NEW DELHI, Oct. 5 Reuter: When a would be assassin fired shots towards Rajiv Gandhi in Delhi last Thursday, state television rushed to show pictures of the Prime Minister unhurt and saying coolly, “There is no problem at all”.

The haste was understandable. When Rajiv Gandhi’s mother Indira was shot dead two years ago by Sikh separatists, New Delhi and other parts of north India were plunged into rioting as Hindus took revenge on the small Sikh minority. The estimated toll was 2,700 dead,

This time the Prime Minister was not hit, and although the would be assassin was again a Sikh the capital has remained quiet.

But the incident was a reminder of just how fragile is the country’s unity and how dependent on a single life.

India is fond of reminding itself that it is the World’s largest democracy and remembering that when Indira Gandhi abrogated its freedom by declaring a state of emergency in 1975 the electorate responded by ousting her party and herself at opportunity,

But when the five party coalitions which succeeded Mrs, Gandhi fell apart less than three years after the people turned back to her without hesitation.

Indian democracy often looks more like constitutional monarchy Mrs. Gandhi was known, only half in jest, as “the Empress of India” and one political dynasty has ruled for all but four and a half ‘of the 39 years since independence.

Jawaharlal Nehru was un challenged as Prime Minister and leader of the Congress Party for 17 years, Indira Gandhi, his daughter, led the government and the party for nearly 16,

Four years before Mrs. Gandhi’s death her younger son and intended political heir, Sanjay, was Killed in a plane crash, In the aftermath of her assassination, party and people alike tuned to her surviving son, Rajiv, then 40, although he had no experience of government and no political power base, only the magic of the Gandhi name.

 But Rajiv’s teenaged son and daughter are as yet too young to carry on the dynasty.

If Thursday’s bullets had found their target, India would have no new figure of national stature to rally around, largely because Indira Gandhi was wary of possible challenges within the ranks of the party she led.

Her son, whose interests lean more towards foreign policy and Modern station, has himself neglected the party’s grassroots.

Its leaders at state level are mostly seen/as dispensers of political patronage whose power depends on their loyalty to Rajiv Gandhi rather than to their personal ability.

As for their political groups, the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the only other than Congress to have tasted power, has never put together a coherent platform since it was ousted, squabbling in 1980.

If Gandhi was to leave the stage a successor would of course be found.

But while that successor struggled to master a system illk prepared for anyone but a Gandhi, the forces pulling India’s nearly 800 million desperate people apart ‘would have free play.

Besides the Punjabi Sikhs, significant separatist movements exist among the Kashmiris, the Gurkhas in Assam and the Tamils in the South. On a communal level, the potential is always there for knife between Hindu and Moslem, Hindu and Sikh. ‘At presents all these forces are held in check not least by Gandhi’s image as an honest broker, a “Mr. Clean” above party politics. His conciliatory approach has already borne fruit in ending one rebellion, in the northeastern state of Mizoram.

But Thursday’s attack on Gandhi and the attempted murder of the Punjab Police Chief the following day brought charges that the security forces even those regarded as the elite are riddled with incompetence.

The authoritative Times of India said that in this they were not alone. “Not one of our institutions possess the efficiency of its counterpart in a truly modem state,” it declared.

Few Indians would argue. Which means that if Thursday’s attack had succeeded, it would have left a power vacuum which neither public figures nor internal security forces nor the apparatus of government in the World’s largest, and perhaps most vulnerable democracy appear ready to fill.

Article extracted from this publication >> October 10, 1986