Mr. Morarji Desai once complained of having been dismissed by the then Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi as a peon. When he took the oath as India's oldest prime minister on March 24, 1977, it marked the end of monopoly rule of the Indian Congress party extending over a period of thirty years. Earlier, the people of India, by their active participation in a silent revolution of the ballot box, had thrown away the authoritarian and dictatorial rule of Mrs. Gandhi, replacing her party by the Janata party, an organization that brought together men with different ideological affiliations.