Word: gandhis
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, 59, is a shrewd tactician who gambles only on sure things. Last month, to the astonishment of her 620 million countrymen, she suddenly relaxed the emergency regulations under which Indians had been living for 18 months, released dozens of leading political prisoners from detention and announced that the country's long-postponed elections would be held in mid-March. By last week Mrs. Gandhi could wish that she had left bad enough alone. Within a span of three days, the opposition staged a vigorous reincarnation and one of her most respected political...
Fear Psychosis. The ease with which the opposition could stage such a large rally, the first since June 1975, may have surprised Mrs. Gandhi. But what really shocked her was the unexpected resignation of her Food and Agriculture Minister, Jagjivan Ram, 68, from both the Cabinet and the Congress Party. As the acknowledged leader of India's 85 million Untouchables, or harijans (children of God), and a Cabinet member since 1947, Ram was one of Mrs. Gandhi's most powerful colleagues. Though he had remained loyal to her throughout the emergency, Ram declared last week that Indians were...
...letter to "My dear Babuji" (the Hindi honorific for a respected elder), Mrs. Gandhi retorted: "It is strange that you should have remained silent all these months," especially when "you were actively and directly associated with every decision." Then, rising from a sickbed, she summoned her Cabinet and other party leaders and extracted from each of them a signed statement of loyalty to herself and a condemnation of Ram. Later, as her anger grew, she denounced Ram as an opportunist and a turncoat, and charged that he was to blame for a recent rise in food prices. "Now that...
...broken with Mrs. Gandhi so tardily? Some observers noted that Indira's ambitious son Sanjay, 30, had been demanding that a number of party nominations for parliamentary seats be reserved for younger candidates; Ram and other members of the old guard may have feared that Mrs. Gandhi was on the verge of replacing them with fresh faces. Ram's walkout will impede her efforts to reorganize the party, forcing her to maintain a delicate balance between young and old candidates...
Blessing in Disguise. Whatever the reason, and however severe the blow to Mrs. Gandhi, Ram's departure does not necessarily spell her downfall. The Congress Party, having ruled India since 1947, is well entrenched, and Indira remains the country's most powerful-and popular-political figure Moreover, she benefits from the fact that the Janata Party, whose elements range from the right-wing Old Congress faction to the Socialists to the Hindu-first Jana Sangh, is united in almost nothing except its opposition to the existing government. Indeed, as one Janata spokesman confided to TIME...