Indira Gandhi and JP— Both to be Blamed?

The agitation led by JP was getting increasingly chaotic and certainly posed issues of law and order for the government. JP even exhorted the Army and the police not to obey ‘illegal’ orders. When the Allahabad Court judgement came, the cry for Indira Gandhi’s resignation/removal became strident.

Indira Gandhi’s appeal to the Supreme Court led to an interim decision by the vacation judge, Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, who, on June 24, allowed a conditional stay of the Allahabad verdict

– that Indira Gandhi could remain in her post, speak in Parliament but could not vote in it. This stay order reinforced the demand of JP and the Janata Morcha for the removal of Indira Gandhi as the prime minister.

JP seems to have forgotten the Gandhian principles on which he had been nurtured. He could have had the patience to wait for the general elections which were due in March 1976: if people were dissatisfied they would have thrown out Indira Gandhi and the Congress. But JP and his allies were not even willing to abide by the Supreme Court judgement and wait for the final decision.

In her broadcast to the nation on the evening of June 26, 1975, Indira Gandhi said: “In the name of democracy it has been sought to negate the very functioning of democracy, duly elected governments have not been allowed to function… agitations have surcharged the atmosphere, leading to violent incidents… certain persons have gone to the length of inciting our armed forces to mutiny and our police to rebel… How can any government worth the name stand by and allow the country’s stability to be imperilled?”

Indira Gandhi, for her part, seems to have forgotten or deliberately discarded her father’s democratic ideals. But then, perhaps, she was always a little autocratic; she was after all instrumental in getting an elected Communist government in Kerala dismissed. After the Allahabad Court judgement, she could have gracefully resigned, dissolved the Lok Sabha and called for early general elections or waited a few months on the side lines for the elections on their due date. But she was not interested in giving up power: she claimed later that resignation would have strengthened the forces that were, according to her thinking, threatening democracy.

As Joe Elder, a British sociologist pointed out, “JP erred

in launching a mass movement without a cadre of disciplined, non- violent volunteers… his movement’s credibility was weakened by the presence within it of extremists of the Left and Right. On the other hand, the Prime Minister clearly over-reacted in imposing the Emergency.”

P.N. Dhar said: “When the fateful moment arrived, JP did not let the law take its own course. Whether it was his mistrust of Indira Gandhi’s motives, or his own lack of faith in the democratic method, or his ambition to go down in history as a political messiah of the Indian people is beside the point. Similarly, Indira Gandhi showed more faith in the repression of political opponents and dissidents in her party than in her own ability to engage them constructively or fight them politically. Whether she opted for the Emergency to save herself from loss of power or as shock treatment to bring the country back to sanity is also beside the point. The fact remains that both JP and Indira Gandhi, between whom the politics of India was then polarized, failed democracy and betrayed their lack of faith in the rule of law.”

since I began to introduce certain progressive measures of benefit for the common man and woman in India.” Those were Indira Gandhi’s words to the nation in her broadcast over All India Radio.

President’s rule was soon imposed on Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, the two states where parties other than the Congress ruled; the entire country thus came under direct central rule or were under Congress governments. Emergency powers were used to replace with compliant men those Congress chief ministers who were strong and could offer opposition to Indira Gandhi. All pending legislative assembly elections were indefinitely postponed.

Most opposition leaders – Jayaprakash Narayan, Atal Behari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani, Morarji Desai, Charan Singh, Asoka Mehta – and some Congress dissidents such as Chandra Shekhar, as also many journalists (Ajit Bhattacharjea and Kuldip Nayar to name two), trade union leaders, student leaders and academicians were arrested under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA). Several organisations of extreme ideologies – the Anand Marg, the RSS, the Jamaat- i-Islami, the CPI(ML) – were banned.

As a result of the Emergency, the fundamental rights

were suspended and civil liberties were curtailed with the amendments to MISA and the Defence of India Act in July 1975. Parliament was practically ineffective as there was no effective opposition to debate issues. Several decrees, laws and even constitutional amendments were passed to reduce the power of the judiciary and to declare that Parliament’s right to amend the Constitution was unlimited. In this context, the 42nd Amendment is memorable.

Censorship was imposed on the press and some newspapers used to come out with blank spaces on the editorial pages to signify that their views had been blacked out for being critical of the situation. The Indian Express and The Statesman will be remembered for trying their best to put across criticism of the Emergency and the government.

The Emergency will be remembered for the ruthlessness of the State: people were detained without charges, the law enforcement authorities abused and even tortured those arrested, and so-called programmes for development were thrust on an unprepared people. The rise of Indira Gandhi’s younger son, Sanjay Gandhi, to wield a power he did not hold officially seemed ominous. He spearheaded the programmes of destruction of crowded housing settlements and forced sterilisation for controlling the population, causing misery to thousands of people. He was, in the opinion of many, instrumental in helping to set up what was in effect a police state.

Support for the Emergency The imposition of

Emergency was not condemned outright by everyone. In fact, considering that such a mass movement had been curbed and JP arrested, no spontaneous demonstration took place. The JP movement clearly did not have the support of people across the socio-economic spectrum.

The middle classes on the whole initially welcomed the Emergency: they were tired of the protest atmosphere and were all in favour of some discipline and the control on prices, for instance. Law and order certainly improved as did administration, and there was a sense of calm that was welcome. MISA was used to arrest smugglers, hoarders and those indulging in black market. The suppression of strikes also met with general approval.

The announcement of the Twenty Point Programme enthused the poorer and rural sections of population as well. The economy improved initially, though it was mainly because of the good monsoons. And, on the whole, people believed that the Emergency was a temporary step to bring the country back on the path of progress.

Even if the Congress party president Dev Kant Baruah’s sycophantic praise of Indira Gandhi in 1976 that “India is Indira, and Indira is India” was not shared by all, many eminent personalities supported her step, at least initially.

The Communist Party of India was all in support of the Emergency “to thwart right reactionary forces that is using all the rights and liberties of parliamentary democracy set up in order to destroy the freedom of the country”. The party regretted its position later. The Communist Party (Marxist), though, opposed it, and some of its members were jailed.

Acharya Vinobha Bhave appreciated that it was time for discipline to be imposed. Mother Teresa too supported Indira Gandhi’s step for bringing calm and peace in the country. Eminent journalist Khushwant Singh, surprisingly, supported the Emergency in the beginning as he believed that the JP movement would have led to anarchy in the country. Later on, he was to change his view of the Emergency, especially in light of the atrocities that were perpetrated. Growth of Popular Discontent By mid-1976, the popular mood had changed: there was discontent everywhere as the economic improvement could not be sustained, the criminals were back at their work, and the welfare programmes failed to move at a fast enough pace to please the poor. Also, it was the same corrupt and callous bureaucracy and sycophantic and exploitative politicians who were handling these programmes and the impact was therefore poor. The strict and rigid discipline imposed did not meet with the approval of government officials and teachers who also resented being compelled to fulfil targets of getting people sterilised. The police and bureaucracy had too much power which they abused. Above all, the atmosphere of fear and insecurity that had been created made people angry and resentful, but these feelings had no vent as protest was

forbidden even as there was no alternate way for getting grievances against corrupt and abusive officials redressed. Sanjay Gandhi’s rise to power without responsibility created great unease and anger, not only among intellectuals who feared the erosion of democratic values, but more so among the common people who had to bear the brunt of the demolition and sterilisation drives. Surprisingly, the points he put forward were not in themselves bad, for he advocated abolition of dowry, planting of trees and beautification of cities, encouraging literacy, and limiting family size. But the ruthless and insensitive way in which these ideas were implemented caused great misery and shocked people. Abuse of authority, apparently under the direction of Sanjay Gandhi, was rampant. With no effective press to report with at least some accuracy on the situation and with people disbelieving the official publicity news, rumours of atrocities and violent

protest put down forcefully spread and were believed.

The scale of the Emergency atrocities were more in the northern parts of the country than in the southern parts. This was to be reflected in the election results of 1977. In retrospect, the Emergency was one of the darkest periods of post-independent history of India; the two-year- long period was also perhaps a very significant episode in

the political evolution of the Indian National Congress.

A lasting effect of the Emergency was to be felt in the way the Congress party worked since then. At the 1976 AICC session in Guwahati, the stage was set for sycophancy as an important political need. In fact, sycophancy was institutionalised and prepared the way for dynastic politics. The Guwahati session marked the debut of Sanjay Gandhi in politics, and the Youth Congress cemented the rise to power by considering Sanjay to be the heir to the throne, so to say. On Sanjay’s death, Rajiv Gandhi was to step into the space created, even if reluctantly.