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: Indira, again

Twenty-five years after Indira Gandhi’s assassination, how does she live on? Does she live on? Can we finally step back and take stock of her politics? Last week ended on these questions.

If there are more questions than answers even 25 years later, it bears testimony to the nature of Indira’s legacy which is as complex as it is polarising. In many of today’s major debates — on secularism, balance of power between the Centre and state, the relationship between party and government, or the relationship between liberty and order — the force of her interventions can still be felt.

The observance of October 31 last week only underlined that for those who admired her and no less for those who were alienated by her, she remains an inescapable reference point on the political landscape.

Maoists, CPM, Nepal

The audacious strike by the Maoists last week in West Bengal, in which they held a Rajdhani hostage for several hours, has inaugurated a round of sniping between the home minister, P Chidambaram, and the CPM. The sparring comes at a time when the CPM and the Centre have taken similar positions on the Naxal threat, with top party leaders and West Bengal CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee agreeing to the Centre’s line that talks with

Maoists were not possible until they halt the violence.

On Saturday CPM general secretary Prakash Karat issued a statement taking on Chidambaram for his swipe about the Maoists being the CPM’s “comrades in arms”. “Far from being the CPM’s comrades in arms, the Maoists have always been unremittingly hostile to the CPM…” said Karat, as he urged Chidambaram to concentrate on the “glaring contradiction” within the Cabinet on the Naxal question, an unsubtle reference to Mamata Banerjee’s posturing on the matter.

Meanwhile, even as the blame game in India’s political class goes on, reports indicate that the Maoists are influencing people, making newer friends. A working relationship has apparently been established between Nepali Maoist leaders and Maoists in India. Rajdhani, a national newspaper in Nepal, has reported that senior leaders from both sides, including Kishenji —the CPI(Maoist) leader currently holed up in West Bengal and considered to be leader of the party’s operation in the east — and Indra Mohan Sigdel ‘Basanta’ from the Communist Party of Nepal- Maoist (CPN-M) met at an undisclosed location in India between October 8 and 11.