THE REPUBLICIndira Gandhi had hardly any party worth the name: she had divided it
again in 1978 and many defectors had gone over to the other side—she
never forgot or forgave this when she was back in power. On the other
hand, Jagjivan Ram now led what was left of the Janata Party and
expected the solid support of all Harijans (untouchables). Charan Singh
was concentrating on his stronghold in western Uttar Pradesh and, as the
election result would show, was very successful there and managed to get
more seats in the Lok Sabha for his Lok Dal—a purely regional party—
than Jagjivan Ram achieved for his Janata Party, which had conducted a
nationwide campaign. It was Indira Gandhi’s untiring national
electioneering which brought about her comeback: it was a personal
plebiscite rather than the campaign of a party.
Once Indira Gandhi had staged her comeback she started the old
toppling game in order to eliminate state governments which did not
belong to her party. This toppling game was justified with an argument
which runs counter to the spirit of federalism. The verdict of the electorate
in a Lok Sabha election is equated with its general will and thus a state
government which owes its existence to an earlier election at state level is
thought to have forfeited its mandate if the composition of that
government is at variance with this new verdict. At the time when central
and state elections were conducted simultaneously, this argument could not
be advanced. Ever since Indira Gandhi had broken that link in 1971,
however, she could insist on this interpretation of the verdict of the
electorate: she did so with a vengeance. In several cases she was successful,
although she did not dare to touch the well-entrenched Communist
government of Jyoti Basu in west Bengal. In some state elections she was
bitterly disappointed in her expectation—for example, when the Janata
Party won the elections in Karnataka and established a government headed
by a very competent chief minister, Dr Hegde, whom she could not easily
dislodge; or when a new party, Telugu Desam, emerged victoriously under
the leadership of the popular film actor, Rama Rao, whom she did try to
remove but who got himself reinstated and thus raised his prestige and
lowered hers. Some of these desperate moves must have been due to the
fact that she was faced with an imminent Lok Sabha election (spring 1985)
which could very well have ended up like that of 1977. She had not
imposed another ‘emergency’ this time, but she was stuck with such
problems as unrest in Assam and growing tension in the Panjab.
In Assam she was faced with the steady influx of Bengalis, or rather
Bangladeshis, as well as other groups of people into an area inviting
settlement because of a relatively low population density. The census
showed that the population of Assam had grown on average by about 3.5
per cent per year, compared with a national average of about 2.4 per cent.
This could only be due to large-scale immigration. The local people got
increasingly alarmed and students played a leading role in the anti-