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Throughout India news of Mrs. Gandhi's defeat was received with astonishment and euphoria. "What is happening?" shouted Janata supporters outside a counting station in New Delhi. When told that their candidates were winning decisively, the spectators hugged the messengers of the good news. Said Om Prakash, 26, a cloth merchant: "The election result shows that dictatorship cannot acquire any roots in this country." Declared M.C. Sachdeva, 27 a government clerk. "To my generation, freedom began today, not in 1947." The Janata victory, added a fire brigade employe "has come mythical Lord Rama descending to earth to destroy the evil demon Indira."
Indira's major newspapers and magazines, most of which had been harassed into silence by censorship and government found their voices again. The Time of India called the election "a second liberation struggle" and added "Never before has the country been through such hell." Observed the Statesman, which had courageously criticized emergency excesses: "We Indians can hold our heads a little higher today." The Indian Express which had been brought to the verge of bankruptcy by a variety of governmental dirty tricks, said, "Indian democracy will never again be the same . . .No future government however large its majority in Parliament can afford to assume that it can drive a coach-and-four though the constitution and the laws."
In the United States, as in other Western countries, there was widespread satisfaction with the results. As one State Department official put it, "Indian democracy worked—and with a vengeance." Although careful not to gloat, a Carter Administration official said he found it "refreshing to see so many people opt for freedom in what amounts to a referendum against martial law." Perhaps the most enthusiastic response of all came from New York's Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the former U.S. Ambassador to India (1973-75). He introduced a resolution in the Senate to "congratulate the free people of the Republic of India" for successfully holding "the largest democratic elections in history." With his customary Irish hyperbole, Moynihan told reporters, "Nothing that will happen in Washington this year will be as important to America as what happened in New Delhi in the past few days. Political democracy has reasserted its claim on the future of the world."
There was no joy in the Soviet Union, whose leaders had assiduously courted Mrs. Gandhi as an ally. Russian newspaper readers were not told of her loss for two days after the results were known. Then Izvestiya lamely explained that she had been beaten because of "mistakes and excesses" committed since the emergency was declared. Until last week, the Soviets had had nothing but praise for her tough emergency measures, and had attacked her opponents as "reactionaries" and "black marketeers." Now, said Izvestiya, Moscow was looking forward to friendly relations with the new government.