Word: indira
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Rajiv has one sure advantage: he begins with the sympathy of the Indian people. Indira Gandhi, who had been a shy young woman, was never really trained to succeed her powerful parent, any more than Rajiv was. But in time she became a world figure who could still communicate with her people. One journalist who accompanied her on a trip a few years ago remembers how Mrs. Gandhi, when she visited a group of Harijan (untouchable) women who had been raped by men of a higher caste, sat down on the ground and listened to their stories. But she could...
Five days before her death, Indira Gandhi was talking with a foreign visitor about the problems of her country. She did not mention the Sikh problem by name, but she spoke of the need for India to "transcend its demons" and fight off the fanaticism on every side. On Saturday afternoon, her own demons vanquished at last, she was cremated and thereby freed, according to Hindu belief, to proceed with the inevitable process of reincarnation...
...typical of the proud, stubborn, courageous Indira Gandhi that she hated to wear a bulletproof vest and rarely agreed to do so. Certainly she was a fatalist. The night before her death, she had told a large, enthusiastic crowd in Orissa's capital city, Bhubaneswar, "I am not interested in a long life. I am not afraid of these things. I don't mind if my life goes in the service of this nation. If I die today, every drop of my blood will invigorate the nation...
Like the father of modern India, Mahatma Gandhi, who was not related to her, Indira Gandhi died in a tranquil New Delhi garden, a victim of her country's turbulent politics. Mahatma Gandhi was killed in 1948 by a Hindu fanatic enraged by concessions made to the Muslims and by the partition of India and Pakistan. Mrs. Gandhi's murderers were Sikhs, whose religious community of 15 million represents only about 2% of India's population but holds a disproportionately important place in the country's life. For the past two years, a Sikh rebellion has been smoldering in Punjab...
...death began to spread through New Delhi, there were screams, weeping and tearing of hair, but mostly the kind of stoic acceptance that Indians tend to show in times of sorrow and pain. "She's gone," they told one another, rarely using her name, because in India, "she" meant Indira. All around Connaught Place, the capital's commercial center, there was the sound of steel shutters slamming down as shop after shop closed for twelve days of mourning. By late afternoon, New Delhi had become a ghostly city of empty streets. Flags were lowered to half-staff. On television, prayers...