Election campaign in India

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32542, 27 February 1971, Page 6

Election campaign in India

(N.Z. Pres. Aaan.—Copyright?

JAIPUB, Feb. 26.

A white jeep decked with marigolds bounces into a browned Indian village and the aristocratic figure of a woman politician steps out into the dust and the crowd. Old women wearing silver bracelets and brilliant yellow cotton shawls bow reverently to touch her feet. Swarms of children express their excitement more noisily. Barefoot farmers in pink turbans promise their votes even before she begins a quietly dignified campaign pitch. Speaking in simple Hindustani, she explains the troubles of these people as the fault of the Prime Minister (Mrs Gandhi). This elegant, respected woman, is Gayatri Devi, Maharani of the late Maharaja of Jaipur, and now the Rajmata ("the queen mother”). She is campaigning to retain her seat in Parliament in the crucial elections set for the first week of March.

As a leader of the Conservative Swatantra Party, Gayatri Devi is one of the strongest candidates among the forces trying to deprive Mrs Gandhi’s Congress Party of the majority it needs to rule effectively. The Rajmata, at 51, is two years younger than Mrs Gandhi. Both have entered political maturity with grace, vigour and popularity. BEAUTY Long before Mrs Gandhi was introduced to the world as India’s Prime Minister, Gayatri Devi was famous outside the country as one of the world's most beautiful women—a princess of Cooch Bihar who had killed 25 tigers before her twenty-fifth birthday, and had married one of India’s ablest and wealthiest maharajas. She entered politics in 1962 when she was elected to Parliament She easily won reelection in 1967 with an overwhelming majority. Mrs Gandhi’s sudden call, in December, for new elections came in the middle of the Rajmata's year of official mourning, for her husband died last June in England, stricken by a heart attack while playing polo. At the end of January, the Rajmata said: “I was still hoping that someone else

would contest from this district." But the Swatantra Party insisted on her as its only strong candidate and as someone who could foot the campaign bill. Her last hesitations ended with a meeting of local priests, who gave her the theological go-ahead. A number of former princes and their wives have entered the lists for Parliament this time, angered by Mrs Gandhi’s attempts in the last year to remove their constitutional privileges and privy purses.

The Rajmata’s campaign staff reminds the people of Jaipur district that there were no taxes, little theft and lower prices in the years before Indian independence, when her husband reigned benevolently. All over the district are symobls of the past the massive pink walls of the Royal city and the palaces and hilltop forts some of which the Rajmata’s family still own and use.

Her opponents say she is out of touch with both the people and the present. She is noted for her long absences from her constituency and sessions of Parliament as, for example, when she remained in England for much of last year.

TOUGH POLITICIAN To accompany Gayatri Devi on the election trail however, is to watch a tough and practiced politician. There is little evidence of the legendary pampered princess, except for the dignity, the beauty, and imperiousness with which she deals with aides-de-camp. “Find out the name of the man who’s talking all the time and never stops,” she will order them.

Dressed in an elegant blue chiffon sari and a modest gold necklace, she spends much of her time in a jeep going from village to primitive village along rough cart tracks.

At the end of such a day she was exhausted and running a fever. “I hate it,” she admitted.

Still, the Rampata would not schedule an interview at home.

“I hate being kept in the house,” she explained, “even for half an hour, when I should be out in the villages.” Mrs Gandhi is hungry for power, she tells the peasantry, and warns that a vote for the Prime Minister’s socialist-' oriented Congress Party willj be “your last salute to De-i mocracy in the country.” I