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• often described as the world’s most powerful woman, breakfasted on fruit and toast and stepped out of a side door of her official residence, 1, Safdarjung Road,
• In fact, she had taken particular care with her dress, appearance and coiffure that morning because she was on her way to a television interview she had agreed to give Peter Ustinov, the British playwright, actor and humorist, on the lawns of her Akbar Road office. She had chosen a saffron sari because she had been advised that this colour showed r...
• If Indira had put on a saffron sari for the sake of the TV camera, she had, for the same reason, left off the bulletproof vest that she had been virtually forced to wear under her blouse because of repeated threats to her life. These threats had suddenly multiplied during the four months since June of that year when she had ordered the Indian Army ...
• Besides discarding the bulletproof vest, Indira had dispensed with an important routine dating back to the days of her illustrious father. For about an hour every morning the prime minister’s home used to be an open house. Hundreds of people, including the poorest of the poor, were allowed access to the head of the government to submit…
• As independent and impartial observers have testified, Indira’s decision to order the troops to flush the terrorists out of the Golden Temple did not stem from ‘enmity’ for the Sikhs, ‘a community Mrs Gandhi regarded with great affection’. But this is not how the…