ABSTRACT
Nineteen seventy-seven is the year in which, quite possibly, the paths of India and Pakistan were closest to each other, but after which two very different directions were chosen. It is not difficult to imagine a very different outcome, one in which Pakistan would have moved towards a genuine democracy, while India relapsed into a more ideologically driven and intensely harsh version of Mrs Gandhi’s Emergency regime, with her son Sanjay in a starring role. The powers of the bureaucracy could easily have been enhanced, on the excuse of the need to accelerate development, and of the military to bring India to the status of a Great Power on the world stage. Soon, a new generation of politicians with only weak legitimacy – the Congress was already decaying at its roots, with loyalty to the leader in Delhi paramount, and with perhaps less taste for free and fair elections – would quickly lose power to the bureaucrats, or even the military.
