Word: desai
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...will say it no more. Defeated in an adjoining constituency by 76,000 votes was Sanjay, in his first try for elective office. Of 542 seats in the new Lok Sabha (Lower House), Mrs. Gandhi's Congress Party won only 153 (v. 355 in the last Parliament), while Desai's Janata coalition won 270, completely routing Congress in its traditional heartland, the Hindi-speaking north. In a dramatic capitulation to the voters' verdict, Indira Gandhi drove to the home of Acting President B.D. Jatti at 4 a.m. one day last week after learning of her defeat...
Instrument of God. Desai rises each morning at 3 or 4 to pray, work at his spinning wheel and practice yoga until about 7. He eats only uncooked food-milk, fruit, cheese, carrot juice-and disdains even cereals. He also rejects alcohol, tobacco and modern medicine, and looks and acts at least 20 years younger than his 81 years. He swore off sex in his early 30s as a way of achieving self-control. In principle he favors national prohibition and regards self-control as the best means of achieving family planning-although, he quickly adds, he realizes that "governments...
...more attention to means than ends," Desai says. "I would not give up truth to save the world." Once, when TIME Correspondent James Shepherd asked him why he always seemed so sure of his own infallibility, Desai replied calmly, "Because I'm an instrument of God." Friends say he has considerably mellowed with age and from his recent period in prison, where he passed the time peacefully spinning yarn, memorizing the Bhagavad-Gita, updating his autobiography and writing about natural medicine...
...Desai's accession to power was uneventful and low-keyed. On Thursday, he drove to the old Viceroy's residence-now known as Rashtrapati Bhavan -where he was sworn in by Acting President Jatti. The oaths of office and official secrecy were read in Hindi, and in keeping with Desai's wish for austerity, there were no garlands. The new Prime Minister told reporters that he wanted to avoid being "vindictive or vengeful" toward Mrs. Gandhi or her fallen comrades. He announced that she was free to live in her government residence "as long as she wished...
...Desai also changed India's foreign policy at a stroke. He made it clear that while remaining officially nonaligned, India will now be far less partial toward the Soviet Union than it has been in the past. The Indo-Soviet treaty of 1971, he said, would not be allowed to stand in the way of friendship "with any other state." And if it did, he added, the treaty "must be dissolved." He rejected outright any notion of a domestic political alliance with the Moscow-leaning Communist Party of India. "I don't want a Trojan horse," he said...