On October 31, 1984, Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of
India, was shot down while walking from her house to her office
in New Delhi, India's capital city. The fatal shooting was
carried out by two men who were members of her personal bodyguard.
The shooting marked an abrupt and tragic end to the lengthy
political career of the woman who was not only India's first
female prime minister, but also the daughter of the very first
prime minister of India. Her assassination was indicative
of the deep unrest in India, brutally forcing to the surface
problems which had been simmering in the country for decades.
India, which had long been a British colony,
did not achieve complete independence from Great Britain until
1948. The path to Indian independence was a long and bloody
one, marked by religious and political strife in this ethnically
and religiously-mixed country. When India finally did become
independent, it was only after a large part of her territory
was partitioned off to form a new country, Pakistan. Independent
India came to have a predominantly Hindu leadership, although
there were many Muslims living in the country, while Pakistan
had a Muslim government. Many Hindus in the country were very
dissatisfied with the loss of land which resulted from the
establishment of Pakistan. As a result, relations between
India's Muslim and Hindu population were often strained, frequently
erupting into bloodshed as one or the other side felt underrepresented
or unfairly treated.
It was in this unsettled atmosphere that
Indira Gandhi first came to power. She was chosen as Prime
Minister in 1966, and with the exception of a three year period
during which she was first voted out of office and then subsequently
voted back in, Gandhi remained the Prime Minister until her
death. During her tenure she faced the formidable tasks of
trying to create political stability, appease both the Hindu
and Muslim communities, and develop the fragile economy of
this newly independent and impoverished country.
Gandhi was a controversial figure in Indian
politics. She was accused by many of being a dictator whose
focus on enlarging her own sphere of power led her to neglect
the needs of her country, swinging it further into poverty.
When she was voted out of office in 1977 it was as a result
of an increasing public opinion that Gandhi was too authoritarian,
and that she did not have India's interests in mind. But,
despite the existence of strong public sentiment against her,
Gandhi proved remarkably resilient. During much of her political
career she was extremely popular among the majority of Indians,
who saw her as the "Mataji," or Great Mother of India, and
as the single most stabilizing force in Indian politics.
One element which was increasingly dissatisfied
with the Indian government was the Sikhs, a sect whose followers
totalled 13 million, a small but still substantial percentage
of India's total population of 750 million. Many Sikhs felt
that Indian society discriminated against them both culturally
and politically. In an effort to make the Sikhs' case heard,
some members of the Sikh community became increasingly militant,
even to the point of committing terrorist acts. Disputes between
Sikhs and Hindus were frequently the source of riots and other
political violence.
In an effort to contain religious violence,
Gandhi began to crack down severely on Sikh militants. In
June of 1984, she sent Government troops into the Golden Temple,
the most holy of all Sikh shrines, because it was suspected
of harboring terrorists. When the temple was raided, it was
found to be harboring leaders of the Sikh terrorist movement
as well as stores of weapons. A large fight erupted between
the military and Sikh militants during the raid of the temple.
The Golden Temple incident became one of the bloodiest events
in India's recent history; at least 600 people were killed
in the fighting. The Golden Temple events unleashed a rage
among many of the Sikhs, who felt that the Indian government
had used undue force, and had debased their most sacred Shrine,
thus showing a complete disregard for Sikh culture and religion.
Throughout the summer of 1984 Gandhi continued
to clamp down on Sikh militants. The struggle between Gandhi
and the Sikh militants finally culminated in her assassination
by two members of her own bodyguard, both of whom were Sikhs.
The two assassins were apprehended, and were subsequently
convicted, along with a third accomplice, of the murder of
the Prime Minister. The three men received the death sentence.
The death of Prime Minister Gandhi was followed
by widespread rioting and other violence. Her son, Rajiv Gandhi,
who took over after the death of his mother, found the task
of bringing calm to this deeply rocked country to be extremely
difficult. It was only after many deaths and the intervention
of the Indian military that a fragile and deceptive calm was
restored to the country. Instability and political and ethnic
violence have continued to trouble India until the present
day, with no resolution in sight to the complex problems which
plague this young country.
