Maharani Gayatri Devi was the third wife of Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II of Jaipur. Following India’s independence, she became a successful politician of the Swatantra Party. This excerpt, from her memoir A Princess Remembers, describes the 1962 Lok Sabha election in which she won 192,909 out of 246,516 votes cast, one of the biggest electoral landslides the world has seen.
In 1962 the Swatantra Party was contesting elections for the first time. There was a meeting of some of its leaders and prominent party members in Jaipur, and there it was decided that besides contesting the Jaipur parliamentary seat myself, I should be responsible for securing the election of candidates for the whole area that had been the old state of Jaipur. This was a serious responsibility for someone without political experience. Jaipur state covered about 16,000 square miles. It had five parliamentary seats, and 40 seats in the State Legislative Assembly of Rajasthan.
Finding suitable candidates immediately presented a great problem. The Swatantra was a new party, and besides, many of the eminent citizens we approached refused to stand for an opposition party for fear of government pressure and reprisals. Businessmen were worried that their import permits might be cancelled or supplies of essential…
