THE INDIAN ELECTIONS OF 1977 and 1980 raise an obvious political question: how could a vast and diverse electorate render in quick succession such apparently conflicting verdicts? That is a question of electoral behavior and of campaign issues better addressed by first-hand observers than by this article. Wrapped in the electoral question, thoughjis a puzzle durable enough and abstract enough to warrant a more speculative approach. What does the stress of the Emergency of 1-975-1977 demonstrate about the actual working of the Indian constitution? What do the electoral outcomes, taken together, show to be the meaning of the constitution to the hundreds of millions of voters? These are somewhat old-fashioned questions. The body of concepts from which they spring was more current a generation ago than now, and the experience to which the concepts were applied was that of Europe and its cultural offshoots. (Japan must be added, but primarily because Japan fell under the constitutional influence of that European tradition). When they turned to the new nations of Asia and Africa in the 1950s, and to the decay of legal governments in Latin America, political scientists turned away from constitutions as irrelevant or misleading.' It is the assumption of this article that India warrants making an exception to the trend. For one thing, Indian intellectuals themselves argued the Emergency and its aftermath in terms of the meaning of events for the constitution. Moreover, the very durability of the constitution-it passed its thirtieth anniversary this year-entitles it to attention. The 30 years had not been without stress even before the Emergency: four border wars, the start of general industrialization and the