Indira Gandhi built the Congress on toughness, empathy and pride in roots, culture and national security. Today's Congress leaders seem determined to dissipate her legacy.
We romanticised the 1977 election ending Mrs Gandhi's rule. Sterilisation and the Opposition's imprisonment showed the Gandhis to be amateurs. Anyone could learn from their mistakes today.
Rahul Gandhi's petulance and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's weakness is no longer the glue that will hold Congress together. The party urgently needs an interim President and real party elections.
The Emergency meant a surface of tranquility in Union-ridden Kerala. But under the surface, tremendous brutality simmered, which burst forth in the P Rajan case that rocked the state.
In June 1975, the political climate around Indira Gandhi was growing stormier by the second. On the 25 of June, Emergency was declared. But the build-up was full of strange stories and characters.
Do some hard thinking. Maybe you do not have the mettle, and the nastiness, required to be a politician in South Asia. Maybe you didn’t want it in the first place.
Without a Nehru-Gandhi at the helm, the Congress has only seen doom. And the fact is, even now, despite the Modi wave and the politics of hate, Rahul Gandhi has a lot to feel confident about.
Today, 1984's traumatic Operation Blue Star appears water under the bridge for Delhi's Sikh elite. Why has such a different impression of the event, which scarred Punjab back then, emerged?
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