Who is Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi? On her birth anniversary (November  19, 1917), it could be a mistake to toss this question at bright-eyed students in college campuses. “The Mahatma’s daughter”, is how young college students responded in a recent survey conducted by a magazine on Free India’s iconic leader, daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, and the quintessential amma to rural India’s unwashed masses.

Indira Gandhi was worshiped, abused, feared, loved, ridiculed, idolised, demonised, and eventually, gunned down to death.

Admired she was, by friends as well as foes. Former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee — a Jan Sangh MP in the early 1970s — hailed her as a “modern-day Durga”, when she inflicted a permanent scar on Pakistan in the 1971 war, by liberating Bangladesh. A Congress President D K Barooah famously said once, “Indira is India”. In a sense, it was true, never mind the sycophancy.

Indira was a reporter’s worst nightmare come true. An average speaker, her staccato delivery left one rather cold, and her speeches, barring some inspired moments (and there were some) were often as interesting as a drain inspector’s report. Yet lakhs of people used to attend her meetings, drawn to her like fillings to a magnet. They came to see her, period, not to hear her. Paradoxically, Indira was extremely articulate and successfully held her own against the likes of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.

She governed by instinct. As she confessed once in an interview she gave to the American press, some of the most far reaching policies — like the withdrawal of privy purses, and nationalisation of banks was a product of her “stray thoughts”.

As Prime Minister, she ruled the country for nearly 12 years from 1969 to 1977 and 1980-84. And did she rule? The gunghi gudiya (the dumb doll) of 1969 first released the old Congress Party from the stranglehold of the Syndicate — the triumvirate of Kamaraj (who, ironically, plotted to make Indira PM, to thwart the ambitions of the irrepressible Morarji Desai), Nijalingappa and Sanjeeva Reddy.

Playing for high stakes, and putting her fledgling political career which was just beginning to bloom, on the line, Indira stabbed the Indian National Congress in the back by conspiring to bring her chosen man V V Giri into the Rashtrapati Bhavan, and broke the party to crown herself as the unquestioned empress of the breakaway Congress(I). The 1971 Bangladesh War was her masterstroke, and a mesmerised electorate deified her as a latter-day “Bharat Mata”.

But the euphoria evaporated soon enough. Unseated by the Allahabad High Court judgment for misuse of official machinery in her election campaign, Indira retaliated by clamping an Emergency in 1975, on the advice of her lackey Siddarth Shankar Ray, and her pugnacious son Sanjay Gandhi. The entire opposition was dumped in prison and the press gagged, while thousands of innocents suffered nationwide.

Nemesis followed 19 months later, with the non-Congress parties joining hands to form the Janata Party. In the historic 1977 Lok Sabha elections, the Indira Congress suffered a humiliating defeat all over the country, barring the southern states.

Friendless, forlorn and alone in the Janata era, Indira and Sanjay were hounded day in and day out for their excesses committed during the Emergency. After a brief spell in the wilderness, the wounded tigress, smelt blood when a few Daliths were massacred in Belchi. She brilliantly exploited the mass disenchantment with the failed Janata experiment, and stormed back to power, literally on an elephant.

Predictably, she groomed her younger son Sanjay Gandhi to be her heir. But fate intervened in the form of an air crash. She then prevailed upon her other son, the gentler Rajiv, to take the plunge.

Perhaps, Indira Gandhi’s insatiable lust for power proved her undoing. In Punjab, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a rabble-rousing leader of Sikhs, proved to be her Frankenstein. Punjab went up in flames in the early 1980s, the Sikhs momentarily flirted with the idea of a separate Khalistan, and eventually, Indira was forced to call in the Army to flush out terrorists taking shelter in the much revered Golden Temple. Operation Blue Star was a military success, but Indira paid the ultimate price, when her Khalistani guards shot her at point blank range.

As a politician, Indira Gandhi was quite simply unparalleled; some would say, a law unto herself. Under her rule, the President of India, no less, used to meekly sign on the dotted line. Well, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed signed the Emergency declaration, while having his bath. Another President, Gyani Zail Singh, publicly stated his willingness to scrub the floor, if Indira bade him to do so.

Indira Gandhi changed chief ministers and governors, merely on a whim. In her view, democratic institutions and traditions were not cast in stone. Not surprisingly, the Constitution was amended a record number of times during her regime.

Unlike today’s leaders (sic), Indira Gandhi was decisive, bold, single-minded, and “her own man”. Indeed, she was really destiny’s own child. Love her or hate her, Indira was India.