AHC: Next Indian TL

Pick the POD

  • Black Prince

    Votes: 7 41.2%
  • The Leader is Right, The Future is Bright

    Votes: 12 70.6%

  • Total voters
    17
This will be centered on a Sanjay Gandhi premiership either in 1976 or 1984, so take your pick. I promise both will be interesting in the Chinese sense and a happy ending is rather unlikely, though enleadenment is not guaranteed either.

Black Prince: Sanjay exercises better piloting judgment on 06/23/80. When his mother is assassinated on schedule, he becomes PM. One important thing to keep in mind is his political idol: Ferdinand Marcos. That alone gives you a good idea of where things will go.

The Leader's Right, the Future's Bright: Indira Gandhi holds the federal election scheduled for February 1976 on schedule rather than delaying it. At that point the Emergency was still widely accepted and she'd have retained her 2-1 majority from 1971. Unfortunately socialist radicals have other plans, and in 1977 Sanjay becomes PM while the Emergency is still in place. Free-marketeers will be just as thrilled as they were under Rajiv IOTL, but civil libertarians will not, if they're still alive that is. As a side note, the title is an actual propaganda slogan from the Emergency.

*Important note: Sanjay and Rajiv had a very chilly, if civil relationship IOTL. Rajiv blamed Sanjay for the excesses of the Emergency (which he opposed most of) and his mother's defeat in '77 and subsequent show trials of both Sanjay and Indira. In that he was right: it was Sanjay, as always the decisive voice, who convinced his mother to delay the election and didn't want it held in 1977 either, or probably anytime for that matter.


January 1980, when Indira was swept back to power for a third term and Sanjay was elected the freshman MP for Amethi, which Rajiv would hold throughout his career after his election in a July 1981 by-election.
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Family dinner at the PM's residence, 06/11/80. From L-R: Rajiv, Indira, Sonia, Sanjay.
 
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TLRTFB is much more dystopic, because in 1980 India is democratic. The list of Sanjay's enemies is long and will keep RAW and Army SpecOps very busy in threat prevention. There are many ethnic conflicts to resolve, but this is also good for the US and Commonwealth, neither of whom will mind an Indian realignment to the West and free markets as occurred from Rajiv onwards. A bush-league Marcos without a fraction of the old man's intellect or LBJ-style political skills but the same inclinations towards enlightening rivals by enleadening them.
 
TLRTFB is much more dystopic, because in 1980 India is democratic. The list of Sanjay's enemies is long and will keep RAW and Army SpecOps very busy in threat prevention. There are many ethnic conflicts to resolve, but this is also good for the US and Commonwealth, neither of whom will mind an Indian realignment to the West and free markets as occurred from Rajiv onwards. A bush-league Marcos without a fraction of the old man's intellect or LBJ-style political skills but the same inclinations towards enlightening rivals by enleadening them.

Ah. I heard "Marcos" and assumed Sanjay would try to become a dictator. Consider my vote changed to Black Prince.
 
In 1976 he already had dictatorial powers: defacto DPM, defacto mayor of Delhi, and all of social policy as exemplified by the Five-Point Programme. Which is why I lean towards the former: more interesting. Plus there is so much family drama here, which is why that will be a major component alongside politics. The brothers are OK with each other, not so much their wives.

In sum, stay tuned. ;)
 
Rajiv Gandhi all the day, Rajiv is the most responsible of India's economic opening although he didn't saw it. His economic policies is the basis for the economic opening. Sanjay sounds like Mao Zedong minus famines.
 
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