What is significant about the time between the Gandhi assassinations?
The assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984 traumatized India, but it also opened up the possibility that the economically stagnant and corrupt India that she had created could be reformed and modernized. But after a promising start, the man who replaced her as prime minister – her son, Rajiv – failed to change India, and his years in power were years of frustrated hope and failed dreams. Q: How is the India of that time different from the more contemporary India of The White Tiger? A: It was only after Rajiv’s death that the old India was finally swept away. The years between the assassinations are the last years of the old regime. They are a time of dashed hopes and of crisis; yet the men and women who endured these years did so by learning the virtues of perseverance, resignation and compassion – virtues that have become less conspicuous in the new India of The White Tiger. In that sense, Between the Assassinations is not a prelude to The White Tiger but presents an al
