Word: gandhis
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...stunning upset, Mrs. Gandhi lost her own carefully nurtured constituency in Uttar Pradesh by 55,000 votes to Raj Narain, a socialist buffoon whom she had trounced by 112,000 votes in 1971. "India is Indira, and Indira is India," Congress Party President D.K. Barooah used to boast. He 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...
Throughout India news of Mrs. Gandhi's defeat was received with astonishment and euphoria. "What is happening?" shouted Janata supporters outside a counting station in New Delhi. When told that their candidates were winning decisively, the spectators hugged the messengers of the good news. Said Om Prakash, 26, a cloth merchant: "The election result shows that dictatorship cannot acquire any roots in this country." Declared M.C. Sachdeva, 27 a government clerk. "To my generation, freedom began today, not in 1947." The Janata victory, added a fire brigade employe "has come mythical Lord Rama descending to earth to destroy...
There was no joy in the Soviet Union, whose leaders had assiduously courted Mrs. Gandhi as an ally. Russian newspaper readers were not told of her loss for two days after the results were known. Then Izvestiya lamely explained that she had been beaten because of "mistakes and excesses" committed since the emergency was declared. Until last week, the Soviets had had nothing but praise for her tough emergency measures, and had attacked her opponents as "reactionaries" and "black marketeers." Now, said Izvestiya, Moscow was looking forward to friendly relations with the new government...
...were jammed, while Prime Minister's audiences were embarrassingly apathetic. Three times during a rally at Varanasi, the chairman called for a cheer for Indira, and three times the crowd shouted no. In Lucknow, women in the front of the audience started to leave ten minutes after Mrs. Gandhi began to speak. Tired of news broadcasts on the government-run All India Radio, which ignored the opposition's campaign and burbled endlessly about New Delhi's accomplishments, many Indians began to call it "All Indira Radio...
Almost to the end, Mrs. Gandhi believed her Congress Party machine would believed the vote, as it had done so often before. Sanjay was also convinced that his crowds-dutifully rounded up by party flunkies-were made up of genuine supporters. But when the balloting began, says a friend, the family confidence began to wane. "You could hear it in their conversation. They started wondering...