One person, two books, different perspectives

Suddenly, there is a flood of books on Indira Gandhi. Indira Gandhi, a Life In Nature by Jairam Ramesh and Indira, India’s Most powerful Prime Minister by Sagarika Ghose, have hit the stands within a span of one month.

It is Indira Gandhi’s birth centenary year. India’s third Prime Minister would have turned 100 on November 19, 2017. So, publishers and authors both want to take a fresh look at India’s “most powerful prime minister’’ yet again.

Well, the first book, under review here, by Jairam Ramesh, looks at Indira Gandhi from an entirely fresh angle. Jairam’s focus is Indira, the naturist, as the title itself suggests. Indira Gandhi has been possibly one of the most researched subjects from every possible angle. Her personal and public life have been the subject of dozens of books written on her so far. But no one has looked at Indira Gandhi only from the nature’s perspective. Jairam Ramesh does it for the first time. Therefore, it is a book of its own kind on Indira and deserves attention.

Jairam is a scholar and politician rolled into one. Author of many books, he now turns to Indira with a new angle. He claims that he discovered Indira, the naturist, during his “22-month tenure as environment minister”.

Indeed, Indira Gandhi was heavily into nature; trees, animals, flowers, rivers, streams, anything and everything you name in the natural domain interested Indira. I personally witnessed her immense concern for environment as a cub reporter. It was a public meeting that I was assigned to cover barely two months before her brutal assassination.

During one of my first major political assignments in 1984, I was asked to cover the national launch of the NSUI at Nagpur in 1984. Indira Gandhi was to attend the ceremony. Indira was a Nehruvian. So, it was her practice to round off her visits with a public meeting, something Jawaharlal Nehru used to do as well. So, all the journalists rushed to the Nagpur ground where Indira was to speak. The ground was full of common people. And, you know, what was the focus of her speech there? Envoirnment.

Barely two months before her death, the Prime Minister of India was explaining the growing environmental threat to common men. She was concerned with the growing trend of felling trees. She took the example of the neem tree. She said that her grandmother used to apply neem paste when she used to get hurt during her childhood. “But now neem is becoming extinct; it is a serious matter,” she told the gathering.

She really loved trees and used to collect new varieties of trees not available in Delhi. She used to do it even during her foreign trips. Indira brought one rare tree from Mexico. One sapling was gifted to the late Khushwant Singh and others were given to the Delhi Horticulture Department. Khushwant wrote about it in one of his columns. Those big trees with big red flowers bloom in winter and now dot Delhi.

That was Indira, the naturist. She was the first Indian Prime Minister to create an environment ministry that Jairam Ramesh would head many many years later.

Jairam Ramesh brings out Indira, the naturist, through an “unconventional biography” of India’s third Prime Minister. Read it if you wish to discover a new facet of Indira Gandhi.

Indira, the politician, is the subject of Sagarika’s book titled Indira Gandhi, India’s Most Powerful Prime Minister. Sagarika is a vintage journalist who has grown up during the Indira days. She has already made a mark both in print and electronic journalism. So, it was natural for her to graduate into book writing, which she has done earlier too. Growing up during Indira days seems to have interested Sagarika to take a serious look at Indira.

Sagarika has written this book as if she is reliving the Indira period. Right from Indira’s childhood to her death, she takes a complete and thorough look at her subject.

The book is racy and gripping. Once you start reading, it becomes an unputdownable book. The book is full of facts and anecdotes about Indira. She does not spare even gossipy stuff about Indira’s personal life. She has done hard work reading all available stuff on Indira Gandhi and then sort of reliving it in a highly readable manner.

But Sagarika does not come up with any fresh insight into Indira’s life and work. No big statements are made; nor any fresh light on Indira come out from the book. Yet, the book is highly recommended for those who lived the Indira years and those who are interested.

Indira Gandhi, A Life in Nature

Writer: Jairam Ramesh

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Pages: 437

₹799

INDIRA (Insecure daughter, Betrayed wife, National heroine, Tough dictator)

India's Most Powerful Prime Minister

Writer: Sagarika Ghose

Publisher: Juggernaut

Pages: 342

₹699