Word: nehru
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Varun Gandhi is the great-grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru, the country's first Prime Minister. His grandmother was Nehru's only child, Indira Gandhi, whose two sons, in turn, left legacies at odds with each other. The older son Rajiv, succeeded his mother as prime minister shortly after she was assassinated in 1984. Rajiv was later murdered in a 1994 terrorist bombing and his Italian-born widow, Sonia, now leads the ruling Congress Party. Rajiv's younger brother, Sanjay, however, had been their mother Indira's favorite and had been viewed as her heir apparent until his sudden death...
Many Indians are appalled not only that a descendant of Nehru is espousing such a political perspective but that his name and actions besmirch that of the great Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who was assassinated by a Hindu extremist in 1948. While the Mahatma was not a blood relation of the Nehrus, a popular story has the philosopher of political non-violence, who was Indira's godfather, allowing her fiance, a young Zoroastrian lawyer originally called Feroze Shah Ghandy, to restyle his surname as Gandhi, thus attaching prestige to a mixed marriage many Hindus would not have approved of. Priyanka Gandhi...
...with the police and laid siege to the jail. Police responded by firing tear gas shells and charging the demonstrators with canes, injuring 25 people. His mother Maneka further stoked the anger when she claimed a Muslim officer had led the charge. In India's often overheated politics, the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty knows about playing with fire...
While painting India's potential with broad rhetorical strokes, Nilekani achieves an impressive breadth nonetheless. He sketches an overwhelming list of sociocultural hurdles from the political legacy of Nehru-era socialism to education, the deeply entrenched caste system, and urbanization. But his reliance on platitudes and wide-eyed optimism is cogent only to a point: the hows are lost in the dust of repetitive hopeful declarations ("a different type of moment seems to be upon...
...result is a toxic mix of immigrant backlash, Islamophobia and militant separatism, says Uddipana Goswami, a social scientist at Jawaharlal Nehru University who has written extensively about the northeast. Ethnic Assamese political parties and separatist groups like the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) have all taken up the anti-immigrant cause, as have other non-Muslim minorities. A series of bomb attacks in the state capital Guwahati on Oct. 30, 2008, killed more than 60 people, and local police say that militants agitating for an ethnic Bodo homeland, who have clashed violently with local Muslims, are to blame...