book excerptise:   a book unexamined is wasting trees

Indira: the life of Indira Nehru Gandhi

Katherine Frank

Frank, Katherine;

Indira: the life of Indira Nehru Gandhi

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002, 567 pages  [gbook]

ISBN 039573097X, 9780395730973

topics: |  biography | indira | india | history | modern | politics


Indira got her results [to the Oxford admission exam] and learned that she
had failed, with a particularly bad performance in Latin. p.116

Feroze's open affairs with Tarakeshwari Sinha "the glamour-girl of the Indian
Parliament", Mahmuna Sultana and Subhadra Joshi...  His other well-known
girlfriends included a beautiful Nepalese woman who worked for All India
Radio and a divorcee from a high-caste Kerala family. [41] p.242

Indira's affair with Nehru secretary M.O. Mathai

Mathai boasted openly of his liaison with Nehru's daughter, both at the
time and for many years after.  There is no q that Indira and M were very
close.. she was attached to and confided in him.

Sarvepalli Gopal, Nehru biographer said of the Mathai relationship: 
  	Indira Gandhi encouraged him beyond normal limits."

In the 70s Mathai wrote an autobiography, which was to include a chapter,
"She" that he himself suppressed when the book came out.  But in the early
80s, some five years after Mathai's death, the chapter surfaced when Maneka
Gandhi circulated it among a small group of Indira's enemies.  The chapter
contains such explicit material that even if M had not suppressed it, it is
doubtful the publishers wd have published it.  M describes Indira as 'highly
sexed' and includes, among other salacious details, the claim that she became
preg by him and had an abortion.  At the time M was a disillusioned man eager
to have the last destructive word against Indira, and her father... Ntheless,
people who knew I and M well, including BK Nehru, who is a reliable source
and no enemy of his cousin, feel that the "She" chapter contains more fact
than fiction. p. 243

Mathai claims in 'She' that he was constantly fearful that Indira's careless
behaviour would alert her father.  One day in the hall of Parlyament, Feroze,
Feroze Gandhi was enraged when someone referred to Mathai as 'the PM's real
son-in-law. Indira, significantly, did nothing to quell the rumours of the
alleged liaison. 243

But "Delhi buzzed with rumours" about their relationship.

Subsequently, Indira Gandhi wrote to Dorothy Norman, her lifelong confidante,
that she had taken to yoga taught "by an exceedingly good-looking
yogi"—Dhirendra Brahmachari. She wrote that "it was his looks, especially his
magnificent body, which attracted everyone to his system." Dhirendra was
probably no brahmachari: a raid on his ashram in Kashmir after the Emergency
yielded, among other things, a vibrator! If she had a lover as prime minister
it would have to be him. "Brahmachari was the only man to see Indira alone in
her room while giving her yoga instruction, and he was the only male with
whom she could have had a relationship during this period."

Excerpts: Outlook

Mrs G's String of Beaus- Sanjay Suri


amitabha mukerjee (mukerjee [at-symbol] gmail) 2012 Aug 24