In the centenary year of Indira Gandhi, this essay looks at the legacy of a politician who dominated the Indian scene for close to two decades. Her tenure constitutes a bridge between the early optimism of a newly independent nation struggling to deal with numerous internal schisms, and a phase when democratic politics chose a comfortable coexistence with them. She has left a violent bequest but this was less about individual choice than about larger historical forces that she may have once sought to combat, before choosing to make peace.