Indira Gandhi's assassination sparks a fearful round of sectarian violence.
Namaste, in Hindi, means 'Greetings to you.' It is the traditional Indian salutation, accompanied by a crossing of hands before the face, as if the speaker were offering a prayer.
At 9:08 last Wednesday morning, Indira Gandhi folded her hands in front of her face, looked at the two guards standing along the path to her office and said, 'Namaste.' It was to be her last word. Within hours India would be plunged into one of its worst paroxysms of sectarian violence since partition in 1947. As the death toll passed the 1,000 mark, the dominant question was whether the country's new leader, Indira's inexperienced son Rajiv, could, over the long term, sustain the integrity of the ambitious political patchwork that against all odds binds 746 million ethnically and religiously diverse people.
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