by Rajan Philips

The 22^nd Amendment has given the government’s critics a convenient cudgel to beat up the government. But there has been no crushing blow by any effective opponent. Too many people have been taking too many turns and striking too many blows, but no one has landed anything to shake the government in any way. The whole drama is the new Sri Lankan parody of Lilliputians taking on Gulliver. Nonetheless, the critics have found an opening to keep haranguing the government. There are two prongs to their exertions.

One is the pre-NPP past of the old JVP. In political years, the chasm is as wide as that between the Old Testament and the New Testament. This provides the basis for claiming that 22A is the NPP government’s first step towards ending parliamentary democracy. The hilarity of this accusation is matched by its hypocrisy inasmuch as the current chief accuser was also the high priest of the 18^th Amendment that was set up to envision a third term for Mahinda Rajapaksa. Who else – but GL Pieris. One good thing the Bar Association did was to keep GL Pieris entirely out of its entourages.

The second front of attacks on the government is based on the JVP-NPP’s cohabitation in the Yahapalanaya diarchy of Sirisena and Wickremesinghe. Indeed, the question has been asked: Is Malimawa heading to be the second Yahapalanaya? If that were so, GL Peiris and others should be able to feign a sigh of relief that parliamentary democracy is indeed safe owing to the NPP’s incompetence. But the absurdity of the Malimawa – Yahapalanaya allusion is a different laugh. Perhaps, more than one laugh.

One is in the table-talk suggestion that “due to the misdeeds of Pohottuwa that followed Yahapalanaya, voters gave an overwhelming mandate to Malimawa…” Sanitizing the disaster that was Gotabaya presidency as misdeed is quite a feat. A more serious look is about the voters who gave the “overwhelming mandate to Malimawa.” Most of the Malimawa voters were peeled off the Pohottuwa vote block, while Yahapalanaya voters were left to choose between Sajith Premadasa and Ranil Wickremesinghe. Namal Rajapaksa who was supposed to stand down in support of Ranil Wickremasinghe in the hope of diverting Pohottuwa votes to RW. Instead, the Rajapaksa scion decided to get big race experience, fared badly in the race and caused another serial defeat for RW.

Arresting Politics

Now the political wheels are turning differently. Namal Rajapaksa has become the latest martyr of the government’s arresting politics. Illusorily or not, the young Rajapaksa believes that he’s finding political traction in the country and that the government is putting him behind bars to slow him down. Coming to his defence is of course the inscrutable (even to himself) Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Sajith Premadasa has apparently remained quiet so far, and so has the SJB. Neither has made any statement or expressed concern over the arrest of Namal Rajapaksa on Friday, September 4. It is not that Mr. Premadasa is becoming what Ranil Wickremesinghe was to Mahinda Rajapaksa – the government’s Minister of the Opposition, but the man has no political fire in his belly. If his passion is for wildlife, he should ask the government to put him in charge of running the Yala National Park. He can have a better animal farm there than what he seems to be suffering within his Party and in parliament.

Mr. Rajapaksa has been arrested over the Airbus purchase scandal that goes back to 2012 and 2013. The details of the scandal are known, and allegations of payoffs have been rumoured for quite a while. Yet it is the of pattern of Friday morning questioning, evening arrest and arraignment, and weekend incarceration – that has become all too familiar and fodder for cynical misgivings. There have been too many arrests but too few trials, let alone convictions. All arrests and no trials not only erodes public confidence in the process, but also let the criminals and their beneficiaries go Scot-free.

For his part, Namal Rajapaksa is claiming that the government timed his arrest to scuttle the political rally that he and the SLPP have scheduled for Saturday, September 12, in Anuradhapura. Their claim seems to that the Anuradhapura rally will mark the scion’s coming of age as a viable presidential candidate. The claim gets some credence in the context of the government’s own political planning for holding a series of pro-government public rallies where President Dissanayake will be both the show and substance. The first of the NPP rallies is coincidentally scheduled for Sunday, September 13, and also in Anuradhapura.

Next week, we will have all the commentaries and comparisons about the two rival rallies in Anuradhapura. Future rallies will show whether Mr. Rajapaksa is actually surging in the public recognition of his political abilities, and whether the government is actually concerned about this apparent surge and mounting a counter surge of its own. If all this were true, the irrelevance of Sajith Premadasa will become even more entrenched, and the personal relevance of Ranil Wickremesinghe will become even more real.

For the pundit theory is that while the NPP might view Namal Rajapaksa as a growing threat in popular politics, its more substantive fear is about Ranil Wickremesinghe and what he says about the economy. To wit, the government’s full throttled response to Mr. Wickremasinghe’s casual remark at a political book launch that the government may not be having enough forex reserves when foreign creditors come collecting in 2028.

The Real Question

The real question is apart from the show and tell of political rallies there is still not much to write home about government performance on the substance of the economy. The government has so far been quite good at keeping the economic house in order. Keeping order is not too difficult a task once you start keeping corruption out of the door. But there are no signs of the government doing anything substantial on the economic front, especially the export sector for without significantly increasing export earnings it will be impossible to carry out debt repayment.

The government has been commended for identifying 33 State-Owned-Enterprises (SOEs) for closure or restructuring. Yet there are a few biggies left, including the debt burdened Sri Lankan Airlines with about $ 2 billion estimated to be its accumulated losses. The government has also announced a slew of mega projects in highways and the energy sector. At the same time, there are ethno-economic criticisms that the government is delaying work on the KKS Harbour and the Palaly Airport projects that have Indian funding.

Highway projects can be a curse dressed up as blessing, and they are coming out of the same Rajapaksa economic playbook. There are rumours that would be corporate beneficiaries of mega highway projects have found an inside track to government decision makers. It is up to the government to prove that such allegations are untrue and to demonstrate that it will not be bought over in contract awards. Highway construction is also import heavy even with local contractors. The economic worry should be that with too many highway projects, all going on at the same time, there will be a drain on the limited forex reserves to bring in equipment and materials. That was the experience of the highway robberies under the Rajapaksas and the NPP government can forget the lessons from that era only at its peril.

On a positive note, there is commendable activity in the renewable energy sector, amidst warnings by the Public Utilities Commission (PUSCL) about new power cuts under El Niño weather conditions. The PUSCL recently approved new feed-in tariffs for electricity from renewable energy sources and has directed the newly minted National System Operator (NSO) to expedite the implementation of Battery Energy Storage System with sufficient capacity to accommodate solar energy. There is some and back-and-forth between the two agencies about implementation details, but that is a good disagreement to have as opposed to the prolonged agreement about doing nothing on renewable energy.

There is a new green light for the once controversial 350 MW LNG power project in Kerawalapitiya. The project is being undertaken by Sahasdhanavi Limited on a Build-Own-Operate-Transfer (BOOT) basis, and will be implemented in two phases. The unfortunate snag is that in both phases, initial operations will be based on diesel with expectation to switch to Regasified Liquefied Natural Gas (RLNG) which will require additional infrastructure and supply arrangements. One would hope that diesel generation will not become a permanent feature in Kerawalapitiya.

To its credit, the government launched Sri Lanka’s largest renewable energy project, the ‘Rividanavi’ Solar Power Park project, in September 2025, in the Monaragala District, as part of the target to generate 70% of the country’s electricity from renewable energy sources by 2030. Sooner the country reduces its reliance on thermal energy, the better for its economy and the environment.

The government seems to be wanting in messaging its achievements, big or small, to the public in consistent and convincing ways. The mode of messaging through presidential rallies may not have much benefit except during an election campaign. At the same time, the government is getting caught up in controversies of its own making. The exertions on all sides over the 22^nd Amendment is a case in point. In the upshot, it is the judiciary that has been badmouthed and diminished. The lure of arresting politics could be appealing in the short term, but can come back to haunt one if no one gets convicted.

For all intent and purpose, the government has missed the bus on constitutional reforms. I would be the first to applaud if my prediction turns out to be incorrect. But the government cannot walk away from the economy the way it seems to have abandoned its promise on the constitution. And the challenge of managing even a small national economy is not getting any easier with all the havoc that the Trump Administration is wreaking on America and the world.

Nihal Passed away on 14th August, a few days after his 86th birthday. Nandi, Raffi and Anouk, his granddaughter, had been with him from New York till just a week before he died. In the weeks after he passed away, there have been glowing tributes to Nihal by his professional colleagues and from organisations in which he served. My tribute is personal, of friendship over decades with a multi-talented and kind-hearted gentleman, with a delightful sense of humour, who wore his talents so lightly.

I cannot speak of Nihal without talking of his wife Chitra. To me, they were an ideal union. They shared the same values of kindness, generosity, commitment, professionalism, humility and unquestionable integrity. They also shared many interests – in art, theatre, film, classical music (both oriental and western), literature and world affairs, to name a few. They were equal partners, each respecting the other’s views and looking out for the other. They had their arguments, but with never a loud, rude, harsh or unpleasant word.

I first met Nihal and his family nearly 50 years ago in Manhattan, New York. I had moved to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, as a graduate student in January 1978. I had an introduction to them from my close friend Radhika Coomaraswamy, who had known them since her student days in New York. Nihal was Counsellor at the Sri Lanka Mission to the UN. He and Chitra, together with their 6-year old twins, Nandi and Satya, graciously opened their home to me. From the beginning, I was made to feel a part of this delightful family and I considered their apartment in Manhattan as my “home away from home”. I regularly dislodged one of the twins from a bed to a sleeping bag on the floor, whenever I turned up in the “Big Apple” on the six-hour greyhound bus ride from Ithaca, comfortable enough to occasionally bring a friend along as well!

I have such happy memories of walking in Central Park eating ice-cream with the foursome, or going to movies and Broadway shows with Chitra. Our friendship never wavered over the next several decades and geographical distances, as they moved from one diplomatic post to another. I remain ever-grateful to Radhika for that initial introduction.

My father (Sam Wijesinha) had befriended them before me, when he had accompanied a Parliamentary delegation to Australia in 1970, in his capacity as Secretary General of Parliament, and he was a great fan. Nihal was then acting High Commissioner and they had brought him to their home for a chat and informal dinner after an official party they had all three attended. When they got home, both Nihal and Chitra realized that neither had taken their keys with them and they were locked outside their own home with their guest! Undeterred, Nihal managed to prise open the kitchen window and climb into the house to let the other two in. My father remained a great admirer of Nihal and Chitra forever after!

From Counsellor in New York, Nihal rose to Ambassador status, SAARC Secretary-General and Foreign Secretary, and finally as our Ambassador in China. They were such fun and gracious hosts when my husband and I visited them in both Kathmandu and Beijing and made their home our base while travelling in Nepal and China. They were the perfect diplomatic couple, able to converse with, and entertain royalty, presidents, the literary, arts and business communities and regular citizens, with equal ease, grace and dignity. It certainly did not harm the Sri Lankan image that they were also an extraordinarily good-looking couple!

Nihal and Chitra met as students at Peradeniya University in its golden years. They enjoyed Ediriweera Sarachchandra’s plays at the famous open-air theatre, while Nihal was also President of the English Drama Society. On my return to Sri Lanka in the mid-‘80s, it was Chitra who introduced me to Sinhabahu and Maname, as well as all the glorious ballets performed by the Chitrasena and Vajira dance troupe.

As mentioned by others, Nihal was an authority on art and a painter himself. Nihal, Chitra and fellow students were befriended by George Keyt, then living in Kandy. Canvasses in their home showcase Nihal’s artistic talents, as well as early Keyt paintings, gifts from the artist himself. Later, Nihal served on and supported the George Keyt Foundation in many ways. He was also a lover of, and an authority on film. I remember especially the Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart classics. If one wished to watch, one had only to visit the Rodrigos and ask- Nihal had an entire collection of those DVDs.

Nihal could speak with authority, in language a lay person could understand, on geopolitics, especially the power changes taking place in an increasingly volatile world. His astuteness on Sri Lanka’s diplomatic relations was ahead of his time.

In the early 1990s, Nihal was Secretary to a high-level Foreign Affairs Study Group (FASG) appointed by President Premadasa and chaired by Dr. Gamani Corea, with Mervyn de Silva, Lakshman Kadirgamar and S.K. Wickremesinghe among its members.

As the Cold War had ended and Asia began emerging as an economic force, Nihal saw that, along with two economically awakening giants China and India, fast developing countries in East and South East Asia would become increasingly important to Sri Lanka for its own future development. He therefore officially co-opted me, from the Central Bank’s Economic Research Department, to provide the FASG with regular statistical updates of Sri Lanka’s economic and trade links with those very countries.

His thinking has proved correct, although I do not think successive Sri Lankan governments gave such astuteness the importance it warranted.

His final diplomatic posting, as Ambassador to China, reflected the enormous respect in which he was held. His time there was invaluable to Sri Lanka. Since his return to Sri Lanka in 2007, he was one of the most sought-after authorities on China in the region. He lectured in academic institutions and was a popular speaker on Sri Lanka’s foreign policy for well over a decade after his retirement.When his health began to deteriorate, he led a quieter life, meeting friends and family in their home, ably cared for by his devoted wife through the years that followed.

Nihal’s and Chitra’s interest in world issues and the arts have been inherited by, and nurtured in both Nandi and Satya, and most likely, Anouk too. Today, where are those delightful six-year olds whose beds I took over all those years ago?

Nandi is Head of Research at the New York Times Magazine, married to Raffi, a senior writer for the New Yorker, and Satya, a senior diplomat in Sri Lanka’s Foreign Service, currently serves as our Ambassador in Rome, with the same charm and professionalism as his father. So, to me, Nihal and Chitra were also role-model parents, giving their twins space to grow and develop their own individual personalities.

Nihal had many admirable qualities, but what I admired most was how his intellect and creative abilities sat so lightly on him. He shared of his knowledge, experience and wisdom without ever acting superior or talking down to anyone; he could turn a tense moment in a discussion and lighten the mood in a wink, with a delightfully witty remark or joke, and always had time to chat and joke with us younger adults, however busy his work schedule.

But Nihal was not all-perfect! It was Chitra, his soul-mate, he relied on so completely for all matters practical and financial, including hosting, entertaining and maintaining their homes all over the world, and for companionship, comfort, peace and harmony, in their own home in Colombo, in the final years of his life.

He will be missed by all who knew him, but we will all treasure memories of a talented, humane individual who made this world a better place. May he rest in peace.

Anila Dias Bandaranaike

Continuing Gopalakrishnan Gandhi’s fascinating tale of Independent India

by Tissa Jayatillake

Nehru had been a Prime Minister for 12 years when E.M.S. Namboodripad became the Chief Minister of Kerala in 1957, for the first time. Namboodripad’s was the first ever non-Congress government in the whole of India to take office after the general elections of 1957. This Communist government had defeated the revered Congress Party, in a free and fair election, while all the other states in India were ruled by the Congress Party.

Calling this unique Namboodripad government “an astonishing failure”, Nehru dismissed it in 1959, citing Article 356 of the Constitution of India. This was the time when Indira Gandhi had been elected President of the Congress Party and it was believed that she had much to do with this ruthless political act. Knowing how Indira Gandhi conducted herself in the office of the Prime Minister of India several years later, this early act of hers seems merely the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps Prime Minister Nehru, who had the authority but did not use it to prevent this political misadventure, could be held responsible for this fiasco.

Another reason why Nehru has been found wanting by his detractors, was due to the invasion (or the liberation and reunification, as some prefer to call it) of Goa in December 1961, code named Operation Vijay as well as for his left-of-centre politics, influenced, it is thought, largely by V.K Krishna Menon, India’s Minister of Defence from 1957 to 1962.

As the instances recorded in The Undying Light illustrate, Jawarhalal Nehru faced criticism from both his admirers and detractors for certain decisions made during his momentous 17 years (1947 to 1964) as Prime Minister.  For many, these policy choices were difficult to reconcile with the Nehru they knew – – as Mahatma Gandhi’s protégé, a pivotal figure in the independence struggle and a man defined by innate decency and civility.

However, Jairam Ramesh, a former Union Minister and at present a senior member of the opposition Congress Party, gives us a different perspective on Nehru and Menon in his biography of the latter titled, A Chequered Brilliance, The Many Lives of V.K Krishna Menon (2019). That Menon had been a complex character is generally known. Jairam Ramesh, in an interview in December 2019 with Karan Thapar of ‘The Wire’, tells us that Nehru and Menon were ‘soulmates’ who were on the same wavelength, politically.

They were both Anglophiles who were suspicious of the political motives of the United States and enamoured of the Soviet Union despite Stalin’s excesses. Jairam Ramesh observes that Menon was ‘an extraordinarily gifted, extremely well-read and charismatic figure’ who carried many demons within him. In fact, he describes him as a man who, like the notoriously right-wing U.S Secretary of State at that time, John Foster Dulles, was ‘a bull who carried his china with him’.

Menon’s role as the Minister of Defence of India, according to Jairam Ramesh, was controversial as he weakened the morale of the Indian army by creating dissension and distrust among the senior officers in it. Regardless of such shortcomings, it is to Menon’s credit that he had advocated for a negotiated settlement on the border issue between India and China. Moraji Desai and S.K Patil who led the right-wing segment of the cabinet and such Members of Parliament as Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Rammanohar Lohia and Acharya Kripalini opposed Menon’s advocacy.

In April 1960, when Zhou Enlai visited Delhi which probably was the last opportunity India had to seriously consider entering into a negotiated settlement with China on the border issue, those opposed to Menon schemed and conspired successfully to have him kept out of all meetings with the visiting Chinese Premier. Had Menon been listened to, argues Jairam Ramesh, the Indo-China war of 1962 could have been averted. Gopal Gandhi also attests to the fact that there was, ‘substantial goodwill’ in the 1950-1960 period between the two great Asian powers despite known differences over the border.

India’s international credibility and effectiveness at the UN were mostly due to that goodwill between the two countries. Moreover Bandung (1955), Brioni (1956) and the subsequent blossoming of the Non-Aligned Movement which brought together the emerging nations of Africa and Asia, would have been impossible had there been no cordiality and unity of purpose between India and China at the time.

Professor Howard Wriggins, a prominent scholar of Political Science and International Relations at Columbia University, New York, and a specialist in South Asian Studies, made the following observation in his book, Ceylon: Dilemmas of a New Nation (1960):

To my Ceylonese friends I would say that I have done my best with much sympathy, and I hope some intelligence, to convey to a foreign audience, the essential dynamics of social economic and political changes as I saw them. Those who feel dismay at what has been stressed should remember that a study of politics in any country is not necessarily a study of that country’s highest philosophy or its most gentle arts. Though politics demands the highest qualities of leadership and poised judgment, it is also the study of “who gets what, when and how”, which is not likely to be the field of human endeavor where the best is always revealed.

Perhaps Professor Wriggins’ words go some way towards explaining the anomaly in some of Nehru’s political decisions during his tenure as Prime Minister.

It should be noted that none of those who disagreed strongly with Nehru like Chakaravarti Rajagopalachari (Rajaji), Sarvepali Radhakrishnan, Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) and Babasaheb Ambedhkar, among others, had to bear the onerous responsibility of being the Prime Minister of India for 17 tumultous years. None of them, therefore, had to experience being ‘on the precarious perch of a tightrope walker’ to use Gopal Gandhi’s words, as Nehru did.

Gopal Gandhi describes Jawaharlal Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, as a dramatically different kind of politician from both her father and her immediate predecessor, Lal Bahadur Shastri.  Indira Gandhi, appears in The Undying Light, as in life, ‘the invincible iron lady of India’. The consensus was that she was not a likeable person. Instead, she was a determined and, on occasion, a ruthless politician.

Interestingly, when the question of Nehru’s successor figured in conversations as early as in 1954, when the seemingly indispensable and irreplaceable Prime Minister was 65, the names suggested were Jayaparakash Narayan (JP) as the first choice and Moraji Desai, as the second. Neither Lal Bahadur Shastri nor Indira Gandhi was on anybody’s mind. A mere five years later, however, the latter became the President of the Congress Party.

Two significant events took place as Indira Gandhi succeeded the saintly Shastri as Prime Minister. On the day she was sworn in as Prime Minister on January 24, 1966, coincidentally or otherwise, Homi Bhaba, the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of India and close associate of the late Lal Bahadur Shastri, was killed in a plane crash. And in March of that year, the Mizos of the Northeast of the country, in what was termed ‘Operation Jericho’ demanded independence from India. The rebels had captured several installations including the Treasury in Aizawal.

Indira Gandhi’s response was to bomb Aizawal. In effect, the government of India bombed its own territory! Rammanohar Lohia, an opposition politician had described Indira Gandhi, rather crudely, as a “gungi gudia” or ‘dumb doll’. This was a grave misperception of the strong- willed personality that she was.  It was not only this opposition politician and his colleagues who misperceived Indira Gandhi. Senior members of the Congress Party did so as well. They believed she was a pliant leader who could be controlled by them.

However, in 1969, she demonstrated that she was made of sterner stuff. Firstly, she ditched her own Party’s candidate for President, Sanjiva Reddy. Following much political manoeuvering, Vice- President V.V. Giri was elected President. This led to a major split in the Congress Party with Deputy Prime Minister Moraji Desai resigning in protest. In the same year, she nationalized 14 commercial banks and launched the ‘Garibi Hatao’ (Remove Poverty) scheme, to placate the rural and urban poor.

Gopal Gandhi describes this measure as ‘the beginning of realpolitik in India’. All these events took place in 1969, a mere five years after Nehru’s passing and in the year that the Mahatma, had he lived, would have turned hundred. No longer was an India-serving Nehru at the helm. Instead, India had now been transformed into an Indira- serving nation. Everything was now Indira-centric, not India-centric, as before.

In the 1971 general elections, the Congress Party won 350 out of 518 seats in the Lok Saba placing Indira Gandhi firmly back in the saddle. She had now been Prime Minister for eight years having won two general elections: narrowly in 1967; and effortlessly in 1971. Though unloved by the people, she was nonetheless a consummate politician who had mastered the art of winning elections. But by 1974, Gopal Gandhi informs us, misgovernance, corruption and unemployment were rampant in India. Large numbers of people were unable to meet their living expenses. India was in turmoil.

Unrest in Gujarat resulted in large numbers being injured and over a 100 being killed. The unrest spread to Bihar. A year later, tension mounted as violence was unleashed on peaceful demonstrators in Patna, Calcutta and elsewhere in the country. On June 26, 1975, at the Prime Minister’s request, the President declared a national Emergency. The night before the declaration of the Emergency both Jayaprakash Narayan and Moraji Desai were arrested and on June 27, press censorship came into play for the first time in India since Independence.

The Emergency continued into 1976 and Indira’s rule as a virtual dictator was now in full swing: Jayaprakash Narayan was released from prison and sent to Jalok hospital in Bombay for emergency treatment before heading back to his home in Patna, for rest and recuperation; Moraji Desai continued to be stuck in jail; Karunanidhi the Chief Minister of Madras, an ally of the Indira Government in 1971, was dismissed by the end of January 1976 and 25,000 members of the DMK including Karunanidi’s son, M.K. Stalin were imprisoned; Tamil Nadu was placed under President’s Rule; and George Fernandes, the prominent Indian socialist politician and trade unionist, was arrested in Calcutta, imprisoned in the Red Fort in Delhi and viciously ill- treated. Indira and her son Sanjay Gandhi were effectively running the show.

By 1977, the economic situation had begun to worsen. Indira could not but be aware of her unpopularity. The term of Office of the Lok Sabha was extended to mid-1978 and there was talk of an Indira-raj. Ominously, Y.B. Chavan, the Minister of External Affairs in Indira’s cabinet told his countrymen on November 2, 1976, that ‘mere elections are not democracy’. But on January 8, 1977, to the surprise of all, Indira Gandhi announced that elections would be held in March. With this announcement, all political prisoners were released.

The results of the elections held in March 1977 were disastrous for Indira Gandhi and Congress. Congress was decimated in the north with Indira Gandhi being defeated in her Rae Bareli constituency. Only the south stood by her.

Moraji Desai became the new Prime Minister. Cast aside by the people, Indira Gandhi was a political nobody now but as Nehru’s daughter, she knew she had a role to play. The very disappointing performance of the new government with Moraji Desai at the helm paved the way for a sensational comeback by the indomitable Indira Gandhi.

In the elections held in 1980, Congress won 351 out of the 525 Lok Saba seats. Indira Gandhi won back the seat in Rae Bareli which she had previously lost in 1977. She also won in Medak, Andhra Pradesh, her back-up seat which she had contested in the event that she lost the seat in Rae Bareli. Sanjay Gandhi won in Amethi, Uttar Pradesh, which had vigorously rejected both the mother and son in 1977 but voted them in, in 1980.

Indira Gandhi kept her new seat and handed over her Rae Bareli seat to B.K. Nehru. She was back, stronger than before. Her son Sanjay was no longer the power behind the throne. He had become a powerful political figure in his own right. But destiny makes its own plans. Sanjay Gandhi, the chosen successor of the Prime Minister, was killed in a plane crash in June and succeeded by his brother, Rajiv Gandhi.

Whatever one may say about Indira Gandhi and much has been said earlier on in this essay, her courage in adversity has to be admired. In the face of a personal tragedy of such magnitude as the death of her son and heir, Sanjay, she continued stoically, to lead the country with calm strength. From the early 1980s onwards, Indira Gandhi and her government were faced with threats to the political integrity of India.

In 1980, extreme political violence led to the hideously brutal killing of prisoners awaiting trial in Bhagalpur, Bihar. Once again in Bihar, in late April of 1981, a riot between Hindu Yadavs and Muslims in the town of Bihar Sharif, left many dead and many more, seriously injured. Indira Gandhi, on learning of the dreadful events, visited the area, immediately. Gruesome events of a similar nature took place in Assam in 1983. There was little that the Prime Minister could do in these circumstances, except to show her concern.

Trouble was brewing in Punjab as well. In 1983, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, leading the Sikhs, demanded a greater measure of independence from the central government, if not a separate state. Bhindranwale, having made the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holiest shrine of the Sikhs, his headquarters, encouraged and fostered a hatred of Hindus, of Congress and of India in general, among the Sikhs.

With his encouragement, violence against Hindus erupted on October 6, 1983. Indira Gandhi responded by taking decisive action. She dismissed her own Congress government in the state, imposed President’s Rule, declared Punjab a Disturbed Area, invoked emergency internal security protocols and ordered the Indian army to remove armed militants from the Golden Temple. Operation Blue Star had begun.

Governor General Mountbatten recieves his successor at the head of the grand steps, forecourt, Government House, New Delhi, June 1948. The author of the book, Rajmohan Gandhi was a grandson of both the Mahatma and Rajagopalachari

Contrary to what the military intelligence had led the Prime Minister to believe, there were many more followers of Bhindranwale within the Golden Temple Complex in Amritsar, than she had anticipated. Thus, despite orders to use minimum force, the storming of the Golden Temple resulted in heavy casualties on both sides. The result was that Indira Gandhi became a much-hated figure among the Sikhs. In 1984, two of her own trusted Sikh bodyguards assassinated her. She was succeeded by her son Rajiv Gandhi, who, like his mother, became the victim of a political assassin later on.

While Indira Gandhi had veered sharply away from the policies of the governments headed by Nehru, the current Prime Minister of India, Narendra Damodardas Modi, discarded them altogether. Modi’s political career began in December 2002 when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won in Gujarat and he became the Chief Minister of Gujarat. On June 8, 2014, the BJP named the Gujarat Chief Minister as its Prime Ministerial candidate. Born in 1950 after India’s independence, he sought the vote of a nation that appeared to have abandoned the ethos of those who fought for independence.

In the event, Narendra Modi and the BJP won the 2014 election resoundingly with Congress reduced to a historic low of a mere 44 seats. The left parties fared as badly, losing power in their traditional strongholds.

If the first four decades of independent India could be categorized as those shaped by the Nehru-Gandhi nexus, India after 2014 was being shaped by Modi. If the ethos of the former was ‘democratic republicanism and secularism’, the latter embraced ‘majoritarian nationalism and Hindutva’. By 2019, the Modi era was in full swing. Elections that year for the BJP were almost a mere formality, and the election of Modi for a second term, a foregone conclusion.

To borrow Gopal Gandhi’s words from 2019 onward, the Modi era has been firm and strong, with ‘its supporters a heaving ocean and its critics a still pond’. However, some cracks have since appeared in Modi’s popularity. A massive protest by the farmers of North India against certain farm laws and Prime Minister Modi’s retraction of them, Arundathi Roy’s persistent and searing one-woman criticism plus the most recent protest by the Cockroach Janata Party which demanded and secured the resignation of the Minister of Education, Dharmenda Pradhan in July 2026, are indicative of the fact that the Modi government, however electorally powerful it is, cannot suppress forever the will of the people of India.

In his epilogue in The Undying Light, Gopal Gandhi shares some concluding thoughts with his readers. Those which resonated with me are the following:

The economic disparity of India where 220 million Indians out of a population of 1.428 billion live below the poverty line. This ranks India, 11th out of 125 nations in the Global Hunger Index; 129th out of 146 countries surveyed in the Global Gender report and 176th out of 180 nations surveyed in the Environmental Performance index. Ironically, however, it ranks third in the Forbes billionaire list;

The author’s reference to Manmohan Singh whom he rightly describes as, ‘the last living Statesman I have known’. On his passing at almost the end of December 2024, Gopal Gandhi observes that ‘[the] Indian Sky had decidedly darkened at the departure of this good man’, who had shown us all that there was space in politics for decency and for decency in politics;

His reiteration of Mahatma Gandhi’s prayer in the months before his voice was stilled: ‘Grant, please, God, good sense to all’. He then draws our attention to Babasaheb Ambedkar, the man who had crafted India’s Constitution. who joined the Mahatma’s funeral procession with no fanfare and, due to his poor health, walked in it for only a short distance. He then refers to the fact that Mahatma Gandhi and Ambedkar had had disagreements on matters political but that all of them – Subhas Bose, Nehru, Patel, Kripalini, Azad, Ambedkar and Gandhi, despite their disagreements and different views, stood for a united India based on the highest principles and values.

Saroj Devi and Gukesh were two individuals who displayed on the world stage what it is to be generous and magnanimous to one’s rival. The former, the mother of the javelin thrower Neraj Chopra was warmly appreciative of Arshad Nadeem of Pakistan who bettered Chopra’s throw. Nadeem reciprocated in similar vein.

Likewise, when 18-year- old Gukesh, became the world chess champion on 12 December, 2024, he paid tribute to his Chinese opponent, saying that he ‘is a true champion’. Had they been around, I feel that while Mahatma Gandhi would have been delighted to hear of the bond between the representatives of India and Pakistan, Krishna Menon and Jawaharlal Nehru might have rued afresh the missed opportunities to have forged a closer link with China before the war erupted at the border.

In the course of his book, Gopal Gandhi says, ‘The independent India that has surfed the moon, holds dark craters in its soul’ and that, ‘Just as perversion hides and is never suspected to exist until it is too late, human solidarity stays unseen and unknown to stir at a moment’s notice. That is India, the theatre of strife between the hideous and the humane’.

The narrative of how India emerged from the shadow of Western imperial domination to be the proudly independent country it is today, is well known. But in Gopal Gandhi’s masterly account, the reader is placed at the very epicentre of this evolution and made privy to behind-the-scenes happenings, when its leaders sought to heal the wounds of partition and build a cohesive new nation.

Gopal Gandhi offers the reader insight into significant events that took place in India, from the time before independence to the present, while, at the same time, presenting a nuanced critique of key figures who played a part in shaping the India of today. Despite its mammoth length, the book is unputdownable; and Gopal Gandhi’s love for his country is plain for all to see. In the final reckoning, Gopal Gandhi makes it abundantly clear to the reader that no matter what challenges the future may bring, India will always hold its own.

And so, it is appropriate for Gopal Gandhi to end on an optimistic note when he observes that:

India’s light can dim; it cannot, will not die.