what happened in parts of Southern India in the late 1970 and 80
Answers
Ramchandra Guha
Indira is India, and India is Indira', said a Congress sycophant in the 1970s, a decade that-for good and for ill- will forever be identified with the country's first woman prime minister. Politically speaking, the decade actually began in the second half of 1969, when Indira Gandhi split the Congress party, nationalised the banks, and set in motion the abolition of the princely order.
Having refashioned herself as a messiah of the poor, Mrs Gandhi then fought and won the 1971 elections on the compelling slogan, 'Garibi Hatao'. Before the year ended, she had won a more emphatic victory-in the battlefield- against Pakistan. Opposition politicians were now falling over one another to sing her praises. The luck, it seemed, was all running Mrs Gandhi's way-she could even take credit for the Green Revolution, which had actually been set in motion by her predecessor Lal Bahadur Shastri, who did not, however, live long enough to enjoy its fruits.
Halfway through her term, Mrs Gandhi was truly the monarch of all she surveyed. Even Jawaharlal Nehru in his heyday had not enjoyed such enormous and countrywide adulation. But then a veteran freedom-fighter named Jayaprakash Narayan abandoned social work to re-enter politics. Disgusted, he said, by the corruption and degeneration around him, he had decided to join the youth of his native Bihar in restoring, to public life, the values of the national movement.
Through 1974, Bihar saw a series of strikes and processions, demanding the resignation of the Congress Government in the state. One protest, in Gaya, provoked the police into firing on unarmed demonstrators; in another protest, in Patna, the police rained lathis on Narayan himself. By now, the 'Bihar movement' had been renamed the 'JP Movement'. To its banner flocked students of all stripes, and also the major Opposition parties. No longer did it merely want a change of regime in Bihar; it demanded that Indira Gandhi herself vacate her chair and seek a fresh mandate from the people.
In the second week of June, 1975, the JP Movement got a huge boost when a court in Allahabad ruled that Mrs Gandhi was guilty of electoral malpractice. The call for her resignation grew louder; instead, the Prime Minister imposed a state of Emergency on the nation. Opposition leaders were jailed, and the press censored. There was surprisingly little dissent. The trains ran on time. The rains that year were good, bringing down prices and inflation. Once more, it seemed that the Gods were smiling indulgently on Indira Gandhi. Under her benign care even the country's notoriously under-performing sportsmen were tasting success. India won the hockey World Cup towards the end of 1975; then, in early 1976, our cricketers beat the mighty West Indies. As the winning runs were scored in distant Port of Spain, I heard the All India Radio commentator credit the victory to the Prime Minister and her 20 point programme. 'Ye Indira Gandhi ka desh hai!', he shouted, 'Ye bis sutri karikram ka desh hai!'
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