DEMOCRATS: Up Anchor

For the past eight years, no gathering of top Democratic politicos has been complete without the formidable India Edwards, the party's director of women's activities and insistent crusader for more women in good political jobs. At the national convention in Chicago last year, she berated the restive delegates for being "extremely rude" to speakers, and then she seized the chairman's gavel and banged the hall into silence when the buzz of conversation began to drown out her own speech. Some Democrats had a name for indomitable India: "The Tugboat Annie of politics."

Last week India resigned as the party's women's director. She wrote a "Dear Steve" letter of resignation to Democratic " National Chairman Stephen Mitchell, who expressed the proper regrets in a "Dear India" reply. The cordiality shown in their exchange was only letter-deep. Old Pro India had always considered Political Amateur Mitchell naive and impractical. When Mitchell set out to "integrate" the women's division into the general national committee organization, India was sure that he was trying to get rid of her. At first, she thought she could outlast him. But Amateur Mitchell turned out to have considerable staying powers of his own. After he consolidated his position and erased the last traces of the women's division at the Democrats' big rally in Chicago last month, she decided she would have to go.

Last week Mrs. Katie Loucheim, the bouncy wife of a Washington financial consultant, took over India's job, which is less important than it was before integration. This week India and her husband, Herbert Edwards, were heading for California, where they will rest, visit relatives and decide where to settle. India, 58. said she really quit for her husband's sake. Herbert is a quiet, patient man who, to please India, changed his politics (from Republican to Democratic), his religion (from Episcopal to Presbyterian), and his name (from Threlkeld-Edwards to Edwards; India thought the hyphen was "ridiculous"). He had quit his job at the State Department last April, and he wanted to leave Washington.

Just how much resting energetic India will do is in doubt. Still vice chairman of the National Committee, she has five speaking engagements on her way to the coast, and as Husband Herbert (her third) once said: "She is a rushing mountain torrent. She's so intense that when she has to rest, she wears herself out with the intensity of resting."