Opinion: Endorsement Sans Election: How Indira Gandhi's Death Changed Everything

Forty years ago, on October 31, 1984, India saw a sudden change of guard—Rajiv Gandhi was sworn in as Prime Minister within four-and-a-half hours of the official announcement of the assassination of Indira Gandhi. In 1964 and 1966, when the premiership changed following the death of a predecessor, new incumbents were sworn in after a 13-day mourning period. But things were different in 1984. Jawaharlal Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri had died due to natural causes; Indira Gandhi had fallen to the bullets of assassins, her own bodyguards.

The planners of the assassination had chosen a perfect day: President Zail Singh was on a visit abroad; Cabinet Secretary Krishnaswamy Raosahib and the Prime Minister’s Principal Secretary, P.C.Alexander, were in Bombay for a meeting of the Atomic Energy Commission; Pranab Mukherjee, the designated number-two in the Indira Gandhi Cabinet, was in West Bengal, accompanying All India Congress Committee general secretary Rajiv Gandhi on a tour of rural areas; Home Minister P.V.Narasimha Rao was visiting coastal Andhra; the Congress Working President, Kamlapati Tripathi, was touring Uttar Pradesh; Defence Minister Shankarrao Chavan was in Moscow, leading a delegation of Army and Air Force top brass; Naval chief Admiral Dawson was in Vishakhapatnam; and top intelligence advisor, Ram Nath Kao, was abroad.

Dark Days

Thanks to the resilience of India’s democracy, chaos was avoided and a smooth transition of power ensued, though it was blotted by the bloodshed of anti-Sikh riots, for which ultra-enthusiasts of the ruling party were blamed (some are facing trial to date). It was a macabre period—apparently, voters’ lists and ration card addresses had been used to identify Sikh homes for the pogrom. Indira Gandhi’s assassination was an aftermath of Operation Bluestar, in which the Army flushed out terrorists by attacking Amritsar’s Golden Temple complex. She was killed by Sikh bodyguards in her home, 1 Safdarjung Road.

Both norm and form were bypassed on that fateful day. It set in motion a departure from the observance of custom and ushered in an era of ad hoc, off-the-cuff decision-making in the Congress, in which the long shadow of bureaucracy and advisors (read: family, friends) over seasoned political leadership was all too evident. Palace intrigues were not new to the Grand Old Party. But in 1984, it was endorsed and institutionalised. Pigmies began dwarfing stalwarts.

Constitution And ‘Acting PM’

In 1964 and 1967, the charge of interim Prime Minister fell on the shoulders of Home Minister Gulzari Lal Nanda. India has no Constitutional provision for having an ‘acting Prime Minister’. Yet, Nanda was sworn in, ultimately demitting office after the next Prime Minister was formally chosen by the Congress Party in Parliament (CPP). Party president K. Kamraj orchestrated the candidatures of Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1964 and Indira Gandhi in 1966. On both occasions, conservative right-wing leader Morarji Desai lost out—he would become the Janata Party Prime Minister in 1977.

In 1984, Indira Gandhi herself was Congress President. She had appointed Kamlapati Tripathi as the Working President. On the day of her assassination, he was on tour. Thus, unlike in 1964 and 1966, there was no “Kamraj” available in New Delhi. On both of those previous occasions, President Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was at the Rashtrapati Bhavan to mentor and monitor succession. In 1984, Gyani Zail Singh was on a visit to Yemen (he rushed back upon hearing the news).

The Announcement Of Gandhi’s Death

As Indira Gandhi’s bullet-ridden body lay at the All-India Institute for Medical Sciences (AIIMS), a conference room was opened up for ministers and senior bureaucrats. Indira Gandhi’s longtime aide, R.K. Dhawan, was also there, but the eclipsing of his status was all too evident. The advisor in the Prime Minister’s Secretariat, Vijay Shankar Tripathi, a retired IAS officer, acting in tandem with Rajiv Gandhi’s buddies, called the shots. He advised Principal Information Officer U.C. Tiwari to ensure that the news was not officially announced by Akashvani till 6 pm, though doctors had announced her death at 2.20 pm. Information minister H.K.L. Bhagat was kept out of the loop too.

The news had been broadcast by BBC London around 11 am, soon after the Indira Gandhi family’s yoga teacher, Dhirendra Brahmachari, came out of the eighth-floor operation theatre, where Gandhi’s body lay, and said with a strange wave of the hand “ab sab Bhagwan ke haath mein hai” (now it’s in the hands of the Almighty).

Following the BBC broadcast, most Indian missions abroad had lowered the national flag to half-mast. US President Ronald Reagan’s condolences reached New Delhi at 2 pm (even before the medical bulletin). However, as per Tripathi’s diktat, Indira Gandhi was ‘officially alive’ till 6 pm. Rajiv Gandhi was sworn in at 6.55 pm.

Rajiv Gandhi had heard the news put out by BBC that forenoon on a transistor radio in a village in Midnapore district. Pranab Mukherjee was by his side. He decided to rush back to Delhi. A special Indian Airlines flight was arranged from Calcutta. Mukherjee and another minister, A.B.A. Ghani Khan Choudhary, accompanied him. He reached AIIMS at 3.40 pm.

How Rajiv Gandhi Became PM

Rajiv Gandhi was of the opinion that a senior minister should hold the fort till things were finalised by the CPP. But this was not to be, as Parliamentary Affairs Minister Buta Singh, AICC treasurer Sitaram Kesari, Arun Nehru and Rajiv Gandhi’s school friend and aide, Arun Singh, were on the same page as V.S. Tripathi; a signature campaign endorsing Rajiv Gandhi was already on. The Youth Congress had announced that if anyone else was sworn in, “there would be trouble”.

President Zail Singh arrived at AIIMS at 5 pm. His motorcade had been pelted with stones as he drove from the Palam airport (anti-Sikh riots had engulfed the nation). During a conversation he had with this writer in August 1985, Singh recalled the day’s events thus: on learning that Indira Gandhi had been shot, he decided to return from Yemen. He asked his Secretary, IAS officer A.C. Bandopadhyay, to get a copy of the Constitution from the local Embassy. On board the IAF special aircraft, the President enquired about Rajiv Gandhi’s whereabouts. IAF security advised that as the flight was traversing airspace adjacent to Pakistan, only radio traffic related to flight logistics was advisable; the President’s mind should not be disclosed.

Honouring Indira Gandhi’s ‘Wish’

“After studying the Constitution, I realised that though the President is bound by aid and advice of the Cabinet headed by Prime Minister, he has one independent, unfettered power: to choose who ought to be the Prime Minister and swear him in,” Singh added. He said he owed his position to Indira Gandhi and wished to fulfil her wish that her son should be her successor. On reaching AIIMS, he put his arm around Rajiv Gandhi’s shoulders and invited him to the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

The selection of Rajiv Gandhi was done during a meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Board (CPB),  an organisational apex body, and not by CPP, the parliamentary wing. Of the five-member CPB, only two people—Pranab Mukherjee and P.V. Narasimha Rao—attended. Kamlapati Tripathi and Margatham Chandrashekhar were not in Delhi. The decision of the CPB was conveyed to the President in a handwritten note signed by the AICC General Secretary (Organisation), G.Karuppiah Moopanar (as a protégé of Kamraj, Moopanar had witnessed 1964 and 1966 successions from the sidelines).

As Rajiv Gandhi was being sworn in at the Rashtrapati Bhavan’s Durbar Hall, a meeting of the CPP was being held in Parliament’s Central Hall. It was presided by its deputy leader, Prof. N.G. Ranga, who was oblivious to the developments in the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Thirty members attended. A condolence resolution was adopted. The CPP’s endorsement was post facto: on November 2, a resolution was passed with 497 out of 505 votes (eight MPs were absent) ‘electing’ the new Prime Minister.

Thus, a new era began. Endorsement of leadership, and not election, became the norm. Rajiv Gandhi won the ensuing General Election by a record score, surpassing Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. 
Five years later, beginning 1989, Congress stopped getting a Lok Sabha majority on its own. The Bharatiya Janata Party, born on April 6, 1980, contested its first election on the lotus symbol in 1984, winning a mere two seats. Decades later, in 2014, it would emerge as India’s party of governance with a clear mandate. 

(Shubhabrata Bhattacharya is a retired editor and a public affairs commentator)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author