, next to his mother’s constituency, Rae Bareilly, in the state of Uttar Pradesh. It was the territory of the Nehrus and the Gandhis, where victory was guaranteed. If he won a seat, Sanjay would be protected from the revenge of his countless enemies by his parliamentary immunity. Maneka and he were so naïve that in their first speech they praised the results of the sterilization campaign. They were booed by a group of furious women:

  “You have turned us into widows!” they shouted. “Our husbands are no longer men!”

  Indira met similar reactions all over the country. One of her speeches was interrupted by a peasant woman who shouted at her: “Everything you tell us about your concern for women’s welfare is all very well, but what about the vasectomies? Our men have become weak, and we women have too.” In a place near Delhi, another peasant woman who was being asked to vote brought up the subject of sterilization again, and did so in evocative language: “Madam, what good is a river without any fish?” Indira finally realized that in a country with a Hindu majority, where the lingam (phallic stone) is venerated as the earliest deity and the source of all life, the campaign of mass sterilizations had been a monumental mistake. And she knew that in politics mistakes are paid for.

  After those exhausting tours, Indira would return home with tears in her eyes.

  On March 20th, 1977, election day, Pupul went to see her in her house. It was eight o’clock in the evening and the streets of New Delhi were overflowing with previously unheard of joy since the celebrations of independence from the English thirty years before. Groups of people played drums, clowns walking on stilts gave out sweets to the children, the people danced in the streets, it smelt of gunpowder from the firecrackers and fireworks… The sovereign people had voted and were celebrating the fall of the “Empress of India”.

  And yet the house was enveloped in a disturbing silence. There was no fuss or lights or cars parked outside as on previous election evenings. There were no children or dogs to be seen. A secretary with a grave expression led Pupul to the sitting room decorated in tones of beige and pale green. Indira was alone, and stood up to greet her. She had aged ten years. “Pupul, I’ve lost,” she said simply. They both sat down and remained in silence, one of those clamorous silences of Indira’s which made words unnecessary.

  Sanjay and Maneka were in Amethi, their constituency. Rajiv and Sonia were in their room, very worried. They knew better than anyone in that house the antagonism the Emergency had aroused in society and they were afraid of reprisals against their mother, against their brother and against them too. They were afraid for their safety, now that Indira had to leave power. Added to this there were many unknown elements arising out of the new situation: where to live? for example, because it was necessary to hand the house back to the government. But, above all, they were very afraid for the children. Sonia was very upset. Now she felt politics striking out at her own flesh and blood. She had seen it coming, but what could she have done to prevent such an outcome? A servant interrupted them, knocking on the door:

  “Dinner is served
.”

  The table in the dining room was laid as for any normal day. Sonia could not hold back her tears. Rajiv was serious, gloomy, silent. They only ate a little fruit, while Indira had a good dinner of vegetarian cutlets with greens and salad, as though the defeat had not affected her as much. It seemed more as though she had shaken some weight off her shoulders. Nobody said a word. You could only hear the sound of the cutlery on the china, and Sonia’s timid sniffling. There was only an interruption when secretary Dhawan, Sanjay’s henchman, came in to announce the latest catastrophic results. Sanjay had lost in Amethi, and Indira in her constituency. A thing never seen before: the defeat was absolute and total, even in their traditional home ground. Indira did not bat an eyelid and served herself some fruit for dessert.

  They went into the sitting room, still without a word, except to exchange banalities with a family friend who came to be with them. They stayed like that for a while, until Pupul announced that she was leaving. Rajiv went to the door with her.

  “I shall never forgive Sanjay for having forced my mother into this situation,” he told her. “He is the one responsible for everything.”

  Pupul listened to him in silence. Rajiv went on, “I told Mother the truth about what was going on several times, but she didn’t believe me…”

  “There were rumours going around that if the Congress Party had won, Sanjay would have been named Home Secretary and people were terrified of that happening,” Pupul told him.

  “I can believe it. I’m sure he would have tried.”

  Pupul noticed, in the shadows of the hallway, that Rajiv’s eyes were full of tears.

  At midnight, Indira left the house to meet for the last time with her ministers and to formally call off the state of emergency after eighteen months, although in practice almost all the measures had already been cancelled. It was a short meeting, in which almost no one said anything. They had all lost their seats. They were facing the biggest disaster that had ever happened in the party. For the first time since independence, the Congress Party was not in power. From there, Indira headed for the palace of the President of the Republic. Shrouded in mist, the old palace of the British Viceroy was fleetingly lit up by the explosions of the fireworks. Once inside, she officially presented her resignation to the president.