The Reawakening of India

She had planned a sort of plebiscite, a “yes” or “no” vote on her rule, and was positive of the outcome. Whoever heard of a dictator losing a plebiscite election, since Louis Bonaparte invented the technique?

Everything remained under Mrs. Gandhi’s control during the campaign—police, army, state apparatus, election machinery. She relaxed her almost two-year-old Emergency, but let her closest advisers know that once the election was won she would crack down hard; she would show the Opposition what Emergency rule really meant! “I am not a dictator,” she proclaimed. Proof? The elections. But what empowered her to turn elections on or off, postpone them, and then suddenly call them? She made...