Sanjay Gandhi

Sanjay Gandhi was born on 14 December 1946 in New Delhi, the younger son of Indira Gandhi and Feroze Gandhi. In June 1971 he became managing director of Maruti Motors Limited, which built no vehicles in his lifetime. He held no office, but after Indira Gandhi declared the Emergency on 25 June 1975 he gained great influence over ministers and officials. The BBC's Mark Tully described his use of that power as setting up, in effect, a police state (Wikipedia).

The Shah Commission, set up by the Janata government on 28 May 1977 under Justice J. C. Shah, was especially harsh on him. A summary of its findings in the Sentinel (Assam) says ministers, officials and police acted on informal instructions and signals, not written law, and that it recorded 1,774 deaths linked to sterilisation procedures in the Emergency drive. Wikipedia reports police firing on residents protesting the demolition of homes at Turkman Gate in Delhi in April 1976, with at least 150 reportedly killed, and says historians disagree on how far Sanjay himself directed the sterilisation drive.

Punjab

In Amritsar: Mrs Gandhi's Last Battle (1985), Mark Tully and Satish Jacob argue that Congress set out to use a religious figure to embarrass and split the Akali Dal, then in coalition with the Janata Party in Punjab. As summarised by Virginia Van Dyke in the Journal of Sikh and Punjab Studies, they say Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale had Congress support in the 1979 SGPC elections, and that Giani Zail Singh and Sanjay Gandhi identified the issue that would lift him as a defender of the Panth, a clash with the Nirankaris. Van Dyke notes the book does not say who its sources were.

Tarlochan Singh, a former MP and former chairman of the National Commission for Minorities, disputes that Zail Singh was close to Bhindranwale. In the same article (SikhNet, 7 October 2022) he writes that in 1979 Sanjay Gandhi told Congress leaders, Zail Singh among them, to help the Bhindranwale group in the SGPC elections. Van Dyke also summarises the political scientist Paul Brass as arguing that Indira Gandhi's empowering of Sanjay during and after the Emergency brought an acceptance of violence into party politics.

At about 8:10 am on 23 June 1980 he lost control of his aircraft during an aerobatic manoeuvre and crashed in the Diplomatic Enclave in New Delhi. Captain Subhash Saxena, the only other person aboard, also died (Wikipedia).

Key moments

• 25 June 1975: the Emergency begins.
• 1976: the Turkman Gate demolitions and the sterilisation drive.
• 1979: according to Tarlochan Singh, tells Congress leaders to back the Bhindranwale group in the SGPC elections.
• 23 June 1980: dies in the crash.

What he is remembered for. He is remembered for the Emergency's excesses, which the Shah Commission put on record, and, in accounts of Punjab's road to 1984, as a Congress man said to be behind the use of Bhindranwale against the Akali Dal. Tully and Jacob make that claim; others dispute it.