Worksheet: Salman Rushdie, “The Assassination of Indira Gandhi”

Following are the opening four paragraphs of Salman Rushdie’s “The Assassination of Indira Gandhi,” which appears in Rushdie’s Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991 (London: Granta, 1991), pp. 41-46. The assignment on this worksheet is to summarize these paragraphs in about 150 words (typed, standard manuscript form).

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All of us who love India are in mourning today. It is of no importance whether we numbered ourselves amongst Indira Gandhi’s most fervent supporters or her most implacable opponents; her murder diminishes us all, and leaves a deep and alarming scar upon the very idea of India, very like that left on Pakistani society by General Zia’s execution of the leader who was in so many ways son semblable, son frère, Prime Minister Bhutto. During the time of Mrs. Gandhi’s father Jawaharlal Nehru, the India news media’s favourite catch-phrase was the rather nervous ‘After Nehru, who?’ Today, we ask ourselves a more fearful question: ‘after Indira, what?’ And it is clear that what is most to be feared is an outbreak of reprisal killings, of Hindu-Sikh communal violence, both inside and outside the Punjab. The wind was sown in Amritsar; now, perhaps (and it would be good to be wrong), the whirlwind ripens.

Where, in all this, can we find any scrap of hope for India’s future? Where is the way forward that leads away from destruction, disintegration and blood? I believe that if it is to be found anywhere then it must begin, at this most difficult of times, with the clearest possible analysis of the mistakes of recent years. Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.

At the heart of the idea of India there lies a paradox: that its component parts, the States which coalesced into the union, are ancient historical entities, with cultures and independent existences going back many centuries; whereas India itself is a mere thirty-seven years old. And yet it is the ‘new-born’ India, the baby, so to speak, the Central government, that holds sway over the greybeards. Centre-State relations have always, inevitably, been somewhat delicate, fragile affairs.

In recent years, however, that delicate relationship has [end of p. 41] developed severe imbalances, and much of the responsibility must lie at Mrs. Gandhi’s door. During her time in office, power has systematically been removed from the States to the Centre; and the resentments created by this process have been building up for years. The troubles in the Punjab began when the Congress-I leadership persistently refused to discuss the then very moderate demands of the Akali Dal Party for the restitution to the State government of powers which the Centre had seized. There can be no doubt that this intransigence was a major contributing factor to the growth in support for Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale’s terrorists, and to the whole sorry process which resulted in the attack on the Golden Temple.