Indira Gandhi's Andhra Adventure
D'MONTE, DARRYL
A STAR IS BORN Indira Gandhi's Andhra Adventure BY DARRYL D'MONTE Bombay The abrupt dismissal of the government of Andhra Pradesh State only five months before a general election must be held...
...Gandhi is probably fully aware, Congress-I is losing ground to the Hindu chauvinist Bharatiya Janata Party and to smaller groups led by the aged Charan Singh and Janata boss Chandrashekhar...
...A STAR IS BORN Indira Gandhi's Andhra Adventure BY DARRYL D'MONTE Bombay The abrupt dismissal of the government of Andhra Pradesh State only five months before a general election must be held may have transformed its Chief Minister into the savior of the country's parties hostile to Indira Gandhi...
...West Bengal's government, run by the Communist Party of India-Marxist, has long argued that each state should have far more autonomy...
...In Kashmir, her decision to install a faction favorably disposed to Congress-I has similarly hardened the longstanding anti-Hindu sentiments of the predominantly Muslim population...
...in the process, it helped turn their violent leader into a spokesman for many of his coreligionists...
...It is true as well that back then she could always count on the loyalty of the first two...
...Yet it is seldom recognized that during the late 1970s, when Mrs...
...Gandhi was out of office, son San-jay—aided by India's current President, Zail Singh, the Punjab's Chief Minister from 1972-77—actually encouraged the activities of Jarnail Singh Bhindran-wale, the Sikh zealot killed in the attack...
...At that time the Punjab was run by the Alkali Dal Party, an ally of Janata...
...Consequently, despite the urging of her notorious younger son Sanjay that any polling be postponed indefinitely, she became convinced the voters would not dare defeat her at the zenith of her might and proceeded to seek, in effect, a popular stamp of approval for her repression...
...But whatever the damage of the actions in the Punjab and Kashmir to the Prime Minister's public image, neither had the electrifying impact of her Andhra adventure...
...the third was caught up in its own regionalism and on the whole indifferent to whoever might be running the show at the center...
...Gandhi returned to power in 1980...
...She also was misled by her intelligence sources, notably the very powerful Research and Analysis Wing, in the case of the '77 contest...
...In both, a guerrilla campaign by Sikh extremists has made other communities feel insecure...
...Mrs...
...Mrs...
...Subsequent widespread rioting, demonstrations of Rama Rao's strength in the Andhra Pradesh Legislature, and his dramatic decision to take his grievances to New Delhi gave him ever more publicity and importance...
...The next 18 months of authoritarian rule seriously deluded the Prime Minister...
...After Rama Rao's dismissal, Hegde's head was expected to roll, but then the Prime Minister was stung by the severity of the nationwide backlash to this latest of her assaults on constitutional liberty...
...Gandhi has now unwittingly welded these disparate elements into a united opposition...
...In large part this was because they had not witnessed the vasectomy drives and shanty-town razings that turned public opinion elsewhere against the Prime Minister...
...Like his late father, Sheikh Abdullah, deposed Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah is an enormously well-liked man whose ouster can only be interpreted as an attempt by New Delhi to frustrate elected officials who are articulating regional grievances...
...in any case, he removed a number of old faces from his cabinet...
...Including Andhra, different opposition parties control only four of India's 22 states...
...As things turned out, of course, thanks to the victorious Janata coalition's ineptness and to fierce infighting among rival gerontocrats angling for the prime ministership, Mrs...
...Even newspapers that usually support her strongly came out in favor of Rama Rao and demanded Ram Lai's dismissal, though he obviously acted on her specific instructions...
...An address he delivered at a mammoth public meeting in the capital (after having paraded his supporters before the President of India) was memorable as much for its emotionalism—the wronged minister repeatedly broke down—as for the tumultuous response he and his associates received...
...When NTR, accompanied bymore than 150 loyal members of the Assembly, went to the Governor's house to remonstrate, he was arrested and held briefly...
...Much to Gandhi's discomfiture, one of the offers was taped and released to the press...
...Kashmir, Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, and other parts of the country have their own languages and cultural traditions...
...In fact, the scene was reminiscent of Narayan's dramatic rally on June 25, 1975, the very night Nehru's daughter swooped down on her enemies Darryl D'Monte, who writes frequently on Indian affairs for The New Leader, has recently completed a bookon environmental issues in the Third World...
...Should they succeed, Mrs...
...these days, any prime minister might be committing political suicide by trying to make them bend to the center's will...
...Last year's state elections, however, gave rise to regionalist forces that seemed to threaten Congress-I's national supremacy...
...Andhra Pradesh put its fortunes in the hands of Rama Rao, whose promise to restore local pride won his newly formed Telu-gu Desam Party 190 out of 294 Assembly seats...
...N. T. Rama Rao, a former movie star popularly known as "NTR," had returned from a heart bypass operation in the United States shortly before his removal from office on August 16...
...Among other things, it includes the recent strengthening of the National Security Act, permitting detention without trial...
...Meanwhile, rather clumsily, the wife of Maharashtra's loyalist Chief Minister was sent to Bangalore, Karnataka's capital, to bribe local lawmakers into defecting...
...Now he is widely spoken of as a successor to the late Jayaprakash Narayan, who a decade ago overcame his own physical infirmities and so galvanized the divided Opposition that it ousted Prime Minister Gandhi in the 1977 elections, thus ending her infamous "state of emergency...
...First to be maneuvered out, early in the summer, was one of Gandhi's most strident critics, Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, leader of the National Conference Party...
...It consists of unseating unfriendly administrations and either installing puppets or holding new elections during the period of Governor's Rule, when a state is under New Delhi's direct authority...
...At Rama Rao's New Delhi meeting, for the first time, two Communist groups appeared together with Bharatiya Janata, whose Right-wing views they abhor...
...The blatant chicanery was not unprecedented, perhaps explaining why no one in authority foresaw the national outcry that it triggered—certainly Ram Lai, who soon was forced to resign, did not, nor did his mentor Mrs...
...Gandhi would lose badly...
...Responding to this challenge, Mrs...
...Such travesties will continue until New Delhi accepts the need to share its power...
...The majority of Indians, though, were sickened by her forced sterilization of some 7 million citizens (the largest number of people ever to be mutilated in this fashion anywhere in the world) and by her evicting slum dwellers from their homes— two moves against the poor often conducted in tandem...
...Congress-I wooed the fanatics in hopes of creating an alternative...
...In many other regions, Mrs...
...Her rivals worry that like her attempts to remove inimical state governments, she might someday use the security measure against them...
...Indeed, the question being asked is whether she will postpone the elections and institute a presidential form of government, as she has threatened to do in the past...
...Six weeks later Rama Rao was the target...
...India's "Hindi heartland" in the north—the populous states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, and Madh-ya Pradesh—rejected Gandhi unceremoniously...
...Comrade Jyoti Basu owes his unflagging popularity as much to Bengali chauvinism as to his ideology...
...Of these Tamil Nadu's Chief Minister has hitched his wagon to New Delhi, although he retains his post solely because he claims to support resistance to the hegemony of the North...
...Therefore, sometime before January 1985, the end of the present term of the Lok Sabha (or Lower House of Parliament), she will have to submit herself to the electorate once more...
...Ironically, New Delhi's summer crackdown on Sikh zealots occupying the sect's Golden Temple, in the Punjab, improved the Prime Minister's standing with Hindus there and in the country's neighboring agrarian powerhouse, Haryana...
...Rama Rao and Tamil Nadu's Chief Minister, M. G. Ramachandran, another ex-movie star, may be more at home on film sets than in debating chambers, but that in no way diminishes their tremendous appeal as sons of the local soil and symbols of the struggle between good and evil...
...Gandhi and her older son Rajiv (whom she has been grooming as her political heir apparent since the death of Sanjay in a plane crash four years ago) recently launched a new strategy...
...and packed them off to jail, heralding the start of the emergency...
...Regionalism has strong roots in India...
...New Delhi's all-too-pliant instrument then replaced him with an erstwhile colleague, N. Bhaskara Rao...
...Gandhi's manipulation of the Sikh situation is a prime example of her utter inability to comprehend that India is a vast and varied nation whose strength, to use the cliche, lies in its diversity...
...In Andhra, for instance, protracted Communist agitation against the traditional rule of the Nizams culminated in a secessionist movement that was ruthlessly crushed...
...The catalogue of the Prime Minister' s threats to political freedom is by no means inconsiderable...
...They duly turned her out, casting their ballots for the coalition Janata Party...
...By contrast the south—particularly the politically and socially more advanced states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu—was the one bright spot for the Congress-I Party...
...It is known, too, that millions of "black" (untaxed) rupees have been poured into Karnataka to persuade Hegde's supporters to cross the floor— perhaps with some effect...
...Talks are currently being held to field a unified list against Congress-I in every constituency in the land...
...The assault on the Golden Temple was long overdue...
...Incidentally, Lai, a former Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh, had to resign that post, too, after a spate of corruption cases...
...Andhra's Governor Ram Lai sacked Rama Rao on the grounds that he no longer commanded a majority in the 294-member Legislative Assembly and therefore could not carry out his official duties...
...In Karnataka, Congress-I was defeated hands down by the able and sophisticated local Janata chief, Rama-krishna Hegde...
...Now Sikhs are more alienated from their Hindu fellow citizens than they have ever been, and the Army must maintain the peace in Punjab...
Vol. 67 • August 1984 • No. 15
