The grand defeats of the Indian National Congress in 1982 brought Sanjay Gandhi’s brutal dictatorship to an end. Jagjivan Ram became Prime Minister, the first Dalit to attain that office. With the massive majority of the Indian Democratic Revolutionary Party (IDRP), he had the Forty-Third Amendment passed, which reverted India to a parliamentary system while reversing the centralizations of power done by Indira and Sanjay. The constitution was purified. With the Forty-Fourth Amendment, emergencies were made much harder to proclaim, and the basic structure doctrine was made explicit. Sanjay Gandhi was tried and imprisoned on charges of theft from the treasury. Jagjivan Ram’s government broke up the press, consolidated into a single government-operated newspaper by Sanjay Gandhi, into multiple competing papers, while those papers which did go underground were now fully legal. He dedicated memorials to the victims of the various massacres, including the infamous 1981 Amritsar Massacre, the so-called “Second Jallianwala Bagh”. For the victims of Sanjay Gandhi’s campaigns of mass sterilization, the government declared subsidies and some reparations. As India entered 1984, it seemed everything was getting better. The future seemed bright.
In 1984 this all changed. Jagjivan Ram had previously established a commission, the Bhole Commission, to look into establishing caste-based reservations in government jobs and university spaces, and it was in 1984 that the report of the Commission was completed. It suggested, in total, a 49.7% quota divided between Scheduled Castes, Depressed Backwards Classes, and Intermediate Backwards Classes, though a majority of the Indian people were eligible for these new reservations. Despite his advisors telling him that implementation would amount to political suicide, Jagjivan Ram believed that he had to implement caste-based reservations to break the power of the upper-castes. And so, he announced the full implementation of the findings of the Bhole Commission.
The result was a wave of self-immolations by upper-caste students. For a time, three students immolated themselves every day. But nevertheless Jagjivan Ram stood firm. Though he offered his sympathies to the students, he refused to budge on caste-based reservations. And this caused the collapse of his cabinet, as the Hindu nationalists Vajpayee and Advani left and so did the farmer leader Charan Singh, over the issue of reservations. Having lost much of his cabinet, having a dramatically weaker position, despite retaining a substantial majority, Jagjivan Ram announced an election. And so it was in 1984 that the nation went to the polls.
Jagjivan Ram’s IDRP had an enormously weakened position, as upper caste voters wouldn’t dare countenance him, and various regional leaders refused to support him owing to a desire not to see their own popularity harmed. His previous press conferences had been lightweight affairs, due to the press being grateful for his actions ensuring freedom of speech; now this ceased to be the case as journalists routinely gave him tough questions, ones he often had difficulty answering. Many quarters of Indian society openly cursed his name for the establishment of caste-based reservations, either for diminishing the privileges of upper-caste Indians, or for not including certain groups - Jats, or Khatris. In particular, victims of Sanjay’s campaign of mass sterilization desired inclusion in the reservation scheme, citing that in many parts of India, they were considered all but untouchables. It seemed Jagjivan Ram was heading for defeat.
Amidst this came the Sanjay Congress. Though it was enormously weakened by the great split of 1982 and the subsequent defeat, it still existed, and it had been bolstered by its victory in the 1983 Awadh elections, caused almost entirely due to the popularity of the incumbent Chief Minister V. P. Singh. Effectively hollowed out of most of his membership, what remained was little more than a Sanjay Gandhi personality cult. With Sanjay in jail for theft from the treasury, members attempted to hold protests, but none of these protests proved to be anything of significance. In the absence of Sanjay, his wife Maneka Gandhi became its leader. As she had no political experience whatsoever and indeed had served as a model before marrying Sanjay, most thought she would bring the rump of the Sanjay Congress to its final collapse. But she was intent to make sure this wouldn’t happen.
During the Bhole Commission protests, Maneka was there to console the mothers of immolated children. She was there to denounce the Bhole Commission report as divisive. And indeed, this was much commented by the media, that she was willing to attack Jagjivan Ram so decisively. By the time elections were announced, Maneka had partially built up a new public image.
With the elections, Maneka faced the same accusations that Sanjay had faced in 1982, that there had been campaigns of mass sterilization, that the soul of Indian democracy had nearly been killed. She faced hecklers deriding her and her husband, chanting slogans such as Indiri Bachao (“Save Your Penis”), and Sanjay continued to be compared to the dictator of Pakistan, Zia-ul-Haq. But these issues she sought to tackle. The Sanjay Congress did not run candidates in much of the nation, with the hopes instead of centralizing their efforts to those constituencies that Maneka felt could be won. She stated that, yes, there had been severe atrocities during Sanjay’s tenure as President, that there was no apology possible for the horrors of mass sterilization...and that if Sanjay had known, he would have stopped them. She alleged that it had been a secret cabal of advisors, bureaucrats, and lower-level administrators that had committed the atrocities, and that now this cabal had latched onto the current government - the clear implication was that there was a plot to continue mass sterilization that was wholly unconnected to Sanjay. Despite being widely mocked in the press as reminiscent of the old medieval adage of “the king’s evil advisors”, it was nevertheless a defence that did partially succeed.
Most of all, she attacked Jagjivan Ram. She alleged that he was conspiring to divide Brahmins and Dalits from one another for his own electoral gain. She increasingly relied on Hindu nationalism despite being a Sikh, stating that Brahmins and Dalits should unite in their common faith - that common faith was, of course, Hinduism. It was explicit enough that Hindu nationalists would know to vote for her, but implicit enough that she could deny being a Hindu nationalist. The Hindu nationalist and Maratha regionalist Shiv Sena, led by Bal Thackeray, supported the Sanjay Congress during the Emergency, and Maneka ensured they would continue to offer such support. The fact that she was a young woman, and an ex-model at that, meant that few politicians took her seriously enough to take the time to attack her and her campaign.
But all the while, Jagjivan Ram laid out his own campaign across the nation. He gave speeches where he adeptly walked the line between defending his own policies and conveying his sympathies to the students who immolated themselves. He extolled the achievements of his tenure as PM, namely restoring democracy and purifying the constitution. He often faced heckling by people who accused him of not caring about upper-caste people, of only caring about revenge. But this he denied. He stated that lower-caste people had jobs, and that they needed reservations in order to get any measure of help from the state. And he stated that he would make it easier for upper-caste people to get jobs as well through comprehensive economic reform, to create a booming economy for all. He made these speeches all across the nation, and they were widely covered in the media. It seemed he was making up for his diminished popularity.
At the same time, Charan Singh led his new party, the Lok Dal, in opposition to Jagjivan Ram and his government. He derided him as anti-farmer and brought the powerful vote of the Jat ethnic group against him. The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Loktantrik Party (BLP) likewise attacked Jagjivan Ram, alleging that he was animated by anti-Brahmin sentiments as well as a desire to divide Hindus. Both of these parties harshly attacked Jagjivan Ram while totally ignoring Maneka Gandhi.
But at the same time, Jagjivan Ram went hard against these two parties. He alleged that Charan Singh was an unscrupulous and power-hungry man, an old man in a hurry, who reduced his base to a mere vote-bank. At the same time, he alleged that the Hindu nationalism pushed by the BLP was false. Jagjivan Ram was a follower of the Bhakti Hindu saint Ravidas, and he stated that the Ravidassia school of thought, with its belief in the equality of Hindu and Muslim alike, of low-caste and upper-caste alike, all before a God which could be worshipped by all, was the truest form of Hinduism in contrast to the Hindutva pushed by the BLP. While Jagjivan Ram had pushed this belief even before the election, and the Ravidassia movement had already been spreading across Dalit communities throughout India, it had now been effectively weaponized. It was an effective attack, one which put the BLP on the defensive.
It was a few weeks before the election that a game-changing party shift emerged. Subramanian Swamy, who during the Emergency organized opposition to the regime among the diaspora and famously snuck his way into Parliament in 1976 to denounce the then-prime minister Indira Gandhi to denounce her for killing democracy before escaping, had in 1983 been dismissed from the administration for anti-Muslim sentiments, though he alleged it was really because Jagjivan Ram and Vajpayee had conspired to sideline him. He initially refused to support any party in the 1984 election. But Maneka had been in contact with him, and successfully brought him into the Sanjay Congress a few weeks before the election. And so it was that one of the most famous opponents of Sanjay Gandhi was now brought into Sanjay’s party. It was a game-changing event, one which added much credibility to the Sanjay Congress.
A mere three weeks before the election, another game-changing event shook Indian political society. Jagjivan Ram’s son, Suresh Kumar, was caught in flagrante delicto with a college student, and pictures were published in a newspaper run by the Sanjay Congress. A married man well over the age of forty having an affair with an eighteen-year-old woman rocked the nation. If Jagjivan Ram couldn’t teach his own son that extramarital affairs in general, and with a woman who was barely an adult in particular, was wrong, opponents said, what right did he have to lead the nation? But Jagjivan Ram was quick on the scene. He made his son apologize on television, then disowned him, and derided the Sanjay Congress for sleazy tactics worthy of Richard Nixon. He attempted to shift the debate back to policies, but was only partially successful.
Come the election, polls and other electoral studies showed massively conflicting results. They showed everything from a majority for the Lok Dal to a parliament divided between four or more parties. But almost everyone was sure that Jagjivan Ram and his IDRP would be destroyed totally and utterly, that it would cease to exist.
They were wrong. The IDRP led by Jagjivan Ram retained a majority, even if a small one. Jagjivan Ram’s campaign had proved more successful than anyone expected, even with all the snags it hit, turning a surefire defeat into a victory. But perhaps the greatest shock came in the other results. The Lok Dal and, in particular the Bharatiya Loktantrik Party, utterly failed to win many seats at all. But perhaps the biggest shock was the electoral performance of the Sanjay Congress. Under the effective leadership of the canny Maneka Gandhi, it rose from 17 seats to 117 seats. It was now to be India’s Official Opposition. It shocked everyone, even Maneka herself. Many were unnerved, worried that this sudden surge could be used by the Sanjay Congress to take power democratically and restore Sanjay’s horrific dictatorship. A happy Maneka announced the Sanjay Congress had every intention of taking back power. Furthermore, she tried to take a step towards gaining further legitimacy
In 1982, the courts ruled that Sanjay’s faction of the Congress party had to refer to itself as the Indian National Congress (Sanjay); with the other faction integrated into the IDRP and the Sanjay Congress having become the opposition by 1984, Maneka requested the courts to see if it could be recognized as the official successor of the Congress party. But this Jagjivan Ram could not allow. He could not allow the venerable Congress party of the past to be associated with the Sanjay Congress, and so he requested 120 MPs from his own party to officially “separate” from the IDRP to create the Indian National Congress (Democratic), and it was only this kept the Sanjay Congress from being recognized as the official Congress party.
Nevertheless, Jagjivan Ram declared the victory of the IDRP. He once again enumerated his party’s policies, and he declared he would make India a better nation for all Indians regardless of race, caste, or creed. But people were worried. Worried about the policies that would be pushed by the IDRP. Worried about the revival of the Sanjay Congress. Worried that Jagjivan Ram would fail.
And so, as India entered 1985, it entered a period of uncertainty.