ABSTRACT
Not only did Dr. Farooq Abdullah refuse to enter into an electoral alliance, he further upset Indira Gandhi by trying to unify India’s opposition parties on the sensitive issue of center-state relations.36 Upset by his prominence in the all-India anti-Congress (I) opposition grouping, Indira Gandhi began to actively pursue Farooq’s removal from Kashmir’s chief ministership. The Indian Constitution accords certain rights to the Center to dismiss a state government on the governor’s advice. When the then governor, B. K. Nehru, refused to follow Mrs. Gandhi’s bidding, she replaced him with Jagmohan Malhotra (in his first tour as governor of Jammu and Kashmir). Jagmohan engineered Farooq’s dismissal after the Congress (I) had succeeded in inducing the defection of a bloc of Farooq loyalists in the state assembly.37 Farooq was branded proPakistani and anti-Indian. Earlier that year Farooq may have made matters worse by visiting the Sikh separatist Bhindranwale in Amritsar. The final straw, however, was a cricket match in Srinagar (between India and the West Indies) on October 13, 1984, where a section of the audience shouted pro-Pakistani slogans and waved Pakistani flags.
