The World: A Self-Styled Joan of Arc

There is considerable irony in the fact that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi temporarily suspended civil liberties to forestall an opposition campaign of civil disobedience. Although unrelated to Mohandas K. Gandhi, the secular saint of India who preached passive resistance as political strategy, Mrs. Gandhi is the only daughter of the Mahatma's colleague and political heir, Jawaharlal Nehru. She was only four years old when, in 1921, her father went to prison for the first time to protest British rule over the subcontinent, and she spent an intense, unhappy childhood prematurely immersed in the...

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