The Red Sari: A Novel

by Javier Moro

  “Do you think we’ll be safe in another country? We’re all on the blacklist of the extremists, and those fanatics are capable of striking anywhere. No, Sonia, we have no option but to live under constant protection, at least until the threat is removed.”

  Sonia wept disconsolately. She knew what that meant. It meant having to live in a claustrophobic environment, that the children would not be able to enjoy a normal life… Was that living? And what about happiness in all this? That happiness to which they had become so comfortably accustomed?

  “I’m begging you, Rajiv, don’t let them do this to you,” Sonia said.

  “I can assure you it’s for our own good.”

  “For our own good? But that system of protection you’re talking about has shown itself to be totally inefficient. A Prime Minister gunned down in her own home, and not even a basic emergency team on hand…! Do you see what I mean?”

  “They warned her to get rid of her Sikh guards, but she took no notice…”

  “What do you mean? That it was her own fault?”

  “She should have listened to the police chief and the head of Intelligence. She would still be with us now if she had.”

  He hugged her again. She went on:

  “My God, they’ll kill you too.”

  “I have no choice, they’ll kill me anyway, whether I’m in power or not…”

  “Please don’t accept, tell them no…”

  “I can’t, my love. Can you imagine going on living as though nothing had happened, always afraid, here, in Italy or anywhere else?… That’s what would happen if I don’t accept. That’s how you have to look at it. It’s my destiny. Our destiny. . There are moments when life gives you no choice because there is no choice possible. Help me to accept it.”

  “Oh no! Oh my God, no!…” Sonia murmured in a flood of tears. “They’ll kill you, they’ll kill you…” she repeated as Indira’s official secretary, P.C. Alexander, came to interrupt them. The wheel of succession could not wait. It was urgent to set it in motion. He took Rajiv by the arm.

  “We have to organize the swearing in,” he said in a low voice.

  “I’m going home to change my clothes,” Rajiv answered him. “I’ll be at the palace of the President of the Republic by six o’clock.”

  Then Sonia knew there was nothing to be done, that once again she had to bow to forces that were superior to her and that she would never be able to control. What could she do against a country that had been left motherless and was now calling for the head of the son? When Rajiv kissed her forehead and went slowly away from her, Sonia felt torn apart inside, and prey to an indefinable feeling of melancholy, just like when she was in the Ambassador cradling the head of a dying Indira in her arms.

  In the evening that same day the swearing in ceremony of Rajiv Gandhi as sixth Prime Minister of India took place in the Ashoka hall of Rastrapathi Bhawan, the Palace of the President of the Republic, the same place where his grandfather and his mother had been invested for the same post. Of the six Prime Ministers, three had belonged to the same family and the other three had only governed very briefly. In 36 years of independence, the Nehrus had been Prime Ministers for 33 years. Indira had been the third to die in office, but the first to die a violent death. It was not a lively ceremony, as it would have been under normal circumstances. There was a young man, who had not been given time to take in his mother’s death and its repercussions on the nation, pushed into accepting the most difficult and demanding job that any citizen of India could aspire to. Without wanting it or desiring it.

  Before accepting, Rajiv had made it clear that he would keep on the previous government, without any new members or changes in responsibilities. Next, he held his first cabinet meeting, in which the discussion revolved around Indira’s funeral. They decided to set up the funeral chapel in Teen Murti House, Nehru’s old residence, the little palace where Rajiv had spent his childhood. Usha, the faithful secretary, was one of the first to arrive and she described her old boss, lying in the coffin, her body covered by a shroud but her face uncovered: “Her face was swollen and colourless. It was just as well she could not see herself like that because she would not have been pleased with the way she looked. She always looked so nice and took such great care of her appearance.” Sonia must have thought the same. The television caught a short, intense moment, a gesture that was engraved on the memory of millions of Indians and which spoke, louder than any written or verbal declaration, of the link between the two women. Sonia, very composed, wiped a handkerchief over the corner of Indira’s mouth to take the sheen off her skin. As though instead of dead she were alive and still needed her to take care of her. Thus loyalty lived on after death.

  After eleven o’clock at night, the new Prime Minister appeared on television, in a speech that was broadcast by radio all over the world. Sonia was at the recording studio, her heart broken to see how power had kidnapped her husband, unscrupulously using the Nehru-Gandhi name to keep the country united in a time of crisis. Was it not cruel to have asked someone with so little experience in politics as her husband to accept a post that demanded so much experience, at least in these difficult times?

  “Indira Gandhi has been assassinated,” Rajiv began saying in front of the cameras. “You know that the dream of a prosperous, united and peaceful India was close to her heart. Because of her premature death, her work has been interrupted. It is up to us to finish it.”

  His speech, and the tone of contained emotion with which he gave it, reminded many of the speech his grandfather Nehru made after the assassination of Gandhi. At that time Nehru was afraid that the Moslems might be blamed for the assassination, and for that reason he was quick to say loud and clear that the guilty party had been a Hindu fanatic. Thirty-six years later, Rajiv Gandhi made no reference to the murderers of his mother, or to their motives. He referred to the religious nature of the assassination when he called for calm and unity, saying that nothing would hurt Indira Gandhi’s soul more than an outbreak of violence in any part of the country.

  But violence had already broken out. It began first of all in the surroundings of the hospital, when several taxis driven by Sikhs were stoned and a Sikh temple was burned. Any man in a turban suddenly seemed suspicious. The local Sikhs took their children off the streets and locked themselves in their homes. They put down the blinds and turned off the lights, trying to become invisible. The women peered through the cracks, terrified. Some Sikhs ran to find shelter. For others there was no shelter. They knew that the assassination of Indira Gandhi had made them a target for the anger of the people. When night fell, groups of people gathered in the alleyways, mostly Hindus, some with sticks in their hands, others inciting people to hunt down Sikhs. It was a black night, made even darker by the wave of hatred and terror that came over the city, which hardly slept. The intensity of the massacres increased as rumours arose that the Sikhs had poisoned the capital’s cisterns of drinking water, or that a train full of Hindus who were coming from the Punjab had been attacked. They were untrue, but the people believed them. Bands of hooligans, who at first destroyed houses and shops that were the property of Sikhs, then dragged men and boys in turbans out of their homes and cut them to pieces with machetes in front of their horrified womenfolk. In the streets, groups of bullies hurled themselves on Sikhs and beat them to death, or poured petrol over them and then set them on fire. Whole families were put to the knife on trains and in buses. The police did not dare to intervene, out of pure idleness and also because they probably secretly agreed with taking revenge on that turbulent minority. For three days, while thousands of people filed past the body of Indira Gandhi, among them film stars, heads of State, political leaders, friends, members of the family and thousands of citizens who had never met Indira but who were profoundly sad at losing her, the orgy of violence went on spreading. Over two thousand cars, lorries and taxis were burned, as well as a string of factories that were the property of Sikh families, such as the Campa Cola, the Indian answer t
o Coca Cola, which belonged to an old friend of Sanjay’s who had helped them to get through the hard times. Reporters documented a particularly bad episode in a district on the right bank of the River Yamuna, where a well-organized group systematically killed all Sikhs and the police did nothing. They did not even give them a chance to save themselves because they set fire to their homes with the inhabitants inside. One of the reporters who witnessed what was happening phoned Pupul: “Please do something. The situation is appalling,” she told her in a frightened voice. Pupul was perplexed. Until only a short time ago she would have known what to do. She would have picked up the phone and called her friend Indira, who would have acted immediately. But now she did not know who to turn to. So she called the Home Secretary, who by chance was meeting with Rajiv at number 1, Safdarjung Road. She told him about the massacres, the rapes, the horror of what was going on less than ten kilometres from where they were. “Speak to the Prime Minister,” he told her and immediately passed her over to Rajiv. Pupul repeated what she had already said. “It was hard for me to address Rajiv as Prime Minister, it was hard for me to understand that the enormous power and massive authority that Indira held had now fallen to him.” Rajiv made her go to his house, where Pupul told him everything she knew in more detail. The Prime Minister seemed disconcerted. and indecisive.

  “What shall I do, Pupul?” he asked her.

  “It isn’t up to me to say what the Prime Minister should do,” she answered. “I can tell you what your mother would have done. She would have called out the army and kept order at all costs. She would have gone on television and with all the prestige of her position she would have made it very clear that she would not allow the massacres under any circumstances.”

  “Help me to write a speech like those my mother would have written,” Rajiv asked her as he went to the door with her. “Do it now please, it’s urgent.”

  Pupul did so, but when she sat down in front of the television, Rajiv did not appear. Instead it was the Home Secretary. Pupul thought that his presence was not convincing enough to calm things down. She thought the speech lacked the anguish of a son and the authority of a Prime Minister. In fact the army was not called out to intervene that night for fear of inflaming things even more, so the terror and savagery continued. That lack of decisiveness was attributed by many to Rajiv’s inexperience. But the fact was that he was overcome by events, still feeling the trauma of having lost his mother and of finding himself holding on to the reins of power, without really knowing how the mechanisms of that power worked. Among the Sikhs there was such panic that for the first time in their lives many of them took off their turbans and shaved off their beards and hair to save themselves. Some one hundred thousand fled the capital. The writer Kushwant Singh took refuge with his wife in the Swedish Embassy: “What the crowds were after were the goods of the Sikhs, the televisions and fridges, because we are more prosperous than other communities. Killing and burning people alive was just part of the fun.” As night fell, groups of Sikhs scattered all over the city seeking refuge. Two of them came to Pupul’s house and frightened the wife of the dhobi, the laundryman, who at that hour must have been joining in the disturbances. At the woman’s cries of fright, the Sikhs went running off, but Pupul would have given them shelter that night, as many other Hindu families did too. In the same way as very few Sikhs had been followers of Brindanwale, very few Hindus wanted revenge on the Sikhs. But those who did were so cruel that it reminded people of the times of Partition. In three days, some three thousand were massacred.

  On the evening of November 2nd, Rajiv finally came out on television demanding an end to the violence. “What has happened in Delhi since the death of Indira Gandhi is an insult to everything she defended,” he said clearly. The next day, he finally ordered the army to intervene, imposing a curfew and sending tanks into the most conflictive districts with orders to shoot anyone who was caught in a flagrant act of aggression.

  On November 3rd, as peace was being imposed by force, Indira’s cremation was carried out very close to where Nehru’s and Sanjay’s had taken place, on the riverbank. Rajiv walked seven times round his mother’s funeral pyre before putting a torch to the sandalwood logs. The flames gradually took hold as the sun dyed the sky orange, red and gold. An impressive list of personalities were present, amongst whom were George Bush Sr., Mother Theresa, members of European royalty, artists and writers, business magnates, scientists and heads of State. For one elegant lady dressed in black, this funeral held very special significance. Margaret Thatcher remembered Indira’s warm words when a few weeks earlier she had called her after the IRA attack. “We have to do something about terrorism…,” she had told her.

  The silhouette of Rajiv between the flames that devoured his mother’s body was engraved forever in the eyes of a whole people, like a torch of hope. “Everything was chaos around him,” wrote a well-known journalist, “but he reflected an image of confidence and seemed to be in control of the situation.” The British Iron Lady commented, “I have seen in Rajiv the same self-control that Mrs Gandhi had…” The one who was absolutely devastated, and did not hide it, was Sonia. “If someone had painted the scene,” said Margaret Thatcher, “her pain would have been enough to communicate the general feeling.” Paradoxically, there was no huge crowd of humble folk, of the millions who had venerated Indira like a goddess. Fear of the disturbances and the atmosphere of violence that reigned in the city dissuaded many from paying their last tribute to her.

  Faithful to the instructions he had received from his mother a short time before, one morning Rajiv took the bronze urn that held the ashes and boarded an Indian Air Force plane. After an hour’s flight, he was flying over the Himalayas, a crest of white peaks that stretched as far as the eye could see. They opened a trapdoor in the floor of the plane for him and freezing air poured in. Rajiv, wearing an astrakhan hat and a thick leather coat with warm, lined gloves and an oxygen mask, took the urn, also wrapped in a leather bag so that the contents would not freeze. He opened the bag and let the ashes fall over the mountains, just as the ritual requires, so that death could turn into life, thirteen days after Indira Gandhi had entered history.

  35

  Rajiv did not have a moment to stop and deal with his own grief. Political life went on and the leaders of the party advised him to bring the general election forward. They wanted to capitalize on the sympathy vote that Indira’s assassination was likely to cause. Rajiv understood that those elections were very important for him, because they would serve to gain him legitimacy in the eyes of the people and not seem merely designated by his mother’s followers because of who he was. So he set the date for voting on December 26th, 1984. He wanted Sonia to go with him again to campaign in the constituency of Amethi, where Maneka, with her little son in her arms, was standing as rival candidate. Sonia was now the country’s first lady, and just thinking about it made her dizzy. Fate could not have chosen anyone less predisposed to take on that role. A role that would have filled most women with pride and satisfaction, but made her sad, because it made her long for her old life. What a luxury it was to live in safety! What a luxury to be able to spend time restoring paintings, going out with friends, being free and leading a normal, anonymous life! They were still so traumatized that before the trip to Amethi, and coinciding with Indira’s 68th birthday, Rajiv and she both wrote out instructions: “In case of my death or that of my wife Sonia in an accident, inside or outside of India, our bodies are to be repatriated to Delhi and burned together, according to the Hindu rite, in a place in the open air. Under no circumstances are our bodies to be burned in an electric crematorium. According to our custom, our son Rahul is to light the pyre… It is my wish that our ashes be scattered in the Ganges, in Allahabad, where the ashes of my ancestors were scattered.” Did the saying not go that the cobra always bites twice? In other words that misfortune never comes alone.

  Dressed always in a white sari, as was expected in mourning for her mother-in- law, Sonia now
discovered that she was much more at home among the crowd in Amethi. “I became a frequent visitor to that place,” she would write later. “I knew the people and their problems, and I no longer felt like a stranger among them.” But Indira’s absence was cruelly felt. She had been the centre of the family universe, a strong, reliable personality, always there to guide, advise, encourage and embrace them. The gap she left was terrible. Rajiv had been left an orphan, without the last figure in his family. One day Sonia was looking for him at home, but no one seemed to know where he had got to. She finally found him in Indira’s old study, looking at his mother’s things and photos, as though he were looking for signs of her. “He looked very lost and very alone,” Sonia would write. “He very often felt her absence intensely.” It was inevitable. Wherever he went, even in the most remote corners of the sub-continent, he saw posters with his mother’s face on them, always smart with her lock of white hair visible and waving with the palm of her hand turned upwards. There was always someone talking about her to him, about the last visit she had made there, about what she had done for that community, about the children she had blessed and even about the civil servant she had reproached. Indira had left her mark all over the country, and sometimes it seemed to Rajiv that she was still alive, and that she was about to appear to comfort him and encourage him. He had no option but to gather his reserves of courage and mental fortitude to face the memory of his mother stoically.

  Rajiv’s electoral tour all round the country would have been triumphant if it had not been for the serious accident which occurred in the city of Bhopal, in the centre of India, when an escape of poisonous gas from a pesticide factory, the property of the American multinational, Union Carbide, spread over the poorest districts of the city, causing thousands of dead and injured. Considered as the biggest industrial accident in history, the tragedy in Bhopal, just at the beginning of his career, was seen by many as a bad omen for the man who at all costs wanted to develop the country and tighten links with the elite of the business world. Rajiv immediately decided to visit the disaster zone. He preferred Sonia to stay at home, in case the poison from the factory was still floating in the air, but she refused and went with him. As soon as they arrived, they were struck by the effects of the poisoning. The hospitals were crowded with people who had lost their sight, with mothers crying for the deaths of their children, with orphaned children and men made desperate by the total loss of their families. In view of the scale of the tragedy, his diatribes on the industrialization of India and his call to prepare the country for the twenty-first century seemed hollow words. Rajiv realized the problems that development itself could engender. For a start, he did the only thing he could do and freed urgent aid for the victims and promised that the government would give them fair compensation. But that was never obtained.1