If Indira Gandhi hated marigolds, Rajiv Gandhi couldn’t handle garlands: especially the long, heavy ones. More than the flowers, the thread on which they were strung together would cut his skin. If he escaped that, he battled with a rash. But then, Rajiv had sensitive skin. It would go red at a touch. Even flower stalks hurt him. Therefore, if the petals were not separated from the roses, or marigolds were thrown at him by admirers, he would get bruised.
Kripashankar Singh, then a prominent leader in the Maharashtra Congress narrated to me how Rajiv had once instructed him about storing the garlands in the boot of the car: “Wapas nahin dena, ek mala laate hain aur baar baar pehnate hain,” (Don’t return the garlands back to the crowds; they bring one and keep rotating the same).
Apparently, Rajiv had then explained to Kripashankar how it worked: you take off the heap of garlands around your neck and hand it over to the person standing next to you. He passes it on to the next and almost replicates a game of Pass the Parcel. Within a few minutes, new faces emerge holding the same old garlands and thus carries on the process.
This was news for the dyed-in-the-wool Kripashankar who had started off as a food vendor and worked his way up. Even his vast experience in politics had not taught him what Rajiv Gandhi, a late entrant into the rough and tumble of politics, had figured out in no time. Whether it was his eye for detail, or coming to terms with being a politician, but Rajiv’s initial battles were with getting the basics right.
Somehow, Rajiv Gandhi never understood the logic of garlands: particularly the humongous ones made of marigold, some several feet long, carted by a dozen hands.
I remember Rajiv Gandhi’s election as leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party on December 31, 1984. The late GK Moopanar, who was the General Secretary of the Tamil Nadu Congress party at the time, had brought a huge marigold garland to mark his leader’s elevation. Four men had assisted him in garlanding Rajiv, who had nearly got crushed under its weight. A few laddoos were also stuffed into his mouth. Even as Rajiv was struggling with the sweets and flowers, JK Jain, a Rajiv Gandhi loyalist, had remarked: “Our leader is strong enough to bear any burden,” unmindful of Rajiv’s discomfort with both the spectacle, and the weight of the flowers around his neck.
It was Kiran Choudhary, now in state politics, who had advised Rajiv to carry an ointment after noticing the rash he had once developed. “It’s the garlands,” he had told her.
“But, Rajiv ji, you should apply some ointment,” she’d suggested indulgently and rushed to get him some. Whenever she accompanied him to rallies, Kiran would either carry cardamom or lozenges for him. “He would speak for hours on end and his throat would be parched.” The skin ointment later became part of her kit and stayed there for as long as Rajiv was alive.
Rajiv Gandhi, the pilot-turned-reluctant politician was getting into the groove, slowly getting used to the dust and grime of politics, as also hordes of people, and the attention that came with it. At one point, he had actually started enjoying it and gave up the struggle of keeping his personal life completely private. In that sense, Rajiv was a people’s person, less like his brother, Sanjay, and more like his mother, Indira Gandhi.
Yet what distinguished Rajiv Gandhi from the run-of-the-mill politician was making it apparent that his life didn’t begin and end with politics. His family was important and as I said, he was among the few politicians who was often seen with his wife. Sonia Gandhi, despite her initial aversion to politics, would accompany Rajiv on many of his tours both when he was a party functionary and later as the prime minister.
Kiran Choudhary recalled how “immensely protective” Rajiv was of Sonia Gandhi. “He would even shield her from the flowers. During election rallies, people who couldn’t reach him, would throw garlands at him. Sonia and Rajiv often travelled in an open jeep and the garlands could sometimes hit you hard when hurled from the streets. I noticed how Rajiv would crane his neck forward to cover Sonia. I often teased my husband asking him to learn from Rajiv how women should be treated. Seekho kuch, I would tell him.”
It was ironic that it was a garland which eventually took Rajiv’s life. It was May 21, 1991 when Rajiv’s fate was being sealed in a sleepy temple town in Tamil Nadu, the birthplace of a great philosopher, Sri Ramanuja. His assassin was walking through the crowds in Sriperumbudur holding a garland, like any other admirer.
A woman constable had tried barring her from moving forward when Rajiv had asked her to allow the young woman, who one later discovered was called Dhanu. When Dhanu had tried elbowing her way to position herself closer to Rajiv, he again told the constable, “Don’t worry, let everyone have a turn; don’t worry, relax.”
The security personnel were genuinely worried, for the crowds were not only surging, but getting out of control. Dhanu, who was conspicuous because of her thick glasses, struck with precision, placing a sandalwood garland around Rajiv’s neck. It was to be his last. As he took it off, considering he always did, she had bent down to press a button. There was a loud explosion which had ripped him and several others apart.
My sense is that had Dhanu been a man, Rajiv may have let the constable have her way. It was the gentleman in him that did not want a lady jostling and struggling in a crowd.
When Kiran Choudhary’s entry into politics was attributed to her good looks, she had complained to Rajiv about this terrible bias. He had smiled and told her to get on with her job and ignore such jibes. “If you want to remain in politics, then you must develop the hide of a rhinoceros.”
Courteous to a fault, Rajiv Gandhi always made it a point to walk up from his desk to say his goodbyes to women visitors. Given that chivalry is rare amongst Indian men, particularly politicians, Rajiv’s women visitors often came out with a heady feeling and wouldn’t tire of narrating the “door story”.
Had it been anyone else, I would have put it to clever tactics, but the concept was alien to Rajiv.
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I remember Rajiv Gandhi as a newly appointed General Secretary of the Congress party. He would chat for long hours, almost like a keen student of politics decoding the intricacies of a system that was still alien to him. Despite the bitter criticism that he faced from many about being the privileged son of Indira Gandhi and the scion of the dynasty, he seemed earnest.
Unlike his brother, Sanjay Gandhi who was somewhat brash, Rajiv would make an attempt to understand, but express surprise at every bit of information.
Everything was “like big news” to which his one word response was “Really?” I think Rajiv was often at sea about how things worked. His situation was best summed up by a Mahila Congress leader who told me rather dramatically, “He is like an angel from heaven, trying to find his feet on earth.”
But Rajiv was a fast learner, at least seen to be one, because he was aware that in order to survive in politics, one had to plunge into the deep end.
If his advise to Kripashankar was any indication of a man who was getting used to his life as a politician, there was this other story about the “oil formula” that he had adapted to keep people away during his rallies.
Rajiv Gandhi would often travel only in an open jeep, and I have been witness to incredible scenes where in the rural hinterland, there would be utter commotion with several people trying to touch him, get in a word, or even clamber onto his jeep from all sides.
I remember one such tour in Kanpur when he was out of power. It was the height of summer and the temperatures were killing. The jeep Rajiv was driving had over a dozen people hanging on to it and an equal number riding in it. As a result, the jeep was moving at the snail’s speed of less than a kilometre an hour. Added to the discomfort was the continuous throwing of garlands from all directions. Those were halcyon days, when a bunch of journalists would travel together while tracking a politician. I remember Anuradha Prasad, who later began spelling her first name as Anurradha, who is now the head of a television channel, travelling along for a story.
She was in the jeep behind ours. Even in that mad scramble when several journalists were trying to get a foothold on to Rajiv’s jeep, Anuradha had refused to budge.
Suddenly, Rajiv’s jeep had come to a complete standstill. It had had a breakdown. We heard Anuradha shout loudly from behind: “Mujhe maloom tha, yahi hoga tumhare saath,” (I knew this would happen with you guys).
So here was Rajiv Gandhi, sitting in a stationary jeep in the middle of a town with hundreds of people teeming around him. Many crawled upto the bonnet to reach him.
At this point, Rajiv Gandhi had turned to some of the men in his team and asked them to rub oil on the bonnet of his jeep. “Sab ludak jayenge,” (All of them will come tumbling down), he had said. In retrospect, not only was his statement ironical, but also ominous because there came a time when he himself had slid off from the seat of power after riding the wave with 400 plus seats in parliament.
That Rajiv was a reluctant politician was well known, but he was also not as clued into politics as was expected of a politician; quite similar to his mother, who had started off rather slowly, but had learnt the ropes swiftly, even as Rajiv could not, also because his career was cut short by his untimely death. Even his son, Rahul Gandhi seemed ill-at-ease with mainstream politics initially, often taking off on holidays even as crucial decisions awaited his approval. Mrs Gandhi also often took vacations, particularly to Dachigam, around twenty-two kilometres away from Srinagar; so also did Rajiv.
However, once Rajiv Gandhi donned the mantle of prime minister, it was expected of him to learn the finer points of realpolitik. As one of the first steps as prime minister, he decided to change the old order, his mother’s trusted loyalists, who many rightfully associated with corruption, sloth, and outdated concepts. The all-powerful RK Dhawan was amongst the first to go, and there were rumours that he wasn’t even allowed to take his papers along.
Rajiv Gandhi also did the unthinkable by excluding a senior leader like Pranab Mukherjee from his Cabinet. Instead of being seated in the front row in Rashtrapati Bhawan on a day when Rajiv Gandhi was being sworn in, Mukherjee was home watching the ceremony on television.
Having gotten rid of some of his mother’s colleagues, Rajiv surrounded himself with a bunch of young men like Arun Singh and Amitabh Bachchan. But as it turned out later, most of his “boys” proved to be inept: they neither spoke nor understood the language Indian politics demanded.
Excerpted with permission from The Marigold Story: Indira Gandhi and Others, Kumkum Chadha, Tranquebar.
