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Lists of Heads of Government and Heads of State

World Chess Champions (1975-2021)

aka

why yes, I did watch the queen's gambit actua

1975-1991: Anatoly Karpov (SUN)

1975: Bobby Fischer (USA)
1978: Viktor Korchnoi (XXA)
1981: Viktor Korchnoi (CHE)
1984: Garry Kasparov (SUN) [1]
1987: Garry Kasparov (SUN) [2]
1990: Jan Timman (NLD)

1991-1993: Anatoly Karpov (RUS) [3]
1993-1994: Nigel Short (GBR) [4]

1993: Anatoly Karpov (RUS)
1994-1999: Anatoly Karpov (RUS) [5]
1994: Nigel Short (GBR)
1996: Viswanathan Anand (IND)

1999-2005: Alexei Shirov (ESP) [6]
1999: Anatoly Karpov (RUS)
2002: Demis Hassabis (GBR)

2005-2008: Judit Polgár (HUN) [7]
2005: Alexei Shirov (ESP)
2006: Alexei Shirov (ESP)

2008-2020: Demis Hassabis (GBR) [8]
2008: Judit Polgár (HUN) [9]
2011: Vladimir Kramnik (RUS)
2014: Ellen Carlsen (NOR)
2017: Levon Aronian (ARM)

2020-: Ian Nepomniachtchi (RUS) [10]
2020: Demis Hassabis (GBR)

Footnotes

[1] On December 7th, 1984, Karpov plays the more pressing 22.Nf3 [A] instead of 22.Qd3 and Kasparov's somewhat imprecise response leaves him at a small but significant material disadvantage, which Karpov is able to exploit - in suitably Karpovian fashion - to slowly smother his opponent's play and win the decisive sixth game. More draws than expected, to be sure, but it would take very rose-tinted glasses to see the 6-0 shut out as anything other than a total humiliation for the up-and-coming Kasparov.

[2] And yet he clawed his way back in the next Candidates Tournament - although many would contend that he never really regained his "edge" after the catastrophe in 1984 - and went on to lose [C] to Karpov. Again. What followed was a year of further recriminations, internal politicking, and in June of 1988, Kasparov's defection at the end of the tournament in Belfort, France, alleging sustained collusion and psychological pressure from both FIDE and the USSR. Hopes briefly skyrocketed that Kasparov could do what Korchnoi had not and finally notch a win for the West, but with Kasparov's refusal to even compete on FIDE's terms the torch was passed to the stalwart - but underwhelming - Jan Timman of the Netherlands. Timman lost.

[3] But Karpov's steel facade began to crack in the early '90s, with both the collapse of his home country and the news that Kasparov had finally done the one thing he never could - defeat Bobby Fischer. The 1992 Kasparov - Fischer match dominated headlines at the time, but is now considered an embarrassment for both men; Fischer for losing, handily, and Kasparov for choosing to take on someone twenty years out of practice (and to say the least, unwell) just so he could claim the hollow title of Champion of the West. But, at the time, Karpov was rattled.

[4] And that was enough for him to lose, in a stunning upset, to GM Nigel Short, who created a brief spot of excitement and a British chess boom to punctuate the high highs and low lows of the Moore years.
Stories that when asked about the new champion's reign Karpov simply responded "Short." are, of course, completely anecdotal.

[5] Karpov thrashed Short in '94 in arguably the most dominant performance of his career [D] and reclaimed the title for five more turbulent years, leaving him second only to Emanuel Lasker as far as longevity is concerned, although far more polarizing: in terms of sheer talent, unquestionably one of the greatest of all time, but you would be hard-pressed to find a player outside of Russia who truly celebrated his total domination of the era and willingness to toe the Kremlin line.

[6]
Which makes it fitting, possibly, that when he finally lost his battle with time it was accompanied by the bright candle of émigré Alexei Shirov, whose aggressive tactical flair made for thrilling victories over the aging Karpov (and his stylistic heir Hassabis) but at times cast a shadow on the real 'soundness' of his play - especially since he finally lost the battle of Man vs. Machine to the distinctly Karpovian positioning of Deepest Blue.

[7] Live by the sword, die by the sword. Shirov brought about his own downfall with, characteristically, a gamble - but this time an organizational one. Hoping to avoid the proverbial 'draw death' and put a more aggressive stamp on the game, FIDE's adoption of short knockout qualifiers, with his backing, resulted in chaos [E] and what less creative journalists called a 'Cinderella run' for Hungarian GM Judit Polgár, the best of three sisters who had utterly dominated the world of women's chess. Polgár's combativeness was a far cry from both of his past opponents and, Shirov was already on the wane, and in a 'shocker' that should have surprised no one who'd seen their recent play, Polgár won, handily. The rematch was even more one-sided. But all nice things must come to an end, and Polgár, who herself had admitted that the game was "30 to 40% psychology", was subject to personal harassment on an unprecedented level and withering criticism over the course of her tenure for not being 'committed' enough to the sport, not least when she had the temerity to admit she was considering having children - and elevated by the caprices of a knockout system, she simply didn't have the staying power [F] of a Botvinnik or Karpov.

[8] But at least she got knocked out by the best. "Demigod" Hassabis had been the brightest star of the Short Boom, a serious contender for WC since 1999, and even made it to the final in 2002, only to be pipped by Shirov. But his smooth, positional play seemed passé and, in the meteoric world of chess, his moment seemed to have passed. But it had just arrived. A whole new generation of players were now growing up with chess computers but it was Hassabis that saw their limits, picking up not just new lines of theory but new realms of it - materialistic chess was a thing of the past. Less quick attacks, more quicksand. Opponents wandered in and didn't come out. The incumbent champion happened to be one of them.

[9] Polgár was denied an immediate rematch in 2009 - ironically, on the grounds that Shirov had demonstrated the futility of such a tradition. She continues to be a worldwide ambassador for girls getting involved in chess, so it remains to be seen whether FIDE will succeed in their goal of actively hounding all women out of the game.

[10] Even with all the technological advances at his fingertips, Hassabis has no monopoly on a deep mind, and after twelve dominant years - by far the best run since Karpov - his more wary approach [G] finally went down in flames at the hands of a daring, swashbuckling Russian. Kasparov, busy crushing American three year olds on daytime TV, would be proud.


Footnotes but about chess

[A] I got into chess because of a TV show so obviously I am talking some bullshit here, but if you look at the position on move 22, knight to F3 attacks the pawn and also develops a knight that isn't doing anything - I think it's a pretty intuitive move and Kasparov (and Timman) both thought the position was practically shouting it.

Just relying on Kasparov's own calculation of the position with years to think on it (i.e. giving him the best possible chance) and a really smart computer, his proposed sequence leaves him down essentially three pawns (or a whole knight or bishop) in the evaluation, which at their skill level would require Karpov to actively throw the game away to not win it. Karpov had won five and drawn twenty five games at this point, with the rule being first to six wins - botching this match was something of a turning point, with Kasparov getting his first win in the next one, picking up steam, and making it 5-3 before the championship was outright adjourned for a year because they were so tired. Garry went on to win in 1985 and the rest is history.

[C] It's an open question how much losing 6-0 would have permanently damaged Kasparov's performance (Karpov thinks it would have crushed him but he is obviously, er, biased) but the OTL championship in 1987 was 12-12 between them with ties to the champion, so even if defeated, demoralized Kasparov does exactly as well as OTL, he actually loses.

[D] Karpov had his best performance of all time in OTL in the '94 tournament in Linares and Short was historically not really on his (or Kasparov's) level but beat Karpov in the semis in a bit of a fluke in 1993.

[E] FIDE did this in OTL in the '90s after their schism with Kasparov and it resulted in people ranked 19th, 28th, and 44th in the world all becoming champions so, er, not the best idea guys. Polgár was eighth at her peak (and tended to overperform in rapid knockout formats) so this is basically a perfect storm for her to get a shot against the past-it Shirov.

[F] The flip side of this is that Polgár is already alive and doing chess by the POD and at her very best in '05 was eighth in the world; she's just not going to consistently beat #1s. Oddly it feels easier to butterfly Hassabis quitting it in college after being world-class at, like, 12, than to butterfly Polgár's skill level because I mean, in OTL she didn't do anything wrong - she doesn't have to be one-in-a-century to deserve recognition for being really, really good at chess. Should also be acknowledged that toxic, exclusive atmospheres are, you know, bad.

[G] This is all a bit of an anachronistic blend of Hassabis's style as a kid (at least in the one game I found) and that of his creation, AlphaZero, who is also non-materialistic but is more of a lunatic attacker than a sanguine defender. By this logic Elon Musk should be partly battery-powered but just shut up and enjoy the damn list about chess.
 
Delightful list, @zaffre. I'm not a chess guy but my dad is (he actually beat Short as a young man in the 80s, an anecdote he is even less likely to shut up about in this world) and I know enough by osmosis to appreciate the cleverness of it.

I enjoyed magnus' sister being the one to get into chess, here.
 
[G] This is all a bit of an anachronistic blend of Hassabis's style as a kid (at least in the one game I found) and that of his creation, AlphaZero, who is also non-materialistic but is more of a lunatic attacker than a sanguine defender. By this logic Elon Musk should be partly battery-powered but just shut up and enjoy the damn list about chess.

This list is so specific. I love the energy
 
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The Rise and Fall of CAnon - A Very British Conspiracy Theory

2017-2020: Jeremy Corbyn (Labour)

2017-2019: 57th Parliament
Labour Majority of 2


Labour won the general election after a very poor campaign from the Conservatives and the Grenfell disaster taking place in the last week of the campaign. The new government made housing safety a priority and pushed for better social welfare measures. Labour was hamstrung, however, by a tiny majority and rebellions within the party. Brexit failed to get anywhere and took a huge amount of time.

On the Labour left a narrative developed about a betrayal of the Corbyn government by the PLP, Civil Service, and royal family. This was backed by a series of leaked dossiers which claimed, among other things, that Labour staffers had hoped to lose in 2017 and had targetted Diane Abbott with racist harassment.

2019-2020: 57th Parliament
Confidence and Supply with Nicola Sturgeon (SNP), Majority of 12


TIG split off from Labour in early 2019 and necessitated Labour making deals to stay in power. Their deal with the SNP unsurprisingly included two second referendums. In September, Britain voted to leave the EU with in a soft Brexit deal by 59.2%. This triggered a second independence referendum, set for March 2020. Unfortunately for the SNP, this was delayed by COVID-19 and the need for nation-wide lockdowns.

At this time, slogans changed on the left. A belief grew up that TIG MPs had acted illegally towards Corbyn, the Labour Party, and its activists, and if the full, unredacted, dossier detailing all of their crimes was released it would lead to by-elections where Corbyn could purge the party and regain his majority.

2020-2027: Rory Stewart (Conservative)

2020-2022: 57th Parliament
Coalition with Boris Johnson (Conservative), Tom Watson (Hope), Luciana Berger (TIG), Jo Swinson (Liberal Democrat), Majority of 57


Those on the centre of the political spectrum feared Corbyn's approach to lockdowns for a variety of reasons - his perceived unwillingness to condemn his brother, the weakness of lockdown regulations, the furlough scheme, rent forgiveness schemes, the overzealousness of the lockdown regulations, etc. In May 79 Labour MPs split to form a new centrist party and Corbyn was forced out of government, replaced by Rory Stewart, a Conservative who had build up a reputation with centrists.

Across the country, Labourites were furious about the betrayal and in many areas MP's offices were vandalised. Stop the Coup Protests were the first in a series of protests that would encompass antiracism, trans rights, women's safety, and eventually unrestricted looting that characterised the summer between COVID waves.

2022-2027: 58th Parliament
Conservative Majority of 65


Rory Stewart gained a lot of popularity during the COVID years and when it finally abated in autumn of 2021 he was first choice for the Conservatives to lead the party into the next election. The new Conservative government pushed for tighter controls on social media and greater police powers, and maintained government committments to Help to Buy and the pensions triple lock through the biggest recession in British history.

In 2022 Stewart lost the Scotland referendum but squared up the Sturgeon on the matter, claiming that as there had been a boycott by Remain voters the decision was invalid. He took Britain out of the EU in 2023, but was an good European who was highly effective in the border schirmishes with Russia. In 2025 he reformed the country in the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Scotland would now have a Prime Minister and radically more autonomy and English Parliament Days would take place in Westminster to decide English Laws. This may have been what prevented Scotland from leaving in the 2025 Third Scottish Independence Referendum.

#ReleaseTheDossier and #StopTheCoup never quite ended. The riots of 2020 had badly damaged the brand of Black Lives Matter, Women's Safety and Trans Rights groups but the Corbynistas never quite fell into that group anyway. The size and scope of the Deep State extended and it's purported crimes grew. In 2024 a list of deep state super-injunctions was leaked online and in 2026 a series of memos were released detailing how King Charles and Prince William had cut Harry and Megan out of the royal family

2027-2037: Boris Johnson (Conservative)

2027-2032: 59th Parliament
Conservative majority of 51


By the time Boris Johnson got to power he had been the King Across the Water in the Conservatives for almost two decades. In that time he'd developed a range on interesting policies with the help of political advisors Dom Cummings and his wife, Dehenna Johnson. The party was now against critical race theory and critical gender theory. It opposed climate radicalism and pushed for British Patriotism and unionism.

It was all a bit much. When the government announced there would be no reform to the Gender Recognition Act, this caused outcry from a western world where self-ID was the norm. When Britain won the World Cup in 2030 players were united in their condemnation of racist attacks on the team he had described as freedom of speech. His policies hit a solid brick wall of reality, and kept going.

Labour were in a similar situation, however. Despite their new leader Keir Starmer's best efforts the party hierarchy was held by FreeCorbyn believers, the party went into the election divided and with party activists calling their own leader a Deep State stooge and a cop.

2032-2037: 60th Parliament
Conservative majority of 12


FreeCorbyn protestors stormed parliament on opening day, easily breaking through security and forcing parliament out of the building. In a few days, protests turned to the kind of generalised rioting that had become a hallmark of British civic life since the pandemic. Parliament's occupiers declared a people's republic and demanded the votes be recounted and the Corbyn Dossier be released. They were dealt with harshly by armed police. Lilly Grist became the first person to die of bullet wounds in the House of Commons chamber, though more died in hospitals.

This fired up the intense culture wars that had gripped English public life. A proposal for an English Parliament became the focal point of a lot of the tension and a protest village was set up on the site where it would be built. Meanwhile, Westminster's own temporary relocation to the QE2 centre was presumed by FreeCorbyn to be a "militarisation of parliament". The country was angry, sad, and even the 2034 coronation of King William failed to improve the mood.

2037-2042: Richard Burgon (Labour)

2037-2042: 61st Parliament
Labour majority of 23


Burgon was a convinced Free Corbyn suporter by 2037 and his first act on coming to power was to demand the Corbyn Dossier be released. This was complicated by the fact that it did not exist. He also attempted to close down the English Parliament and move the British Parliament back to Westminster. Neither of these proved possible, but he did ensure that The House of Commons and the new UK Senate would change meeting locations and travel across Britain rather than stay in the QE2 centre. Among his unusual policies, Burgon spoke out against the Treaty of Jerusalem, tried to grant recognition to the Free Russian Republic, and tried to make Harry king as a temporary measure before a republic could be established.

Some of his decisions were popular. The renationalisation of the Postal Service and developing it into a communications network provider, beginning the slow nationalisation of the train network, and establishing a truth and reconciliation committee on racist, sexist and transphobic oppression. It had to be noted that once the London Met was replaced by the new English Law Enforcement Service, the riots in London stopped. However, he never quite escaped his association with FreeCorbyn which was becoming only more radical and unhinged while in power. In 2041, some 25,000 people listed FreeCorbyn as their religion in the census and they were only half joking.

2042-204X: Zarah Sultana (Labour)

2042-2047: 62nd Parliament
Labour majority of 14


Labour's centrists retook the party in what FreeCorbyn called a second coup but really came down to Burgon's CLP refusing to reselect him. The new leadership has charted a conciliatory course, trying to end the culture wars and recreate a sense of unity, while continuing the world of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She achieved disestablishment of the Church of England and replacing royal honours with Parliamentary awards, but has so far failed to end the monarchy or bring in free wifi. These committments will await a possible second term.

In 2046, Jeremy Corbyn died. His funeral bought out thousands and shrines appeared across the country. But by now, FreeCorbyn is becoming a niche, outdated, movement. Jeremy Corbyn himself had grown increasingly bemused by it, while his brother had taken on an ever larger role in its leadership. It will be intriguing to see whether this political cult will survive the enduring object of its affections.
 
This list is so specific. I love the energy

It was nice to lean fully into "take it or leave it idk" material and not feel like there were any expectations I had to really contend with.

Delightful list, @zaffre. I'm not a chess guy but my dad is (he actually beat Short as a young man in the 80s, an anecdote he is even less likely to shut up about in this world) and I know enough by osmosis to appreciate the cleverness of it.

I enjoyed magnus' sister being the one to get into chess, here.

Short had no real business going up against Kasparov or Karpov but he hit world #3 in the '80s so honestly respect.

Magnus is interesting since I can't, like, not allude to him (I mean I could, since he was born post-POD) but it's also hard to toss him in a list without going "and then Magnus just beat everybody" since that's basically what OTL has been. But yeah, in this world she has been a bit more inspired by Judit while he has some real Scandi noir bullshit going on in the cutthroat world of Nordic modeling, or whatever.
 
37. Richard Nixon Republican Spiro Agnew 1969-1973 Gerald Ford 1973-1977 1969-1977

38. Edmund Brown jr Democratic Lloyd Benson 1977-1985

39. Charles Percy Republican Howard Baker 1985-1989
 
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1893-1897: John M. Palmer (Democratic)
1892 (with William Eustis Russell) def. Benjamin Harrison / Whitelaw Reid (Republican) and James B. Weaver / James G. Field (People’s)
1897-1900: Cushman K. Davis* (Republican)
1896 (with Marion Butler; cross-nominated by People’s) def. John M. Palmer / Williams Eustis Russell (Democratic) and Levi P. Morton / various (National Republican)
1900-1901: Marion Butler (Republican)
Replaced Davis
1901-1905: Richard F. Pettigrew (Republican)
1900 (with Joseph C. Sibley) def. George Dewey / Elliott Danforth & Chauncey Depew (Democratic cross-nominated by National Republican)
1905-1908: William Freeman Vilas** (Democratic)
1904 (with George Gray) def. Richard F. Pettigrew / Joseph C. Sibley (Republican)
1908 (with George Gray) def. Albert B. Cummins / Albert Beveridge (Republican)

1908-1913: George Gray (Democratic)
Replaced Vilas
1913-1921: Thomas H. Carter (Republican)
1912 (with Nahum Josiah Bachelder) def. George Gray / James D. Phelan (Democratic)
1916 (with Nahum Josiah Bachelder) def. Simeon Eben Baldwin / Joe T. Robinson (Democratic)

1921-1929: Herbert Hoover (Democratic)
1920 (with J. Campbell Cantrill) def. Nahum Josiah Bachelder / Jeter Pritchard (Republican)
1924 (with Albert Ritchie) def. Jacob S. Coxey Sr. / Harry Wallace (Republican)

1929-1937: Smith Wildman Brookhart (Republican)
1928 (with Gifford Pinchot) def. Royal Copeland / Vic Donahey (Democratic)
1932 (with Gifford Pinchot) def. John Nance Garner / J. Hamilton Lewis (Democratic)

1937-1941: Charles H. Martin (Democratic)
1936 (with Thomas Rhea) def. Homer Bone / Philip La Follette (Republican)
1941-1942: Smedley Butler*** (Republican)
1940 (with John L. Lewis) def. Charles H. Martin / Thomas Rhea (Democratic)
1942-1945: John L. Lewis (Republican)
Replaced Butler
1945-1949: Henry J. Kaiser (Democratic)
1944 (with Frederick Van Nuys) def. John L. Lewis / Bronson Cutting (Republican)
1949-1959: William “Wild Bill” Langer**** (Republican)
1948 (with Huey Long) def. Henry J. Kaiser / Robert Gray Allen (Democratic) and Robert Taft / Howard Buffett (Liberty endorsed by ‘Isolationist’ Democrats)
1952 (with Huey Long) def. Paul A. Dever / Robert Kerr (Democratic) and Robert Taft / William Knowland (Liberty)
1956 (with Wayne Morse) def. Manchester Boddy / Frank Lausche (Democratic) and William E. Jenner / Walter Judd (Liberty)

1959-1961: Wayne Morse (Republican)
Replaced Langer
1961-1969: Harold J. Arthur (Republican)
1960 (with Jeremiah Voorhis) def. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. / Berkeley Bunker & Thomas Werdel (Democratic cross-nominated by Liberty) and Paul Douglas / Vincent Impellitteri (Independent)
1964 (with Jeremiah Voorhis) def. Nelson Rockefeller / Malcolm Buie Seawell (Democratic) and Barry Goldwater / Wallace F. Bennett (Liberty)

1969-1973: Harold Hughes (Republican)
1968 (with Billy Graham) def. Clinton D. McKinnon / Daniel Brewster (Democratic) and Harland Sanders / Curtis LeMay (Liberty)
1973-1981: Allard Lowenstein (Democratic)
1972 (with Philip Hart) def. Harold Hughes / Billy Graham (Republican) and Jack Williams / William Loeb III (Liberty)
1976 (with John J. Gilligan) def. John Sherman Cooper / Wilbur Hobby (Republican) and James Buckley / Hank Grover (Liberty)

1981-1989: George McGovern (Republican)
1980 (with Milhous Nixon) def. John J. Gilligan / Cyrus Vance (Democratic) and Jack Kemp / Phil Crane (Liberty)
1984 (with Milhous Nixon) def. Dixy Lee Ray / Thomas P. O'Neill III (Democratic) and James Buckley / Sam Hayakawa (Liberty)

1989-1993: David Garst (Republican)
1988 (with Bronson La Follette) def. Anthony Iacocca / Gordon Humphrey (Liberty) and Pierre Salinger / Dorothy Richards (Democratic)
1993-1995: Mario Cuomo***** (Democratic)
1992 (with Neil Goldschmidt) def. David Garst / Bronson La Follette (Republican) and Henry Hyde / Pete du Pont (Liberty)
1995-1996: Neil Goldschmidt****** (Democratic)
Replaced Cuomo
1996-1997: George Leland (Democratic)
Replaced Goldschmidt
1997-2005: Norman Schwarzkopf (Independent)
1996 (with John Engler; cross-nominated by Liberty) def. Bronson La Follette / George Sinner (Republican) and George Leland / Bob Casey (Democratic)
2000 (with John Engler; cross-nominated by Liberty) def. Glen Stassen / Isaac Skelton (Republican) and Paul Wellstone / Carl Levin (Democratic)

2005-2017: Billy Blythe (Republican)
2004 (with James P. Hoffa) def. Hillary Trump / Malcolm Forbes (Liberty) and Kurt Schmoke / Jack Reed (Democratic)
2008 (with James P. Hoffa) def. John McCain / Isadore Lieberman (Liberty) and Carl McCall / Lynn Woolsey (Democratic)
2012 (with James P. Hoffa) def. Bill Peduto / Dick Durbin (Democratic) and Earl Johnson / Ovide Lamontagne (Liberty)

2017-2021: Betsy Huber (Republican)
2016 (with John Boyd Jr.) def. Warren Wilhelm Jr. / Michael McGinn (Democratic) and Dick Zimmer / Willard Romney (Liberty)
2021-Present: Frederick Lee Morton (Liberty)
2020 (with Elizabeth Herring) def. Dennis Kucinich / Katherine Clark (Democratic) and Betsy Huber / John Boyd Jr. (Republican)

* Died of lung disease.
** Died of natural causes.
*** Died of cancer.
**** Died of diabetes.
***** Assassinated by the mafia.
****** Resigned after allegations of rape emerged.


Political Parties as of modern day:
Democratic Party: Left-wing to center-left, urban focus, progressivism, economic interventionism, labor unionism, social democracy (faction)
Republican Party: Left-wing to center, populism, social moralism, Grangism, isolationism, cooperative economics, social credit (faction)
Liberty Party: Center-right to right-wing, fiscal responsibility, classical liberalism, libertarianism, internationalism, business interests, social conservatism (faction)
 
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Crooked Warren or The Impossibility of Change?

1921-1924 Warren G Harding/Calvin Coolidge (Republican)

1920: Warren G Harding/Calvin Coolidge-Republican [211],Herbert Hoover/Franklin D Roosevelt-Independent [200],James Cox/Lawrence Tyson-Democratic [120]

1924-1925 Calvin Coolidge/Charles G Dawes (Republican)

1925-1929 Fredrick Gillett/
vacant (Hung College)

1924: Herbert Hoover/Franklin D Roosevelt-New Dawn [220],Calvin Coolidge/Charles G Dawes-Republican [154],John W Davis/Charles W Bryan-Democratic [141],Robert La Follette/Burton K Wheeler-Progressive [16]

1929-1933 Finis J Garrett/vacant (Hung College)
1928: Franklin D Roosevelt/Herbert Croly-New Dawn [200],Frank Lowden/Charles Curtis-Republican [164],Al Smith/Joseph T Robinson-Democratic [161]

1933-1937 Bertrand Snell/vacant (Hung College)
1932: Franklin D Roosevelt/Phillip La Follette-New Dawn/Progressive Alliance [245],Al Smith/Huey Long-Democratic [140],Frank Lowden/Joseph I France-Republican [140]

1937-19xx Redford Tugwell/Elmer Benson (New Dawn/Progressive/Farmer-Labor National Salvation Pact)
1936: Redford Tugwell/Elmer Benson-New Dawn/Progressive/Farmer-Labor National Salvation Pact [279],Frank Know/William Borah-Republican [117],John Nance Garner/Millard Tydings-Democratic [110],Huey Long/John Brinkley-Common Men [12],William Randolph Hearst/Alvin M Owsley-Rebirth [8],Norman Thomas/George A Nelson-Socialist [3]
 
Presidents of the United States (inspired by @Vidal)
1977-1981: Jimmy Carter (Democratic)
'76 (with Walter Mondale) def. Gerald R. Ford (Republican) [1]
1981-1982: Gerald R. Ford (Republican) [2]
'80 (with Buddy Cianci) def. Jimmy Carter (Democratic)
1982-1983: Buddy Cianci (Republican) [3]
1983-1984: Tip O'Neill (Democratic) [4]
1984-1985: Silvio Conte (Republican) [5]
1985-: Lawton Chiles (Democratic)
'84 (with Jim Mattox) def. Jon M. Huntsman Sr. (Republican) [6]
'88 (with Jim Mattox) vs. Buddy Cianci (Republican), Elliot Richardson (Constitution) [7]

[1] The nomination of Buddy Cianci for Rhode Island's Senate seat, and his use and usefulness as a surrogate for the Ford campaign, pushes the President's campaign into the Rust Belt. When November rolls around, Ford wins Ohio, Wisconsin, and the popular vote - but Carter takes Oregon, Oklahoma, and three out of Maine's four electors, and with it the Presidency. Republicans seethe.
[2] 'Miss me yet?' say the buttons, and America does. Reagan botches expectations management by staying out too long and allowing Ford to lock up the institutional Republican party and use John Anderson as a Washington Generals for the conservatives, then alienates the base by violating the Eleventh Commandment and doing his level best to monster Ford. It doesn't work. Ford rallies, picks fresh young Senator Cianci as a running mate, and wins the election in a walk.
[3] John Hinckley got caught stalking Jodie Foster and was in jail at the time - but Christopher John Lewis was still around, and when President Ford visited New Zealand in 1982, his rifle didn't miss.
[4] Cianci's corruption was visible enough that the House was already considering convening hearings before Ford's untimely death - but between the sympathy bounce, the rise and fall of Bill Janklow's nomination for the Vice Presidency, the sagas of Dan Rostenkowski and Jim Wright muddying the waters, and the desultory War in Lebanon, the matter was delayed. Still, it couldn't be delayed forever, and Cianci chose to fall on his sword and leave the door open for a future effort.
[5] O'Neill elected to stay on until the Republicans could pick a replacement, but that proved more difficult than expected - Bob Michel, Trent Lott, and Newt Gingrich feuded over the caucus nomination, allowing Silvio Conte to squeeze through on a platform of solidifying the Cianci legacy among white ethnic voters.
[6] Both the Democrats and the Republicans wanted to nominate outsiders, people above reproach for the clusterfuck of the past few years. But plenty of swing voters distrusted Huntsman for his Latter-Day Saint faith, and others simply didn't gel with his personal style, while Chiles married down-to-earth Southernism with personal ethics that were beyond reproach.
[7] Will that and his successful healthcare reforms be enough to compensate for ongoing deindustrialization and the undeniable charisma of Buddy Cianci, the 'local boy made good' who survived the powerful trying to knock him down for doing the right thing? Only time will tell, though observers have noted that the Chiles campaign this time is a lot lower-energy than last time.
 
1947 - 1952: Jawaharlal Nehru (Indian National Congress) [1]
1951 def: Khawaja Nazimuddin (Indian Muslim League), Ajoy Ghosh (Communist Party of India), V. D. Savarkar (Hindu Mahasabha)
1952 - 1955: Chakravarti Rajagopalachari (Indian National Congress)
1955: Chakravarti Rajagopalachari (Swatantra Party)
[2]
1955 - 1960: T. T. Krishnamachari (Indian National Congress) [3]
1955 def: Khawaja Nazimuddin (Indian Muslim League), Chakravarti Rajagopalachari (Swatantra Party), Ajoy Ghosh (Communist Party of India), V. D. Savarkar (Hindu Mahasabha), Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Pashtun Awami Party)
1960 - 1967: N. G. Ranga (Swatantra Party) [4]
1960 def: T. T. Krishnamachari (Indian National Congress), Khawaja Nazimuddin (Indian Muslim League), Ajoy Ghosh (Communist Party of India), V. D. Savarkar (Hindu Mahasabha), Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Pashtun Awami Party)
1965 def: Neelam Sanjiva Reddy (Indian National Congress), Nurul Amin (Indian Muslim League), Jayaprakash Narayan (Indian Socialist Party), Jyoti Basu (Communist Party of India), Deendayal Upadhyaya (Hindu Mahasabha), Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Pashtun Awami Party)

1967 - 1970: Jayaprakash Narayan (Popular Front/Indian Socialist Party) [5]
1967 def: Neelam Sanjiva Reddy (Indian National Congress), N. G. Ranga (Swatantra Party), Nurul Amin (Indian Muslim League), Jyoti Basu (Communist Party of India), Deendayal Upadhyaya (Hindu Mahasabha), Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (Muslim Socialist Party), Amin Ahsan Islahi (Jamaat-e-Islami), Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Pashtun Awami Party)
1970 - 1975: Yashwantrao Chavan (Indian National Congress) [6]
1970 def: Minoo Masani (Swatantra Party), Jayaprakash Narayan (Indian Socialist Party), Nurul Amin (Indian Muslim League), Deendayal Upadhyaya (Hindu Mahasabha), Jyoti Basu (Communist Party of India), Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (Muslim Socialist Party), Amin Ahsan Islahi (Jamaat-e-Islami), Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Pashtun Awami Party)
1975 - 1980: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (Swatantra Party) [7]
1975 def: Yashwantrao Chavan (Indian National Congress), Abdul Qayyum Khan (Indian Muslim League), Deendayal Upadhyaya (Hindu Mahasabha), George Fernandes (Indian Socialist Party), Abdul Ghafoor Ahmed (Jamaat-e-Islami), Jyoti Basu (Communist Party of India), Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (Muslim Socialist Party), Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Pashtun Awami Party)
1980 - 1994: Morarji Desai (Indian National Congress) [8]
1980 def: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (Swatantra Party), Abdul Qayyum Khan (Indian Muslim League), George Fernandes (Indian Socialist Party), Abdul Ghafoor Ahmed (Jamaat-e-Islami), Jyoti Basu (Communist Party of India), Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (Muslim Socialist Party), Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Pashtun Awami Party)
1985 - 1986 def: S. V. Raju (Swatantra Party), Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi (Indian Muslim League), George Fernandes (Indian Socialist Party), Ram Swarup (Hindu Mahasabha), Ghulam Azam (Jamaat-e-Islami), Sita Ram Goel (Communist Party of India), G. M. Syed (Muslim Socialist Party), Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Pashtun Awami Party)
1990 - 1991 def: S. V. Raju (Swatantra Party), George Fernandes (Indian People’s Party), Ebrahim Sait (Indian Muslim League), Ram Swarup (Hindu Mahasabha), Ghulam Azam (Jamaat-e-Islami), A. K. Padmanabhan (Communist Party of India (Marxist)), Nasim Wali Khan (Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party)

1994: Sharad Pawar (Indian National Congress) [9]
1994 - 1998: Ishaq Dar (Swatantra Party) [10]
1994 def: George Fernandes (Indian People’s Party), Ram Swarup (Hindu Mahasabha), Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain (Indian Muslim League), Sharad Pawar (Indian National Congress), Ghulam Azam (Jamaat-e-Islami), A. K. Padmanabhan (Communist Party of India (Marxist)), Nasim Wali Khan (Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party)
1998 - 1999: Birender Singh (Swatantra Party) [11]
1999 - 2000: Lalu Prasad Yadav (Indian People’s Party) [12]
1999 def: K. S. Surdashan (Hindu Mahasabha), Birender Singh (Swatantra Party), Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain (Indian Muslim League), Jalaludin Umri (Jamaat-e-Islami), A. K. Padmanabhan (Communist Party of India (Marxist)), Sanjay Gandhi (Indian National Congress), Nasim Wali Khan (Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party)
2000 - 2001: Mulayum Singh Yadav (Indian People’s Party) [13]
2001 - 2011: Benazir Bhutto (Swatantra Party) [14]
2000 - 2001 def: K. S. Surdashan (Hindu Mahasabha), Mulayaum Singh Yadav (Indian People’s Party), Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain (Indian Muslim League), A. K. Padmanabhan (Communist Party of India (Marxist)), Jalaludin Umri (Jamaat-e-Islami), Nasim Wali Khan (Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party), Sanjay Gandhi (Indian National Congress)

[1] - The road to India’s independence was more fraught then what an outside observer might think. It was not marked by much violence, and as hindsight would show would eventually be an inevitability as the British, along with other colonial powers, would find it increasingly difficult to hold on to large colonies following the end of the Second World War. And yet, the process could have very much been complicated. Throughout the Indian independence struggle a movement emerged calling for the separation of the Muslim areas from the Indian Subcontinent and turning it into its own separate state - Pakistan. The movement would continue to grow in size and in popularity with the Muslims of India, yet would be cut short when the leader of the separatist All-India Muslim League, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, would die of tuberculosis in 1940, shortly after the declaration of the Lahore Resolution, which called for an independent Pakistan. Without a clear path forward, the AIML found it difficult to make its case to the British Crown, and eventually the decision was made to let India become independent, undivided. On July 1st, 1947, the flags of the British Raj were pulled down and replaced with the flag of India. The All-India Muslim League was forced to change its name and its separatist ideology with one merely calling for the preservation of Muslim interests in India.

However, sectional tensions remained even after independence. The Hindu population wasn’t quite sure if it could trust a Muslim population which wasn’t so long ago was calling for a separate state. The continued existence of the All-India Muslim League, in spite of its rebrand, could possibly lead to a system in which, all the Muslims vote for one party whereas the Hindus vote for another. The sectionalization of electoral politics was a scenario which Nehru was repulsed by, and would try to do anything in his power to break the back of the League. Most of the leaders of the League in Muslim-majority areas such as Sindh, Punjab, and Bengal tended to be wealthy landlords - Nazimuddin, the leader of the League in all of India, was one of them. As such, Nehru felt that by embarking on vast land reform, he could break the finances of the Muslim League. He achieved support for this even by non-socialists within Congress, who shared a desire to crush the League. The 1950 Land Reorginization Act, passed just a year before the elections (so as to prevent the Muslim League from recovering in time), would set the maximum amount of land to be owned to be at 30 acres. The suddenness of this reform - opposed by the League - would work at first as Muslim League branches in some towns found itself unable to fund itself. However, come 1951, most Muslims would still vote for the League, as they had felt that Nehru had not done enough to help the Muslims in India. The League managed to portray land reform as anti-Muslim, a portrayal accepted by the majority of Muslims.

Foreign policy wise, Nehru tried to orient India into a non-aligned position as the world powers were dividing themselves into blocs based on political ideology, either under America and the Montreal Pact, the Soviet Union and EUTO (Eurasian Treaty Organization). Nehru did not believe that India, the most populous country in the world, should be a lackey of any of the three blocs, not under the Soviets, nor under the Americans. But being non-aligned did not mean being isolationist. This was shown in 1950 when the Republic of China began to mobilize troops along the border to annex Tibet, India recognized Tibet and sent soldiers to Tibet in order to prevent any annexation of it. This prevented a Chinese annexation of Tibet, much to the dismay of the United States which wanted to expand China’s power in the region. India’s refusal to become aligned with the Soviets had ensured its status as a separate, non-aligned nation. One of Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel’s last acts before his death was to move India into annexing Sikkim and Bhutan, two states in the Himalayas both of which were a British protectorate during the Raj period. Patel did not see much of a reason for their continued independence seeing as how they would have to rely on India on pretty much everything from water to electricity to monetary aid etc. essentially making it impossible for them to be truly independent from India, and as such it would be in the best interest of Sikkim and Bhutan to become a part of India, thus formalizing what would have been a de facto relationship had they remained independent. It was said that Patel wished to do this with Nepal as well, however Nepal was much larger, was more independent even during British rule, and wasn’t as willing to become a part of India despite the fact that the relationship that Sikkim and Bhutan had with India was essentially becoming true with Nepal as well. Nevertheless, Patel died before he could do anything vis a vis Nepal, thus securing its status as an independent state.

This would not be the only foreign policy issue to dominate Nehru’s tenure. So too would the issue of the Pashtun areas in India play a part. This became readily apparent when Afghanistan voted against India’s entrance to the UN - the only nation to do so. Afghanistan wanted a repeal of the Durand Line and a return of all of the Pashtun areas of India to Afghanistan, and was rather dismayed that the British chose to leave without first consulting them. Afghanistan also refused to recognize India as an independent state until the issue was resolved. Nehru was, at first, sympathetic to the Afghans due to anti-colonial stance and was willing to give up FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to Afghanistan. However, he faced stark opposition from those in Congress, believing that letting go of Indian territory could potentially set a bad precedent. Instead, a separate idea was proposed by Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel, who stated that the Pashtun areas should be allowed in India so as to arouse Pashtun nationalist sentiments, which would express itself in the elections. Their main opponent would be the Muslim League, who would then find itself having to deal with more than one political opponent. For every rupee the Muslim League spends on a candidate against a Pashtun Nationalist, they don’t spend it on a candidate against a Congressi. An interesting idea to be sure, one which Nehru eventually got around to supporting, and one which ended up with his death at the ends of an Afghan Nationalist on January 29th, 1952.

[2] - One issue that would dominate Rajagopalachari’s tenure was the same issue that got him in office in the first place, that of Afghanistan and the Pashtun areas in India. Rajagopalachari’s government had contacted Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the “Frontier Gandhi”, otherwise referred to as “Bacha Khan”, a staunch opponent of the erstwhile Pakistan Movement, to issue his support for the Durand Line and for India’s presence in Pakhtunkhwa. However, Bacha Khan was a lot more reluctant to take a pro-government position, instead believing that the Afghan Government had legitimate grievances. Rather surprised by this reluctance, and also the fact that Nehru’s assassination, Said Akbar Babrak, was revealed to have had ties with tribal Pashtun leaders and was a part of a Pashtun separatist network, had led to the Indian Government coming to the harsh but unavoidable conclusion that the Pashtunistan issue would be a much more difficult one than expected. It was not long until there were reports of security incidents within the tribal areas, with some of them even consisting of casualties of police officers and border patrol agents loyal to the Indian Government. Like its more dysfunctional neighbor to the east, Burma, India too was facing the beginnings of a separatist insurgency.

As proposals were drafted up for an eventual crackdown on separatists in Pakhtunkhwa, Rajagopalachari received a letter from a Major-General named Ayub Khan, who was also a Pashtun, and despite coming from a Muslim background he wasn’t that religious, in which he said that the Indian Army shouldn’t send Hindu or Christian soldiers to Pakhtunkhwa to participate in the crackdown, at least not in large numbers, to deal with the Pashtun separatists lest they make out the operation to be a religious war. Further, he called for the implementation of President’s rule in Pakhtunkhwa. While Rajagopalachari did not consider President’s rule to be necessary at this time, he nevertheless trusted Ayub Khan’s expertise in dealing with the Pashtun population on account of his ethnic background. He would be promoted and placed in charge of the bulk of Indian soldiers in Pakhtunkhwa. Ayub Khan would overplay his hand in Pakhtunkhwa, and would be noted for his excessiveness in dealing with the population there. He would make a mountain of a molehill of separatist activity in Pakhtunkhwa in order to justify his actions, and would exaggerate said activity in written reports to his superiors in New Delhi. All this would do was alienate some of the more moderate Pashtuns, such as Bacha Khan, who would later form the Pashtun Awami Party, which was a nationalist, yet not separatist, party of Pashtuns calling for negotiations with Afghanistan and the cessation of operations in the area.

Yet what would end up dooming Rajagopalachari was not Pakhtunkhwa or the anti-Hindi agitiations in Madras. His insistence on economic liberalism and on markets would end up alienating much of the Congress leadership, who were socialists in the vein of the late Nehru, and what would end up becoming the final straw would be his open rejection of the Five Year Plan which had been in place since 1951. He would make moves to repeal it and would refuse to listen to other Congress leaders, which even if they were not as socialist as Nehru considered Rajagopalachari’s intrasignece to be an insult to the memory of the man who led India’s independence struggle and was killed for his commitment to its unity. The other Congress leaders would make moves to eventually get rid of him in a palace coup of sorts. Facing increasing pressure and finding it unable to work with Nehru’s cabinet and the party leadership, Rajagopalachari would eventually declare his departure from the Congress Party and declare the formation of the new Swatantra Party. Over 60 members of the Lok Sabha would switch over, but in the end all this did was make things easier for Rajagopalachari’s opponents in Congress who managed to force through a vote of no confidence and call for new elections. Though the Swatantra Party managed to hold course and not spectacularly collapse (as was the hopes of some Congress leaders), they still lost in a landslide to the Congress Party.

[3] - Seeing as how the main disputes were because of differences in dealing with economics, who better to put in charge of India than the finance minister himself. Krishnamachari became Prime Minister at an increasingly precarious time. With a part of India on the verge of open revolt, the Congress Party, while still dominant, having gone through a split, one could not really envy him. However, he was confident in his ability to make things right. India would be a better place by the time he’s done with it.

Of course, these things don’t tend to be as simple, and in Krishnamachari’s case this wasn’t an exception. First issue was the big one - Pakhtunkhwa. The crackdown had failed in its purpose after two years of its beginning. What’s worse, with Afghanistan surrounded by the USSR, along with two EUTO members (Iran and East Turkistan), they managed to make an image of themselves within the halls of Congress and in the Pentagon as an important ally. As such, it would receive billions in aid money from the US, along with advanced military technology, and Afghanistan chose to send quite a bit of those new guns to separatists in India. The Pashtun cause found some supporters within the State Department, who were annoyed at India’s socialism and stubborn non-alignment. India found few friends within the West, which instead tended to sympathize with Afghanistan. The last straw - one that tipped public opinion of the West in favor of the separatists, was the Orakzai Massacre on January 29th, 1956 in which 29 civilians accused of helping separatists were shot. The massacre was publicized by Afghan embassies and consulates within the United States and in the European countries. This was both a PR disaster, and one which many within the Indian Government found itself personally disgusted by. The decision was made a week later to dismiss Ayub Khan and replaced him with General Muhammad Musa Khan Hazara.

Musa Khan was a Hazara Shia, and his family, along with most other Hazaras in India, had fled Afghanistan into Balochistan after the genocidal campaigns waged against them in the 1880s by the Pashtun Afghan king Abdurrahman Khan. And while Musa Khan did not hold any grudges against Pashtuns - it would be unbecoming of a professional soldier to do so, and one does not become a general being unprofessional - it did lead to some alarm among ordinary Pashtuns. Pashtun nationalists began to sound the alarm of a revenge seeking Mongol with a hatred against Pashtuns and Sunnis in general at the employ of daalkhor (Pashtun term for those east of the Indus River, Hindu and Muslim both, meaning “daal eater”) Hindu polytheists ready to avenge his ancestors. This framing led to an increase in recruitment for Pashtun separatist militias, but it was also false. Musa Khan had showed an exemplary professionalism in dealing with the insurgency, much more than his harsh predecessor, Ayub Khan, did. By 1959, the number attacks and incidents began to fall sharply, and infighting between Pashtun groups due to ideological differences (the use of religious framing led to many Islamists joining the struggle, and needless to say they didn’t quite like the more secular nationalists) just further hurt their cause.

Another issue which would end up being solved during Krishnamachari’s tenure would be that of Hindi imposition. Being a Tamil himself, he was always against the imposition of Hindu as a national language, speaking against it at the constituent assembly just a year after India’s independence and terming it as “Hindi Imperialism”. He put his words into deed during his tenure and removed Hindi’s status as the official language. Official government documents would continue to be written in Hindi, but in English too.

But despite his initial successes, what ended up dooming Krishnamachari was his own self. A leak to the press around the beginning of election season in 1960 exposed a scam in which Haridas Mundhra, a Calcutta-based industrialist and stock speculator got the government owned Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) to invest 13 million rupees into his companies. What made this leak interesting was that Prime Minister Krishnamachari was involved in the scam, and this could not have happened without his approval. This had hurt Krishnamachari’s reputation, and calls for his resignation were plentiful. However, he dug his heels and refused to do so during an election campaign. All this did was ensure the defeat of Congress.

[4] - Yet this did not mean that the Swatantra Party managed to win, at least, at first. They had won a small plurality of seats and won the popular vote by a smidgen, yet could not make a majority government. It was then that the leaders of the Indian Muslim League realized that they had suddenly become some of the most powerful people in India. And it wasn’t long until everyone else did too. Congress’s screams of bloody murder, that Swatantra was openly dealing with traitorous closet secessionists fell on deaf ears as Ranga went to Lahore to meet with Nazimuddin to discuss a coalition government. In a way, this was not as unexpected as one may think. The League was the party of Muslim landowners. Due to their affluence, they were not taken in by religious leaders as some of their middle class co religionists did, those who voted for Jamaat e Islami (the Muslim underclass, which found itself at the service of this elite, voted alongside their bosses) And it was due to their affluence that they found themselves negatively impacted with Nehru’s land reforms and were even more hostile to him and the Congress than in the past. And it was the Hindu landowners who too began to feel animosity towards Congress and who were responsible for funding Swatantra. This coalition was thus a secular coalition consisting of the landowning elite of both religions.

This did not mean that land reform was reversed, though. It would simply be too big of an issue if they were to move with this. A lot of landlords found themselves bankrupted and as such couldn’t really buy back the land anyhow. But Nehru’s legacy would have to be dismantled in some way, and it was decided that it would be the Licence Raj, along with his non-alignment, that would be the ones to go. Over the next five years, every facet of the Licence Raj was being done away with in favor of a pro-market liberal policy. This “shock therapy”, as it was called, did indeed lead to the Indian economy becoming more unstable as these sudden changes were occurring. The Congress Party managed to get the other leftist parties and even some sympathetic members of the Hindu Mahasabha to oppose some of the more extreme changes, and indeed it was this opposition that prevented “shock therapy” from truly doing a number on India.

There was one aspect of the liberal economic program under the Ranga government which did have much more far reaching effects than others. That was the attempted privitization of Indian Railways. The announcement of a privatization came as a surprise, and even by some Swatantra members many believed that it was a bridge too far. Many railway workers, fearing that their livelihoods would be negatively impacted with privatization, took to the streets to strike against it. In Odhisa a heavy crackdown took place leading to the deaths of over 20 strikers. The fact that there was a Congress Government in Odhisa (Congress had opposed privatization, but the Odhisa Congress Party stated that the crackdown was needed for purposes of securing law and order) had led to the already existing rift between ardent socialists and the Congress Party to become much larger, and eventually, led to the creation of the Indian Socialist Party. Ultimately, privatization was defeated as even some members of the Swatantra Party and the Muslim League chose to vote against acts which would begin the process of privatization.

Non-alignment was something easier to get rid of. Both Swatantra and the League were pro-West, and believed that an alliance with the United States was in the best interests of India. Ranga would make the meeting with President Johnson the first foreign meeting of his premiership. With the Licence Raj being dismantled, US investment- both governmental and non-governmental - began pouring into India. This would help India’s economy and, along with a successful operation taking back Portuguese India in 1964, would lead to another victory for the Swatantra-League Coalition in 1965. Furthermore, India being an American ally would lead to pressure being applied on Afghanistan to stop funding Pashtun militants. However, India would soon have to hold up their end of the bargain.

To India’s south would be Indonesia. Indonesia resembled India in many ways - it was a large, multiethnic, multifaith, once-colonized nation which did not have any inclinations towards either the United States or the Soviet Union. It was for this reason that Indonesia and India had good ties throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Yet, it had experience internal strife much worse than anything India had at that point. Be it pressure from communists or from Islamists, the Indonesian President Sukarno saw no other choice than to embark on an autocratic “guided democracy” system, yet that just made things worse. In 1964, an attempted coup d’etat by the military (which ended in his assassination) in response to his inclinations towards the left had led to a civil war in Indonesia, with leftists, Islamists, the Military, and separatists all fighting each other. A bomb blast at the American embassy committed by Communists on March 30th, 1965 would give America a casus belli to enter in support of the Indonesian military, bringing along Australia and New Zealand. In India, the pro-West tendencies of the Ranga Government meant that there was considerable support within it to have India involved as well. This would lead to a firestorm within the Indian political sphere, with every party except Swatantra, the Muslim League, and the Hindu Mahabhasha against it. But despite the domestic opposition to it, the United States attempted to entice India such as by promising billions more in aid, along with military aid in which the weapons are worth just as much. Eventually, Ranga would be forced to accept sending a few detachments of the Indian Army to Indonesia to act as a peacekeeping force.

The announcement led to vast opposition within India, and arguably marked the start of the worldwide anti-Indonesia War movement. India’s soldiers soon found themselves in the foxholes alongside Americans once it became clear that being a mere “peacekeeping” force wasn’t going to be tenable as Communists and Islamists began shooting at them. Reports of American and Australian crimes just led to more opposition to the war amongst Indians. While many in the Ranga Government hoped that, at the very least, involvement in the war would be unify Indians regardless of religion, ethnicity, caste, or class, it actually exacerbated existing tensions. Many Indian Muslim soldiers found themselves tempted by the propaganda of Islamist forces in Indonesia, and there would be reports of defections and soldiers refusing to fight them (this was a part of a larger global trend, shown in a similar civil war in Turkey after the military couped an Islam-oriented government, which led to another civil war between putchists, leftists, Islamists, and separatists). This led to Hindu and Sikh soldiers being distrustful of their Muslim comrades, a distrust which was obviously felt by them even if they were never openly told of it. At home, it ironically did unify Indians regardless of division against the war. The Muslim populace was of course against the war, and could not understand why the Muslim League, though it talked endlessly of securing the rights of Muslims at home, was willing to embrace getting involved in a war which overwhelmingly hurt Muslims. This discontent was eventually shown when 20 Muslim League MPs, lead by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, split from the League in order to declare the formation of the Muslim Socialist Party. This announcement meant that the Swantantra-League Coalition no longer held a majority of seats, forcing a new election.

[5] - The 1967 Indian Election was perhaps the strangest of elections, yet when one digs deeper one finds it easier to understand. Perhaps the biggest question has to relate with the winner - how come did the Congress Party lose at a time of an unpopular Swatantra Party government, even though they had been seen as the main opposition? The answer to that question is rather simpe - the Indian Socialist Party, after managing to get a much better than expected showing in 1965, still had enough momentum to manage to defeat both the Congress Party (still recovering from 1960) and the Swatantra Party. Had the elections gone as planned in 1970, it is likely that the ISP would have lost quite a fair bit of their momentum and it would’ve been a Congress victory. The Congress Party had also made Neelam Sanjiva Reddy his leader, which, despite the urgings of his many advisors, did not take up a populist tone throughout the campaign and as such lost quite a fair bit of supporters to the Indian Socialist Party.

One part of the election which stood out was that the Indian Muslim League no longer had a monopoly over the Muslim vote in India. Their support for involvement in Indonesia had hurt them, and they were attacked by both the left-wing and the right-wing of the Muslim political spheres for it. This would be a pretty monumental election in this regard, and its effects would last to this day. This also led to vote-splitting which led to quite a few weird results taking place, like in Bengal, where a member of the Hindu Mahasabha ended up winning in a 51% Muslim constituency.

Narayan would begin his term by announcing the end of Indian involvement in Indonesia. This was rather easy, and something there wasn’t much opposition to this move. So too would Narayan move to re-establish negotiations with the Kingdom of Afghanistan at the behest of their coalition partner, the Pashtun Awami Party. Narayan knew that giving up the Pashtun areas was a bridge too far, one that would not find much support among Indians, one which even he didn’t really support. But he had to do Something. For one, the Americans which had been invited to India were getting rather antsy with a Communist Party within a ruling coalition government, and Narayan didn’t want a re-establishment of the American-Afghan alliance which would set Pakhtunkhwa on flames as in the 1950s. Further, the “Popular Front” government was holding on by a thread, and with the exit of one party the whole thing falls apart. Narayan knew that he had to do something to make the Pashtun Awami Party happy. Eventually, a compromise was found, in that while India would not cede any territory to Afghanistan, Afghan citizens and Indian citizens in Pakhtunkhwa would be able to move between borders without having to deal with the usual protocol when it comes to crossing borders (of course, any Afghan wishing to go to India beyond Pakhtunkhwa and into Punjab, Balochistan, or Jammu and Kashmir, would, in fact, need papers). Indian laws would still apply in their part of Pakhtunkhwa but none of them were that offensive to Afghan sensitivities. Narayan was hailed by his party, and many members of the opposition, for being the one to have solved the Durand Line problem which had led to the death of the first Prime Minister and dominated the 1950s. Foreign policy wise, Narayan sought better ties with the Soviet Union, and further, would declare India’s support for movements such as the anti-colonial fighters in Angola along with the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa.

Domestically, Narayan would find it much more difficult to push through his agenda. While he did have his successes, such as pushing through the 1968 Film Act, which had managed to rein in Bollywood’s excesses (unknown to him, this had saved millions of lives, and in this author’s view Narayan is worthy of a posthumous Nobel Peace Prize), his moves towards nationalization would find opposition from the Swantantra Party, the Muslim League, and by many members of the Indian National Congress. The first act of nationalization would relate to coal - India’s energy needs were not being met by private coal companies, as such, they would have to go. Narayan had managed to take enough socialists from the Congress Party and populists from the Hindu Mahasabha to vote against their party leadership, and thus, the coal industry was nationalized. So too did Narayan succeed in nationalizing the banks, one of which was the Bank of India. These radical policies caused shocks in India’s economy and would make him unpopular amongst the general populace.

What would end up dooming Narayan, however, was foreign policy. 1970 would see the end of the ten-year Civil War in Turkey, which saw that partition of Turkey by the Soviet Union and Greece, with the former taking many once Georgian and Armenian areas and making them a part of the Soviet Union, leaving just a rump Islamist Turkish state in its place. In doing so, the USSR would ethnically cleanse the Turks there and would destroy their mosques. This would cause a firestorm across the entire Muslim World, with even leftist currents among it feeling uneasy at the whole thing. The Muslim Socialist Party would condemn the displacement of Turks, and would try to nudge Narayan to get on their side. Narayan, who wanted to make it clear to his naysayers that he wasn’t going to turn India into a Soviet satellite, would condemn the annexation and the Soviet Government, but in doing so would alienate the Communist Party of India, which saw the condemnation as a betrayal, and would leave the Popular Front coalition. In doing so, it no longer had a majority, forcing a new election. It can thus be said that it was the Muslim Socialist Party which brought Narayan into power, but also got him out of it, and it was Narayan’s desire for peace that brought him into power but also led to him losing it.

[6] - A Nehruvian Socialist, Chavan became the leader of the Congress Party mainly because people believed he would have taken enough voters from the Indian Socialist Party to win. But in the end, socialist or not, Chavan would’ve won mainly because by the year 1970 the Congress Party was becoming synonymous with steady governance, as it was under Nehru and Krishanamachari when politics were considerably more stable than after the latter. If he had been a liberal, he would’ve taken voters from the Swatantra Party, and he would’ve still won.

Despite his victory, Chavan proved to be little different than his predecessor. He did not wrap himself in the red flag, which may have made him more palatable to the West, but in his deeds, he would not reverse any of Narayan’s reforms nor govern much differently than what he planned. This was either very good or very bad depending on who you asked. But Chavan’s greatest opponents would come not from the opposition but rather from his own party. The right-wing of the Congress Party, led by Morarji Desai, which had the same economic views as the Swatantra Party but was also on board with Congress’s non-alignment policy as opposed to the pro-Western policy of the Swatantra Party, would lead the charge against further nationalization of private industries. Chavan didn’t really plan on dealing with them at the outset of his premiership, which is why when he began to move forward on bank nationalization, he was surprised to see one member of Congress after another voting with the opposition against it, eventually leading to its defeat.

But perhaps the issue that would define Chavan’s premiership would be that of communal tensions. The issue of religion in Indian politics was never one that went away though it had not been propagated by any of the major parties. What would be the spark the would re-ignite religious tensions would be the selection of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as the leader of the Swatantra Party and thus the new leader of the opposition. It was not surprising that someone like Bhutto would be involved in the affairs of the Swatantra Party as he had come from a background similar to many of its supporters, that is, he was the son of a land-owning family in Sindh who lost a lot of their land during Nehru’s land reforms. While Bhutto was in America at the time, and was a member of the Muslim League, he was profoundly impacted by this, and would chose to join the Swatantra Party after returning to India in 1955, believing that a secular party such as the Swatantra Party could do more to oppose Congress’s left-wing reforms than the more exclusive Muslim League. By making Zulfikar Ali Bhutto the leader of the Swatantra Party, many Hindus would have to grapple with the question of whether or not they would vote a Muslim for Prime Minister. Riots and pogroms have happened in the past, albeit mainly in rural areas meaning that it didn’t really impact the urbanites in India and as such didn’t make the news. But it did cause a lot of friction between Hindus and Muslims, and this friction was shown due to Bhutto becoming the Leader of the Opposition.

Tensions, slowly but surely, built up until October of 1973, during Ramadan. That was when a strand of hair, purportedly belonging to the Prophet Muhammad, was stolen at the Hazratbal Shrine in Srinagar. The news caused considerable concern amongst Kashmiris and Muslims across India. The spark would be the announcement that the thieves were a few Hindu teenagers. Thousands of miles away in Bengal, a land dispute between Muslims and Hindus was occurring in Dhaka, the leader of the Muslims being a man named Muhammad Azam, who would use the news of the Hazratbal incident to whip up a frenzy in his support. Members of his family, along with his supporters, would begin attacking Hindu shops and businesses on October 15th. While this may have ended there as just a small episode of violence which didn’t last more than 24 hours with all the perpetrators arrested and tried, what ended up happening was the entrance of RSS members and other members of Hindu Nationalist organizations who chose to take the law in their own hands and attack not just the perpatrators but also other Muslims as well. Riots in Dhaka would then continue for the next few days, with violence beginning to spill over as Hindus began to attack Muslims in the Hindu-majority areas of the Bengal province. Within two weeks, every major urban area in Bengal was in flames with religious violence, with only villages with a clear population disparity of one religion or the other being spared. In Uttar Pradesh on November 1st, an attack on Hindu pilgrims in Ayodhya (though who would be the killers is a subject of debate to this day - with many claiming that it was a false flag) would leave 10 dead in a very gruesome manner, and would just inspire an attack on part of Hindu parties against Muslim worshippers, leaving 32 dead. The violence would soon spread across Uttar Pradesh, and eventually to Bihar too as it was between Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. Most of North India would thus be at the center of the some of the worst pogroms in human history. Chavan would be forced to use the military against the rioters, setting a rather bad precedent but one which he felt was necessary. The riots would end by December, with over 5,000 dead, most of them Muslim, with many of the bodies never being found. In an attempt to save face with the Muslim population, who blamed him for a slow response, Chavan would announce the banning of the Hindu Mahasabha, the RSS, and Jamaat-e-Islami, along with numerous other organizations, both Hindu and Muslim, accused of playing a role. However, these bans would just lead to widespread criticism from both groups, Muslims blaming Chavan for playing a “both sides” routine, and as for the Hindus, reactions ranged from support (mainly from Congressis and those to their left), to concern regarding free speech (this was the main argument of the Hindu Nationalists but there were secularists who were also concerned), to anger. They would take the issue to court, but eventually Chavan would be forced to lift the ban after six months, fearing even more violence if the courts chose not to rule their way.

The 1973 North India Pogrom, as it was called, would set a shadow over Chavan’s premiership. It would be the main event anyone could remember from it. He no longer had the trust of the overall Muslim community due to his late response. Hindu Nationalists, to some success, managed to portray the violence as being started by Muslims and thus making them deserving of what happened to them. All this would do was set the stage for even more violence in the latter half of the decade.

[7] - Ultimately, Bhutto won the election as a result of three main factors. The first one was rather obvious- the average person did not feel as if they were better off now than when Chavan came to power. In all democracies, if you fail to make people think as if they are better off than when you assumed office, let alone actually make them better off, it is difficult for you to be given another mandate. The second reason is darkly comedic - the voters who were steadfastly against a Prime Minister with an, err, strange name found themselves divided between voting for the Hindu Mahasabha, who shared their views on Muslims, and the Congress Party, who presented the best chance at beating Bhutto. Further, the Mahasabha, after just being banned, wasn’t able to recuperate in time to launch a full fledged campaign. Nevertheless, the Mahasabha managed to, in a first, get their number of seats up to the triple digits, mainly in the rural Hindu areas where the Swatantra Party tanked. The third reason consisted of mere rumors and innuendo, but would nevertheless be revealed in 2004 to be factual. That would be of American involvement in the election. America, after witnessing eight years of a socialist, non-aligned India, chose to interfere in India’s elections by covertly funding Bhutto’s campaign. As Shahnawaz Bhutto, Zulfikar’s youngest son, would state in an interview 30 years later: “We came to power on a CIA Train”. America had suffered a bloody nose in Indonesia and was eventually forced to withdraw in 1975, but nevertheless maintained an interest in the region as they wanted to prevent more countries from following the path of Indonesia. If guns and bombs wouldn’t do it, then perhaps more secretive means will, and in India, it worked. The election would also see a resurgence in the Indian Muslim League’s fortunes, as after a rough last two elections, managed to now use the alliance with the Swatantra Party to their advantage as now Bhutto was in charge and thus would be more amiable to Muslim interests than anyone else. A vote for the League was thus a vote for Bhutto.

Bhutto did hold up his end of the bargain vis a vis the United States. He had reversed all left wing reforms done by the Narayan and Chavan administrations. Further, he moved to a more pro-US position in the region, but even he managed to cause a few headaches for them by taking a stand against the pro-US Hashemite Arab Federation, which had developed a system of segregation, much like to that which had once existed within the American South, against the Shia population, and Bhutto, however irreligious he was came from a Shia family, and most of the Shias in India voted for the Swatantra-League coalition in greater numbers than they had previously. Bhutto also continued India’s support for anti-colonial movements across Africa.

But like with Chavan, Bhutto’s biggest issue would be of religious disputes. While there would be a lot tensions during election season and immediately after the results, it amounted to nothing. Indeed, the rest of 1975 and much of 1976 would be quiet in this regard. It was then, on October 28th, 1976, when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his wife Nusrat were visiting Assam to rally support for the Swatantra Party in the upcoming Assembly Elections that a few shots from an abandoned building would end up becoming a “declaration of war” on part of Hindutva extremist groups against the Indian state. Bhutto was unharmed, suffering only a shoulder wound, yet the same can’t be said of his wife who had taken the majority of the bullets. She would eventually be declared dead just hours after arriving at the hospital.

The attack had shocked the nation, with even the Hindu Mahasabha not finding any joy in the death of a middle aged woman. Personally, it had shaken Bhutto up tremendously. Cynical as he was he had been emotional at his wife’s funeral. The killer would be captured just hours after the attack, and would’ve been revealed to have been part of a larger network which had been aiming for anti-Muslim pogroms just after the Bhutto’s planned killing. This network had stretched from RSS shakas to police departments to local politicians. These local politicians had links with much of the Hindu Mahasabha leadership in the state. It would be then that, partly out of delirium from his wife’s death, and also because he wanted to get rid of a political opponent, that Bhutto would make the decision to ban the Hindu Mahasabha, the RSS, and practically every Hindu right-wing group in a crackdown which far exceeded his predecessor’s.

In response, the Hindutva organizations tried to repeat what they had done previously in order to get unbanned, that is, make it so that it would be either allowing them to operate or face the threat of more violence. But this situation was different - they did not kill Chavan’s wife. Bhutto remained undeterred. When they tried to change their name to circumvent the ban, they were banned again. But Bhutto never threw anyone who wasn’t a part of that network in jail. This meant that all of the Hindutva leaders on a national level were still allowed to go on without harm provided they don’t openly endorse the banned organization. On October 22nd, 1977, right after Dussehra, a Hindu festival celebrating the death of the demon king Ravana, all of the Hindu Nationalist organizations - banned and unbanned - announced protests across the country. After burning they would burn effigies of Ravana - some which were just standard effigies, others made to look like Bhutto, and others in which it literally was just Bhutto with no ambivalence as to who was portrayed on the effigy - they took to the streets by the millions. In Delhi, the demonstrators would march lockstep near the houses of power. One American journalist compared the demonstration to the March on Rome. As they were doing so, one marcher was hit by rocks thrown by Muslim children. Angered by this, he and his comrades would soon run against them into the Muslim neighborhoods where they eventually had to face their parents. A brawl would occur, causing more to get involved, and eventually they would be kicked out. But that group of Hindutvawadis would come back with even more demonstrators after telling them that the bruises they incurred were the cause of Muslim aggression by members of Jamaat-e-Islami. They would rally across the Muslim neighborhood. When Bhutto heard of this, he would order the Swatantra-led Government of Delhi to send police to stop the march dead in its tracks in an attempt to prevent any violence. But if this was the intention, it had failed.

The arrival of the police had not come as a surprise, what did come as a surprise was when the police tried to break up the rally. Seeing this as an attack, the Hindutva demonstrators began to attack the police, and when the police fired back, the situation had collapsed. It did not take long for the rioting to reach the Muslim areas as well. And when more police were sent in, an unfortunate incident took place in which there were some Hindu police officers which began to side with the Hindutva demonstrators. Things just became worse when far-left groups began to arrive to join in on the “fun”. Islamists began to enter too, and within 72 hours Delhi became a free-for-all. Bhutto would eventually declare President’s Rule and send in the Army, and after a series of provocations by the far-right demonstrators the army would fire at them, killing 100 by the day’s end. The other demonstrations in other states outside of Delhi by Hindu Nationalist organizations became quiet during the Delhi violence, yet after the massacre would explode into chaos. Across all of India, violence erupted as Mosques and Churches were destroyed by Hindu extremist groups. Mass graves would’ve been dug in certain areas, while entire neighborhoods were cleansed in others. The violence continued for months varying by region until a crackdown along with the initial anger causing the violence to begin with beginning to ware off led to its end.

The 1977 - 1978 Indian Religious Conflict would be a black mark on its history, one that would have effects last even today. It deepened the divide between religious groups as more segregated communities began to be formed. People couldn’t trust one another anymore. Throughout the Muslim community, many began to wonder whether or not Jinnah was right. A question which was thought to have been buried with independence (but in reality was always a lingering one, never really went away) resurfaced once more. Outside investors looked at the violence with disgust and many began to leave India, thus preventing any big economic boom as Bhutto promised in 1975. Bhutto could’ve stopped it by jailing the leaders but now he could not as that would cause another uproar. Much like Chavan, Bhutto found it unable to have his government move on from the religious conflict. Reports of lynchings and lone-wolf shootings would continue throughout his term, and the threat of another pogrom always remained.

In 1975, Bhutto was a lion of the Swatantra Party. The man who would save India from the clutches of Socialism and Soviet Imperialism. His victory would defeat the purveyors of class war and religious war. By 1980, the fire had gone away from him. He had lost his wife. His faith, along with the faith of many other minorities in the country, in India had been shaken thoroughly. He was no longer as energetic. It was over, and he knew it.

[8] - The national morale of the Indian nation throughout the 1980 Election Campaign was at an all time low. Religious and political violence combined with a rather sluggish economy led to a sense of pessimism across the country. Few were optimistic about the future. In these cases, it is very hard for the ruling party to win a second term, and indeed, this showed in the 1980 Election. With the banning of the Hindu Mahasabha all of the anti-Muslim voters went to Desai, not because Desai was an Hindutva extremist himself, but instead mainly because he would be the only person powerful enough to defeat Bhutto. Further, the fact that Desai had come from the right-wing of the Congress Party (that is, the one that preached economic liberalism) made him appeal to many Swatantra voters as well. And as such, it came as no surprise to even the unseasoned political observers that he would win in a landslide.

Yet this landslide was not accompanied by any positive feelings that people had for Desai. Indeed, his decision in 1981 to unban the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS was one that caused an outcry by many both in and out of his party, but nevertheless it was one that he felt would be best for the country. Yet this surprisingly did not lead to a resurge in religious unrest as feared. The most likely reason for this would be that after three years of being forced into underground, many of the Hindutva leaders were rather uneasy with starting yet another crisis, and would rather spend this time trying to build up their strength. The fact that a Hindu is now Prime Minister meant that a lot of the wind had been taken from their sails. A rather interesting event occurred within the fields of communal relations when, in 1985, after his re-election Desai moved to decriminalizing homosexuality, a position which he had always held much to the disagreement of those even within his own party. Desai realized that just because he had won re-election it did not mean that he had the mandate to embark on such a radical move. In doing so he had united the organizations of every religion against him, which managed to cause enough pressure on Desai to eventually desist.

With a decrease in religious tensions, the foreign investors which had left India had now become interested in it once more. India became a country that they could use as a way to get cheap labor. This helped the GDP of India to grow as it had throughout the 60s under Ranga’s government, yet what it also did was cause further income inequality between the poor and wealthy classes of India. Desai, for his part, tried to fix this, yet for many this was not enough. The Indian Left, which had been divided since 1970, used the growing discontent at Desai’s neoliberal policies to finally come around to an agreement to unite into the Indian People’s Party. This consisted of the Indian Socialist Party, the Muslim Socialist Party, Pashtun Awami Party, and the Communist Party of India. And of course, there were a few splitters who disagreed with the formation of the IPP, leading to the formations of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party. Yet despite the problems caused by an increase in foreign investment, it nevertheless brought benefits as well. By the year 1990 all of India’s villages had been electrified, one US Dollar had equaled to just five Indian Rupees, and it had become one of the top 5 largest economies in the world, only set to increase in the future.

This had an impact on foreign policy as well. Desai did the expected thing and began to disengage from the United States after the defeat of the pro-West Bhutto. This, of course, also did not mean that India was becoming a Soviet colony. But he went further than that and tried to build ties with various African countries, along with countries in South-East Asia, to act as a sort of third, non-aligned bloc consisting of nations from the Global South against both the capitalist and communist blocs. This would be formalized in 1991, with the formation of the Indian Ocean Cooperative Pact, or the IOCP, consisting of Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Brunei, Aden, Somalia, Somaliland, and the East African Confederation. In addition to working on economic cooperation, they too would find common ground on dealing with the threats of the communist states of Indonesia, Malaya, and Thailand, along with the Islamist Islamic State of Melaku and Apartheid South Africa.

On the face of it, all was well under Desai’s tenure. Religious tensions had gone down, India’s economy and quality of life are better than ever, and India’s position in the world had increased by a lot. Yet as Desai was getting older it was clear that he was losing control over his mental faculties and thus could not have been as capable in dealing with India’s affairs as he once was. Yet he could not be removed. There was very little difference between the Congress Party and the Swatantra Party under Desai except that one wished for greater ties with the United States whereas one did not. Nobody else in the Congress Party could inspire as much loyalty as Desai did. The few leftists within the Congress Party, which did not go over to the IPP, felt as if they could strike back after Desai’s death, which was a scenario which was of great concern to the rightists within the Congress Party. As the internal fights within the Congress Party were becoming more tense, it became more clear to the loyalists to the Party that Desai was needed for Congress Party unity. And while it was clear that the Desai of the 1990s wasn’t exactly the Desai of the 1970s or 1980s, it wasn’t as if he was beyond hope. He could still give television interviews without that much effort. For all the effort that the Congress Party leaders put into keeping Desai the Prime Minister despite his old age in a bid to keep the Congress Party afloat, perhaps they should’ve also put effort into figuring out what would happen after Desai’s death. They did not plan for it, and as such when Desai passed away, they had no idea what to do next.

[9] - The worst case scenario for the Congress Party came to fruition when Pawar assumed power. Pawar was a member of the Congress Party’s leftist faction, and had managed to be appointed as the Minister of Defence. The right-wing of the Congress Party could not agree on a candidate, whereas the left rallied around Pawar. In taking control of the Congress Party in such a slick way, the right-wing of Congress was alienated, and many would resign from the cabinet. In an inverse of Rajagopalachari’s departure, now it was a mostly right-wing Congress Party plotting against a left-wing Prime Minister. A vote of no confidence was held, forcing an election so soon after Desai’s death. After alienating most of his party, there was little chance of success for Pawar, and indeed, he would fail to win re-election.

[10] - The selection of another Muslim as Prime Minister, regardless of how secular he may be personally, after the Bhutto debacle, seemed to be a very risky idea. This was the opinion of many of the leaders of the Swatantra Party even though they held no animus towards the Muslim population and believed in secularism. Nevertheless, Dar was a very cunning man. He had managed to climb his way up through the Swatantra Party ranks to become party leader. And when he did, it was too late to reverse it. It thus became a fait accompli for those concerned about a return of communal violence.

The 1994 Elections saw an historical collapse of the Congress Party. With Pawar maintaining a leftist tack while the majority of the Congress Party were liberals, they flocked to Dar and the Swatantra Party. He may have taken a few votes away from the Indian People’s Party, but even then, they had managed to make a name for themselves as a leftist party without the corruption or factionalism of Congress. They would become the main opposition party - cementing India’s new two party system. And while communalism wasn’t that big of a problem during the elections, it did show up with the Hindu Mahasabha becoming the third largest party, and this was inspite of the advanced age of its leader, the ideologue Ram Swarup. This was not focused on as much as most political analysts instead chose to focus on the collapse of the Congress Party.

While Dar was privately in support of a more pro-West position, he knew that if he buddied up too much the West then the Congress Party would perhaps go through a resurgence as the liberal non-aligned party. Further, with the creation of the IOCP, it would risk a collapse if India tried to make it as a second Montreal Pact. It would be for these reasons that Dar would make his first international visit with the Soviet General-Secretary Sergey Sokolov. He was convinced that with his membership in the Swatantra Party, that his visit with Sokolov wouldn’t alarm the West. However, with the United States and the United Kingdom both being under right-wing governments, they chose not to take a risk. “Perfidious India” would become a term coined by CIA Director James Jesus Angleton, to describe America’s frustration with India’s insistence on a non-aligned stance under Chavan’s tenure. This term would appear again in the aftermath of Dar’s visit with Sokolov. With tensions between the West and the East increasing, this was a popular move. Nevertheless, Dar wanted a more powerful India, and would make moves to begin India’s nuclear program. India had not considered making nuclear weapons mainly because it had no immediate threats. However, if India were to become a superpower, it would have to possess that most powerful weapon known to mankind.

Ishaq Dar chose to continue the years of economic prosperity under Desai by not reversing any of the liberal reforms. However, he would try to get rid of more regulation in the belief that it would speeden up India’s economic growth. But in doing so, he had exacerbated the problems that were there with India’s economic growth, such as that about low wages and income inequality, and would eventually cause a scandal when, on June 23rd, 1996, a factory in Chittagong would collapse, killing 232 workers. This incident would cause a firestorm throughout India, with the IPP blaming the neoliberal economic policies of the Desai and Dar administrations. It did hurt Dar’s popularity and would lead to the defeat of the Swatantra Party in the state assembly elections in 1996 and 1997. Dar, however, did not do much to prevent another disaster like that from happening, and maintained course on the economy.

But Dar, much like Krishnamachari, would end up being undone by his own mistakes. In 1997 an investigation done by the Times of India would reveal that Dar he defrauded about five hundred million rupees during his time in office. Dar denied it, but more and more information came out, and the severity of the scandal meant that he couldn’t just pretend that it was a mere moral failing. He would be forced to resign on May 23rd, 1998.

[11] - Poor Birender Singh. Hailed as a rising star of the Swatantra Party for his young age and for his family (his grandfather, Chhotu Ram, being a Punjabi Hindu landlord who worked with Muslim and Sikh landlords in Punjab to prevent partition) all of the hype around him seemed to get into his head, which is why he believed that he would be the one to change the image of the Swatantra Party just a year before elections after one of India’s largest corruption scandals had occurred. Had he waited five years he could’ve been a real fixture in Indian politics, yet he had failed. The press, mainly sympathetic to the Swatantra Party despite the scandals, was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But this was not the case for the Indian public, many of whom were calling for Dar’s head. And so, it would not be a surprise when Singh ended up losing the elections in 1999. But that did not mean that the election results weren’t surprising. Indeed, it would be one of the most important elections in India’s history.

[12] - The old slogan, “Like there is no samosa without aloo (potato), there is no Bihar without Lalu” had “Bihar” changed to India. It should’ve been a landslide for the relatively new Indian People’s Party. Yet what ended up happening again was a lot more complicated than expected. For one, in an environment in which the nation just went through a corruption scandal, Lalu Prasad Yadav couldn’t not portray himself as an anti corruption crusader as he too went through a few corruption cases during his political career and some were continuing as well. He had been acquitted in the ones that had ended, of course (albeit many accused corruption in the decision making process), but it nevertheless set a dark cloud over his campaign which he couldn’t get rid of.

But perhaps the more important issue at the time was pertaining to communal tensions. Religious violence had increased after Dar’s victory, albeit it wasn’t the mass pogroms of the 70s, and with the corruption case many Hindus felt vindicated in their hatred of Muslims. Be it Bhutto or Dar, one could not trust a Muslim to not mess up at some point as head of the country. This was not surprising as they feel no real loyalty to it and never gave up on making a Pakistan. At least that’s what they thought. K. S. Surdashan had been made the new leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, and had hailed from the moderate wing, which made him appealing to the broader Hindu community. This, combined with the unpopularity of the Swatantra Party, and the corruption cases of Lalu, made the Hindu Mahasabha win a plurality in both popular vote and number of seats. The election results shocked the nation. If India had been a presidential system, then they would’ve been assuming power. However, they could not form a government due to the fact that no other party was willing to form an alliance with them. Conversely, the other secular parties were negotiating a grand coalition to prevent the entrance of the Hindu Mahasabha to power. In doing so, they had angered many Hindutvawadis, many of whom used the news of a grand coalition to embark on attacks against religious minorities and leftists in an attempt to scare the various parties from forming a coalition. But all it did do was cement their resolve that the Hindu Mahasabha shouldn’t be allowed any semblance of power. The coalition agreement was made just two weeks after the last election phase, consisting of all of the secular political parties except for the Indian National Congress. The INC, after having lost its right-wing members to the Swatantra Party and its left-wing members to the IPP, was essentially a rump party after the mass exodus. This paved the way for entryists to take control of it, but after various attempts made by people belonging to various ideologies, the winner was Sanjay Gandhi, the grandson of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. While he hoped that name recognition could help him rebuild the Congress Party, he was unable to stake out a clear political position contrary to that of the Swatantra Party and the IPP. And while name recognition did help, the media didn’t focus on him aside from that. And so, despite his attempts, Sanjay Gandhi never became an important figure in Indian history.

This coalition couldn’t hold for too long. Passing populist reforms were not impossible but they were rather difficult as the Hindu Mahasabha declared that despite whether or not they agreed on something all members of it would never vote for a proposal made by the coalition government, even if they were to propose making India a Hindu state, with one member of the Hindu Mahabhasa saying “they’ll find a way to mess it up”. But what did make it impossible was that Lalu’s corruption cases eventually catching up to him. On September 23rd, 2000 he would be convicted by the Supreme Court of India for participation in a scam. He would be forced to resign in ignominy.

[13] - Mulayam Yadav, no relation to his predecessor, faced the same problem as Birender Singh did. The various parties would pull out of the coalition forcing a new election to be called.

[14] - And to ring in the new millennium India made a woman their Prime Minister. Within just a year the Swatantra Party managed to shake off the Dar scandal and win a majority with the League once more. And indeed, for many in India the election of a woman from a religious minority was hailed as a New India. Indeed, a great recession, which was just getting worse and worse with the austerity regimes in the United States and the United Kingdom, had made India the foremost economic power in the world. The collapse of the USSR and EUTO just a year before meant that they couldn’t take advantage of the West’s depredations. The nuclear program was expected to be successful by 2005, and India held the largest military in the world. Now it would be India had been handed the baton which was once held by the United Kingdom and the United States to be the defender of Anglo Liberalism across the world. India managed to culturally influence the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Oceania (Australia and New Zealand taking advantage of the decline of American power also asked for membership in the IOCP). The Arab Cricket League is the most watched cricket league outside of India, and in the West a trend was noted in which those involved in theater who are big fans of Indian movies and eventually get obsessed with India itself due to the fact that most Indian movies are musicals and have a romantic plotline.

Yet this did not mean that India would not have problems. The biggest problem of the time was that pertaining to communal tensions. The Hindu Mahasabha didn’t make much gains mainly because the fact that a Hindu was also in jail for corruption meant that slogans of “A Muslim cheated us!” didn’t hold much water (as if they did before Yadav’s scandals) as it was revealed that no, corruption is not something limited to the Muslim mind. It would no doubt be one of the biggest problems India would face in the future regardless of whatever changes happen. Some hope that with the biggest geopolitical issue India would face being the radical, nuclear-armed, and remaining Apartheid South Africa would give a few people sympathetic to Hindutva a pause as to whether or not a Hindu apartheid would be something desirable after witnessing Apartheid in South Africa, along with the increasingly deteriorating situation of the Indians within it, much as how America went through a similar reckoning vis a vis segregation after the Second World War. However, the explicitly Calvinist nature of the South African government along with the anti-Christian stances of the Hindutva movement meant that supporting Hindutva while being opposed to South Africa wasn’t that much of an unexpected position.

So too would India have to face with resentment from other countries with claims of “Cultural Imperialism”. This would be the most evident in the Arab World, with the far-left claiming that Bollywood represents a soulless, consumerist culture (though some nevertheless maintained a liking for India due to its support of anti-colonialist movements during the Cold War) whereas the far-right disliked India due to its Hinduism and fears that it would spread a more syncretic version of Islam to Arab youth. Some may think that because both sides on the fringe that it isn’t something to worry about. However, these arguments exist and could become more popular within the coming decades. Similar arguments are made in Oceania, Indonesia, East Africa, and other areas in which Indian culture is influential. The fact that India has an economic stranglehold on a lot of them to the point where a decision made by India to embargo them would lead to an economic collapse has made them more dependent on India thus leading to more resentment.

At this stage, while liberalism is seemingly dominant it is not guaranteed that it would remain so. And if an opposition to liberalism rearises, if a Second Cold War were to occur with India at the helm of the liberal capitalist bloc, it is clear that they will act differently than the United States did. Or perhaps liberalism remains dominant which means that India remains dominant, and is available to spread its culture across the globe. In any case, one cannot tell where the Indian Century would lead, but one thing is certain - it will be interesting.
 
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Really like this list. Silver Republicans and Gold Democrats is something I've thought of before, and urban-rural divide political AH isn't explored enough.
Thanks, though I will say the original idea for the list was just to try and get economic left-wing, social conservative Republicans, however overtime it expanded into silver GOP vs. gold Democrats.
 
1947 - 1952: Jawaharlal Nehru (Indian National Congress) [1]
1951 def: Khawaja Nazimuddin (Indian Muslim League), Ajoy Ghosh (Communist Party of India), V. D. Savarkar (Hindu Mahasabha)
1952 - 1955: Chakravarti Rajagopalachari (Indian National Congress)
1955: Chakravarti Rajagopalachari (Swatantra Party)
[2]
1955 - 1960: T. T. Krishnamachari (Indian National Congress) [3]
1955 def: Khawaja Nazimuddin (Indian Muslim League), Chakravarti Rajagopalachari (Swatantra Party), Ajoy Ghosh (Communist Party of India), V. D. Savarkar (Hindu Mahasabha), Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Pashtun Awami Party)
1960 - 1967: N. G. Ranga (Swatantra Party) [4]
1960 def: T. T. Krishnamachari (Indian National Congress), Khawaja Nazimuddin (Indian Muslim League), Ajoy Ghosh (Communist Party of India), V. D. Savarkar (Hindu Mahasabha), Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Pashtun Awami Party)
1965 def: Neelam Sanjiva Reddy (Indian National Congress), Nurul Amin (Indian Muslim League), Jayaprakash Narayan (Indian Socialist Party), Jyoti Basu (Communist Party of India), Deendayal Upadhyaya (Hindu Mahasabha), Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Pashtun Awami Party)

1967 - 1970: Jayaprakash Narayan (Popular Front/Indian Socialist Party) [5]
1967 def: Neelam Sanjiva Reddy (Indian National Congress), N. G. Ranga (Swatantra Party), Nurul Amin (Indian Muslim League), Jyoti Basu (Communist Party of India), Deendayal Upadhyaya (Hindu Mahasabha), Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (Muslim Socialist Party), Amin Ahsan Islahi (Jamaat-e-Islami), Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Pashtun Awami Party)
1970 - 1975: Yashwantrao Chavan (Indian National Congress) [6]
1970 def: Minoo Masani (Swatantra Party), Jayaprakash Narayan (Indian Socialist Party), Nurul Amin (Indian Muslim League), Deendayal Upadhyaya (Hindu Mahasabha), Jyoti Basu (Communist Party of India), Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (Muslim Socialist Party), Amin Ahsan Islahi (Jamaat-e-Islami), Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Pashtun Awami Party)
1975 - 1980: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (Swatantra Party) [7]
1975 def: Yashwantrao Chavan (Indian National Congress), Abdul Qayyum Khan (Indian Muslim League), Deendayal Upadhyaya (Hindu Mahasabha), George Fernandes (Indian Socialist Party), Abdul Ghafoor Ahmed (Jamaat-e-Islami), Jyoti Basu (Communist Party of India), Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (Muslim Socialist Party), Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Pashtun Awami Party)
1980 - 1994: Morarji Desai (Indian National Congress) [8]
1980 def: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (Swatantra Party), Abdul Qayyum Khan (Indian Muslim League), George Fernandes (Indian Socialist Party), Abdul Ghafoor Ahmed (Jamaat-e-Islami), Jyoti Basu (Communist Party of India), Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (Muslim Socialist Party), Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Pashtun Awami Party)
1985 - 1986 def: S. V. Raju (Swatantra Party), Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi (Indian Muslim League), George Fernandes (Indian Socialist Party), Ram Swarup (Hindu Mahasabha), Ghulam Azam (Jamaat-e-Islami), Sita Ram Goel (Communist Party of India), G. M. Syed (Muslim Socialist Party), Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Pashtun Awami Party)
1990 - 1991 def: S. V. Raju (Swatantra Party), George Fernandes (Indian People’s Party), Ebrahim Sait (Indian Muslim League), Ram Swarup (Hindu Mahasabha), Ghulam Azam (Jamaat-e-Islami), A. K. Padmanabhan (Communist Party of India (Marxist)), Nasim Wali Khan (Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party)

1994: Sharad Pawar (Indian National Congress) [9]
1994 - 1998: Ishaq Dar (Swatantra Party) [10]
1994 def: George Fernandes (Indian People’s Party), Ram Swarup (Hindu Mahasabha), Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain (Indian Muslim League), Sharad Pawar (Indian National Congress), Ghulam Azam (Jamaat-e-Islami), A. K. Padmanabhan (Communist Party of India (Marxist)), Nasim Wali Khan (Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party)
1998 - 1999: Birender Singh (Swatantra Party) [11]
1999 - 2000: Lalu Prasad Yadav (Indian People’s Party) [12]
1999 def: K. S. Surdashan (Hindu Mahasabha), Birender Singh (Swatantra Party), Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain (Indian Muslim League), Jalaludin Umri (Jamaat-e-Islami), A. K. Padmanabhan (Communist Party of India (Marxist)), Sanjay Gandhi (Indian National Congress), Nasim Wali Khan (Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party)
2000 - 2001: Mulayum Singh Yadav (Indian People’s Party) [13]
2001 - 2011: Benazir Bhutto (Swatantra Party) [14]
2000 - 2001 def: K. S. Surdashan (Hindu Mahasabha), Mulayaum Singh Yadav (Indian People’s Party), Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain (Indian Muslim League), A. K. Padmanabhan (Communist Party of India (Marxist)), Jalaludin Umri (Jamaat-e-Islami), Nasim Wali Khan (Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party), Sanjay Gandhi (Indian National Congress)

[1] - The road to India’s independence was more fraught then what an outside observer might think. It was not marked by much violence, and as hindsight would show would eventually be an inevitability as the British, along with other colonial powers, would find it increasingly difficult to hold on to large colonies following the end of the Second World War. And yet, the process could have very much been complicated. Throughout the Indian independence struggle a movement emerged calling for the separation of the Muslim areas from the Indian Subcontinent and turning it into its own separate state - Pakistan. The movement would continue to grow in size and in popularity with the Muslims of India, yet would be cut short when the leader of the separatist All-India Muslim League, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, would die of tuberculosis in 1940, shortly after the declaration of the Lahore Resolution, which called for an independent Pakistan. Without a clear path forward, the AIML found it difficult to make its case to the British Crown, and eventually the decision was made to let India become independent, undivided. On July 1st, 1947, the flags of the British Raj were pulled down and replaced with the flag of India. The All-India Muslim League was forced to change its name and its separatist ideology with one merely calling for the preservation of Muslim interests in India.

However, sectional tensions remained even after independence. The Hindu population wasn’t quite sure if it could trust a Muslim population which wasn’t so long ago was calling for a separate state. The continued existence of the All-India Muslim League, in spite of its rebrand, could possibly lead to a system in which, all the Muslims vote for one party whereas the Hindus vote for another. The sectionalization of electoral politics was a scenario which Nehru was repulsed by, and would try to do anything in his power to break the back of the League. Most of the leaders of the League in Muslim-majority areas such as Sindh, Punjab, and Bengal tended to be wealthy landlords - Nazimuddin, the leader of the League in all of India, was one of them. As such, Nehru felt that by embarking on vast land reform, he could break the finances of the Muslim League. He achieved support for this even by non-socialists within Congress, who shared a desire to crush the League. The 1950 Land Reorginization Act, passed just a year before the elections (so as to prevent the Muslim League from recovering in time), would set the maximum amount of land to be owned to be at 30 acres. The suddenness of this reform - opposed by the League - would work at first as Muslim League branches in some towns found itself unable to fund itself. However, come 1951, most Muslims would still vote for the League, as they had felt that Nehru had not done enough to help the Muslims in India. The League managed to portray land reform as anti-Muslim, a portrayal accepted by the majority of Muslims.

Foreign policy wise, Nehru tried to orient India into a non-aligned position as the world powers were dividing themselves into blocs based on political ideology, either under America and the Montreal Pact, the Soviet Union and EUTO (Eurasian Treaty Organization). Nehru did not believe that India, the most populous country in the world, should be a lackey of any of the three blocs, not under the Soviets, nor under the Americans. But being non-aligned did not mean being isolationist. This was shown in 1950 when the Republic of China began to mobilize troops along the border to annex Tibet, India recognized Tibet and sent soldiers to Tibet in order to prevent any annexation of it. This prevented a Chinese annexation of Tibet, much to the dismay of the United States which wanted to expand China’s power in the region. India’s refusal to become aligned with the Soviets had ensured its status as a separate, non-aligned nation. One of Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel’s last acts before his death was to move India into annexing Sikkim and Bhutan, two states in the Himalayas both of which were a British protectorate during the Raj period. Patel did not see much of a reason for their continued independence seeing as how they would have to rely on India on pretty much everything from water to electricity to monetary aid etc. essentially making it impossible for them to be truly independent from India, and as such it would be in the best interest of Sikkim and Bhutan to become a part of India, thus formalizing what would have been a de facto relationship had they remained independent. It was said that Patel wished to do this with Nepal as well, however Nepal was much larger, was more independent even during British rule, and wasn’t as willing to become a part of India despite the fact that the relationship that Sikkim and Bhutan had with India was essentially becoming true with Nepal as well. Nevertheless, Patel died before he could do anything vis a vis Nepal, thus securing its status as an independent state.

This would not be the only foreign policy issue to dominate Nehru’s tenure. So too would the issue of the Pashtun areas in India play a part. This became readily apparent when Afghanistan voted against India’s entrance to the UN - the only nation to do so. Afghanistan wanted a repeal of the Durand Line and a return of all of the Pashtun areas of India to Afghanistan, and was rather dismayed that the British chose to leave without first consulting them. Afghanistan also refused to recognize India as an independent state until the issue was resolved. Nehru was, at first, sympathetic to the Afghans due to anti-colonial stance and was willing to give up FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to Afghanistan. However, he faced stark opposition from those in Congress, believing that letting go of Indian territory could potentially set a bad precedent. Instead, a separate idea was proposed by Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel, who stated that the Pashtun areas should be allowed in India so as to arouse Pashtun nationalist sentiments, which would express itself in the elections. Their main opponent would be the Muslim League, who would then find itself having to deal with more than one political opponent. For every rupee the Muslim League spends on a candidate against a Pashtun Nationalist, they don’t spend it on a candidate against a Congressi. An interesting idea to be sure, one which Nehru eventually got around to supporting, and one which ended up with his death at the ends of an Afghan Nationalist on January 29th, 1952.

[2] - One issue that would dominate Rajagopalachari’s tenure was the same issue that got him in office in the first place, that of Afghanistan and the Pashtun areas in India. Rajagopalachari’s government had contacted Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the “Frontier Gandhi”, otherwise referred to as “Bacha Khan”, a staunch opponent of the erstwhile Pakistan Movement, to issue his support for the Durand Line and for India’s presence in Pakhtunkhwa. However, Bacha Khan was a lot more reluctant to take a pro-government position, instead believing that the Afghan Government had legitimate grievances. Rather surprised by this reluctance, and also the fact that Nehru’s assassination, Said Akbar Babrak, was revealed to have had ties with tribal Pashtun leaders and was a part of a Pashtun separatist network, had led to the Indian Government coming to the harsh but unavoidable conclusion that the Pashtunistan issue would be a much more difficult one than expected. It was not long until there were reports of security incidents within the tribal areas, with some of them even consisting of casualties of police officers and border patrol agents loyal to the Indian Government. Like its more dysfunctional neighbor to the east, Burma, India too was facing the beginnings of a separatist insurgency.

As proposals were drafted up for an eventual crackdown on separatists in Pakhtunkhwa, Rajagopalachari received a letter from a Major-General named Ayub Khan, who was also a Pashtun, and despite coming from a Muslim background he wasn’t that religious, in which he said that the Indian Army shouldn’t send Hindu or Christian soldiers to Pakhtunkhwa to participate in the crackdown, at least not in large numbers, to deal with the Pashtun separatists lest they make out the operation to be a religious war. Further, he called for the implementation of President’s rule in Pakhtunkhwa. While Rajagopalachari did not consider President’s rule to be necessary at this time, he nevertheless trusted Ayub Khan’s expertise in dealing with the Pashtun population on account of his ethnic background. He would be promoted and placed in charge of the bulk of Indian soldiers in Pakhtunkhwa. Ayub Khan would overplay his hand in Pakhtunkhwa, and would be noted for his excessiveness in dealing with the population there. He would make a mountain of a molehill of separatist activity in Pakhtunkhwa in order to justify his actions, and would exaggerate said activity in written reports to his superiors in New Delhi. All this would do was alienate some of the more moderate Pashtuns, such as Bacha Khan, who would later form the Pashtun Awami Party, which was a nationalist, yet not separatist, party of Pashtuns calling for negotiations with Afghanistan and the cessation of operations in the area.

Yet what would end up dooming Rajagopalachari was not Pakhtunkhwa or the anti-Hindi agitiations in Madras. His insistence on economic liberalism and on markets would end up alienating much of the Congress leadership, who were socialists in the vein of the late Nehru, and what would end up becoming the final straw would be his open rejection of the Five Year Plan which had been in place since 1951. He would make moves to repeal it and would refuse to listen to other Congress leaders, which even if they were not as socialist as Nehru considered Rajagopalachari’s intrasignece to be an insult to the memory of the man who led India’s independence struggle and was killed for his commitment to its unity. The other Congress leaders would make moves to eventually get rid of him in a palace coup of sorts. Facing increasing pressure and finding it unable to work with Nehru’s cabinet and the party leadership, Rajagopalachari would eventually declare his departure from the Congress Party and declare the formation of the new Swatantra Party. Over 60 members of the Lok Sabha would switch over, but in the end all this did was make things easier for Rajagopalachari’s opponents in Congress who managed to force through a vote of no confidence and call for new elections. Though the Swatantra Party managed to hold course and not spectacularly collapse (as was the hopes of some Congress leaders), they still lost in a landslide to the Congress Party.

[3] - Seeing as how the main disputes were because of differences in dealing with economics, who better to put in charge of India than the finance minister himself. Krishnamachari became Prime Minister at an increasingly precarious time. With a part of India on the verge of open revolt, the Congress Party, while still dominant, having gone through a split, one could not really envy him. However, he was confident in his ability to make things right. India would be a better place by the time he’s done with it.

Of course, these things don’t tend to be as simple, and in Krishnamachari’s case this wasn’t an exception. First issue was the big one - Pakhtunkhwa. The crackdown had failed in its purpose after two years of its beginning. What’s worse, with Afghanistan surrounded by the USSR, along with two EUTO members (Iran and East Turkistan), they managed to make an image of themselves within the halls of Congress and in the Pentagon as an important ally. As such, it would receive billions in aid money from the US, along with advanced military technology, and Afghanistan chose to send quite a bit of those new guns to separatists in India. The Pashtun cause found some supporters within the State Department, who were annoyed at India’s socialism and stubborn non-alignment. India found few friends within the West, which instead tended to sympathize with Afghanistan. The last straw - one that tipped public opinion of the West in favor of the separatists, was the Orakzai Massacre on January 29th, 1956 in which 29 civilians accused of helping separatists were shot. The massacre was publicized by Afghan embassies and consulates within the United States and in the European countries. This was both a PR disaster, and one which many within the Indian Government found itself personally disgusted by. The decision was made a week later to dismiss Ayub Khan and replaced him with General Muhammad Musa Khan Hazara.

Musa Khan was a Hazara Shia, and his family, along with most other Hazaras in India, had fled Afghanistan into Balochistan after the genocidal campaigns waged against them in the 1880s by the Pashtun Afghan king Abdurrahman Khan. And while Musa Khan did not hold any grudges against Pashtuns - it would be unbecoming of a professional soldier to do so, and one does not become a general being unprofessional - it did lead to some alarm among ordinary Pashtuns. Pashtun nationalists began to sound the alarm of a revenge seeking Mongol with a hatred against Pashtuns and Sunnis in general at the employ of daalkhor (Pashtun term for those east of the Indus River, Hindu and Muslim both, meaning “daal eater”) Hindu polytheists ready to avenge his ancestors. This framing led to an increase in recruitment for Pashtun separatist militias, but it was also false. Musa Khan had showed an exemplary professionalism in dealing with the insurgency, much more than his harsh predecessor, Ayub Khan, did. By 1959, the number attacks and incidents began to fall sharply, and infighting between Pashtun groups due to ideological differences (the use of religious framing led to many Islamists joining the struggle, and needless to say they didn’t quite like the more secular nationalists) just further hurt their cause.

Another issue which would end up being solved during Krishnamachari’s tenure would be that of Hindi imposition. Being a Tamil himself, he was always against the imposition of Hindu as a national language, speaking against it at the constituent assembly just a year after India’s independence and terming it as “Hindi Imperialism”. He put his words into deed during his tenure and removed Hindi’s status as the official language. Official government documents would continue to be written in Hindi, but in English too.

But despite his initial successes, what ended up dooming Krishnamachari was his own self. A leak to the press around the beginning of election season in 1960 exposed a scam in which Haridas Mundhra, a Calcutta-based industrialist and stock speculator got the government owned Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) to invest 13 million rupees into his companies. What made this leak interesting was that Prime Minister Krishnamachari was involved in the scam, and this could not have happened without his approval. This had hurt Krishnamachari’s reputation, and calls for his resignation were plentiful. However, he dug his heels and refused to do so during an election campaign. All this did was ensure the defeat of Congress.

[4] - Yet this did not mean that the Swatantra Party managed to win, at least, at first. They had won a small plurality of seats and won the popular vote by a smidgen, yet could not make a majority government. It was then that the leaders of the Indian Muslim League realized that they had suddenly become some of the most powerful people in India. And it wasn’t long until everyone else did too. Congress’s screams of bloody murder, that Swatantra was openly dealing with traitorous closet secessionists fell on deaf ears as Ranga went to Lahore to meet with Nazimuddin to discuss a coalition government. In a way, this was not as unexpected as one may think. The League was the party of Muslim landowners. Due to their affluence, they were not taken in by religious leaders as some of their middle class co religionists did, those who voted for Jamaat e Islami (the Muslim underclass, which found itself at the service of this elite, voted alongside their bosses) And it was due to their affluence that they found themselves negatively impacted with Nehru’s land reforms and were even more hostile to him and the Congress than in the past. And it was the Hindu landowners who too began to feel animosity towards Congress and who were responsible for funding Swatantra. This coalition was thus a secular coalition consisting of the landowning elite of both religions.

This did not mean that land reform was reversed, though. It would simply be too big of an issue if they were to move with this. A lot of landlords found themselves bankrupted and as such couldn’t really buy back the land anyhow. But Nehru’s legacy would have to be dismantled in some way, and it was decided that it would be the Licence Raj, along with his non-alignment, that would be the ones to go. Over the next five years, every facet of the Licence Raj was being done away with in favor of a pro-market liberal policy. This “shock therapy”, as it was called, did indeed lead to the Indian economy becoming more unstable as these sudden changes were occurring. The Congress Party managed to get the other leftist parties and even some sympathetic members of the Hindu Mahasabha to oppose some of the more extreme changes, and indeed it was this opposition that prevented “shock therapy” from truly doing a number on India.

There was one aspect of the liberal economic program under the Ranga government which did have much more far reaching effects than others. That was the attempted privitization of Indian Railways. The announcement of a privatization came as a surprise, and even by some Swatantra members many believed that it was a bridge too far. Many railway workers, fearing that their livelihoods would be negatively impacted with privatization, took to the streets to strike against it. In Odhisa a heavy crackdown took place leading to the deaths of over 20 strikers. The fact that there was a Congress Government in Odhisa (Congress had opposed privatization, but the Odhisa Congress Party stated that the crackdown was needed for purposes of securing law and order) had led to the already existing rift between ardent socialists and the Congress Party to become much larger, and eventually, led to the creation of the Indian Socialist Party. Ultimately, privatization was defeated as even some members of the Swatantra Party and the Muslim League chose to vote against acts which would begin the process of privatization.

Non-alignment was something easier to get rid of. Both Swatantra and the League were pro-West, and believed that an alliance with the United States was in the best interests of India. Ranga would make the meeting with President Johnson the first foreign meeting of his premiership. With the Licence Raj being dismantled, US investment- both governmental and non-governmental - began pouring into India. This would help India’s economy and, along with a successful operation taking back Portuguese India in 1964, would lead to another victory for the Swatantra-League Coalition in 1965. Furthermore, India being an American ally would lead to pressure being applied on Afghanistan to stop funding Pashtun militants. However, India would soon have to hold up their end of the bargain.

To India’s south would be Indonesia. Indonesia resembled India in many ways - it was a large, multiethnic, multifaith, once-colonized nation which did not have any inclinations towards either the United States or the Soviet Union. It was for this reason that Indonesia and India had good ties throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Yet, it had experience internal strife much worse than anything India had at that point. Be it pressure from communists or from Islamists, the Indonesian President Sukarno saw no other choice than to embark on an autocratic “guided democracy” system, yet that just made things worse. In 1964, an attempted coup d’etat by the military (which ended in his assassination) in response to his inclinations towards the left had led to a civil war in Indonesia, with leftists, Islamists, the Military, and separatists all fighting each other. A bomb blast at the American embassy committed by Communists on March 30th, 1965 would give America a casus belli to enter in support of the Indonesian military, bringing along Australia and New Zealand. In India, the pro-West tendencies of the Ranga Government meant that there was considerable support within it to have India involved as well. This would lead to a firestorm within the Indian political sphere, with every party except Swatantra, the Muslim League, and the Hindu Mahabhasha against it. But despite the domestic opposition to it, the United States attempted to entice India such as by promising billions more in aid, along with military aid in which the weapons are worth just as much. Eventually, Ranga would be forced to accept sending a few detachments of the Indian Army to Indonesia to act as a peacekeeping force.

The announcement led to vast opposition within India, and arguably marked the start of the worldwide anti-Indonesia War movement. India’s soldiers soon found themselves in the foxholes alongside Americans once it became clear that being a mere “peacekeeping” force wasn’t going to be tenable as Communists and Islamists began shooting at them. Reports of American and Australian crimes just led to more opposition to the war amongst Indians. While many in the Ranga Government hoped that, at the very least, involvement in the war would be unify Indians regardless of religion, ethnicity, caste, or class, it actually exacerbated existing tensions. Many Indian Muslim soldiers found themselves tempted by the propaganda of Islamist forces in Indonesia, and there would be reports of defections and soldiers refusing to fight them (this was a part of a larger global trend, shown in a similar civil war in Turkey after the military couped an Islam-oriented government, which led to another civil war between putchists, leftists, Islamists, and separatists). This led to Hindu and Sikh soldiers being distrustful of their Muslim comrades, a distrust which was obviously felt by them even if they were never openly told of it. At home, it ironically did unify Indians regardless of division against the war. The Muslim populace was of course against the war, and could not understand why the Muslim League, though it talked endlessly of securing the rights of Muslims at home, was willing to embrace getting involved in a war which overwhelmingly hurt Muslims. This discontent was eventually shown when 20 Muslim League MPs, lead by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, split from the League in order to declare the formation of the Muslim Socialist Party. This announcement meant that the Swantantra-League Coalition no longer held a majority of seats, forcing a new election.

[5] - The 1967 Indian Election was perhaps the strangest of elections, yet when one digs deeper one finds it easier to understand. Perhaps the biggest question has to relate with the winner - how come did the Congress Party lose at a time of an unpopular Swatantra Party government, even though they had been seen as the main opposition? The answer to that question is rather simpe - the Indian Socialist Party, after managing to get a much better than expected showing in 1965, still had enough momentum to manage to defeat both the Congress Party (still recovering from 1960) and the Swatantra Party. Had the elections gone as planned in 1970, it is likely that the ISP would have lost quite a fair bit of their momentum and it would’ve been a Congress victory. The Congress Party had also made Neelam Sanjiva Reddy his leader, which, despite the urgings of his many advisors, did not take up a populist tone throughout the campaign and as such lost quite a fair bit of supporters to the Indian Socialist Party.

One part of the election which stood out was that the Indian Muslim League no longer had a monopoly over the Muslim vote in India. Their support for involvement in Indonesia had hurt them, and they were attacked by both the left-wing and the right-wing of the Muslim political spheres for it. This would be a pretty monumental election in this regard, and its effects would last to this day. This also led to vote-splitting which led to quite a few weird results taking place, like in Bengal, where a member of the Hindu Mahasabha ended up winning in a 51% Muslim constituency.

Narayan would begin his term by announcing the end of Indian involvement in Indonesia. This was rather easy, and something there wasn’t much opposition to this move. So too would Narayan move to re-establish negotiations with the Kingdom of Afghanistan at the behest of their coalition partner, the Pashtun Awami Party. Narayan knew that giving up the Pashtun areas was a bridge too far, one that would not find much support among Indians, one which even he didn’t really support. But he had to do Something. For one, the Americans which had been invited to India were getting rather antsy with a Communist Party within a ruling coalition government, and Narayan didn’t want a re-establishment of the American-Afghan alliance which would set Pakhtunkhwa on flames as in the 1950s. Further, the “Popular Front” government was holding on by a thread, and with the exit of one party the whole thing falls apart. Narayan knew that he had to do something to make the Pashtun Awami Party happy. Eventually, a compromise was found, in that while India would not cede any territory to Afghanistan, Afghan citizens and Indian citizens in Pakhtunkhwa would be able to move between borders without having to deal with the usual protocol when it comes to crossing borders (of course, any Afghan wishing to go to India beyond Pakhtunkhwa and into Punjab, Balochistan, or Jammu and Kashmir, would, in fact, need papers). Indian laws would still apply in their part of Pakhtunkhwa but none of them were that offensive to Afghan sensitivities. Narayan was hailed by his party, and many members of the opposition, for being the one to have solved the Durand Line problem which had led to the death of the first Prime Minister and dominated the 1950s. Foreign policy wise, Narayan sought better ties with the Soviet Union, and further, would declare India’s support for movements such as the anti-colonial fighters in Angola along with the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa.

Domestically, Narayan would find it much more difficult to push through his agenda. While he did have his successes, such as pushing through the 1968 Film Act, which had managed to rein in Bollywood’s excesses (unknown to him, this had saved millions of lives, and in this author’s view Narayan is worthy of a posthumous Nobel Peace Prize), his moves towards nationalization would find opposition from the Swantantra Party, the Muslim League, and by many members of the Indian National Congress. The first act of nationalization would relate to coal - India’s energy needs were not being met by private coal companies, as such, they would have to go. Narayan had managed to take enough socialists from the Congress Party and populists from the Hindu Mahasabha to vote against their party leadership, and thus, the coal industry was nationalized. So too did Narayan succeed in nationalizing the banks, one of which was the Bank of India. These radical policies caused shocks in India’s economy and would make him unpopular amongst the general populace.

What would end up dooming Narayan, however, was foreign policy. 1970 would see the end of the ten-year Civil War in Turkey, which saw that partition of Turkey by the Soviet Union and Greece, with the former taking many once Georgian and Armenian areas and making them a part of the Soviet Union, leaving just a rump Islamist Turkish state in its place. In doing so, the USSR would ethnically cleanse the Turks there and would destroy their mosques. This would cause a firestorm across the entire Muslim World, with even leftist currents among it feeling uneasy at the whole thing. The Muslim Socialist Party would condemn the displacement of Turks, and would try to nudge Narayan to get on their side. Narayan, who wanted to make it clear to his naysayers that he wasn’t going to turn India into a Soviet satellite, would condemn the annexation and the Soviet Government, but in doing so would alienate the Communist Party of India, which saw the condemnation as a betrayal, and would leave the Popular Front coalition. In doing so, it no longer had a majority, forcing a new election. It can thus be said that it was the Muslim Socialist Party which brought Narayan into power, but also got him out of it, and it was Narayan’s desire for peace that brought him into power but also led to him losing it.

[6] - A Nehruvian Socialist, Chavan became the leader of the Congress Party mainly because people believed he would have taken enough voters from the Indian Socialist Party to win. But in the end, socialist or not, Chavan would’ve won mainly because by the year 1970 the Congress Party was becoming synonymous with steady governance, as it was under Nehru and Krishanamachari when politics were considerably more stable than after the latter. If he had been a liberal, he would’ve taken voters from the Swatantra Party, and he would’ve still won.

Despite his victory, Chavan proved to be little different than his predecessor. He did not wrap himself in the red flag, which may have made him more palatable to the West, but in his deeds, he would not reverse any of Narayan’s reforms nor govern much differently than what he planned. This was either very good or very bad depending on who you asked. But Chavan’s greatest opponents would come not from the opposition but rather from his own party. The right-wing of the Congress Party, led by Morarji Desai, which had the same economic views as the Swatantra Party but was also on board with Congress’s non-alignment policy as opposed to the pro-Western policy of the Swatantra Party, would lead the charge against further nationalization of private industries. Chavan didn’t really plan on dealing with them at the outset of his premiership, which is why when he began to move forward on bank nationalization, he was surprised to see one member of Congress after another voting with the opposition against it, eventually leading to its defeat.

But perhaps the issue that would define Chavan’s premiership would be that of communal tensions. The issue of religion in Indian politics was never one that went away though it had not been propagated by any of the major parties. What would be the spark the would re-ignite religious tensions would be the selection of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as the leader of the Swatantra Party and thus the new leader of the opposition. It was not surprising that someone like Bhutto would be involved in the affairs of the Swatantra Party as he had come from a background similar to many of its supporters, that is, he was the son of a land-owning family in Sindh who lost a lot of their land during Nehru’s land reforms. While Bhutto was in America at the time, and was a member of the Muslim League, he was profoundly impacted by this, and would chose to join the Swatantra Party after returning to India in 1955, believing that a secular party such as the Swatantra Party could do more to oppose Congress’s left-wing reforms than the more exclusive Muslim League. By making Zulfikar Ali Bhutto the leader of the Swatantra Party, many Hindus would have to grapple with the question of whether or not they would vote a Muslim for Prime Minister. Riots and pogroms have happened in the past, albeit mainly in rural areas meaning that it didn’t really impact the urbanites in India and as such didn’t make the news. But it did cause a lot of friction between Hindus and Muslims, and this friction was shown due to Bhutto becoming the Leader of the Opposition.

Tensions, slowly but surely, built up until October of 1973, during Ramadan. That was when a strand of hair, purportedly belonging to the Prophet Muhammad, was stolen at the Hazratbal Shrine in Srinagar. The news caused considerable concern amongst Kashmiris and Muslims across India. The spark would be the announcement that the thieves were a few Hindu teenagers. Thousands of miles away in Bengal, a land dispute between Muslims and Hindus was occurring in Dhaka, the leader of the Muslims being a man named Muhammad Azam, who would use the news of the Hazratbal incident to whip up a frenzy in his support. Members of his family, along with his supporters, would begin attacking Hindu shops and businesses on October 15th. While this may have ended there as just a small episode of violence which didn’t last more than 24 hours with all the perpetrators arrested and tried, what ended up happening was the entrance of RSS members and other members of Hindu Nationalist organizations who chose to take the law in their own hands and attack not just the perpatrators but also other Muslims as well. Riots in Dhaka would then continue for the next few days, with violence beginning to spill over as Hindus began to attack Muslims in the Hindu-majority areas of the Bengal province. Within two weeks, every major urban area in Bengal was in flames with religious violence, with only villages with a clear population disparity of one religion or the other being spared. In Uttar Pradesh on November 1st, an attack on Hindu pilgrims in Ayodhya (though who would be the killers is a subject of debate to this day - with many claiming that it was a false flag) would leave 10 dead in a very gruesome manner, and would just inspire an attack on part of Hindu parties against Muslim worshippers, leaving 32 dead. The violence would soon spread across Uttar Pradesh, and eventually to Bihar too as it was between Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. Most of North India would thus be at the center of the some of the worst pogroms in human history. Chavan would be forced to use the military against the rioters, setting a rather bad precedent but one which he felt was necessary. The riots would end by December, with over 5,000 dead, most of them Muslim, with many of the bodies never being found. In an attempt to save face with the Muslim population, who blamed him for a slow response, Chavan would announce the banning of the Hindu Mahasabha, the RSS, and Jamaat-e-Islami, along with numerous other organizations, both Hindu and Muslim, accused of playing a role. However, these bans would just lead to widespread criticism from both groups, Muslims blaming Chavan for playing a “both sides” routine, and as for the Hindus, reactions ranged from support (mainly from Congressis and those to their left), to concern regarding free speech (this was the main argument of the Hindu Nationalists but there were secularists who were also concerned), to anger. They would take the issue to court, but eventually Chavan would be forced to lift the ban after six months, fearing even more violence if the courts chose not to rule their way.

The 1973 North India Pogrom, as it was called, would set a shadow over Chavan’s premiership. It would be the main event anyone could remember from it. He no longer had the trust of the overall Muslim community due to his late response. Hindu Nationalists, to some success, managed to portray the violence as being started by Muslims and thus making them deserving of what happened to them. All this would do was set the stage for even more violence in the latter half of the decade.

[7] - Ultimately, Bhutto won the election as a result of three main factors. The first one was rather obvious- the average person did not feel as if they were better off now than when Chavan came to power. In all democracies, if you fail to make people think as if they are better off than when you assumed office, let alone actually make them better off, it is difficult for you to be given another mandate. The second reason is darkly comedic - the voters who were steadfastly against a Prime Minister with an, err, strange name found themselves divided between voting for the Hindu Mahasabha, who shared their views on Muslims, and the Congress Party, who presented the best chance at beating Bhutto. Further, the Mahasabha, after just being banned, wasn’t able to recuperate in time to launch a full fledged campaign. Nevertheless, the Mahasabha managed to, in a first, get their number of seats up to the triple digits, mainly in the rural Hindu areas where the Swatantra Party tanked. The third reason consisted of mere rumors and innuendo, but would nevertheless be revealed in 2004 to be factual. That would be of American involvement in the election. America, after witnessing eight years of a socialist, non-aligned India, chose to interfere in India’s elections by covertly funding Bhutto’s campaign. As Shahnawaz Bhutto, Zulfikar’s youngest son, would state in an interview 30 years later: “We came to power on a CIA Train”. America had suffered a bloody nose in Indonesia and was eventually forced to withdraw in 1975, but nevertheless maintained an interest in the region as they wanted to prevent more countries from following the path of Indonesia. If guns and bombs wouldn’t do it, then perhaps more secretive means will, and in India, it worked. The election would also see a resurgence in the Indian Muslim League’s fortunes, as after a rough last two elections, managed to now use the alliance with the Swatantra Party to their advantage as now Bhutto was in charge and thus would be more amiable to Muslim interests than anyone else. A vote for the League was thus a vote for Bhutto.

Bhutto did hold up his end of the bargain vis a vis the United States. He had reversed all left wing reforms done by the Narayan and Chavan administrations. Further, he moved to a more pro-US position in the region, but even he managed to cause a few headaches for them by taking a stand against the pro-US Hashemite Arab Federation, which had developed a system of segregation, much like to that which had once existed within the American South, against the Shia population, and Bhutto, however irreligious he was came from a Shia family, and most of the Shias in India voted for the Swatantra-League coalition in greater numbers than they had previously. Bhutto also continued India’s support for anti-colonial movements across Africa.

But like with Chavan, Bhutto’s biggest issue would be of religious disputes. While there would be a lot tensions during election season and immediately after the results, it amounted to nothing. Indeed, the rest of 1975 and much of 1976 would be quiet in this regard. It was then, on October 28th, 1976, when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his wife Nusrat were visiting Assam to rally support for the Swatantra Party in the upcoming Assembly Elections that a few shots from an abandoned building would end up becoming a “declaration of war” on part of Hindutva extremist groups against the Indian state. Bhutto was unharmed, suffering only a shoulder wound, yet the same can’t be said of his wife who had taken the majority of the bullets. She would eventually be declared dead just hours after arriving at the hospital.

The attack had shocked the nation, with even the Hindu Mahasabha not finding any joy in the death of a middle aged woman. Personally, it had shaken Bhutto up tremendously. Cynical as he was he had been emotional at his wife’s funeral. The killer would be captured just hours after the attack, and would’ve been revealed to have been part of a larger network which had been aiming for anti-Muslim pogroms just after the Bhutto’s planned killing. This network had stretched from RSS shakas to police departments to local politicians. These local politicians had links with much of the Hindu Mahasabha leadership in the state. It would be then that, partly out of delirium from his wife’s death, and also because he wanted to get rid of a political opponent, that Bhutto would make the decision to ban the Hindu Mahasabha, the RSS, and practically every Hindu right-wing group in a crackdown which far exceeded his predecessor’s.

In response, the Hindutva organizations tried to repeat what they had done previously in order to get unbanned, that is, make it so that it would be either allowing them to operate or face the threat of more violence. But this situation was different - they did not kill Chavan’s wife. Bhutto remained undeterred. When they tried to change their name to circumvent the ban, they were banned again. But Bhutto never threw anyone who wasn’t a part of that network in jail. This meant that all of the Hindutva leaders on a national level were still allowed to go on without harm provided they don’t openly endorse the banned organization. On October 22nd, 1977, right after Dussehra, a Hindu festival celebrating the death of the demon king Ravana, all of the Hindu Nationalist organizations - banned and unbanned - announced protests across the country. After burning they would burn effigies of Ravana - some which were just standard effigies, others made to look like Bhutto, and others in which it literally was just Bhutto with no ambivalence as to who was portrayed on the effigy - they took to the streets by the millions. In Delhi, the demonstrators would march lockstep near the houses of power. One American journalist compared the demonstration to the March on Rome. As they were doing so, one marcher was hit by rocks thrown by Muslim children. Angered by this, he and his comrades would soon run against them into the Muslim neighborhoods where they eventually had to face their parents. A brawl would occur, causing more to get involved, and eventually they would be kicked out. But that group of Hindutvawadis would come back with even more demonstrators after telling them that the bruises they incurred were the cause of Muslim aggression by members of Jamaat-e-Islami. They would rally across the Muslim neighborhood. When Bhutto heard of this, he would order the Swatantra-led Government of Delhi to send police to stop the march dead in its tracks in an attempt to prevent any violence. But if this was the intention, it had failed.

The arrival of the police had not come as a surprise, what did come as a surprise was when the police tried to break up the rally. Seeing this as an attack, the Hindutva demonstrators began to attack the police, and when the police fired back, the situation had collapsed. It did not take long for the rioting to reach the Muslim areas as well. And when more police were sent in, an unfortunate incident took place in which there were some Hindu police officers which began to side with the Hindutva demonstrators. Things just became worse when far-left groups began to arrive to join in on the “fun”. Islamists began to enter too, and within 72 hours Delhi became a free-for-all. Bhutto would eventually declare President’s Rule and send in the Army, and after a series of provocations by the far-right demonstrators the army would fire at them, killing 100 by the day’s end. The other demonstrations in other states outside of Delhi by Hindu Nationalist organizations became quiet during the Delhi violence, yet after the massacre would explode into chaos. Across all of India, violence erupted as Mosques and Churches were destroyed by Hindu extremist groups. Mass graves would’ve been dug in certain areas, while entire neighborhoods were cleansed in others. The violence continued for months varying by region until a crackdown along with the initial anger causing the violence to begin with beginning to ware off led to its end.

The 1977 - 1978 Indian Religious Conflict would be a black mark on its history, one that would have effects last even today. It deepened the divide between religious groups as more segregated communities began to be formed. People couldn’t trust one another anymore. Throughout the Muslim community, many began to wonder whether or not Jinnah was right. A question which was thought to have been buried with independence (but in reality was always a lingering one, never really went away) resurfaced once more. Outside investors looked at the violence with disgust and many began to leave India, thus preventing any big economic boom as Bhutto promised in 1975. Bhutto could’ve stopped it by jailing the leaders but now he could not as that would cause another uproar. Much like Chavan, Bhutto found it unable to have his government move on from the religious conflict. Reports of lynchings and lone-wolf shootings would continue throughout his term, and the threat of another pogrom always remained.

In 1975, Bhutto was a lion of the Swatantra Party. The man who would save India from the clutches of Socialism and Soviet Imperialism. His victory would defeat the purveyors of class war and religious war. By 1980, the fire had gone away from him. He had lost his wife. His faith, along with the faith of many other minorities in the country, in India had been shaken thoroughly. He was no longer as energetic. It was over, and he knew it.

[8] - The national morale of the Indian nation throughout the 1980 Election Campaign was at an all time low. Religious and political violence combined with a rather sluggish economy led to a sense of pessimism across the country. Few were optimistic about the future. In these cases, it is very hard for the ruling party to win a second term, and indeed, this showed in the 1980 Election. With the banning of the Hindu Mahasabha all of the anti-Muslim voters went to Desai, not because Desai was an Hindutva extremist himself, but instead mainly because he would be the only person powerful enough to defeat Bhutto. Further, the fact that Desai had come from the right-wing of the Congress Party (that is, the one that preached economic liberalism) made him appeal to many Swatantra voters as well. And as such, it came as no surprise to even the unseasoned political observers that he would win in a landslide.

Yet this landslide was not accompanied by any positive feelings that people had for Desai. Indeed, his decision in 1981 to unban the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS was one that caused an outcry by many both in and out of his party, but nevertheless it was one that he felt would be best for the country. Yet this surprisingly did not lead to a resurge in religious unrest as feared. The most likely reason for this would be that after three years of being forced into underground, many of the Hindutva leaders were rather uneasy with starting yet another crisis, and would rather spend this time trying to build up their strength. The fact that a Hindu is now Prime Minister meant that a lot of the wind had been taken from their sails. A rather interesting event occurred within the fields of communal relations when, in 1985, after his re-election Desai moved to decriminalizing homosexuality, a position which he had always held much to the disagreement of those even within his own party. Desai realized that just because he had won re-election it did not mean that he had the mandate to embark on such a radical move. In doing so he had united the organizations of every religion against him, which managed to cause enough pressure on Desai to eventually desist.

With a decrease in religious tensions, the foreign investors which had left India had now become interested in it once more. India became a country that they could use as a way to get cheap labor. This helped the GDP of India to grow as it had throughout the 60s under Ranga’s government, yet what it also did was cause further income inequality between the poor and wealthy classes of India. Desai, for his part, tried to fix this, yet for many this was not enough. The Indian Left, which had been divided since 1970, used the growing discontent at Desai’s neoliberal policies to finally come around to an agreement to unite into the Indian People’s Party. This consisted of the Indian Socialist Party, the Muslim Socialist Party, Pashtun Awami Party, and the Communist Party of India. And of course, there were a few splitters who disagreed with the formation of the IPP, leading to the formations of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party. Yet despite the problems caused by an increase in foreign investment, it nevertheless brought benefits as well. By the year 1990 all of India’s villages had been electrified, one US Dollar had equaled to just five Indian Rupees, and it had become one of the top 5 largest economies in the world, only set to increase in the future.

This had an impact on foreign policy as well. Desai did the expected thing and began to disengage from the United States after the defeat of the pro-West Bhutto. This, of course, also did not mean that India was becoming a Soviet colony. But he went further than that and tried to build ties with various African countries, along with countries in South-East Asia, to act as a sort of third, non-aligned bloc consisting of nations from the Global South against both the capitalist and communist blocs. This would be formalized in 1991, with the formation of the Indian Ocean Cooperative Pact, or the IOCP, consisting of Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Brunei, Aden, Somalia, Somaliland, and the East African Confederation. In addition to working on economic cooperation, they too would find common ground on dealing with the threats of the communist states of Indonesia, Malaya, and Thailand, along with the Islamist Islamic State of Melaku and Apartheid South Africa.

On the face of it, all was well under Desai’s tenure. Religious tensions had gone down, India’s economy and quality of life are better than ever, and India’s position in the world had increased by a lot. Yet as Desai was getting older it was clear that he was losing control over his mental faculties and thus could not have been as capable in dealing with India’s affairs as he once was. Yet he could not be removed. There was very little difference between the Congress Party and the Swatantra Party under Desai except that one wished for greater ties with the United States whereas one did not. Nobody else in the Congress Party could inspire as much loyalty as Desai did. The few leftists within the Congress Party, which did not go over to the IPP, felt as if they could strike back after Desai’s death, which was a scenario which was of great concern to the rightists within the Congress Party. As the internal fights within the Congress Party were becoming more tense, it became more clear to the loyalists to the Party that Desai was needed for Congress Party unity. And while it was clear that the Desai of the 1990s wasn’t exactly the Desai of the 1970s or 1980s, it wasn’t as if he was beyond hope. He could still give television interviews without that much effort. For all the effort that the Congress Party leaders put into keeping Desai the Prime Minister despite his old age in a bid to keep the Congress Party afloat, perhaps they should’ve also put effort into figuring out what would happen after Desai’s death. They did not plan for it, and as such when Desai passed away, they had no idea what to do next.

[9] - The worst case scenario for the Congress Party came to fruition when Pawar assumed power. Pawar was a member of the Congress Party’s leftist faction, and had managed to be appointed as the Minister of Defence. The right-wing of the Congress Party could not agree on a candidate, whereas the left rallied around Pawar. In taking control of the Congress Party in such a slick way, the right-wing of Congress was alienated, and many would resign from the cabinet. In an inverse of Rajagopalachari’s departure, now it was a mostly right-wing Congress Party plotting against a left-wing Prime Minister. A vote of no confidence was held, forcing an election so soon after Desai’s death. After alienating most of his party, there was little chance of success for Pawar, and indeed, he would fail to win re-election.

[10] - The selection of another Muslim as Prime Minister, regardless of how secular he may be personally, after the Bhutto debacle, seemed to be a very risky idea. This was the opinion of many of the leaders of the Swatantra Party even though they held no animus towards the Muslim population and believed in secularism. Nevertheless, Dar was a very cunning man. He had managed to climb his way up through the Swatantra Party ranks to become party leader. And when he did, it was too late to reverse it. It thus became a fait accompli for those concerned about a return of communal violence.

The 1994 Elections saw an historical collapse of the Congress Party. With Pawar maintaining a leftist tack while the majority of the Congress Party were liberals, they flocked to Dar and the Swatantra Party. He may have taken a few votes away from the Indian People’s Party, but even then, they had managed to make a name for themselves as a leftist party without the corruption or factionalism of Congress. They would become the main opposition party - cementing India’s new two party system. And while communalism wasn’t that big of a problem during the elections, it did show up with the Hindu Mahasabha becoming the third largest party, and this was inspite of the advanced age of its leader, the ideologue Ram Swarup. This was not focused on as much as most political analysts instead chose to focus on the collapse of the Congress Party.

While Dar was privately in support of a more pro-West position, he knew that if he buddied up too much the West then the Congress Party would perhaps go through a resurgence as the liberal non-aligned party. Further, with the creation of the IOCP, it would risk a collapse if India tried to make it as a second Montreal Pact. It would be for these reasons that Dar would make his first international visit with the Soviet General-Secretary Sergey Sokolov. He was convinced that with his membership in the Swatantra Party, that his visit with Sokolov wouldn’t alarm the West. However, with the United States and the United Kingdom both being under right-wing governments, they chose not to take a risk. “Perfidious India” would become a term coined by CIA Director James Jesus Angleton, to describe America’s frustration with India’s insistence on a non-aligned stance under Chavan’s tenure. This term would appear again in the aftermath of Dar’s visit with Sokolov. With tensions between the West and the East increasing, this was a popular move. Nevertheless, Dar wanted a more powerful India, and would make moves to begin India’s nuclear program. India had not considered making nuclear weapons mainly because it had no immediate threats. However, if India were to become a superpower, it would have to possess that most powerful weapon known to mankind.

Ishaq Dar chose to continue the years of economic prosperity under Desai by not reversing any of the liberal reforms. However, he would try to get rid of more regulation in the belief that it would speeden up India’s economic growth. But in doing so, he had exacerbated the problems that were there with India’s economic growth, such as that about low wages and income inequality, and would eventually cause a scandal when, on June 23rd, 1996, a factory in Chittagong would collapse, killing 232 workers. This incident would cause a firestorm throughout India, with the IPP blaming the neoliberal economic policies of the Desai and Dar administrations. It did hurt Dar’s popularity and would lead to the defeat of the Swatantra Party in the state assembly elections in 1996 and 1997. Dar, however, did not do much to prevent another disaster like that from happening, and maintained course on the economy.

But Dar, much like Krishnamachari, would end up being undone by his own mistakes. In 1997 an investigation done by the Times of India would reveal that Dar he defrauded about five hundred million rupees during his time in office. Dar denied it, but more and more information came out, and the severity of the scandal meant that he couldn’t just pretend that it was a mere moral failing. He would be forced to resign on May 23rd, 1998.

[11] - Poor Birender Singh. Hailed as a rising star of the Swatantra Party for his young age and for his family (his grandfather, Chhotu Ram, being a Punjabi Hindu landlord who worked with Muslim and Sikh landlords in Punjab to prevent partition) all of the hype around him seemed to get into his head, which is why he believed that he would be the one to change the image of the Swatantra Party just a year before elections after one of India’s largest corruption scandals had occurred. Had he waited five years he could’ve been a real fixture in Indian politics, yet he had failed. The press, mainly sympathetic to the Swatantra Party despite the scandals, was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But this was not the case for the Indian public, many of whom were calling for Dar’s head. And so, it would not be a surprise when Singh ended up losing the elections in 1999. But that did not mean that the election results weren’t surprising. Indeed, it would be one of the most important elections in India’s history.

[12] - The old slogan, “Like there is no samosa without aloo (potato), there is no Bihar without Lalu” had “Bihar” changed to India. It should’ve been a landslide for the relatively new Indian People’s Party. Yet what ended up happening again was a lot more complicated than expected. For one, in an environment in which the nation just went through a corruption scandal, Lalu Prasad Yadav couldn’t not portray himself as an anti corruption crusader as he too went through a few corruption cases during his political career and some were continuing as well. He had been acquitted in the ones that had ended, of course (albeit many accused corruption in the decision making process), but it nevertheless set a dark cloud over his campaign which he couldn’t get rid of.

But perhaps the more important issue at the time was pertaining to communal tensions. Religious violence had increased after Dar’s victory, albeit it wasn’t the mass pogroms of the 70s, and with the corruption case many Hindus felt vindicated in their hatred of Muslims. Be it Bhutto or Dar, one could not trust a Muslim to not mess up at some point as head of the country. This was not surprising as they feel no real loyalty to it and never gave up on making a Pakistan. At least that’s what they thought. K. S. Surdashan had been made the new leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, and had hailed from the moderate wing, which made him appealing to the broader Hindu community. This, combined with the unpopularity of the Swatantra Party, and the corruption cases of Lalu, made the Hindu Mahasabha win a plurality in both popular vote and number of seats. The election results shocked the nation. If India had been a presidential system, then they would’ve been assuming power. However, they could not form a government due to the fact that no other party was willing to form an alliance with them. Conversely, the other secular parties were negotiating a grand coalition to prevent the entrance of the Hindu Mahasabha to power. In doing so, they had angered many Hindutvawadis, many of whom used the news of a grand coalition to embark on attacks against religious minorities and leftists in an attempt to scare the various parties from forming a coalition. But all it did do was cement their resolve that the Hindu Mahasabha shouldn’t be allowed any semblance of power. The coalition agreement was made just two weeks after the last election phase, consisting of all of the secular political parties except for the Indian National Congress. The INC, after having lost its right-wing members to the Swatantra Party and its left-wing members to the IPP, was essentially a rump party after the mass exodus. This paved the way for entryists to take control of it, but after various attempts made by people belonging to various ideologies, the winner was Sanjay Gandhi, the grandson of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. While he hoped that name recognition could help him rebuild the Congress Party, he was unable to stake out a clear political position contrary to that of the Swatantra Party and the IPP. And while name recognition did help, the media didn’t focus on him aside from that. And so, despite his attempts, Sanjay Gandhi never became an important figure in Indian history.

This coalition couldn’t hold for too long. Passing populist reforms were not impossible but they were rather difficult as the Hindu Mahasabha declared that despite whether or not they agreed on something all members of it would never vote for a proposal made by the coalition government, even if they were to propose making India a Hindu state, with one member of the Hindu Mahabhasa saying “they’ll find a way to mess it up”. But what did make it impossible was that Lalu’s corruption cases eventually catching up to him. On September 23rd, 2000 he would be convicted by the Supreme Court of India for participation in a scam. He would be forced to resign in ignominy.

[13] - Mulayam Yadav, no relation to his predecessor, faced the same problem as Birender Singh did. The various parties would pull out of the coalition forcing a new election to be called.

[14] - And to ring in the new millennium India made a woman their Prime Minister. Within just a year the Swatantra Party managed to shake off the Dar scandal and win a majority with the League once more. And indeed, for many in India the election of a woman from a religious minority was hailed as a New India. Indeed, a great recession, which was just getting worse and worse with the austerity regimes in the United States and the United Kingdom, had made India the foremost economic power in the world. The collapse of the USSR and EUTO just a year before meant that they couldn’t take advantage of the West’s depredations. The nuclear program was expected to be successful by 2005, and India held the largest military in the world. Now it would be India had been handed the baton which was once held by the United Kingdom and the United States to be the defender of Anglo Liberalism across the world. India managed to culturally influence the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Oceania (Australia and New Zealand taking advantage of the decline of American power also asked for membership in the IOCP). The Arab Cricket League is the most watched cricket league outside of India, and in the West a trend was noted in which those involved in theater who are big fans of Indian movies and eventually get obsessed with India itself due to the fact that most Indian movies are musicals and have a romantic plotline.

Yet this did not mean that India would not have problems. The biggest problem of the time was that pertaining to communal tensions. The Hindu Mahasabha didn’t make much gains mainly because the fact that a Hindu was also in jail for corruption meant that slogans of “A Muslim cheated us!” didn’t hold much water (as if they did before Yadav’s scandals) as it was revealed that no, corruption is not something limited to the Muslim mind. It would no doubt be one of the biggest problems India would face in the future regardless of whatever changes happen. Some hope that with the biggest geopolitical issue India would face being the radical, nuclear-armed, and remaining Apartheid South Africa would give a few people sympathetic to Hindutva a pause as to whether or not a Hindu apartheid would be something desirable after witnessing Apartheid in South Africa, along with the increasingly deteriorating situation of the Indians within it, much as how America went through a similar reckoning vis a vis segregation after the Second World War. However, the explicitly Calvinist nature of the South African government along with the anti-Christian stances of the Hindutva movement meant that supporting Hindutva while being opposed to South Africa wasn’t that much of an unexpected position.

So too would India have to face with resentment from other countries with claims of “Cultural Imperialism”. This would be the most evident in the Arab World, with the far-left claiming that Bollywood represents a soulless, consumerist culture (though some nevertheless maintained a liking for India due to its support of anti-colonialist movements during the Cold War) whereas the far-right disliked India due to its Hinduism and fears that it would spread a more syncretic version of Islam to Arab youth. Some may think that because both sides on the fringe that it isn’t something to worry about. However, these arguments exist and could become more popular within the coming decades. Similar arguments are made in Oceania, Indonesia, East Africa, and other areas in which Indian culture is influential. The fact that India has an economic stranglehold on a lot of them to the point where a decision made by India to embargo them would lead to an economic collapse has made them more dependent on India thus leading to more resentment.

At this stage, while liberalism is seemingly dominant it is not guaranteed that it would remain so. And if an opposition to liberalism rearises, if a Second Cold War were to occur with India at the helm of the liberal capitalist bloc, it is clear that they will act differently than the United States did. Or perhaps liberalism remains dominant which means that India remains dominant, and is available to spread its culture across the globe. In any case, one cannot tell where the Indian Century would lead, but one thing is certain - it will be interesting.
So the US fell behind economically and became less politically influential as a result?
 
So the US fell behind economically and became less politically influential as a result?

Yeah pretty much, a part of this unpartitioned India is that without a Licence Raj and with it being the most populous country in the world it can gain more power than it did IOTL. The League, which probably would have to change its secessionist ideology to a mere autonomist one, consisted on Anglophiles and landlords who weren't Fabians like Nehru. In the event of a Congress split over the economy the League may well find themselves in an alliance with the liberal faction. Of course I do mention India's various problems, most prominent of that being religious tensions. I didn't want to write a "Beautiful and Attractive unpartitioned India" as if partition just came out of a vacuum and Muslims supported it for no reason. India becoming the foremost power in the world without partition is a possibility but so is India becoming a lot more authoritarian as the military would feel the need to step in due to religious strife (without Pakistan the bad reputation that military involvement in civilian affairs has wouldn't be present in India) along with India just becoming mega-Yugoslavia. However while I do like to think that I know a lot about how wars such as those in Yugoslavia and Syria work an Indian Civil War without partition would just be too complicated with so many factions that I just didn't know how to write it. Maybe someone can make a TL on it. I do remember seeing a "Superpower India without Licence Raj" TL on the other site and I wondered how it would look like without partition.
 
1948:Henry Wallace Democratic Albert Barkley. DEF: Thomas Dewey Republican Charles Halleck. Strom Thurmind Dixie a segregationist Steven Francis

1952: Dwight D. Eisenhower Republican Richard Nixon Def:
Adali Stevenson Democratic Richard Soarks
1956 Dwight D. Eisenhower Republican Richard M.Nixon Def: Def: Adali Stevenson Democratic Hubert Humphrey

1960: John Fritzgerald Kennedy Stuart Symthington Democratic
Def:
Def: Richard Nixon Republican Nelson Rockefeller
Def:
1964: Stuart Symthington Democratic
Def: Barry Goldwater Republican William Scranton
 
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