DEAR TO BEHOLD

A slight, affectionate, but not very informative memoir by Indira Gandhi's aunt (Nehru's sister) who skims through the Indian Prime Minister's childhood (immersion in Congress Party politics and Gandhian rebellion), her unusual education (history lessons written by her father from jail; a year studying Indian dance at Tagore's university; a formal degree from Oxford) and her subsequent marriage and career. The treatment of politics is brief and shallow, overshadowed by saccharine renderings of the principal figures--Gandhi, Nehru, and Indira herself. Possibly the most worthwhile sections of the text deal with the role of women in India as seen in myth and history. Gently chiding the misinformed (and anti-feminist) West, the author underlines the participation of women in the campaigns against the British, notes that Indira was the fourth woman to head the Congress party, and reports that her niece's present position is not seen by fellow Indians--if by American journalists--as a petticoat triumph.