India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

by Ramachandra Guha

With Mrs Gandhi one cannot be so sure. She had neither read nor travelled extensively. She was unquestionably a patriot; growing up in the freedom movement, and with its leaders, she was deeply committed to upholding India’s interests in the world. How she thought these could best be upheld was less certain. In all the years she had been in politics her core beliefs had not been revealed to either party or public. They knew not what she really thought of the market economy, or the Cold War, or the relations between religions, or the institutions and processes of democracy. The many volumes of Nehru’s Selected Works are suffused with his writings on these subjects – subjects on which Mrs Gandhi, before 1967, spoke scarcely a word.