Gandhi in the Slammer

A good place, she figures, to launch a re-election campaign

It was pure soap opera, and India's most accomplished tearjerker was relishing her leading role. After Indira Gandhi's colleagues in the 542-member lower house of the Indian Parliament wound up a rancorous two-week debate by voting overwhelmingly to expel her and send her to jail for contempt, the graying former Prime Minister, 61, declared that "I would rather be arrested here and now and not in the dead of night at my house." Then she clambered onto a table and waited for the police. Before they led Mrs. Gandhi off to Delhi's Tihar jail, where thousands of her political opponents were locked up during her 21-month emergency dictatorship, she recited a version of a British show tune: "Wish me luck as you bid me goodbye/ With a cheer, not a tear in your eye/ Give me a smile I can keep all the while I am away."

Gandhi was clearly looking forward to her brief confinement, which is due to end when the legislature recesses, possibly this week. Before she checked into prison, the National Herald, mouthpiece of her Congress-Indira Party (Congress I), published a special edition whose black-bordered front page carried a faked photograph of her smiling beatifically from behind bars. Thousands of pro-Indira protesters poured into the streets of Indian cities setting fire to buses and buildings and hanging Prime Minister Morarji Desai in effigy; at least 15 people died and Gandhi's followers claimed that 32,000 demonstrators were arrested. Two members of the party's youth wing hijacked an Indian Airlines jet to the holy city of Benares with 132 people aboard; their effort to exchange the hostages for Gandhi's freedom fizzled when their weapons turned out to be a toy pistol and a ball disguised as a grenade.

From Gandhi's point of view, that probably was just as well: her chances of recapturing the prime ministership she lost in 1977 might be enhanced by her being in jail. During the debate over how to punish her for ordering the arrest in 1975 of four officials assigned to investigate the tangled business affairs of her son Sanjay, 32, she sought to provoke Desai's Janata Party into rashly locking her up. By so doing, the Times of India editorialized last week, she would gain "concrete evidence that when it comes to dealing with political opponents, Janata is no better than she." Then she could argue that her stay in the slam mer had purged her of guilt for abuses during her term as India's one-woman ruler.

Desai, 82, had no desire to help Gandhi wrap herself in martyr's robes. But Janata hardliners, stung by Gandhi's barb that the proceedings were "like a medieval star chamber," balked at Desai's plan of suspending her from Parliament until she publicly apologized for the 1975 offense. Snapped Janata Member Kanwar Lal Gupta: "Indira-ji has put 150,000 people in jail. Can't she spend three days there herself?" The vote to condemn her: 279 to 138.

By week's end, the outcome of Gandhi's gamble was not clear. The pro-Gandhi demonstrations continued, as Gandhi's supporters strove to prove that she has a nationwide following. Desai's problems with his predecessor are far from over. Gandhi has announced that she may campaign for re-election after she is released. Predicts C.M. Stephen, the Congress I parliamentary leader, "she will be back like thunder."

In neighboring Pakistan, another deposed leader was having what may be his last day in court. Pale, shaking and gaunt, former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto emerged from 15 months in solitary confinement to appeal the death sentence handed down by a Pakistan court for plotting the murder of a political opponent.

Despite his ravaged appearance, the once robust Bhutto, 50, had lost little of his self-assurance. He told the Supreme Court that his jailers had for a time kept him in a cell next door to 15 screaming "lunatics." Declared Bhutto: "Because I am a leader, I was able to survive this treatment. A lesser man would have dissipated [sic] long ago." Denying the murder charge, he added: "I am not a criminal. I am an important national leader. Is this the way you treat national leaders?"

At one point in his four-day appeal, Bhutto asserted that "instead of making me face this humiliation, I wish they had done revolutionary justice to me," a euphemism for execution. But no matter how the court rules on Bhutto's appeal, his fate poses a dilemma for President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, the army chief who heads the junta that overthrew Bhutto last year. As long as Bhutto remains alive, he is a rallying point for opponents of Zia's regime. But if the once respected leader is killed, Pakistan will be confronted by the opprobrium of Western governments and organizations that are concerned about human rights.

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