The 1967 elections

The 1967 elections came at a hard time.

• Economic crisis: the monsoons failed, drought spread, and there was a serious food shortage. Foreign exchange reserves fell. In 1966, the government devalued the rupee under US pressure, which made imports costlier.
• Prices rose fast. People protested with bandhs and hartals. Communist groups led armed Naxalite struggles of peasants. There were communal riots.

Non-Congressism: the socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia argued that the Congress won only because the opposition vote was divided. If all the opposition parties joined hands, they could beat it. He called this strategy 'non-Congressism'. It brought together parties with very different ideas, united only against the Congress.

The results shocked everyone; observers called them a 'political earthquake':

• The Congress kept its majority in the Lok Sabha, but with its lowest number of seats and votes since 1952.
• Many senior Congress leaders, including Kamaraj, lost their own seats.
• The Congress lost power in nine states, about half the country.

In Madras (now Tamil Nadu), the regional party DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) won a majority on its own. It had led the anti-Hindi agitation against making Hindi the only official language, and it rode that wave to power.

The big lesson of 1967: the Congress could be beaten. One-party dominance was ending.