The Biggest Election

Dodging man-eating tigers and lumbering elephants, runaway ponga carts and revved-up Rolls-Royces, 125 million Indians go to the polls this week in the world's biggest free election. The voters range from maharajahs to harijans (untouchables), speak 845 different languages and dialects, come from seven different racial strains, including fair-skinned Punjabis in the north and ebony-colored Tamils in the south. Some 75% of them are illiterate; they will mark their ballots with government-issue rubber stamps. Democracy is still a new experience for them, and many think that the ballot box is a place of worship to be daubed with vermilion paste and flower petals.

"Elections are not a good thing, because they bring out the worst in us," says India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and in the final days of the campaign, there was plenty of evidence to support him. In Uttar Pradesh, four people were shot dead in riots; in Kashmir, candidates opposed to the government claimed they were kidnaped by police. In Jaipur, where the Maharani of Jaipur was running against the Congress Party machine under her maiden name. Gayatri Devi, local politicos found another Gayatri Devi to run against her as an independent in order to split her vote. At a New Delhi rally, an onlooker hurled a shoe at a poet reciting verses onstage in praise of a Congress nominee; the shoe missed, but in the resultant melee part of the platform collapsed.

Tipping the Scales. Candidates cannonaded each other with a barrage of epithets. So corrupt and inefficient is Congress, raged Chakravarti Rajagopalachari. leader of the free-enterprise Swatantra Party, that "it is time for us to open our umbrellas to protect ourselves against the heavy drizzle of Congress maladministration." The party, "C.R." continued, is only Nehru's "donkey ... a band of bakasuras [mythological Hindu demons], a swarm of locusts, a band of tyrants." Retorted Nehru: "He is cursing for the sake of cursing." Lashing out against the Swatantra's threat to his doctrinaire brand of socialism, Nehru said: "Rajaji calls me a half Communist. If it helps India, I will not be a half Communist, but a full Communist."

Key to Nehru's campaign was the vital constituency of North Bombay, where independent Coalition Candidate J.B. Kripalani hoped to unseat Nehru's left-lining Defense Minister Krishna Menon (TIME cover, Feb. 2). Posters hitting at Congress Candidate Menon's soft stand on Red China's border incursions proclaimed: "Patriots vote Kripalani; Communists vote Menon." Through North Bombay's streets snaked a huge Kripalani procession headed by a phalanx of gaily garbed dancers. The demonstrators displayed a giant set of scales in which a full-sized effigy of Kripalani outweighed an image of Menon.

Crisscrossing the city, Menon sound trucks blared out the theme that Menon was a modern Marco Polo, spanning oceans and continents to defend India's interests all over the globe. But Menon himself scarcely concealed his contempt for constituents. At one gathering in a slum area, he stretched out on the platform behind the party functionary who was eulogizing his accomplishments and fell fast asleep. Awakened by applause, he scrambled to his feet and spoke a few words in English, which sailed right over his Hindi-speaking audience.

Threatened Purge. So bold were Menon's backstage Communist supporters that they ran his picture on the same campaign posters as avowed Communist candidates. Many conservative Congress voters were appalled by this Red support, and some campaign contributors defected to Kripalani. Loudest denunciation of Menon came from Jayaprakash Narayan, 59. a Socialist who quit party politics eight years ago. now travels about the country preaching a blend of mysticism and partyless democracy. Said Narayan: "If Menon wins, his victory would be a victory for the Communist Party. On the other hand, Kripalani's victory, even though he is fighting a Congress candidate, would be a victory for the values and ideals for which the Congress stood in the best days under Gandhi."

Certain that the Congress will maintain its majority in the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament), Nehru has threatened to purge the party after the election of all conservative Congressmen who have either tacitly or openly opposed his programs. Now 72 and perhaps fighting his last election battle (next national election: 1967), Nehru has indicated that he will push India even farther left in order to complete his socializing aims. Only a strong showing by the Swatantra can act as a brake to this course. But through the week, all the parties and candidates must wait for the returns to straggle in from remote constituencies all over the subcontinent; final results will not be tabulated until the early days of March.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.