Hindustan Times

Dipankar Ghose

Dhrubo Jyoti

Six months after she is bundled out of power, Indira strikes a chord with a visit to a remote troublespot. Elsewhere, a coalition loses popularity, then crumbles. And a plane crash permanently alters the course of history.

Southern sojourn, Janata implodes, an assassination: 5 key moments

<h2 style="text-align:center;">Indira goes to Belchi</h2>

<p>Today it is a nondescript village in Bihar, but in 1977, it was the site of a political storm. Eight Dalit people had been brutally murdered in the village, by dominant-caste men, and the incumbent Janata government was seen as prevaricating. Discontent was building.&nbsp;</p><p>Indira Gandhi, who had been bundled out of power six months earlier, sensed an opportunity. In a sudden, announced trip, she landed in Patna and proceeded to Belchi. The slushy Bihar hinterland roads presented a hurdle; cars kept getting stuck. On the advice of a local Congress leader, she climbed atop an elephant for the last 15 km of the journey. The sun was setting when Gandhi atop the pachyderm Moti trundled into Belchi, the families of the victims running towards her.&nbsp;</p><p>Through her political acumen, Gandhi had crafted a compelling moment of symbolism, one that resonated with Dalit communities across the country. It was also a reminder that Gandhi was down, but not out.</p><h2 style="text-align:center;">Southern sojourn</h2>

<p>If Belchi was the beginning of Indira Gandhi’s political comeback after the 1977 drubbing, the 1978 byelection to Chikmaglur was its high noon. The rolling hills of Malnad that autumn were abuzz with political activity as a galaxy of political stars descended from across the country. Now called Chikkamagaluru, the seat had been won by the Congress in 1977 (the landslide in its tally due to Emergency excesses was largely limited to the northern heartland), and then-Karnataka chief minister D Devaraj Urs had convinced Gandhi that he could guarantee her victory. The Congress launched an aggressive campaign with its iconic slogan, “Ek sherni, sau langur, Chikmaglur, Chikmaglur (One lioness, a hundred monkeys, Chikmaglur, Chikmaglur)”, underlining the political colossus Gandhi was in front of the Janata candidate Veerendra Patil. In the end, she won by 77,000 votes and was back in Parliament.</p><h2 style="text-align:center;">Janata implodes</h2>

<p>When Gandhi entered the Lok Sabha in 1978, then-prime minister Morarji Desai was unfazed. This would have no impact on his government, he told reporters. In a year, he was to be proven wrong. The Janata coalition was done in by its ideological inconsistencies, its left-wing members forever suspicious of its right-leaning leaders with ties to the Jana Sangh.</p><p>The signs of trouble were already evident in 1978. The government was quickly losing popularity over a string of economic-policy missteps. Gandhi was proving an effective campaigner on the ground. And Emergency-linked trials against senior Congress leaders were not going the way the coalition had hoped they would. Added to this, the battle between leaders such as Raj Narain and Charan Singh on one side and Desai on the other was becoming more public.</p><p>Things came to a head after Narain and his loyalists resigned in 1979, prompting a no-confidence motion against Desai’s government. Facing imminent defeat, the prime minister resigned.</p><h2 style="text-align:center;">Sanjay Gandhi dies</h2>

<p>By the time he was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1980, Sanjay Gandhi was already a powerful name in Indian politics. Blamed for some of the worst excesses of the Emergency, including a forced-sterilisation programme and peremptory slum clearances, Sanjay Gandhi was seen as the chosen heir of Indira Gandhi and someone who had slowly expanded his grip over the Congress. He had powerful acolytes and detractors alike. In the 1980 election, about 50 of his associates were elected to the Lok Sabha, strengthening his hand. His death in a plane crash in June that year changed the course of things, and prompted Indira Gandhi to induct her other son, Rajiv Gandhi, into politics.</p><h2 style="text-align:center;">Indira is assassinated</h2>

<p>At 9.30 am on October 31, 1984, at her residence at Safdarjung Road, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her bodyguards. It was seen as an act of retaliation in the aftermath of Operation Bluestar, which aimed to flush Sikh extremist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and other militants out from the Golden Temple.</p><p>The assassination plunged the nation into grief and sparked horrific riots in Delhi and in other parts of the country, that targeted the Sikh community. It also unleashed a wave of sympathy that handed the Congress its largest-ever parliamentary majority, and marked the first (and only) time that a party has crossed the 400-seat mark in the Lok Sabha. Rajiv Gandhi, once reluctant to join politics, became the prime minister with a supermajority.</p>