WORLD, Page 57INDIAThe Fall of the House of NehruFor only the second time since independence, the electoratevotes the Congress Party out of powerBy Lisa Beyer
In the history of modern dynasties, the House of Nehru rates
one of the heftier chapters. Since India gained independence in
1947, its political destiny has been inextricably linked with this
powerful family, whose scions have ruled the country with only two
brief interruptions. There was Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first
Prime Minister and an early leader of the durable Congress Party,
his daughter Indira Gandhi, and her son Rajiv. Such was the
family's sway that when Indira was assassinated in 1984, the
40-year-old Rajiv, a reluctant and unproven politician, was
rocketed into high office on the strength of one credential: his
name.
Suddenly that dynasty is in disrepute. In parliamentary
elections late last month, the Congress (I) Party, as it is now
called, was routed from power for only the second time in
independent India's history. Several corruption scandals, as well
as Gandhi's accelerating isolation from his people, helped squander
the reserves of public support that in 1984 had given his party an
unprecedented 415 of the 542 seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower
house of Parliament. Congress has been reduced to a sorry 192
seats, having lost power to a disparate opposition led by Gandhi's
archrival, Vishwanath Pratap Singh.
With an estimated 60% of India's 498 million voters taking
part, the balloting was the biggest democratic exercise in world
history -- and the bloodiest and most contemptible ever held in
India. At least 134 people died in election-related violence.
Because of widespread rigging, new voting was ordered in 1,485
polling stations, including 97 in Amethi, Rajiv Gandhi's
constituency in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Ultimately,
Gandhi was declared the winner over Rajmohan Gandhi, a grandson of
Mahatma Gandhi and no relation to Rajiv. But 20 of Rajiv's 59
ministers were defeated, a measure of the Congress Party's steep
decline.
Gandhi's political enemies owed much of their success to the
pertinacity of V.P. Singh, India's new Prime Minister. The
unassuming Singh, 58, served in Indira's governments and as
Minister of Finance and Defense under Rajiv, but in 1987 he
resigned, claiming that he had been blocked in his efforts to
unearth graft related to defense contracts. Soon after, Singh
launched a dogged national crusade against corruption. For the
elections, he persuaded several of India's opposition groups to
quit fighting one another and work together to defeat Congress. As
a result, they were able to avoid facing each other and thus
splitting the opposition vote in 387 of the 525 parliamentary
contests last month.
The opposition's strategy paid off handsomely. Although
Congress remained the largest party in Parliament, it fell 71 seats
shy of a majority. Three days after the third and final day of
polling, Gandhi, looking fresh-faced and unperturbed, appeared on
television to tell the nation, "The people have given their
verdict. In all humility, we respect that verdict."
Since Singh's Janata Dal (People's Party) and its four allies
in the National Front coalition gained a total of only 144 seats,
the anti-Congress forces had to settle for a minority government.
During the campaign, the National Front cooperated with the
Bharatiya Janata Party, a right-wing Hindu nationalist group, and
with the country's two Communist parties to avoid three-cornered
races. At the polls the Communists took a total of 44 seats while
the B.J.P. won 88, an extraordinary leap from the two seats it held
before. But as ideological opposites, the B.J.P. and the Communists
refused to join any coalition that included the other, so a loose
entente was arranged: the rightists and leftists would stay out of
the National Front's coalition but would back it in Parliament.
With two smaller parties pledging support, Singh could count on 283
votes, a score more than the 263 he needed for a majority.
Given the fragile underpinnings of the new regime, there is
intense speculation that it might soon collapse, as did the only
previous non-Congress government, which fell apart in 1979 after
212 years in power. If anything will hold the National Front and
its allies together, however, it will be their collective
determination to avoid a rerun of that debacle and to prevent Rajiv
Gandhi from returning to power. Says B.J.P. president L.K. Advani:
"Our objective is to end dynastic rule in New Delhi."
Among the challenges facing the new government are a foreign
debt of $63 billion, spiraling consumer prices and continuing
unrest in the states of Punjab, Assam, and Jammu and Kashmir. In
addressing these woes, the National Front will be painfully
hamstrung by the need to keep its allies of both the left and the
right satisfied.
That reality may account for Gandhi's equanimity in defeat.
While some members of his party initially urged him to try to forge
a coalition, he concluded that it was wiser to sit back and hope
that the National Front would soon disintegrate. Says a colleague
of Gandhi's: "I told him the people want a change. If you try to
form a government, we will be out of power for 25 years. This way,
it won't be 25 months." That remains to be seen, of course. But for
the moment, given the chaotic nature of India's parliamentary
democracy, an obituary for the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty seems
