The Assasssination (Who Killed Indira G ?)

We know the name of the assassins, but did they act alone?
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi (19 November 1917-31 October 1984), born into the influential Nehru dynasty, was Prime Minister of India for three consecutive terms from 1966 to 1977 and for a fourth term from 1980 until her assassination in 1984. She was India's first and so far only female prime minister.

A crushing victory in the 1971 war with Pakistan was followed by a period of instability that led her to impose a state of Emergency in 1975; she paid for the authoritarian excesses of the period with three years in Opposition. Returning to office in 1980, she became increasingly involved in an escalating conflict with separatists in Punjab which eventually led to her assassination by her own bodyguards in 1984.

The night before her death she told a political rally: 'I don't mind if my life goes in the service of the nation. If I die today, every drop of my blood will invigorate the nation.'

In this fictional filmscript, Tariq Ali suggests that larger forces were at work, exploiting genuine Sikh grievances to settle their own score with a Prime Minister who, whatever her faults, was fiercely independent of Washington and safeguarded Indian sovereignty with a zeal inherited from her father.

TARIQ ALi is a writer and filmmaker, long-time political activist and campaigner. He has written over a dozen books on world history and politics including The Clash of Fundamentalisms and Bush in Babylon, Rough Music, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Axis of Hope, five novels, and scripts for both stage and screen. The first novel of his Islam Quintet, Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree, was awarded the Archbishop San Clemente del Instituto Rosalia de Castro Prize for Best Foreign Language Fiction published in Spain in 1994 and, like the Book of Saladin, has been translated into several languages.

The Assassination is the third in a series of unpublished television playscripts written by Ali in the 1980s and 1990s.