Solemn India Views Gandhi Cremation Rite

The Indian nation watched with the silence of emptiness at sunset Friday while the old Brahmin high priest led Rahul Gandhi around his father’s body seven times near the banks of the Yamuna River, where Rajiv Gandhi’s remains lay, head to the south, under a pyramid of sandalwood sticks.

The priest held an urn of flammable clarified butter while the 20-year-old Rahul dipped one stick seven times. Then, as his mother Sonia watched from under a white lace veil and dark sunglasses, her daughter Priyanka’s arm around her, the son touched fire to wood.

The sandalwood and the body beneath burned for five minutes, the flames giving off scented white smoke until, just after 5:30 p.m., the bearded priest guided Rahul’s stick back into the embers.

There, just as his father had done for his slain mother 6 1/2 years ago and 100 yards away, Rahul delicately crushed his father’s skull, releasing the spirit of Gandhi and--in the highest and most elegant of Hindu rites--ending the political dynasty that shaped modern India.

So it was that 46-year-old Rajiv Gandhi, the third generation of a family that has ruled India for all but six of the nation’s 44 years of independence, was consigned to his gods, leaving behind a nation in deep political crisis and a long-ruling party on the brink of turmoil.

Before the fire had gone out, there was a living metaphor of what may come.

The moment Gandhi’s family and friends--among them India’s top film star, Amitabh Bachchan--stepped down from the pyre, the leaders of his Congress-I Party suddenly began elbowing and shoving their way onto the edifice, where they fought over sandalwood sticks to place as tributes atop their leader’s body.

Three days after Gandhi was assassinated by a suicide bomber at a campaign rally in south India, the party that the former prime minister was desperately trying to lead back to power remains without a leader.

Despite his widow’s flat rejection of the party’s move to elect her its president--an attempt by the party elders to capitalize at the polls on voter sympathy over her husband’s death and to perpetuate the Gandhi name--the party kept the pressure on her throughout the day Friday.

“We shall yet have her as our leader,” declared Ratnakar Pandey when a Congress-I meeting adjourned with another resolution to draft Sonia Gandhi just before the cremation rites began.

But aides to the intensely private Italian-born widow said she remains steadfast in her rejection of attempts to draft her as her husband’s replacement.

Party leaders said they will meet today to discuss an alternative to Sonia Gandhi.

“Wait and see,” replied P. V. Narasimha Rao, the senior party leader and a close friend of the Gandhis, when asked after the cremation how the Congress-I will resolve its crisis--a decision that will help shape the future of Indian politics.

But the mood that predominated Friday was one not of politics but of tribute. The rite drew government ministers and statesmen from 64 countries, among them Vice President Dan Quayle.

“This assassination is simply an outrage,” Quayle said in a prepared statement when he arrived Friday morning with his wife, Marilyn, for his one-day visit to New Delhi.

“The enemies of democracy have struck once again, but they cannot prevail. Let us take this tragic incident as an opportunity to recommit ourselves to the ideals of democracy, peace, prosperity and love--the ideals of Rajiv Gandhi.”

British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, part of a funeral delegation from India’s former colonial ruler that included Prince Charles, similarly condemned the murder. But he also stressed the challenge facing India of preserving its long democratic tradition.

“The survival of those free institutions in that huge melting pot of India is really a test of man as a political being,” Hurd said.

To protect those institutions, more than 60,000 members of police and paramilitary forces were deployed throughout the capital during Gandhi’s cremation and all along the six-mile funeral procession that preceded it. Their primary mission was to prevent a repeat of the orgy of revenge killing in New Delhi that accompanied similar rites for Gandhi’s mother, Indira, in November, 1984, three days after she was gunned down by two of her Sikh bodyguards.

Although a dozen people died Friday--two of them when they burned themselves to death in grief over their fallen leader--the deaths were largely confined to India’s deep south, where Gandhi was assassinated Tuesday night. The capital was quiet throughout the day.

The security forces helicopter that hovered over the flag-draped body throughout the state funeral procession transformed itself into a part of the funeral cortege, dropping clouds of lavender rose petals along the route.

The army gun carriage that held Gandhi’s body, towed by a troop carrier blanketed with rose wreaths and crisscrossed with jasmine garlands, was surrounded by nearly a dozen of the black-jumpsuited commandos called the Black Cats. They fired their submachine guns three times as a farewell salute while the body was committed to the flames.

Missing throughout the procession, however, were the enormous crowds and the intense emotion that accompanied the last earthly journey of Gandhi’s mother--who, despite charges of autocratic and manipulative rule was a deft and deeply loved leader who governed the nation for nearly 16 years.

Most of the funeral route--which included the majestic Way of the Raj that connects the imposing sandstone presidential palace with the huge archway called India Gate--was largely empty as Gandhi’s body passed. And the few thousand mourners who accompanied the gun carriage on its three-hour journey in the 102-degree heat--shouting slogans ranging from “India will remember the sacrifice of mother and son!” to “Hang Rajiv’s assassins!”--were mostly Congress-I politicians and grass-roots party workers.

“Today is a very tragic day,” said Dhirendra Singh Mehta, a New Delhi auditor who was among the handful of non-party workers among the mourners. “India has lost everything.”

Asked his opinion of the succession crisis within the party, Mehta, reflecting what seemed to be a consensus, insisted that Sonia Gandhi will ultimately be persuaded to take the job.

“You see, the people were supporting Rajiv Gandhi, not the Congress Party. The people supported Indira Gandhi, not the Congress. So, in that way, the people will support Sonia.

“If Sonia does not become president then the party will have big, big problems. The party will split. It is most important that Sonia Gandhi becomes the president.”

And another party member in the cortege, who asked not to be named, just shook his head as he looked down the largely empty mile-long thoroughfare also known as the Way of Kings--the same area packed to capacity six weeks ago by the Hindu revivalist party that remains the Congress-I’s main rival for power.

“Maybe our problems are partly to blame,” he said. “Maybe if Sonia had said yes, this Raj Path would have been packed to capacity. Maybe it’s the heat. Maybe it’s because this time the funeral is being televised live. Maybe it’s because there are too few buses on the road today. Maybe it’s because people are afraid. Maybe it’s some sort of combination of this.”

But there also were signs along the route that helped explain the dearth of violence on Friday, which most analysts attributed to the fact that Gandhi’s suicide assassin has yet to be connected to any specific terrorist group.

At one point along the Way of the Raj, an old woman in a white mourning sari was pounding her chest and shouting over and over the traditional Hindi-language slogan of condemnation, “Hai! Hai!” (Down! Down! ) without knowing what group or name to shout after it.

Many in the mourning crowd did shout, as they have for several days, “Down! Down! CIA!,” reflecting a propensity by the Congress-I to blame what it calls the “foreign hand” for most of the nation’s tragedies. And the fear of anti-Western attacks did prompt most embassies in New Delhi, including that of the United States, to close and to urge all their citizens here to remain at home.

But there was at least one symbolic gesture of hope that a post-Gandhi India will somehow manage to heal the deep religious and political divisions that led to the deaths of more than 200 in the election campaign culminating in Gandhi’s death--a polarization that threatens decades of harmony between India’s majority Hindus and its Muslim minority.

For nearly an hour before Gandhi’s soul was symbolically released to the heavens, while the thousands of devotees and onlookers filtered into the cremation ground called Shakti Sthal, or Resting Place of Power, the air was filled with the singing of prayers and praises for the honored dead--one each from every religion on earth.