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What had happened to turn India upside down? Nearly everyone agreed that the voters had held the government responsible for a number of hated events: the excesses of the sterilization program: the forced removal of tens of thousands from city slums; and the ever growing political present of Sanjay Ghandhi, who was seen as an evil influence on his mother and as the possible successor to her dynastic power.
Not even the Janata leaders predicted a landslide by their party, but many realized in the closing days of the campaign that Congress was in trouble. Opposition rallies were jammed, while Prime Minister's audiences were embarrassingly apathetic. Three times during a rally at Varanasi, the chairman called for a cheer for Indira, and three times the crowd shouted no. In Lucknow, women in the front of the audience started to leave ten minutes after Mrs. Gandhi began to speak. Tired of news broadcasts on the government-run All India Radio, which ignored the opposition's campaign and burbled endlessly about New Delhi's accomplishments, many Indians began to call it "All Indira Radio."
Almost to the end, Mrs. Gandhi believed her Congress Party machine would believed the vote, as it had done so often before. Sanjay was also convinced that his crowds—dutifully rounded up by party flunkies—were made up of genuine supporters. But when the balloting began, says a friend, the family confidence began to wane. "You could hear it in their conversation. They started wondering."
Opposition leaders were also wondering—about whether Mrs. Gandhi would abide by the election results if they went against her. They noted that paramilitary police, who had been moved to rural voting locations the week before, were suddenly regrouped. In an ominous speech in Uttar Pradesh on March 17, Mrs. Gandhi accused the opposition leaders of trying to create chaos, and the press of printing stories damaging to the national welfare. Some Janata leaders were sufficiently unnerved that they spent the next two nights at the homes of friends—just in case the police should come for them as they did in June 1975.
In New Delhi there were reports that when Mrs. Gandhi was warned of impending defeat, an inner circle of advisers tried to persuade her to annul the election, arrest the opposition leaders in the name of stability and reimpose the full force of the emergency. Whether or not the reports are true, Mrs. Gandhi—to her credit—accepted the voters' decision with quiet grace.
Spirit of Humility. By midafternoon on March 20, the last day of balloting, opposition leaders knew that the Prime Minister was in trouble in her constituency, Rae Bareli. Sealed off by sycophants, she did not learn the truth until 8 that night. She took the news calmly but became remote and withdrawn, stoically advising her ministers that if she had lost, she had lost. Before dawn the next morning she asked the Acting President to lift the state of emergency. Two hours later she summoned her ministers, many of whom had also been defeated, and told them she would resign.