Word: nadu
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Bombay, the president of India's ruling Congress Party compared her to the Hindu goddess of strength. The comparison was apt. On the last day of January she expunged one of the two remaining pockets of opposition by dissolving the state assembly and dismissing the government of Tamil Nadu-the populous (45 million) former state of Madras. In its place she imposed direct rule from New Delhi. Twenty planeloads of police landed in Madras to prevent trouble, and an estimated 6,000 people were arrested...
...Delhi's pretext for the takeover was that the ousted government of Chief Minister Muthuvel Karunanidhi was guilty of "acts of maladministration, corruption and misuse of power for partisan ends." The more probable cause was the prospect of state elections. In Tamil Nadu's assembly, Karunanidhi's Dravidian Progress Party, a populist movement dedicated to social reform and greater state autonomy, held a commanding majority. The assembly's tenure was due to expire March 21, and Mrs. Gandhi did not want to extend its life. Apparently she feared that any election-state or national-during...
...takeover leaves only one of India's 22 state governments, Gujarat, as an opposition stronghold. Until recently Mrs. Gandhi had cited opposition party rule in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu as proof that India was still democratic...
Although her mandate had seemed assured, Mrs. Gandhi apparently decided that she could not afford to take any chances. Free parliamentary elections in 1976 might well have triggered state elections in Kashmir and Tamil Nadu -two states where opposition forces remain strong. Moreover, in order to hold elections, Mrs. Gandhi would presumably have felt obliged to lift the state of emergency, if only to give a semblance of a free campaign. That she was not prepared to do. If the emergency were lifted, she told the convention, neither her 20-point social and economic program nor any other program could...
...Tamil Nadu's chief minister, Muthuvel Karunanidhi, a teetotaler himself, was obviously irked when legislative assembly members greeted his decision with cheers. The move had been more or less forced upon him. As Karunanidhi metaphorically put it, the state had become "a gem of camphor surviving unlit in the midst of the flaming tongues of a hoop of fire"-meaning that thirsty Tamils had only to drive to adjoining Pondicherry, Mysore, Kerala or Andhra Pradesh for a drink. There was also an overriding economic reason for repeal. The state faces an $80 million budget deficit. Toddy will bring...