The day Nehru’s daughter died

Kolkata: On October 31, 1984, an occupation of fear overcame the invitation of grief. On that day, I was not even a confirmed teenager but that emotion persists to this niggling moment.

It was a routine weekday at St. Xavier’s Calcutta, a late morning session of mellow classes after the Small Break. News trickled in from the usual suspects, the laggards who hung around the Teacher’s Room, that the Prime Minister had been assassinated. The rest of us were too busy following the India-Pakistan ODI at Sialkot on transistor radio, with Dilip Vengsarkar in fine fettle, and ignored such bytes as diversionary gossip.

But as the clock veered towards the afternoon, the conjecture seemed closer to the truth, as the usual imposition of section 144 in the corridors was abruptly relaxed. A few inquisitive souls stepped out of the classroom and Mr Abraham (teacher) suggested firmly that BBC News had indeed confirmed the termination. All India Radio was maintaining a stoic silence as Stalinist protocols of censorship became the chilling SOP.

The bush telegraph, however, reigned swiftly and in the wake of reported riots, the school day was suspended by Suo Moto. On the lengthy and turbulent ride home, the streets had assumed a volcanic character, earnestly suppressed but ready to erupt. Everybody seemed agitated, many were protesting loudly but the agenda was totally unclear, and it was certainly not just about unfettered tears.

To me, and many around me, this was the unveiling of raw fear at its textbook best, unseen yet present. The premonition of the partition riots in ‘Freedom at Midnight’ seemed to be on audio-visual mode, and while there was no visible violence or arson, their trailers were on show. Roadblocks were rampant and public transportation privy to the mercies of the frisky commuters, as official updates were still as foggy as winter Delhi skies.

Much later, on the day and over the weeks, we learnt what really had happened and the senseless carnage that ensued. Overcoming the spontaneous umbrage, Calcutta behaved predictably maturely, ensuring that lives and livelihoods were sincerely protected. Jyoti Basu was quick to rise to the occasion and mobilized the party cadres to become peacekeepers, an unfamiliar but valuable role reversal.

Schools were surely shut for a week as the newspapers unfurled the circumstances, both causes and effects. Peter Ustinov became a drawing-room name, not just a niche Hercules Poirot, as he was awaiting the lady for a video interview. Many Bengalis got excited at the prospect of Pranab Babu’s candidature to be PM, but not for the first time did the Congress close ranks, however illogically, on dynastic continuity.

R K Dhawan, Mrs Gandhi’s confidante, earned notoriety for not agreeing to a rehash of her security profiles and never quite recovered politically. An entire generation of teenage schoolboys instantly fell in love with Priyanka Gandhi, while their mothers more discreetly gaped at her handsome father. The state funeral was naturally telecast live on Doordarshan, with solemn voices adding coal to the black and white gravitas, to be followed by endless days of grief-ridden programming.

Quite apart from a human tragedy, Mrs Gandhi’s demise signalled the death knell of the Congress as it would never again have sustainable grassroots leadership of past stature. Inexperienced Rajiv turned out to be a smart corporate CXO, with an unavoidable set of adjunct follies, while Dr Singh was a masterful economist who played understudy to the dogged Sonia. PV Narasimha Rao (1991-96) was clearly the underrated pioneer of liberalization but his subsequent purging by the party does dampen his footprint on posterity.

But, quickly back to the largest point, I wished to make, on fear versus grief. At this moment, in 1984, I do believe that for most Indians fear was indeed the key (to borrow from Alistair Maclean). A misled minority became the perpetrators, turning murderers and hoodlums, while the bewildered majority coped with its consequences, and nobody was truthfully spared. In all this, we certainly forgot to grieve for a genuine Captain of the nation, or perhaps that was not the priority of the day.

For most folks from our age cohort, this was the very first live, or televised, engagement of citizenry versus citizenry, a hitherto notional subject. Notwithstanding her follies, Mrs Gandhi was surely a significant world leader and we must not let the circumstances of her death override the triumphs of her life.