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BOOKS
INTERVIEW
Katherine Frank
"Indira was a series of many people over time and
at one time."
The evolutionary saga
of The life of Indira Gandhi is a biographer's delight and challenge.
Friends and admirers tried it, though it was far from a reader's delight.
Katherine Frank, 51, an American settled in England, can justifiably claim
to have achieved that rare feat. It took her six years to write this definitive
biography, and four of those years were devoted almost exclusively to
research, including three lengthy periods in India. Though she read almost
every published work connected with the Nehrus and the Gandhis and their
period, her most important sources were unpublished ones-archival materials
from India (Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Indira Gandhi Memorial
Trust, Shantiniketan), the UK (Somerville College, Oxford, Badminton School,
British Library), the US (the Dorothy Norman papers at Yale University)
and Switzerland (school and municipal archives); and interviews she had
with a great number of people who knew Indira. Frank, who holds a doctorate
in English literature, has written an acclaimed biography of Emily Bronte.
She has also taught in universities in West Africa, the Middle East and
Britain. Excerpts from her conversation with senior editor S. Prasannarajan.
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Q. What was it about
Indira Gandhi that made her a subject for you?
A. Indira's life is an exceptional story of privilege, solitude, power
and tragedy. I found her intrinsically interesting because of her psychological
evolution and complexity. She was, in fact, a series of many people or
selves both over time and at one time. But she has tended to be perceived
in one-dimensional, simplistic terms-often extreme ones of worship or
loathing. I wanted to go beyond the well-worn myths and caricatured images
of her.
Q. So, have you succeeded
in humanising Mrs G?
A.
I hope so. It's easy to judge Indira, and many people have-both positively
and harshly. It's far more difficult to understand her. I wanted to explore
the way historical imperatives and contingency determined her life. The
extent to which she was made by-as well as made-history. I think Indira
was, and felt herself to be, ordinary in contrast to Gandhi or Nehru.
But her life was enmeshed in extraordinary circumstances that meant that
she could never have an ordinary life, though she tried to. One of the
things that intrigued me about her story is how someone who wasn't inherently
of gigantic stature herself, responded to and behaved in the midst of
momentous events.
Q. Was the Gandhi
family, especially Sonia Gandhi, cooperative in the venture?
A.
Yes. I met Sonia Gandhi several times in Delhi and she was helpful. She
doesn't give interviews about her mother-in-law, but she discussed the
book with me. B. K. Nehru and his wife Fori Nehru talked to me and gave
me important leads. I interviewed Nayantara Sahgal and her sister Chandralekha
Mehta and am indebted to them for their recollections and help. I also
spoke to members of Feroze Gandhi's family in Mumbai and Allahabad.
Q. You are good at
characterisation and dramatising situations. Are they the liberties of
a good biographer?
A.
Everything in the book derives from documented fact. Nothing is invented.
Indira's life was inherently dramatic (and sometimes melodramatic). It
didn't require embellishment. What I tried to do was recount it as vividly
as I could.
Q. But the art of
the biographer continues to invite the worst kind of criticism.
A. Writing a biography is an art but it's also a moral activity. We
can't invent and aren't free agents like novelists are.
Q. Will the salacious-Indira's
lovers and Feroze's womanising-in the book overcloud the essential-the
evolution of Indira and her times?
A.
It would be a pity to focus on personal aspects of Indira's life without
grasping her development as a human being. It has never been proved one
way or another that she had any lovers. M.O. Mathai's books were published
more than 20 years ago, so his claim of having had a long affair with
Indira isn't news. Mathai is also a suspect witness, as are the other
men who proclaimed themselves to have been her lovers. I think it unlikely
that she had any lovers, but one can't be absolutely sure.
Q. The intimate Indira
comes through very well. Is it the real biographical achievement?
A.
Politicians have personal lives-they fall in love, suffer, achieve goals,
fail, try again... just like ordinary human beings. So yes, the intimate
Indira is the key to the book.
Q. Do you expect
some less than complimentary reactions from the Gandhi family?
A. I have no idea how they will react to the book. Sonia, who is the
custodian of the family papers, placed no obstacles in my way. But this
is certainly not an authorised biography.
Q. Is it the definitive
Indira story? Or is there more?
A. A
good biography can, at most, last a generation. Then it needs to be reassessed.
It's the definitive biography for the time being.
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