The hereditary principle, for centuries a distinguishing mark of autocratic, monarchical rule, is not necessarily incompatible with the democratic system, nor need it pose a lethal threat to that system's essential values of rule of law, political pluralism and submission to the will of the people as expressed in free elections.
The Americans have had their Adamses, Roosevelts, Kennedys and Bushes, the Irish their de Valeras, Cosgraves and Healy-Raes; and yet life, it seems, goes on. India, however, whose democratic system is both younger and, one would imagine, more fragile than that of the US or Ireland, is the modern state which has pushed "hereditism" the furthest; with Jawaharlal Nehru becoming its first prime minister in 1947; his daughter, Indira Gandhi, occupying the position in 1966; and her son, Rajiv, succeeding her after her assassination in 1984. Today Rajiv's widow, the Italian-born Sonia, is leading opposition attacks on the increasingly shaky government of Atal Vajpayee.
Indira Gandhi, the dominant figure in the politics of her country throughout the late 20th century, was initially a reluctant politician. Brought up to be her father's helper, she was only with great reluctance pressed into the succession on his death by the ruling cabal of his Congress Party, who saw in her someone who would ensure continuity and whom they could easily control. In the latter judgment they were seriously in error.
The Congress milieu in which Indira was raised was a curious one. Patrician is scarcely an adequate word to describe Jawaharlal Nehru and his circle. Wealthy, secular and Western in culture, and "progressive" in politics, India's first prime minister and his extended family lived in a comfortable clubby world which placed great value on English tailoring, Scotch whisky and Swiss doctors. Chosen, as they saw it, to lead their impoverished, multicultural and multi-religious nation to a future of increasing prosperity and communal harmony, their ideology was an inclusive, secular republicanism with public duty, particularly for the high-minded Nehru himself, an ever-present stern imperative.
The mechanism for India's transformation was to be the Congress Party, which drew support from all regions and religious groups and stretched politically across most of the centre of the ideological spectrum. It was to be, in Nehru's phrase, "the mirror of the nation", or, in the more prosaic terminology of the political scientists, a catch-all party.
Beset by factionalism after Nehru's death, however, Congress quickly lost much of its idealism and radical focus. With personal ambition pitched against personal ambition, and party right against party left, it soon came to appear as if Indira herself was the only bulwark against chaos. That, at any rate, was the analysis her kitchen cabinet urged upon her, and with which she seemed readily to agree.
Charismatic and a great inspirer of popular devotion, particularly among India's poorest classes, Indira was nevertheless, according to many of those who worked with her, cold and aloof. She was also haughty, unable to admit mistakes and massively vindictive. (In this context, it is not a surprise to hear how well she got on with Margaret Thatcher.) Always attracted by the authoritarian response - on a Russian visit in 1953 she had expressed herself as being "impressed by the discipline of Soviet life" - she was soon at war with the judiciary over the constitution, and had turned Congress, in the words of one critic, into "an unaudited company for winning elections".
THOUGH morally compromised, however, her populist political skills never diminished. Having lost power in 1977, she was triumphantly returned in 1980, well served by the hopelessness of the opposition and the winning slogan "Indira is India and India Indira". In her final years, before her assassination in 1984 by her own bodyguards in revenge for the bloody suppression of a Sikh insurgency at the Amritsar shrine, she appeared to be losing control of a country reeling under the assault of multiple violent communal conflicts.
Katherine Frank's biography dwells much upon Indira's mostly unhappy personal life, her mother's never-ending sorrows and illnesses, her rivalries with her aunt and cousins, her stormy marriage to the philandering Feroze Gandhi (the Mahatma, incidentally, was not a relation). Much of this is sadly tedious stuff, though not the account of the business dealings of her younger son, the unspeakable Sanjay, whose accidental death in 1980 at least spared India from being ruled by a man whose political principles derived from one of the few books he had apparently ever read, The Democratic Revolution in the Philippines by Ferdinand Marcos.
Frank's account of Indira appears scrupulous, its tone measured, its marshalling of evidence calm and cumulative. But it is the performance not so much of a judge as of a coolly forensic prosecution counsel.
It might also be said, in the closeness of its focus on Indira herself, to leave some areas vital to Indian history and to its subject's life and times - such as caste, poverty, education and health - undertreated, and one huge question unanswered: how has such a vast, various and unruly country managed against such overwhelming odds to remain a democracy?
Enda O'Doherty is an assistant foreign desk editor at The Irish Times