The situation
deteriorated further when Nehru's mantle fell on his daughter Indira, creating a dynasty
that sought to justify its claim to power with the religious image of the Mahatma. Indira
ruled with less tolerance of opposition even than her father, and increased policies of
central control, which in the emergency period of the late seventies bordered on
dictatorship. The decline continued when Indira's son Rajiv Gandhi took the throne (more
or less) when she was assassinated.
Lacking his mother's will and courage, Rajiv became a figurehead for forces of
corruption that he did not understand and which soon brought about his fall. This Nehru-Gandhi has dynasty dominated the first fifty years since
India's independence, and lingers on with the possibility of a Sonia Gandhi entering
politics, an Italian Catholic with no political credentials other than the name of her
dead husband.
So deep seated has been the clinging to this family by
members of the Congress party that they seem to have no real agenda without someone with a
Gandhi name to lead them. India has suffered in the shadow of this family, which has used
the Mahatma's image and the slogans of secularism and democracy, though it has resembled
more the royal families of the Middle Ages in its machinations and petty manipulations.
While the image of Mahatma Gandhi has been brought out at election times for
electoral gains, only his shadow remains through the Nehru dynasty that received his name
by chance and took on his influence by way of distortion. Meanwhile the other great
leaders of modern India were ignored and any new political leaders who might threaten the
Gandhi dynasty have been denigrated, if not cut down.
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