Short Memory!

According to India Today's poll Indira Gandhi was voted the best Prime Minister of India till date. About 31% of the respondents have chosen her, if we leave the questions about who were the respondents and assume that they were truly representative of the country, the choice definitely speaks volumes about the country.
Indira Priyadarshini or famously known as Mrs. Gandhi, was definitely the most autocratic ruler India has seen. Emergency, which is described as the darkest period in Indian History by all standards was her initiative. Operation Blue Star, which wronged one of the most sacred places of Sikhs was her scheme. any volume of criticism will not be able to justify the acts done during emergency.
If we talk about the foreign policy of Mrs. Gandhi, probably it is something which would be lauded a lot but if we have a distant view, we quite successfully bullied the neighboring countries. In terms of aiding the birth of Bangladesh and reducing it to a puppet state. For many nationalists it might have been an occasion for pride but for a moment if we forget that we are a part of the offensive state, the fact is that we interfered with another country's internal matter. This followed by aiding the LTTE in Srilanka, it is a totally different whether LTTE was just or unjust but the fact remains we have interfered with the internal affairs of another country for political gains. Political opportunism, it is also called. This is probably one of the forgettable parts of her policy.
What is unforgettable and unforgivable is her autocracy, she was not ready to work with anybody who had an opinion of his own. She was clear on one thing, she was the ruler and that's about it. Today we give Indira Gandhi Award for National Integration, this bit probably was the perfect. She truly worked for national integration, with offensive against Mizoram and Nagaland, breaking up the neighboring country, launching a nuclear program, she definitely laid the foundations for the current national integration policy where any voice against the government is crushed brutally. She definitely paved the way for the army rule in the entire north east, crushing of the Naxal movements without addressing the problems etc. Some might argue that what is the problem with autocracy, when there was progress. If that is the case we should weigh Saddam Hussain, Gaddafi or for that matter the recent one colored as an autocrat by the international media Bashar al assad have to be viewed with the same lens. Why celebrate the ousting of a few and count the other as the best a country has ever had. It is another debate whether those cited were actually as bad as they were portrayed.
We surely have extremely short memory, one can never be sure what today's autocrat will be termed tomorrow as.