December 1984 Lok Sabha election

Who: Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and the Congress (I), the opposition parties, and the voters of India outside Punjab and Assam. Bhai Ajmer Singh gives the election a chapter of its own in 1984: Unchitviya Kehar.

What: Rajiv Gandhi, who became Prime Minister on 31 October 1984, called the Lok Sabha election a month before it was due, with the November killings of Sikhs weeks old. Polling was held on 24, 27 and 28 December (Wikipedia). Punjab and Assam did not vote; Punjab's own election came in September 1985 (UPI). Ensaaf reports that his first rally, on Indira Gandhi's birthday in November, made no mention of the killings of Sikhs, and that his party then ran a propaganda campaign costing 13 crore rupees across radio, television, posters and the press. Khushwant Singh, then a Rajya Sabha member, described full-page advertisements in 15 languages that showed barbed wire and asked, "Will the country's border finally be moved to your doorstep?", and hoardings of two Sikhs in uniform shooting at Indira Gandhi.

Bhai Ajmer Singh argues that the date was chosen to turn anti-Sikh feeling into votes, and that the campaign rested on presenting the Sikhs and their demands as a danger to the country. He writes that Arun Shourie later admitted that, to Hindu voters, "danger to the nation" meant "danger to Hindus" (pp. 362 to 364).

Ensaaf says Congress (I) won 401 of 508 seats on 27 December; the Tribune gives its final record as 404, falling to 197 in 1989. In East Delhi, where Ensaaf says the most Sikhs were killed, HKL Bhagat won with 386,150 votes against 73,970 for the runner-up (The Hindu, quoted by Ensaaf).

Where: Across India except Punjab and Assam; East Delhi is among the seats reported.

Why it mattered: Ensaaf writes that Congress (I) "used the elections to solidify Hindu support gained from the Sikh massacres" and that its campaign made "direct references to the Sikhs as Indira Gandhi's assassins and as a threat to the nation". Ajmer Singh reads the result as an endorsement of the violence. The party whose local leaders survivors in the relief camps blamed (Ensaaf) was returned with a record majority.