India’s Second Revolution

Abstract

M ARCH 22, 1977, marked the second revolution in India's contemporary history. Like the first in August 1947, the transfer of power from one regime to another took place peacefully and without bloodshed. The difference was that on the earlier occasion, the Indian people were able, under Mahatma Gandhi's leadership, to terminate British rule and replace it in due course with a republic of their own making. On this occasion, led by Jayaprakash Narayan, on whom the mantle of Gandhi has now fallen, the Indian people were able to terminate an authoritarian regime and return to the path of democracy under the constitution of the republic. This was a ballot-box revolution. On January 11, 1977, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who had ruled under emergency powers since June 26, 1975, suddenly dissolved parliament and called for fresh elections. After a brief campaign, the people voted freely in the middle of March; and on the 22nd of that month, as the results streamed in from distant towns and villages, the figures revealed that the ruling Congress Party had lost disastrously, being reduced to a mere 153 seats in the Lok Sabha, while the opposition coalition under the banner of the Janata Party, along with its ally the Congress for Democracy, got 298 seats-a clear majority in a house of 542. The results were greeted by great crowds celebrating in public places and watching the electric signs reporting on each successive result as it came in. This was a liberation for which most of them had prayed for almost 19 months.