Word: indira
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Into the Ganges. Though Nehru's will had specifically requested no religious ceremonies after his death (Nehru was an avowed agnostic), his daughter Indira Gandhi had ordered the funeral performed with full Hindu religious customs and traditions. Nehru also had asked that a handful of his ashes be thrown into the holy Ganges River at Allahabad, his birthplace, not for religious reasons but because "the Ganges especially is the river of India, beloved of her people . . . running into the present and flowing on to the great ocean of the future." The remainder of his ashes, according to Nehru...
Clad in a white sari, Indira Gandhi sat weeping on the floor beside her dead father's bed. He lay stretched out under a sheet, two crossed lotus blossoms resting above his head. Later, the body was moved to the doorway of the Prime Minister's white-walled house as a line of weeping, shouting mourners two miles long formed to offer final tribute to Jawaharlal Nehru...
Prison Education. India's struggle for nationhood has almost totally absorbed Indira Gandhi's energies. "My public life," she boasts, "began at three." At twelve, she banded other children together in the illegal "monkey brigade," whose task was to sneak political messages past British soldiers. One visitor to Nehru's Allahabad home was gravely informed by his daughter: "I'm sorry, but Papa and Mama and Grandpapa are all in prison...
Oxford-educated Indira (she studied history) was a disciple of Gandhi, worked as a girl among untouchables in city slums, joined the embattled Congress Party. In 1942, she defied her Brahman father by marrying an obscure Parsi lawyer named Feroze Gandhi (no kin to the Mahatma), with him was jailed by the British for 13 months on charges of subversion. She spent her prison term teaching illiterate convicts. After five years and two sons, she left Feroze to return to Nehru's rambling mansion in New Delhi; her husband died...
...Though not conventionally devout, she always carries in her handbag a pocket edition of India's most sacred scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. She has always refused to run for Parliament, though she would be an unbeatable candidate, explaining that she considers "the role of mother more important." Nonetheless, Indira tilts tirelessly at the myth that Indian women are delicate creatures fit only for domestic duties-and she has done more than her share to disprove...