Word: gandhis
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...with us, it becomes a revival of ourselves, and our old hopes center round it." In an important way, the old hopes of India's founding fathers also exploded on May 22, 1991. The desperation of the hour was vividly illustrated by the Congress Party's resort to nominating Gandhi's Italian-born and determinedly apolitical widow Sonia to the party presidency. Her polite refusal, returned within a day of the offer, forced the party to look within for the first nondescendant of Nehru who might hold the reins of government since Lal Bahadur Shastri briefly succeeded the late patriarch...
...from the egregious act of violence that killed Rajiv, the bloody shirt of extremism and communal vengeance has been threatening to supersede all norms of democracy in the nation. Last week's first round of balloting was attended by an unprecedented wave of killings and vote rigging. And yet Gandhi had held out an at least plausible promise that a restoration of his leadership might help bring back stability after 18 months of rudderless rule. His campaign swing through Tamil Nadu, the keystone state of south India, was almost a perfunctory exercise; it was safe territory, and his Congress Party...
Security was light: a scattering of police, no automatic rifles, no metal detectors in evidence, if present at all. Gandhi had been campaigning with little protection, a marked contrast to his previous style. His mother's assassination by Sikh bodyguards in 1984, the event that catapulted the former airline pilot into the prime ministership, had highlighted his vulnerability. For years he wore a bulletproof vest and surrounded himself with security so tight that opponents had begun ridiculing...
That proved to be an important factor leading to his defeat in the November 1989 elections. V.P. Singh, a former Congress notable whose opposition bloc went on to win the government, charged at the time that Gandhi, who usually kept out of the crush and was shielded by a phalanx of commandos, "had lost touch with the people." It was a mistake -- as Rajiv saw it -- that he did not repeat. While pressing the flesh in the northern state of Bihar on May 5, he spoke about the change. "I used to campaign like this when I was secretary-general...
Suspicions zeroed in at once on the Tamil Tigers, a combat-hardened band of guerrillas who have been fighting for a separate state in northeast Sri Lanka. Notoriously dedicated and vengeful, the Tigers have mastered terrorist bombing to a degree still unknown among India's own insurgents. Gandhi, whose mother's policies had done much to whelp and teethe the Tigers, earned their enmity in 1987 when he co-authored a peace plan for their offshore island republic. Instead of surrendering their arms, the Tigers fought Indian peacekeeping troops in hit-and-run warfare with extensive casualties...