Speaking of Conspiracies

No form of socio-political existence is as dangerous as the one that has run out of conspiracy theories, or has even proscribed the circulation of them through legal measures. I define a 'conspiracy theory' not as a hallucinatory fantasy that someone may conjure out of 'thin air', but as a plausible alternative description of a certain series of events that places them within a broader conceptual framework which might have remained unnoticed (though the question of just how plausible it is will be a question that cannot be settled by the theorist herself).

Speaking for myself, I happen to harbour all sorts of conspiracy theories, such as theories which (at least, according to me) will really explain why some people believe in God, why some become atheists, why some women want to have babies so desperately, why some society-dames are such excellent brokers in the marriage-market, why some students want to get a Ph.D., why some academics want to publish books, why some netters write blogs, and why others even bother to read them. For the moment, however, I shall put forward (craving the indulgence of 'fact-hunting' historians, Indologists and political analysts) a conspiracy theory to explain why Indira Gandhi was able to become the Prime Minster of India.

In my younger days, I was quite impressed to learn that very few countries in the world have had women Heads-of-State; and even more so to find out that most of these 'very few countries' happen to be in South Asia : Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India. Later on, when I came to learn some troublesome words like 'patriarchy', I began to wonder : How is it possible that South Asia, one of the most Patriarchy-infested zones in the world, has produced (at least) four women Heads? One thing led to another, and a conspiracy theory began to brew.

"We must always start, as they used to tell us in school, with the beginnings. The beginnings were made when a young lad called Jawaharlal Nehru came to Trinity College, Cambridge in the 1910s. The time he spent in Trinity made a lasting impression on this young mind, and one of the things that he learnt there was that the independent India of the future would be able to stand proudly in the international community only if it were able to improve its public record regarding its womenfolk. Trinity came and went, and, indeed, so did the British themselves. In 1947, Nehru set himself the task of charting the course of a new shining India through the choppy troubled waters that the departing British had, with tiresome predictability, left behind them.

"One thing that he now particularly began to impress upon his young daughter Indira was that she must take up the reins of the government at 'some point in the future'. That would indeed be the ultimate PR-stunt : it would send down shock-waves all over the international community and would establish India's clean image when it came to women's rights and capabilities. Soon after, Nehru himself went away, pining for the distant woods, dark and deep.

"Indira found herself plunged into the maelstrom (read : male-storm) of Indian politics, and soon realised that in order to man-oeuvre her way through the corridors of power she would need some real man-power. So she first surrounded herself with a formidable coterie of menfolk, and entered into a secret pact with them, an Anschluss that, thankfully for her, never made its way into the newspapers. In return for their unquestioned loyalty to her, she promised that she would not only let the patriarchal foundations of Indian society remain untouched and allow her men to rule over their womenfolk as their ancient grandfathers had once done, but also that she herself would take on the role of the Supreme Patriarch. In other words, she would be, as we say, a wolf in sheep's clothing . Consequently, the election of a woman to the Prime Minstership became, paradoxically, the final seal of approval on patriarchy.

"Indira Gandhi's Prime Ministership was a brilliant move of high diplomacy, and she was able to keep two powerful parties happy at once. On the one hand, she mesmerised scores of international political leaders with her vigorous speeches, and they all applauded her : 'A woman has come to judgement!'. At once, 'Indian women' were plunged into the limelight as members of a brave new world that had been liberated by a Father's daughter, at one thunder stroke, from their menfolk. On the other hand, she kept the most powerful men in India happy by acting and living as the epitome of the Great Patriarch; in Her, they all saw their own reflection, and they sure liked what they did see. Her imperious style of governance; her rousing calls to her country-men to die for the Mother-land, if not for Herself, the Supreme Mother; her indulging in skirmishes on the frontiers threatened by the enemy; her habit of suffering from panic-attacks, one of which culminated in the declaration of an emergency; her intolerance of any domestic squabbles, crushing them, if necessary, with stars flying under the blue skies; and her suppression of civil dissidence --- all of these go towards establishing one curious truth.

"The truth that in the history of Independent India the greatest Patriarch was not a man but a woman. A woman whose brilliant scheming led her to devise a conspiracy, a conspiracy by a woman, of a woman but, sadly, not for the women. A woman whose Prime Ministership was a superb Public-Relations-decoy to trick the world into thinking that Indian women have become free, whereas her very Prime Ministership was established on their bondage and was a means to furthering it."

So that is my conspiracy theory. But I do not like conspiracy theories that are 'close-ended', and I will therefore leave it 'open-ended' with a question (especially) for my women readers. Is this account that I have given itself a patriarchal theory on my part? : that is a bone of contention that I shall leave you to gnaw on.