Choice before the electorate: Karma Yogi or Vansh Bhogi?

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D'Ocracy-D.E.M., beloved husband of T. Ruth, loving father of L.I. Bertie, brother of Faith, Hope, Justice, expired on 26th June Does this make any sense to you? Does it have any bearing on the electoral battle that is about to comm.ence in India? Well, it was an innocuous if strange-sounding announcement in the 'Obituaries' section of the Bombay edition of The Times of India, in its edition on 27 June 1975. Of course, those who read it on that day and could decode its meaning knew that it was about the demise of Democracy, consequent upon the imposition of the Emergency by the then Congress government at the Centre. Censorship had already been clamped. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had already sent stalwarts in the Opposition, including Jayaprakash Nararayan, Morarji Desai, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani and Chandrashekhar, into jail where many of them would spend the next....