Word: gandhis
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What next? After the shocks of the past six months, including the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and a leak in a chemical plant in Bhopal that killed more than 2,500 people, Indians were stunned last week by yet another national crisis. This time the bombshell was the exposure of an espionage network that had penetrated to the highest reaches of the government. Before clamping a tight lid on details of the investigation, India's youthful new leader, Rajiv Gandhi, whose Congress (I) Party won a sweeping majority in national elections only a month ago, gravely informed Parliament...
...Secrets Act and criminal conspiracy against the government. Several of them were officials in the defense and commerce ministries, and three men held key positions in the Prime Minister's secretariat. Among them: T.N. Kher, the personal assistant to P.C. Alexander, a top aide to both Indira and Rajiv Gandhi and one of the country's most respected civil servants. Alexander, who was not connected to the espionage activity, resigned after accepting "moral responsibility" for the leakage of hundreds of files from his office. At least 60 other people were under surveillance or being questioned by authorities...
Scarcely four years ago, he was a commercial airline pilot without a noticeable trace of political ambition. Two weeks ago, Rajiv Gandhi, 40, who became Prime Minister in late October following the assassination of his mother, Indira Gandhi, won the biggest electoral victory since India's independence in 1947, capturing four-fifths of the seats in the lower house of parliament. Last week he moved quickly to replace some veteran ministers and administrators with a group of young technocrats and prepared to tackle such problems as demands by Sikhs for greater autonomy in the state of Punjab. The Prime Minister...
...decisive mandate reflected in part a longing in Gandhi's unsettled country for security and continuity. Constantly sounding the theme of national unity, the unassuming former Indian Airlines pilot faithfully hewed to the creed of democratic socialism propounded by his grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru and perpetuated by his mother. But while providing a sense of national stability, he offered the prospect of a modern new face for his country. "If it's a landslide," he said not long before the election, "we would have to interpret that as a mandate for change." Buoyed by his victory, the businesslike Gandhi is expected...
Religious hatred of another sort claimed Indira Gandhi, who was gunned down by two of her own Sikh guards in her tamarind-scented garden on a sunny October morn. She had just bid her guards "Namaste," the gracious Indian salutation accompanied by the crossing of hands before the face. Assassination may be the most invidious of terrorist acts, since the consequences can ricochet disastrously through a country and beyond. Mrs. Gandhi's death produced such a tragedy: some 2,000 Indians perished in the flames of sectarian violence that followed...