Watching this British Pathe news report from India in 1966 is like stepping into another world. A world before Nehru-Gandhi was a pejorative term. Before the Congress had turned into an organisation controlled by one family. Before the words socialist and secular were inserted into the Indian constitution. Before Emergency.
"She is perhaps the only person in the country whose election would not split the Congress party," says the announcer in the video, as video showed the Congress legislative party voting for Indira Gandhi over Morarji Desai to be prime minister after the death of Lal Bahadur Shastri. "Mr Desai probably guessed as the votes were being counted that he had little chance, and, when it was time for the result to be declared Mrs Gandhi was elected by a large majority."
It would, of course, have been hard then to gauge what would eventually come, of Indira Gandhi's tenure as Prime Minister, which would come to include independent India's only experience of dictatorship. But even then the scale of the challenge of administering the country was easy to see and the announcer would end up being somewhat prescient.
"Perhaps no other woman in history has borne so tremendous a responsiblity, leading a government of more than 450 million people. She is a true Nehru, calm and dignified... Indira Gandhi has good wishes of most of the world."
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