Rebels' Rally

Indira turns a rift into a chasm

When Jimmy Carter visited New Delhi on New Year's Day, India's most celebrated political leader was conspicuously absent from the receiving line of dignitaries. In a characteristically flamboyant maneuver to steal the presidential show, Indira Gandhi appeared across town to harangue 5,000 people assembled under a vast, multicolored tent. Ostensibly, the meeting was a convention of India's Congress Party. In fact, it was a gathering of party rebels reinforced by a motley crew of men hired to provide applause for the discredited former Prime Minister.

Dressed in a blazing red sari, Mrs. Gandhi sat cross-legged on the dais while she was unanimously elected president of the breakaway group, which calls itself the legitimate Congress Party. In her 45-minute speech, she attacked the policies of Morarji Desai, who had succeeded her as Prime Minister after her humiliating defeat in last March's election. She also told her supporters that they should be "prepared to go to the jails and fill them in large numbers"--a prospect that was likely to become as unpopular with politicians as her mass sterilization program had proved to be with voters.

Indeed, not one other political figure of national stature showed up for the breakaway convention in Delhi. Instead, party regulars denounced Mrs. Gandhi's election as preposterous, complaining that her group had illegally appropriated the name of the rightful Congress Party. In swift retaliation, nine members of the party executive committee expelled Mrs. Gandhi from the party that she had dominated for over a decade. Declared one committee member, Priya Ranjan Das Munshi: "The cancer is out, and we are not carrying the burden of Mrs. Gandhi any more." In reply, Mrs. Gandhi expelled Munshi and the entire executive committee from her Congress Party.

As rift turned into unbridgeable chasm among the Congress leadership last week, many Indians were accusing Mrs. Gandhi of ruthlessly sacrificing the party that had ruled India uninterruptedly from 1947 to 1977. The immediate beneficiaries of Congress's quarrel were Prime Minister Desai and his Janata Party, which had overwhelmingly profited in the March elections from Mrs. Gandhi's soaring unpopularity. Most observers believed that Congress would gradually regain much of its former strength after it scuttled Mrs. Gandhi and renounced her dictatorial ways. But as the February elections approach in four states traditionally ruled by Congress, the party is in disarray. Pro-and anti-Indira factions are fighting over the right to use Congress's cow-and-calf emblem on the ballot--a crucial issue in a nation with 64% illiteracy. Now, in a plague-on-both-your-houses mood, a significant number of Congress Party regulars may cast their votes for Janata's man-with-a-plow emblem--a symbol for millions of the Desai government's restoration of civil rights in India.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Gandhi continues to face a full-scale investigation by a government-appointed panel. This week she must respond to a subpoena from the commission headed by former Supreme Court Justice J.C. Shah. For the past four months the commission has heard testimony implicating Mrs. Gandhi and her high-rolling son Sanjay in crimes ranging from improper seizure of dictatorial powers and persecution of their opponents to the uprooting of 700,000 hapless citizens of New Delhi in a beautification campaign. Tearful witnesses testified that police entered their houses and beat up women and children in their zeal to vacate and bulldoze 105,000 homes.

Mrs. Gandhi argues that the Shah commission is carrying on a political vendetta. Clearly, her clumsy efforts to re-enter the political arena last week were mainly designed to reinforce that claim. Her attorneys have advised her to challenge the commission's authority to investigate her as a political leader, in the hope of gaining time for their beleaguered client. Ultimately, however, her repudiation at the polls may be followed by public exposure and disgrace.

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