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∙ THE PRAJA SOCIALIST PARTY, with 18 seats in the Lok Sabha, represents the non-Communist left and is the political home for most of India's intellectuals. It has provided most of the debating muscle against the government in Parliament, but Congress has lifted most of the P.S.P.'s ideas, sharply reducing its influence.
∙ THE JANA SANGH PARTY commands only four seats in the Lok Sabha. but has a growing strength based on its virulent anti-Moslem, antiminority appeal. Jana Sangh's Hindu reactionaries would restrict the rights of Moslems, Christians and untouchables ; they would forbid cow slaughter all over India. Jana Sangh is confident that it can win many Congress voters away from their party. "Scratch a Congressman and you find a Jan Sanghi," says a party leader. But the party is strongly opposed by many Hindus who disapprove of its fanaticism.
∙ THE SWATANTRA (Freedom) PARTY is the most important opposition movement in the campaign, even though it was founded only three years ago, has never been tested at the polls, and has only ten members in the Lok Sabha—all rebels and outcasts from other parties. Swatantra is vigorously conservative, opposes Nehru's idea of a planned society. Nehru has slashingly attacked it as the main ideological challenge to the kind of India he wants to build. Nehru called the Swatantra leaders "fascist." says: "Nobody knows which century they live in—the 15th or the 16th."
The Permit Raj. Nehru's fury partly stems from the fact that the Swatantra leader, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, India's most prestigious elder statesman, attacks Nehru personally. "C.R.," also nicknamed "Rajaji," has stung Nehru by calling the Congress reign "corrupt and dishonest . . . worse than the rule of the Mogul emperor," has accused him of leading India to statism and Communism. A bowed and frail Madras Brahman whom Gandhi once called "keeper of my conscience," C.R. was a leader in the Congress freedom fight against the British, was the only Indian ever to serve as India's Governor General. A leader of the Congress right wing, he quit the party in 1959 when it passed a resolution in favor of cooperative farming. At 84, though mentally alert, Rajaji is not running for election, guides his party from the sidelines.