BEFORE the polls opened, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi seemed confident and optimistic. Later, while her opponents smeared their foreheads with vermilion and danced in the streets of Calcutta, Indira was withdrawn and downcast. In last week's off-year elections in four of India's most important states, Indira's once all-powerful Congress Party emerged undefeated only in her home state of Uttar Pradesh. Elsewhere it went down to stinging defeats. The results were, in fact, so poor that they cast grave doubts on the Congress Party's ability to continue as India's ruling party after the 1972...
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