The tale of modern India's mightiest matriarch and most
controversial Prime Minister. As Frank ("A Passage to Egypt", 1994)
notes, Indira Nehru Gandhi, daughter of independent India's first
Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was strongly influenced by family
friend Mahatma Gandhi (no relation). Drawing on a variety of
sources-including Jawaharlal's memoirs and interviews with those
who knew Indira-the author reveals how Indira's professional and
emotional relationships often intertwined, especially in regard to
the men in her life: her influential father, her quarrelsome
husband, and her two sons-Rajiv and hot-blooded Sanjay. The first
half of the narrative provides some intimate details of Indira's
unconventional childhood in her paternal grandfather's Westernized
home: The only child of Kamala and Jawaharlal, Indira was nicknamed
"Indu-boy" and (like her patrician father) educated abroad. Despite
her privileged upbringing, Indira's early life was far from happy.
She anguished over Kamala's chronic maladies and endured long
separations from Jawaharlal, who was imprisoned several times for
his participation in Gandhi's civil-disobedience movement. After
Kamala died, Indira defied her family by marrying Feroze Ghandhi
(unrelated to Mahatma Ghandhi), who later humiliated her with his
clashing politics and infidelities, until he died unexpectedly at
the age of 48. Frank chronicles the triumphs and blunders of
Indira's career in a detached voice, but the scandals of her
administration-including her Declaration of Emergency, in which she
avoided resignation by censuring the media-provide a vivid portrait
of the turbulence of Indian politics. The author also suggests
that, at certain times during Indira's leadership, the unscrupulous
Sanjay was calling the shots. Although both sons blamed the strains
of politics for their father's death, Rajiv eventually followed in
her footsteps, succeeding her after her assassination in 1984. The
intimacy established in Indira's early years is washed away by
snippets of journalism toward the end, leaving this account
somewhat unbalanced. Still, this is a rewarding study for
Westerners curious about the Nehru dynasty and independent India's
tumultuous political history. (Kirkus Reviews)
The definitive and first non-partisan biography of one of the most formidable political figures of the twentieth century (voted Woman of the Millennium in a BBC poll, 2000)
Indira Gandhi’s life, from her birth in 1917, through partition and up to her assassination in 1984, was dominated by the politics of her country. Always directly involved in India’s turbulent twentieth-century history, once she accepted the mantle of power, she became one of the world’s most powerful and significant women. This biography, the first to be written by an unpartisan, Western woman, will focus on Gandhi’s role as a female leader of men in one of the most chauvinistic, complex and politicised cultures in the world.
Comprehensive, yet also personal, Frank’s biography will deal with power and how this often isolated woman handled it, alongside her family and her emotional life. It will be the definitive book on one of this century’s most powerful and important women.
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