Word: gandhis
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...Rajiv Gandhi's murder plunges India into self-doubt and despair...
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was reminiscing about her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, some years ago. "People say he was like the banyan tree: nothing and nobody grew in his shadow," she mused. "They are wrong. He was like the sun, and let everything and everybody grow -- even the weeds, let us be honest." It was vintage Indira, who would have denied there was a Nehru dynasty even as she came to symbolize...
Leadership has been the Gandhi family's birthright. In a land accustomed to rajas, maharajas, kings and emperors, a republican ruling family was consistent with India's long history. It lent legitimacy to the government of a country that until independence in 1947 had been as much a state of mind as a nation-state...
...wonder Congress elders turned immediately to Sonia Gandhi, 44, as party leader. But Sonia is a widow with no desire for power. She never wanted her husband Rajiv to enter politics, much less succeed his mother. It was Sonia who cradled Indira's head as she lay dying from assassins' bullets, and friends note that after the shooting in 1984, she became obsessed with the safety of her husband and children. Behind the dark glasses she wore during public appearances, her eyes constantly searched crowds for a possible assassin. Says a friend: "What she was most afraid...
Beyond Rajiv's immediate family, there are other Gandhis and Nehrus interested in taking up the family business. Maneka Gandhi, 34, widow of Rajiv's younger brother Sanjay, is highly ambitious and politically astute, currently holding office as Minister of Environment. But she quarreled with the family when Indira cut her out of the succession after Sanjay's death, and joined the opposition. The only other possible choice is Arun Nehru, 47, a cousin of Rajiv's and a former corporate executive who once was Minister of Internal Security in Rajiv's Cabinet. But the two fell...