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A Family Affair is a sequel
to Ved Mehta's much acclaimed The New
India. Together the two books recount the political history
of India since Independence, in 1947. Mr. Mehta holds that India,
although it is the world's most populous parliamentary democracy,
remains a feudal society, organized around principles of caste
and family: Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter, Indira Gandhi,
have, between them, ruled India as Prime Ministers for all but
four of its years as an independent nation, and by the mid-seventies
Mrs. Gandhi's younger son, Sanjay, had become the second most
important person in the country, even though he had never been
elected to public office. The so called "dictatorship of
the mother and son" fell in the 1977 elections (a defeat
that Mr. Mehta calls the greatest modern political upset), but
Mrs. Gandhi's successors as Prime Minister, Morarji Desai and
Charan Singh, were in their turn forced out of office—in
the main because of questions about the political influence of
their families.
Mr. Mehta shows in detail how Mrs. Gandhi survived charges of
nepotism and corruption to sweep back into power in 1980; how
Sanjay was at last elected to office, as a member of Parliament;
and how mother and son reestablished their court autocracy in
New Delhi, with Sanjay assuming the role of heir apparent. Then,
in June, 1980, at the age of thirty-three, Sanjay was killed while
executing a dangerous flip in a plane over the city. Mr. Mehta
goes on to show how Mrs. Gandhi's older son, Rajiv, is carrying
on the Gandhi "dynasty" in the Indian "democracy,"
and how today Mrs. Gandhi is facing India's age-old problems—poverty,
overpopulation, a rigid caste system, warring states—amid
gathering unrest.
Mr. Mehta disentangles the threads of connection and corruption
that weave the fabric of Indian politics, pulling here to expose
flagrant examples of nepotism and there to uncover illegal electoral
practices. He marshals an array of facts, but his narrative reads
like a good story. The personalities he describes, and occasionally
interviews, take on life. There is Desai, who says that God's
will placed him in the Prime Minister's office, but who is unmistakably
an astute politician; his Minister of Health, Raj Narain, who
reportedly campaigned from inside a monkey cage; Charan Singh,
who, before he was named Prime Minister, made a career of being
a malcontent, resigning eleven times from various offices; and,
of course, Sanjay, who recklessly indulged his passion for power
both in fast machines and in politics. The story, fascinating
in and of itself, with its elements of mystery and Greek tragedy,
is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding a
complex and increasingly influential country.
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