India The Fall of the House of Nehru

By Lisa Beyer

In the history of modern dynasties, the House of Nehru rates one of the heftier chapters. Since India gained independence in 1947, its political destiny has been inextricably linked with this powerful family, whose scions have ruled the country with only two brief interruptions. There was Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister and an early leader of the durable Congress Party, his daughter Indira Gandhi, and her son Rajiv. Such was the family's sway that when Indira was assassinated in 1984, the 40-year-old Rajiv, a reluctant and unproven politician, was rocketed into high office on the strength of one credential: his name.

Suddenly that dynasty is in disrepute. In parliamentary elections late last month, the Congress (I) Party, as it is now called, was routed from power for only the second time in independent India's history. Several corruption scandals, as well as Gandhi's accelerating isolation from his people, helped squander the reserves of public support that in 1984 had given his party an unprecedented 415 of the 542 seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament. Congress has been reduced to a sorry 192 seats, having lost power to a disparate opposition led by Gandhi's archrival, Vishwanath Pratap Singh.

With an estimated 60% of India's 498 million voters taking part, the balloting was the biggest democratic exercise in world history -- and the bloodiest and most contemptible ever held in India. At least 134 people died in election-related violence. Because of widespread rigging, new voting was ordered in 1,485 polling stations, including 97 in Amethi, Rajiv Gandhi's constituency in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Ultimately, Gandhi was declared the winner over Rajmohan Gandhi, a grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and no relation to Rajiv. But 20 of Rajiv's 59 ministers were defeated, a measure of the Congress Party's steep decline.

Gandhi's political enemies owed much of their success to the pertinacity of V.P. Singh, India's new Prime Minister. The unassuming Singh, 58, served in Indira's governments and as Minister of Finance and Defense under Rajiv, but in 1987 he resigned, claiming that he had been blocked in his efforts to unearth graft related to defense contracts. Soon after, Singh launched a dogged national crusade against corruption. For the elections, he persuaded several of India's opposition groups to quit fighting one another and work together to defeat Congress. As a result, they were able to avoid facing each other and thus splitting the opposition vote in 387 of the 525 parliamentary contests last month.

The opposition's strategy paid off handsomely. Although Congress remained the largest party in Parliament, it fell 71 seats shy of a majority. Three days after the third and final day of polling, Gandhi, looking fresh-faced and unperturbed, appeared on television to tell the nation, "The people have given their verdict. In all humility, we respect that verdict."

Since Singh's Janata Dal (People's Party) and its four allies in the National Front coalition gained a total of only 144 seats, the anti-Congress forces had to settle for a minority government. During the campaign, the National Front cooperated with the Bharatiya Janata Party, a right-wing Hindu nationalist group, and with the country's two Communist parties to avoid three-cornered races. At the polls the Communists took a total of 44 seats while the B.J.P. won 88, an extraordinary leap from the two seats it held before. But as ideological opposites, the B.J.P. and the Communists refused to join any coalition that included the other, so a loose entente was arranged: the rightists and leftists would stay out of the National Front's coalition but would back it in Parliament. With two smaller parties pledging support, Singh could count on 283 votes, a score more than the 263 he needed for a majority.

Given the fragile underpinnings of the new regime, there is intense speculation that it might soon collapse, as did the only previous non-Congress government, which fell apart in 1979 after 212 years in power. If anything will hold the National Front and its allies together, however, it will be their collective determination to avoid a rerun of that debacle and to prevent Rajiv Gandhi from returning to power. Says B.J.P. president L.K. Advani: "Our objective is to end dynastic rule in New Delhi."

Among the challenges facing the new government are a foreign debt of $63 billion, spiraling consumer prices and continuing unrest in the states of Punjab, Assam, and Jammu and Kashmir. In addressing these woes, the National Front will be painfully hamstrung by the need to keep its allies of both the left and the right satisfied.

That reality may account for Gandhi's equanimity in defeat. While some members of his party initially urged him to try to forge a coalition, he concluded that it was wiser to sit back and hope that the National Front would soon disintegrate. Says a colleague of Gandhi's: "I told him the people want a change. If you try to form a government, we will be out of power for 25 years. This way, it won't be 25 months." That remains to be seen, of course. But for the moment, given the chaotic nature of India's parliamentary democracy, an obituary for the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty seems premature.

With reporting by Edward W. Desmond and Anita Pratap/New Delhi