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00:02Indira Gandhi was always destined for greatness.
00:06As the first female leader of the world's largest democracy,
00:11she inherited a country plagued by poverty, famine and social injustice.
00:16A multi-religious nation of nearly half a billion people,
00:20recovering from over a hundred years of British colonial rule.
00:26Yet Indira triumphed over her critics,
00:29transformed India into a confident, independent democracy
00:33and rose to dominate India's political stage for nearly 20 years.
00:38In the Indian constitution, all citizens are equal,
00:42regardless of sex, religion, language.
00:46To the poor, she was Mother India.
00:49To others, Durga, the goddess of war.
00:53She was idolised and her position seemed unassailable at that point.
00:59Yet Indira was a woman of extreme contradictions.
01:03She was the democrat who became a dictator.
01:08She was the wife and mother who placed politics and power before her family.
01:12It never occurred to her that family and her own needs should come before political imperatives.
01:23Loved and loathed in equal measure, Indira's life was an epic saga of feuds, flaws and betrayal.
01:32A life ended by those she trusted to protect her.
01:40It was really history and circumstances that defeated her.
02:15What did you think life made with music only for a member of Inlandia?
02:23If I die a violent death, as some fear and a few are plotting, I know the violence will
02:29be in the thought and action of the assassin, not in my dying, for no hate is dark enough
02:34to overshadow the extent of my love for my people and my country.
02:47The extraordinary woman who wrote those words was born Indira Nehru on the 19th of November
02:551917 in Allahabad, India, to Kamla Nehru, wife of Jawaharlal Nehru.
03:03She was their only child.
03:10Indira was born at the height of the British Raj.
03:14The age of British rule and of Indian subservience to the British crown.
03:22Since the mid-1800s, India has been vital to the British Empire, an important source of
03:29raw materials and manpower.
03:31Indian soldiers had served in British wars throughout the world.
03:37India was Britain's jewel in the crown.
03:44Indira's grandfather, Mortalal, was a wealthy successful lawyer and he modelled himself on
03:50an English gentleman.
03:51The 42-room Nehru family home had the look and feel of an English country house, complete
03:58with servants.
03:59But when Indira was just two years old, something happened that would completely change their attitude
04:05to the British.
04:10On the 13th of April 1919, a crowd of 20,000 gathered in Amritsa in a show of peaceful resistance
04:18to the British.
04:20In response, the British Army Brigadier General gave his soldiers the order to shoot into
04:26the crowd.
04:28There was no warning and the gunfire lasted until the ammunition ran dry.
04:36Up to a thousand innocent people were killed, with more than 1,500 wounded.
04:41For Indira's grandfather, it was a turning point, and the entire Nehru family destroyed anything
04:48and everything they owned that was British.
04:54Amritsa changed things literally overnight.
04:57They gathered up all their European possessions and burnt them in huge bonfires out in the garden,
05:03and that was one of Indira's earliest memories.
05:10In the early 1920s, anti-British feeling was rife, and the Nehru family had become one of
05:17the most politically influential in India.
05:21Indira's childhood was dominated by politics.
05:26In 1929, her father Jawaharlal Nehru was elected president of the leading opposition movement,
05:32the Indian National Congress Party.
05:37He announced that his party's goal for the Indian people was nothing short of complete
05:42national independence.
05:44It was a battle cry.
05:50Mass civil disobedience and non-violent protests against British rule followed.
05:58But it wasn't long before the nationalists' activities led to Jawaharlal Nehru's arrest.
06:04And by the time Indira was 13, both her parents were in prison.
06:11Indira, a shy, sickly child with no friends her own age, was left almost to fend for herself.
06:19She was clearly emotionally neglected.
06:24Her parents disappeared abruptly, you know, in the dead of night.
06:29She saw the police entering the house carrying off expensive china in lieu of fines and household
06:35furniture.
06:37When her parents disappeared, she never knew how long it was going to be for.
06:41So it was, you know, incredibly chaotic childhood.
06:48But then Indira's lonely childhood became a tragic one.
06:57On the 28th of February, 1936, Indira's mother lost her 10-year battle with tuberculosis
07:04and died.
07:07Indira and her father were by her side, as was a man who would have a deep influence over
07:13Indira's life, Feroz Gandhi.
07:20Feroz Gandhi, no relation to the political leader, Mahatma Gandhi, had not originally been
07:26active in Indian politics.
07:30But inspired by Indira's mother, Kamla, he had dropped out of college to become a Congress
07:35volunteer.
07:37Since then, he had grown close to the Neru family and had become Kamla Neru's political assistant.
07:45He actually proposed to Indira when she was 16, before Kamla's death.
07:51And it's significant too, I don't know if Indira ever knew this, but on her deathbed, Kamla
07:58made Neru promise not to allow Indira to marry Feroz.
08:04And she said if she does, she'll be making the mistake of her life.
08:10Yet despite her family's misgivings, Indira's friendship with Feroz blossomed.
08:22Just seven months after her mother's death, Indira moved to London.
08:27She had failed her university entrance exams, and so began private tuition to try a second
08:33time.
08:36I love the crowds, the parks, and everything.
08:39Perhaps because it is the first time I was entirely on my own.
08:44But this was not strictly true.
08:47Feroz Gandhi was also in London, and living close by.
08:51Together they went to concerts, to the theatre, and took walks in the park.
08:57Indira and Feroz were in love.
09:01When in March 1937 Indira passed her university entrance exams, Feroz had moved to Paris.
09:10And she headed straight there to see him.
09:15In Paris Feroz proposed to her again, and this time she accepted.
09:20It was on the steps of the Sacré-Cœur that we finally and definitely decided.
09:27She wanted to marry, and she wanted to have children, and she wanted to be in love.
09:31And this was, you know, it was really quite a brave thing she did to choose Feroz, and
09:38to stick by it, and to be adamant about it.
09:45But Indira kept her engagement to Feroz a secret.
09:49Her family still thought him entirely unsuitable.
09:58In the autumn of 1937, when Indira was 19 years old, she took her place at Oxford University
10:05to study history.
10:06But politics was never far away.
10:09And she immersed herself in the University Labour Club and the Indian Political Society.
10:15But in the following years, Indira's studies were interrupted.
10:23First by a life-threatening bout of tuberculosis, and then by war.
10:35On the 10th of July 1940, the Battle of Britain began.
10:44Within two months, the German Luftwaffe had launched the Blitz, and bombed major British
10:49cities for 76 consecutive nights.
10:53In London alone, more than a million houses were destroyed or damaged, and 20,000 civilians
11:00killed.
11:02Feroz was in London, which was being daily bombed, and I felt my place was with him.
11:11On New Year's Day 1941, Indira arrived in a war-torn London.
11:17Her illness had forced her and Feroz to be apart for over a year.
11:22But the absence hadn't diminished their love.
11:29Together, they fled the London Blitz for the safety of India.
11:33More determined than ever to marry.
11:36But somehow, Indira had to win her father's blessing.
11:41Indira told him in a letter, I've tasted the cup of happiness.
11:46Most people never experienced this.
11:49Now I have the opportunity.
11:51This is what I want from my life.
11:54And, you know, how can you say no to that?
12:00So on the 26th of March, 1942, in a simple Hindu ceremony, Indira married the man she loved.
12:12Indira Nehru became Indira Nehru Gandhi.
12:25The newlyweds honeymooned in Kashmir.
12:28Since childhood, Indira had felt the most at peace in the foothills of the Himalayas.
12:35But it was clear from the start that this was never going to be a traditional marriage with Feroz in
12:42charge.
12:43Because, with the honeymoon over, Indira's passion for Indian politics was reignited.
12:50And her priority became the struggle for independence.
12:56In the war years, the British Empire was vulnerable.
13:01Thousands of Indian soldiers were serving in the ranks of the British Army.
13:06And in 1942, the Indian nationalists played their trump card and set up the Quit India Movement.
13:16If the British government did not quit India, India would no longer support the British war effort.
13:26It was the most serious threat to British rule yet.
13:31And the British responded by arresting Congress members and brutally suppressing protests.
13:41By the end of 1942, there had been 60,000 arrests.
13:45And it wasn't long before Indira herself was arrested, merely for raising the nationalist flag.
13:56Finally, like her mother and father before her, Indira was going to prison, fighting for independence.
14:03It was a Nehru rite of passage, and she emerged a different person.
14:11Well, all these things went to strengthening one's determination.
14:16And, of course, it helps to harden you physically and mentally to put up with a lot of things afterwards.
14:26But Indira's imprisonment, and her dedication to politics, placed an enormous strain on her marriage to Feroz,
14:33as did their strong personalities.
14:36We quarrelled a lot. We were two equally strong types, equally pig-headed.
14:45After 243 days in prison, on the 13th of May, 1943, Indira was released.
14:57Within five years, Indira had given birth to two boys, Rajiv and Sanjay Nehru Gandhi.
15:07But her joy was overshadowed, for Rose had been having affairs with other women.
15:16Indira wouldn't agree to a divorce, even though their marriage was near the point of no return.
15:24But once again, politics intervened.
15:32The Second World War was over.
15:36And the new left-wing British government was paving the way to grant independence to India.
15:48On the 15th of August, 1947, British India became independent India.
15:58At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.
16:07It was the moment Indira had been striving for all her life.
16:12Freedom was just so big a thing that it could not register.
16:17It seemed to fill all of you and all your world.
16:22India had achieved independence.
16:25And Indira's father, Jawaharlal Nehru, was sworn in as India's first Prime Minister.
16:33But independence had come at a price.
16:38In 1947, India had a population of nearly 350 million, with Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs as the main religious groups.
16:52In granting independence, Britain had agreed to create a completely separate state for Muslims.
16:59British India was to be partitioned into two different countries, India and a Muslim Pakistan.
17:07And the new state of Pakistan was itself to be divided into two geographically separate regions,
17:13in the extreme west and the other in the east.
17:19These new borders were drawn hastily and tore in half an area known as the Punjab.
17:27It left five million Sikhs and Hindus in Muslim Pakistan,
17:32and five million Muslims in a predominantly Hindu India.
17:39There was outright slaughter.
17:42Strong measures are still being taken to prevent further outbreaks of mob violence in Calcutta,
17:47where the strife between Muslim and Hindu has now spread to other parts of Bengal.
17:56Indira felt she couldn't just look on, as millions were displaced and murdered.
18:01She placed her own family life second,
18:04and became unofficial assistant and advisor to her father, the Prime Minister.
18:09And Indira helped him deal with the legacy of partition.
18:21What a life I have made for myself.
18:24I am confident of myself, but still humble enough to feel acutely embarrassed when all kinds of VIPs come for
18:31advice.
18:33But not for the first time.
18:35Her dedication to politics was in direct conflict with her husband's expectations of her as a wife and mother.
18:43You know, she had this kind of hierarchy in her mind in the 50s, of needs, and right at the
18:50top was Nehru,
18:52who was a widower and who was the Prime Minister of India.
18:57Probably second were her children.
19:01Probably third was Faroes.
19:06Matters came to her head when, in 1959, she was formally elected to the figurehead role of President of the
19:14Congress Party.
19:18Firoz has always resented me my very existence.
19:22But since I have become President, he exudes such hostility that it seems to poison the air.
19:28I have been and am deeply unhappy in my domestic life.
19:32I am so sorry to have missed the most wonderful thing in life,
19:36having a complete and perfect relationship with another human being.
19:43For 42 years, her life had been nothing but politics.
19:48Now she made a remarkable decision.
19:51Politics would take a back seat.
19:54She would try to salvage her marriage to Firoz and find the personal happiness she craved.
20:01So in January 1960, Indira Gandhi stepped down as Congress President.
20:10For a time, the strains in her marriage eased.
20:13And she, Faroes, and her two young boys spent time as a family in the mountains of Kashmir.
20:20But then, tragedy struck.
20:25On the 8th of September 1960, Firoz suffered a heart attack and died.
20:33Well, it had been a stormy marriage and a passionate marriage as well.
20:43She was left absolutely devastated and she made a very telling remark.
20:50She said, when Firoz died, all the colour went out of my life.
20:55Within four years, tragedy would strike Indira again.
21:03A few moments before two o'clock, Jawaharlal Nehru breathed his life.
21:09On the 27th of May, 1964, Indira's father and Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, died.
21:22Nehru left a void.
21:24And there was immediate speculation as to who would be his successor.
21:29Such was the power of the Nehru name that Indira was the first choice.
21:34But she was adamant frontline politics was not for her.
21:40It can't be thrust upon me if I do not want it.
21:45The following month, Lal Bhadhar Shastri was sworn in as India's second Prime Minister.
21:52But in less than two years, he too was dead.
21:57Once again, Indira was the obvious candidate to succeed.
22:03And this time, she viewed the offer in a different frame of mind.
22:08She began to think leading India was her destiny.
22:18On the 24th of January, 1966, Indira Gandhi was sworn in as the first female Prime Minister of the world's
22:28largest democracy.
22:29I, Indira Gandhi, do solemnly affirm
22:34that I will bear true faith and allegiance
22:37that I will bear true faith and allegiance
22:40to the constitution of India as by law established
22:44to the constitution of India as by law established.
22:48Indira Gandhi was now responsible for a population of an estimated 493 million people.
22:56It was a new beginning, both for her and for the country she loved.
23:09But the India she inherited was in a worse state than at any time since independence.
23:17After partition, the regional princes had kept their privy purses and privileges
23:23and were draining the government of its scant resources.
23:26But while the rich were getting richer, the poor were getting poorer.
23:33Worst of all, the country was vulnerable to droughts and famine.
23:39It was a period of turmoil for India on several fronts.
23:44There had been food shortages.
23:47There was a massive foreign exchange crisis.
23:50So the immediate reaction to her ascension to power was very much coloured by these challenges
24:01that India was facing at the time.
24:08To meet the immediate crisis, India needed foreign aid.
24:12India swung into action and embarked upon a whistle-stop series of state visits across the world.
24:21Her uniqueness as a female leader charmed foreign politicians.
24:26So much so, that in March 1966, America's President Johnson promised her 3 million tonnes of food
24:35and a massive $9 million in aid.
24:39But if her being a woman was an advantage abroad, it was clearly a disadvantage at home.
24:47She comes to power and is essentially seen as somebody who might be pliable,
24:55who would be easily influenced by the Congress bosses.
25:01But if Congress believed that because Indira was a woman, she was naive,
25:06or that she would bend to their will, they were quite wrong.
25:14Indira had no intention of being anyone's puppet.
25:19In a brilliant piece of political positioning, Indira Gandhi played upon her femininity
25:25and styled herself Mother India.
25:28Mother to each and every one of the 493 million strong Indian population.
25:35And what Mother India promised to do was to wipe out poverty.
25:43In 1967, Indira launched her Socialist Manifesto.
25:49At its heart were radical reforms to make famine a thing of the past.
25:54She provided the rural poor with electricity and water.
25:58Farmers were given fertilisers.
26:00She stripped the wealthy regional princes of their privileges and titans.
26:09Indira named it her Green Revolution.
26:13And for a while, widespread famine became a bad memory.
26:19After just four years in office, Indira had won the hearts and minds of the people
26:24and achieved nothing short of adulation.
26:34The 1971 election was the biggest Democratic poll in history.
26:40150 million people voted.
26:43Well, she was carrying on what she saw as her father's socialist program and plan and vision.
26:50And it was a winner, electorally, because it made the poor and the dispossessed, or the vast majority of Indians,
26:59feel that she was representing them.
27:06Indira won a landslide victory.
27:13For her second full term in office, she had an even larger mandate than her father had enjoyed.
27:20But soon, Indira's strengths would be tested further.
27:25Because she had a major international crisis on her hands.
27:34The problem was the Muslim homeland of Pakistan.
27:38Partitioned by the British in two separate land masses on either side of India.
27:43This single country in two pieces had been under military rule for nearly 13 years.
27:51Now the people of East Pakistan wanted something different.
27:55They were calling for independence.
27:57Pakistan was on the brink of collapse.
28:04On the 17th of March 1971, the Pakistani central government ordered its army to crush the political unrest in East
28:13Pakistan at any cost.
28:15The army looted, burned and destroyed homes and businesses.
28:20Women were raped and by the end of that year, three million people had been slaughtered.
28:26Millions of refugees began to pour across the border into India.
28:30It was the worst humanitarian crisis to hit the area since partition.
28:38Indira was horrified.
28:41What we saw in the camps defied description.
28:45More than the stories of what had happened to them.
28:47It was their physical and mental state that assaulted our moral sensibility.
28:56Indira feared the genocide of the East Pakistani people.
29:00But she also feared India could not shoulder the burden of feeding and housing tens of millions of refugees.
29:08She appealed to the rest of the world to help.
29:12The problem is an international one.
29:14But the weight of it has fallen on India.
29:17It is surely the duty of the world not to delay in creating conditions in which these refugees can return
29:23without fear.
29:25But the United States and many Western countries backed the regime in West Pakistan.
29:34So Indira challenged them.
29:37She took the biggest gamble of her political career and openly backed the rebel forces of East Pakistan in their
29:45quest for independence.
29:53Relations between India and Pakistan soon reached crisis point.
29:59And on the 3rd of December 1971, when the West Pakistani Air Force bombed nine Indian air bases, Indira took
30:08it as a declaration of war.
30:15Indira herself took charge of the military campaign.
30:19Her action was swift, decisive and unforgiving.
30:24Within just 14 days, the West Pakistani Army had surrendered to Indira's forces.
30:30East Pakistan, renamed as Bangladesh, had its independence.
30:38North India had proved herself to be a tough-minded and courageous war leader.
30:45There's something quite exhilarating, isn't there, about a woman leading a country into war and being a victor.
30:54This is usually seen as a male prerogative.
30:59And, yeah, she was idolized and her position seemed unassailable at that point.
31:06She was not only Mother India, but she was Durga, the goddess of war.
31:11But then, it all began to go wrong.
31:21By the summer of 1972, famine had returned.
31:28Strikes crippled the economy.
31:31Inflation soared by 20%.
31:37Then, in 1974, over two million rail workers brought the country to a standstill, trying to bring down Indira's government.
31:49Her response was immediate.
31:54She had over 20,000 rail workers arrested and jailed.
31:58In less than three weeks, she crushed the strike.
32:02But she had also crushed much of her popularity.
32:07Worse was to follow.
32:12In the spring of 1975, she was accused of vote rigging during the previous general election.
32:19Indira refused to appear in court.
32:22But in her absence, she was found guilty.
32:26Her grip on power was slipping.
32:29And her response was unprecedented.
32:34In the early hours of the 26th of June 1975, Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency.
32:42She censored the newspapers and detained opposition leaders without trial.
32:49Indira, who had once fought so hard for the creation of a free democratic India, was herself suspending democracy.
32:59She was convinced for a time that this was necessary.
33:04And, in fact, after the emergency was imposed, a lot of people felt that things were much better.
33:11Smuggling decreased, crime decreased, corruption decreased, the trains ran on time.
33:19And so the emergency was initially seen as something of a success.
33:24But then, as time wore on, the opposition became stronger and stronger.
33:32India was now effectively a dictatorship.
33:36And many were concerned that she had now not only abandoned democracy, but was paving the way for a Gandhi
33:43dynasty.
33:47Sanjay, Indira's second son, thought himself quite a businessman.
33:54He wanted to make his fortune by mass-producing small, cheap cars.
33:59His mother's government granted him a lucrative exclusive license.
34:04And government ministers made donations to his company to try to further their careers.
34:11But in two years, Sanjay's company failed to produce a single vehicle.
34:17However, Sanjay had not only gained wealth, but huge influence in government and a taste for power.
34:40Sanjay was a young man who was driven, he was on the make, he wanted to make a lot of
34:45money.
34:45And he was clearly intoxicated by power.
34:49He doesn't seem to have had a clue about the nature of his family's contribution and past.
34:58You know, he was in it for the thrill of it, and for the power of it.
35:04And Indira's state of emergency gave Sanjay greater freedom to act than ever before.
35:15During the emergency, Sanjay devised a simple five-point plan to solve all of India's problems.
35:23It sounded splendid in theory.
35:26To increase adult literacy, beautify the environment, abolish the bridal dowry,
35:32and end the oppressive caste system which discriminated against the very poor.
35:39These things needed to be addressed.
35:43It was the bluntness of the weapon that he used, you know, that became notorious.
35:52He was going to beautify the environment.
35:54Well, what this meant in Sanjay Gandhi's head was simply bulldozing the slums.
35:59And that means destroying the homes of very, very poor people,
36:03and driving them in vans way onto the outskirts of Delhi and dumping them.
36:11But it was Sanjay's fifth and final aim that caused widespread outcry, both at home and abroad.
36:20By the early 1970s, the death rate in India had plummeted, and the population was growing by 12 million people
36:27a year.
36:29Everyone agreed something had to be done to control India's population growth.
36:35Sanjay Gandhi's answer was a radical family planning programme of mass sterilisation.
36:45Men were rounded up and taken to sterilisation centres with the incentive of a tin of cooking oil or a
36:51transistor radio.
36:53Managers had a quota of workers they had to bring forward for sterilisation.
36:59In the six months between April and September 1976, two million Indians, mainly the very poorest, were sterilised.
37:11Sanjay's policies went against everything Indira had stood for.
37:14But she did nothing to stop him.
37:17Instead, she gave him more and more power.
37:21She seemed oblivious to the harm he was doing.
37:29Eventually, in the spring of 1977, Indira was forced to call a general election.
37:37She was in for a shock.
37:41On election day, the 21st of March, the people deserted Indira's party in their masses.
37:48After a decade in power and years of adulation, Indira suffered a humiliating defeat.
37:59At 59 years old, she had failed.
38:03It seemed her political career was over.
38:07But within six months, things would change dramatically.
38:19One of the most extraordinary turnarounds in political history was set in motion
38:24when the new government started to hound the Gandhi family,
38:28putting them under surveillance and confiscating their passports.
38:33Indira, the criminal politician, was transformed into Indira the Martyr.
38:39By the time the government arrested Indira for her misuse of power during the state of emergency,
38:45huge crowds gathered in support at her home.
38:50The next day, Indira was released, but the damage was already done.
38:56So, with Mrs. Gandhi back home, a free woman,
38:59it looks as though her arrest has backfired on the government.
39:03It's those who are discredited, not Mrs. Gandhi.
39:06They've also given her enormous publicity,
39:08and she's already getting more of that than the government can like.
39:15The Indian government had become so unstable that it was dissolved,
39:23and the political enemies, who thought they had seen the last of Indira,
39:28braced themselves for her return.
39:34It becomes more and more clear that the only candidates that matter are those from Mrs. Gandhi's Congress I party.
39:43On the 14th of January 1980, Indira Gandhi was sworn in as Prime Minister for the fourth time.
39:53But her happiness at returning to politics was short-lived.
39:59I could just accept that the aircraft's engine cut out in the middle of aerobatics.
40:03It then plunged into the ground, narrowly missing a housing estate
40:07a few hundred yards behind Mr. Gandhi's own bungalow.
40:10Both pilots were killed.
40:11On the 23rd of June 1980, Indira's son and heir apparent, Sanjay Gandhi, died in a plane crash.
40:22She was distraught.
40:25When he died, not only was she grief-stricken and devastated, but she really lost the only person that she
40:34was close to.
40:36Um, close to emotionally and close to politically.
40:42In a life punctuated with bereavements, um, this was nothing less than catastrophic.
40:53Indira turned for support to her elder son, Rajiv Gandhi.
40:58He had never wanted to be a politician, and now she had to persuade him to quit his job as
41:04an airline pilot and step into the political limelight.
41:08He was the Gandhi dynasty's last hope.
41:13Rajiv succumbed to his overwhelming sense of duty.
41:17And on the 5th of May 1981, he stood for Parliament.
41:23In true Gandhi style, he won.
41:27Indira had a Gandhi political heir once more.
41:31But by now, India was in turmoil.
41:38Religious violence was breaking out in hotspots across the country.
41:41Many religious groups had called for outright independence, threatening to tear India apart.
41:49Even moderate Sikhs were now talking about an independent Sikh state in the Punjab.
41:55But the Punjab was the breadbasket of India, and Indira refused to relinquish her control over so vital an area.
42:12The
42:12Into the political stalemate stepped power-hungry fundamentalist, Janal Singh Bindramwali.
42:19In the limelight, Bindramwali accumulated a band of die-hard extremist followers,
42:25who began a brutal campaign of murder against the local Hindu population.
42:32Indira, once known for her fearless decisiveness, failed to take action.
42:39Then, towards the end of 1981, Bindramwali sees the most sacred of all Sikh temples,
42:46the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
42:51It became the operational headquarters of his campaign of slaughter.
42:58And somewhere he thought the authorities wouldn't dare touch him.
43:04For almost three years, Indira tried for a peaceful solution, but got nowhere.
43:12And the more she hesitated, the more Bindramwali and his men dug in.
43:17The Punjab was becoming ungovernable and completely lawless, and so Indira reluctantly decided that she had to send in the
43:31army and flush Bindramwali out.
43:38And the more she had to send in the army.
43:39On the 30th of May, 1984, a sequence of events was set in motion that would change the course of
43:46Indian history.
43:47Indira Gandhi gave the go-ahead for Operation Blue Star.
43:51Indian troops began to seal off Amritsar.
43:56Three days later, on the 2nd of June, Indira broadcast a message.
44:02I cannot allow violence and terrorism in the settlement of issues.
44:06To all sections of Punjabis, don't shed blood, shed hatred.
44:14But even as she spoke, her 1,000-strong team of soldiers closed in on Amritsar and prepared for a
44:21siege.
44:24On the evening of the 5th of June, Indian army commandos made their first assault.
44:31But they faced huge problems.
44:35She had very bad or inadequate intelligence about how many of them were in the Golden Temple, how many arms
44:45they had.
44:46There was also the problem that the Golden Temple was a place of worship that was flooded with civilian pilgrims.
44:53You know, how was this going to be done without devastating loss of life?
45:04But what followed was a bloodbath.
45:07And when, around midnight, the tanks were called in, large-scale damage to the sacred temple and further bloodshed was
45:15inevitable.
45:18It wasn't until dawn broke on the third day of the siege that the Indian army gained control of the
45:23temple and found the body of Bindramwali.
45:29An estimated 600 militants had died with him in the severely damaged temple.
45:36But well over 1,000 innocent pilgrims were also casualties of the crossfire.
45:43Many Sikhs felt as if their holiest of temples had been violated by Indira Gandhi personally.
45:51Many wanted revenge.
45:54From that time forwards, Indira Gandhi certainly felt, and rightly so, that she was likely to become a casualty of
46:05Operation Blue Star herself.
46:08She realized it had gone badly wrong, and far from restoring stability, that it had in fact wreaked yet even
46:19more division and violence and hatred.
46:25In the weeks after Operation Blue Star, Indira remained calm in public, but she was acutely aware she was in
46:34grave danger.
46:35Yet she refused to take the advice of her security services and dismiss her Sikh guards and staff.
46:45In October 1984, Indira wanted to spend time in the place she had always found peace, Kashmir.
46:52So for a few days, she escaped the mountains she had fallen in love with as a child.
46:58I am here today, I may not be here tomorrow.
47:01I am proud that I spent the whole of my life in the service of my people.
47:06And when I die, I can say that every drop of my blood will invigorate India and strengthen it.
47:24Indira returned to Delhi on the evening of the 30th of October 1984.
47:32The following day, she rose early to prepare for a television interview in her garden.
47:39At ten minutes past nine, Indira walked out into the garden path, where she greeted her two Sikh bodyguards.
47:48Beant Singh pulled out his revolver and fired five rounds.
47:54Satwant Singh fired 25 bullets from his submachine gun.
48:00Indira was rushed to hospital.
48:02But at 2.23pm on the 31st of October 1984, she was pronounced dead.
48:20Indira's body lay in state for two days.
48:24Millions came to mourn who they still saw as Mother India.
48:28Her cremation was broadcast live around the world.
48:32Indira Gandhi's death had left a nation in shock, but Indira had planned her successor.
48:39Rajiv Gandhi, Indira's surviving son, was sworn in as India's sixth prime minister.
48:46Less than seven years later, he too would be assassinated by religious extremists.
48:55So who was the real Indira Gandhi?
48:59India's greatest prime minister or merely the most controversial?
49:04Criticised by her enemies for being strong-willed, ruthless and autocratic.
49:10Yet worshipped by her supporters for her unique empathy with the poor, Indira Gandhi was a woman of stark contrasts.
49:20I think she was a decent human being.
49:24I think she was amazingly courageous.
49:28She, you know, believed that she, her whole life, had been devoted to her country.
49:35Yes, indeed it had.
49:36And that some good would emerge from this.
49:39But it all went drastically wrong, really despite that.
49:45Indira paid the price for her very public flaws.
49:50Yet the confidence she gave India on the world stage has endured.
49:55India has become one of the most prosperous and dynamic countries in the world.
50:00Even if the opinion of Indira Gandhi's personal legacy remains divided.
50:06India has become one of the most mieszanarians and��cts from the yearsHIHI.
50:09Sinister?