Indira Gandhi's centenary: Two views

Indira-fan or Indira-phobe, these two views are a timely diversion from the summer heat

It’s an inescapable irony that in the year the Congress gears up to celebrate Indira Gandhi’s birth centenary, the fortunes of the family firm she properly founded are at a particularly low ebb, reduced to a woeful presence in Parliament and bruised by a succession of election defeats. What would the country’s second-longest serving prime minister (after her father), of whom it was said that she fought best when her back was to the wall, make of her heirs, who exhibit neither strategy nor stomach for getting ahead?

Reviled and revered, deified and demonised, the Indira mythology has consistently grown since