Word: nehru
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Nehru never ceased to make demands on Indira, and his daughter never stopped acceding to them. She repeatedly left Feroze's home to preside over social functions for her father. When Nehru became independent India's first Prime Minister in 1947, Indira moved back into his house with her two sons and became his official host. That was in effect the end of her five-year marriage, though she never divorced Feroze. He won a seat in Parliament in 1952, occasionally made bitter sarcasms about Nehru and died of a heart attack...
...nation's daughter," Indira accompanied Nehru everywhere, to Washington three times, to Peking and Moscow. Usually she walked a few steps behind her illustrious father, always deferential, ready to be of use. Nehru trusted her and confided in her, but even as she neared 40 she had no political status, made few speeches, offered little advice. She knew everyone, but no one took her very seriously...
...serve on the 21-member administrative working committee. She did well, organizing charities, making speeches for social-welfare causes and traveling widely on party business. But those efforts would hardly have made her president of the party within four years. Her elevation was partly an honor to Nehru, then at the height of his power, and partly the result of a complex intrigue. Younger officials in the party hoped to use Gandhi as a well-liked figurehead with which to challenge the old-line bosses who traditionally dominated Indian politics...
...past 70, and more than a decade in office, Nehru was becoming increasingly disillusioned and crotchety. Sometimes he snapped at Indira, too, saying "Don't talk nonsense" or telling her to keep quiet. She unfailingly did as he ordered. One night in January 1964, Nehru finished a speech, then suffered a stroke and collapsed in Indira's arms. For more than four months, she not only nursed him but aided him in running the country from his sickbed. When Nehru died of another stroke that May, a dry-eyed Indira supervised every detail of the tumultuous funeral...
Then she collapsed in tears. Almost every time someone spoke to her, she would start crying. Nehru's successor, Lai Bahadur Shastri, wanted her to serve as Foreign Minister, but she wanted no public office at all. Only after ten days of Shastri's pleading did she agree to serve as Minister of Information and Broadcasting, a minor post. After less than two years in office, Shastri suddenly died, and the Congress Party bosses could not agree on a successor. They turned to Mrs. Gandhi as someone who could serve while the struggle for power went...