The Red Sari: A Novel

by Javier Moro

  However, although they were the centre of the attacks, Sanjay and Maneka took it all much more sportingly, in the real meaning of the word as well as figuratively. On October 3rd, 1977, they were playing badminton on the lawn in the garden at number 12, Willingdon Crescent. At five o’clock in the afternoon, they heard a police car drive up. Two men knocked on the door. One of them was a Sikh, a tall man with a red turban and excellent manners. Indira, who was discussing things with her lawyers, opened the door to him.

  “My name is N.K. Singh, from the headquarters of the Secret Service,” said the Sikh, squeezing his hands nervously. “We have come to inform you that you are under arrest,” he said, looking at the ground.

  “Do you mean you are taking me to jail?”

  “Yes…” muttered the man, visibly intimidated.

  “It’ll be a good opportunity to have a rest,” said Indira.

  In fact she had been expecting this moment for some time, just as the whole country had been expecting it.

  “Can I know what I am accused of?”

  The man read out the charges. They accused her of having coerced two companies into donating 114 four-wheel drive vehicles to the Congress Party’s campaign and then of having sold them to the army, which suggested bribery. Also of having granted a contract to a company that had made a more expensive bid than others, which suggested corruption. Indira looked heavenwards: it was all lies. “Were those the horrors of the Emergency?!” she thought to herself.

  “Tomorrow you have to go before the court and we will take you there,” said the man.

  “I want to see the order for my arrest.”

  The man handed over some papers. Indira went on: “If you don’t mind, I’m going to consult with my lawyers. Wait a moment, please.”

  She went into the house with the documents. She came out an hour later. The Sikh officer was waiting outside, sitting on a step at the entrance.

  “The First Information Report is missing here,” said Indira. “I do not intend to move until all the papers are in order.”

  “Madam, it will do no good to make my job harder than it already is.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be here when you come back.”

  “O.K. I’ll send an officer for the missing paper.”

  “You can wait inside if you like.”

  The man came in, feeling both grateful and uncomfortable. The house was surrounded by police officers and numerous onlookers who were beginning to gather. Sanjay and Maneka had given up their game and had shut themselves in their room. Usha, who found out what had happened straight away, rushed to Willingdon Crescent. “When I arrived, I saw a scene that made me feel sad. Before, the police cordon was there to protect the Prime Minister from possible altercations and demonstrations. Now it was there to prevent people passing through, and to arrest her.” Usha managed to get inside. Indira was going in and out of her room and was very busy. She was very happy to see her.

  “Usha! How nice that you are here! Could you please help Sonia to prepare my travel bag?”

  Sonia was in Indira’s room, with her mother-in-law’s clothes laid out on the bed. This time she was not very sure what to put in. This was not a journey like the others.

  “Where are they going to take her?” Usha enquired.

  “I don’t know. They haven’t said,” replied Sonia.

  “It’s best if we put a shawl in, in case they take her somewhere in the mountains.”

  “I trust you both to do my hair properly for me,” said Indira from the hallway. “I want to be as pretty as possible.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Sonia told her, already knowing that her mother-in-law never liked to look untidy, even inside the house. But that desire to look good, that made it seem as if she was going to a wedding instead of to prison, was unheard of. “My God,” Sonia said to herself. “And it’s an Indian prison!… Why does she want to look so smart?” she wondered.

  “Mrs Gandhi is like that,” Usha told her.

  While they chose a sari for her, Indira took some documents into the kitchen that she considered dangerous if they were to fall into the hands of the police or the Intelligence Agency. The cook made sure they were destroyed in an unusual way, using Sonia’s pasta-making machine as a shredder.

  Although the phones had been cut off, Sanjay and the lawyers managed to warn members of the party who in turn called the Press. Reporters with television cameras, followers from Sanjay’s Youth Congress and a growing crowd of the curious came to crowd up against the police cordon.

  The Sikh officer, still waiting for Indira in the hall, was getting more and more nervous. He did not at all like the spectacle that was being set up around the house. Of all the missions he had been given throughout his career, this was perhaps the one that most disgusted him. Nobody likes to arrest a goddess. He was nervous and undecided about what to do. He tried to be nice to Priyanka and Rahul, but the children responded with hostile looks.

  Finally, at eight o’clock, Indira appeared, carefully made up and with her hair beautifully combed, dressed in a pretty white sari with a green border that Usha and Sonia had chosen for her. She looked very distinguished. The Sikh officer was astonished: this would be like arresting an elegant grandmother… Furthermore, when Indira came out of the house, she was received with cheers in the garden and a shower of flower petals. At that moment she turned to the Sikh officer: “I want you to handcuff me,” she said.

  N.K. Singh was disconcerted, his mouth left half-open. “Now this little granny was asking to be handcuffed!” he thought in horror.

  “Madam, please…”

  “I want to leave my home in handcuffs. Haven’t I been arrested?… Well, put the handcuffs on me.”

  Sonia, following close behind with her husband and brother-in-law, was just as amazed as the Sikh. The policeman, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, went off to consult with his colleagues. He came back after a few moments.

  “Madam, we are not going to handcuff you.”

  “If you don’t handcuff me, I’m not moving from here. I’m staying put.”

  “Please, Madam, don’t put me in a difficult situation…” he said, embarrassed. “I am not authorized to handcuff you. Be so kind as to follow me or we’ll have to take you by force.”

  In view of the Sikh’s determination, Indira gave way and followed the policemen, while the crowd threw flowers and cheered her. Before he left the house with Sonia, Rajiv asked Usha to remain behind and take care of the children. He did not know how soon they would be back.

  Before she got into the car, Indira addressed a group of reporters. “I was to have gone to Gujarat to visit some tribal communities tomorrow. I would ask you to please convey my apologies to the people of Gujarat.” Asked about her arrest, she declared: “I have tried to serve our country in the best possible way. The charges against me have no foundation. This is a political arrest.”

  The car drove off, preceded by a military jeep and followed by a line of vehicles in which her sons and daughters-in-law, as well as followers and reporters, were travelling. The children were left behind, crying, in the care of Usha. History was being repeated again in the Nehru dynasty, as when the police came to arrest Jawaharlal and his daughter tried to prevent their access.

  They did not take her to the infamous Tihar prison, where she had ordered the Maharanis of Gwalior and Jaipur and so many others, to be locked up. Her “prison” was actually a spartan but relatively clean room in a police station. With great dignity, she said goodbye to her sons and daughters-in-law at the entrance. She was radiating serenity, because she knew intuitively that by now the news of her arrest, like a common criminal, was already spreading from mouth to mouth among the people to the furthest reaches of their immense country. She knew that if she could give the impression of being a martyr—the reason why she had asked to be handcuffed—she would win that round. Unaware of these manoeuvres, Sonia was looking at her with great sadness and was making superhuman efforts to hold back her t
ears. The Nehrus were not an effusive family, and less so in situations like this. Neither could she go under now. The police officers on guard snapped to attention for Indira as she went into her “prison”. It was hard for them to take in that they had her as their guest that night. The world was back to front. Inside, she was offered food, but she refused it. She was worried about being poisoned. She lay down on the bunk in her “cell” and for a long time she read a novel that Usha and Sonia had put into her bag. She slept deeply and at dawn she was already dressed, freshly showered and ready to face the court.

  At nine in the morning, Rajiv was waiting for her in the doorway of the Palace of Justice in Parliament Street, in the centre of New Delhi, accompanied by a lawyer. That morning the usual samosa-vendors and sugar-cane juice sellers were not there, or the scribes who, for a few rupees, would write letters or take down statements for the poor illiterates who were embroiled with the law. The news of Indira’s arrest had caused such a stir that at that time the building was completely surrounded by people crowding together. This time, the Janata coalition had sent their own demonstrators too. Sanjay arrived at the head of his people, so when Indira went into the building, she did so to cries of: “Long live Indira Gandhi!” from one side, and “Hang her!” from the other. But she put up with it, stoically, and at no point did she lower her head, not even when a magazine was thrown at her, flying past a few inches from her head.

  Inside the spacious hall, Indira refused the chair she was offered and stood for almost two hours, listening to the arguments about the charges against her. As it got hotter, a poorly-shaven janitor dressed in a dirty white dhoti clapped his hands to order the ventilators hanging from the ceiling to be started. The blades began to turn slowly, squeaking as they got moving. The draught made the skirts of her sari flutter, so that Indira felt a little relief. She was almost fainting from the effort of standing in all that heat. But she knew that the gesture of having refused a chair was being whispered from mouth to ear by hundreds, thousands and perhaps later, by millions of fellow Indians… “She remained standing!”, “She refused the chair!”… simple phrases that shaped her mythical figure in the people’s imagination.

  Outside, sympathizers and detractors came to blows. The police intervened and charged them wielding their lathis, long bamboo sticks, and later, with tear gas.

  In the end, the magistrate declared that Indira was innocent and absolved her. He immediately ordered her unconditional freedom and gave the following sentence: “There is no proof to support the accusation.” Sanjay went running out, shouting: “Case dismissed! She’s free!” which caused euphoria among some and fury among others, who all came to blows again. The police were forced to fire more cans of tear gas. Indira came out of the courtroom with red eyes and her nose covered, but happy at having won. Rajiv was very excited: “Not even Mother could have dreamed of a better outcome,” he declared to a reporter.

  In effect, the farce of her arrest got the news on the front page of all the national newspapers and a good many international ones too. The government made Indira seem like the victim of an incompetent administration. They achieved the opposite effect to the one they were seeking: they set Indira on the path to her complete political rehabilitation.

  Sonia was beginning to understand the reason for her mother-in-law’s need to be immaculately dressed. She had managed to project herself as a martyr to justice. She admired her desire to fight and at the same time her mother-in-law’s indifference towards the benefits of power; now she was sure that Indira would get back to the top, even if only to clear her name and to be the pride of her people again, especially of her grandchildren, whom she adored. Sonia understood her because they both shared a very deep and intense sense of family. However, she could not see the other side of her mother-in-law’s character, because she had never been attracted by power. For Indira, it was a kind of drug. Kissinger himself had said that power was the best aphrodisiac there was, hadn’t he? From being a plain, lonely little girl, and then a fragile woman with delicate health, power had made Indira into a formidable fighter, tough and tenacious. She had the bug deep inside and she felt it stirring every time the possibility, however remote it was, arose that she might reach it.

  So she did not waste a second; she knew that she had to seize the moment. Once again, Sonia helped her to prepare her travel bag, and this time it would be for a long time because Indira wanted to tour the whole country. In Gujarat, she addressed the people from little platforms erected several kilometres apart. As the day passed, the garlands of jasmine and daisies collected round her neck until they hid part of her face. She would take off the heavy load before she went into the huts of the natives where she shared their food, on banana leaves, talking to them about their problems: the harvest, education, the lack of health care, etc. One night, as she was driving through a wood, she asked the driver to stop. She had heard a voice. A few minutes later a native emerged, a half-naked man with wild hair and very dark skin. He was carrying a garland of flowers. “Mother, I’ve been waiting ten years to see you,” he said in his dialect as he put the garland round her neck.

  The welcome was not always triumphal or loving. The writer Bruce Chatwin, who went with her on part of that tour, was in a car that was mistaken for Indira’s. A stone broke the windscreen and injured the driver. Another went through his window and the pieces of glass caused the writer a cut on the shoulder. “That’s what often happens to those who walk at my side,” Indira told him as she took him to her room to check that the wound was properly bandaged. On another occasion, in the state of Kerala, Chatwin witnessed how a crowd of a quarter of a million, completely soaked by the rain, came to listen to her when it was already dark. Indira went to a balcony on the top floor of a building and sat on a chair that had been put on top of a table. She held a torch between her knees and pointed the beam at her face and torso. And she began to wave her arms and speak, while her followers mixed her up with Lakshmi, the goddess whose many arms moved with a waving motion. The comparison was not trivial: Lakshmi was the goddess of wealth. After some time, she turned to Chatwin, who was sitting below her on the table.

  “Mr Chatwin, please pass me a few more cashew nuts,” she said, bending down towards him. The writer gave her a handful and was perplexed to hear Indira add, “You have no idea how exhausting it is to be a goddess.”

  24

  Prime Minister Morarji Desai admitted what a mistake it had been to arrest Indira, and he was not prepared to repeat it, in spite of the reports from the Shah Commission, which proclaimed that the decision to impose the state of emergency had been unconstitutional and fraudulent as there was no “evidence of threat to the integrity of the nation”, an arguable conclusion. Among the ills caused by the Emergency, Judge Shah emphasized the arrest of thousands of innocent people and a “series of illegal acts that led to human misery and suffering”. The unfortunate thing was that the judge’s well-known pro-government tendency took away some of the Shah Commission’s credibility. It was a very subjective interpretation of the evidence, and furthermore, it was not binding.

  So they forgot about Indira and concentrated on her son, who was not legally safe, although it could never be proved that there was diversion of public funds or bribery in the Maruti affair. The most problematic charge against Sanjay was that he had destroyed a satirical film called The tale of two armchairs, in reference to the power that he and his mother wielded during the state of emergency. The producer of the film had appealed to the Supreme Court to get the judge to OK the censorship and then obtain the certificate to show the film. But then Sanjay and his henchman the Minister of Information had ordered the copies and negatives of the film destroyed, in an act that subverted the course of justice. They were found guilty of that.

  And so Sonia was once again witness to the arrest of another member of the family, this time her brother-in-law. It was much quicker than in Indira’s case. In five minutes he was taken away in handcuffs to the infamous Tihar Jail, wher
e he had sent so many opponents of his mother’s. Indira, who was travelling in the south, caught the first plane back to Delhi. She went directly to see him in jail and found the whole family there, as well as a large group of reporters and television teams. The hug she gave Sanjay went round the world, as well as the advice she gave him: “Don’t lose heart, be brave, this is going to lead to your political rebirth. And don’t worry, remember that I, my father, all of us have been to jail.” Indira was worried about the effect that prison might have on Sanjay. “What I’m afraid of,” she told Rajiv and Sonia, “is that they might hurt him physically.”

  In spite of the tension, the family reacted as one in the face of adversity. Sonia promised to make a meal for her brother-in-law every day which Maneka would take to prison for him. The young woman was excited at the new situation. To her it felt as if they were going through an incredible adventure and deep down she was enjoying her new role because she felt her husband needed her more than ever.

  In 1979, Sanjay was imprisoned six times, although he did not spend more than five weeks locked up. The same thing happened to him as to his grandfather, Nehru: prison brought out the best in him. He had no qualms about mixing with all kinds of prisoner; he organized sports tournaments, team games and shifts to clean up the prison. When a prisoner fell ill, Sanjay took care of him. If he felt it was necessary, he would spend hours at his side. As soon as he went into any of the jails he became the undisputed leader there.

  While Sanjay survived going in and out of jail and the courts, his mother was gathering her strength, convinced as she was that she would be able to regain power, and with it security and dignity for her and her family. She was prepared to fight like a lioness to protect her cubs. It was a lioness who sent the message to Sanjay in jail on his birthday: “Remember, everything that makes you strong, hurts. Some are left crushed or damaged, very few grow. Be strong in body and mind and learn to bear things…”