Emergency: The events that led to the ‘dark days’ of 1975-77
It all began with a youth and students’ movement in Gujarat in January 1974. The agitation was aimed at the removal of CM Chimanbhai Patel for heading what the protesters called a ‘corrupt and incompetent’ government. The movement was blessed by Morarji D
June 26 marks the anniversary of the Emergency declared by the Indira Gandhi government 42 years ago, in 1975. Many among the intelligentsia and the political class are not willing to forgive or forget the “dark days of the Emergency” even 42 years later. However, the present generation needs to know the circumstances that led to the Emergency being declared by a charismatic Prime Minister who only four years earlier had a won massive mandate in the Lok Sabha in March 1971, followed by an equally brilliant performance in the state Assembly elections a year later.
It all began with a youth and students’ movement in Gujarat in January 1974. Calling itself the Nav Nirman movement, the agitation was aimed at the removal of chief minister Chimanbhai Patel for heading what the protesters called a “corrupt and incompetent” government. The movement was blessed by Morarji Desai, who had lost the race for Prime Minister to Indira Gandhi twice in 1966 and 1967. Still nursing his ambitions, the veteran leader saw the students’ agitation as a golden opportunity and plunged himself at the head of the movement. Simultaneously, an agitation for the removal of Bihar CM Abdul Ghaffoor began in Bihar. This was led by Jayaprakash Narayan, a Sarvodaya leader and onetime close associate of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in the freedom struggle, who kept himself aloof from politics after the mid1950s. He had politely turned down Nehru’s invitations to join his Cabinet. Many saw him as his rightful successor due to his moral stature. JP, as he was popularly known, launched a nationwide agitation, beginning with Bihar, for what he called “Sampuran Kranti”, or total revolution.
JP asked students to boycott classes, leave their schools and colleges for one year and work to mobilise the people for his “total revolution”. He told Bihar’s students: “You will have to make sacrifices, undergo sufferings face lathis and bullets and fill up jails.” Adding fuel to the fire was George Fernandes, a labour leader who in 1974 led railway employees in a nationwide strike in a bid to paralyse the country’s transport system and its economy. JP asked all Opposition parties to join his movement, even though some like the Jan Sangh and the Communists were ideologically poles apart. His first and foremost task was to “throw out the government of Mrs. Gandhi”, and then, after defeating the Congress, establish a “partyless democracy”. This was a vague concept that was never fully defined and drew criticism from the media.
On January 2, 1975, railway minister L.N. Mishra was blown up in his home state, Bihar, by a bomb planted at a platform in Samistipur where he was attending a function. Trade unionists loyal to George Fernandes were suspected to be involved. On Februrary 15, JP addressed government employees in New Delh and exhorted the Army and the police not to obey “illegal” orders. In Gujarat, on March 11, Morarji Desai began a “fast unto death” seeking dismissal of the state government and fresh elections. This pressure tactic by the 79-year-old Gandhian leader worked and Mrs Gandhi agreed to dissolve the Assembly and hold fresh elections in June. The elections were held and the Congress was defeated by the five-party coalition comprising followers of JP and Morarji Desai.
But worse was to come. The lightning bolt struck the same day — June 12, 1975. News was received on the PMO’s ticker machine that a Allahabad high court judge had ruled that Indira Gandhi was guilty of electoral malpractices during the 1971 general election. The verdict invalidated Mrs Gandhi’s election as an MP and debarred her from holding elective office for six years. The charges under which Indira Gandhi was held guilty were fairly trivial. Government resources had been used to build the rostrums at her election rallies and her private secretary had become her election agent before his resignation was accepted by the government. A foreign correspondent commented “it is as though a head of government should go to the block for a parking ticket”. But the mood of the nation was different. The cry from one end of North India to another was “Indira must go”. Jayaprakash Narain declared that her remaining
The present generation needs to know the circumstances that led to the Emergency being declared by a charismatic PM who only four years earlier had a won massive mandate in Lok Sabha in March 1971, followed by an equally brilliant performance in the state Assembly elections a year later
in office would be “incompatible with the survival of democracy in India”.
Justice Jagmohanlal Sinha’s order was subject to appeal in the Supreme Court. On the day of the ruling, one of the country’s most renowned constitutional lawyers, Nani Palkhivala, happened to be in New Delhi. He agreed to argue Mrs Gandhi’s appeal in the Supreme Court and advised her that there was no political or legal reason for her to step down pending the hearing of her appeal. The Supreme Court’s vacation judge, Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, gave his ruling on June 24. He allowed a conditional stay of the Allahabad verdict. But the stay order only reinforced the demand of JP and the Janata Morcha for removal of the Prime Minister. Morarji Desai said on June 25: “We intend to overthrow her, force her to resign… The lady won’t survive our movement… Thousands of us will surround her house to prevent her from going out.” Both JP and Morarji Desai had conveniently set aside the Gandhian principles they had followed in their public life till they got obsessed over the removal of an elected Prime Minister, disregarding even the Supreme Court’s explicit stay order. They didn’t even have the patience to wait for a few months when general elections were due in March 1976.
It was these circumstances that led Mrs Gandhi to impose the Emergency on June 26, 1975. Siddhartha Shankar Ray, then chief minister of West Bengal and an eminent lawyer, accompanied Mrs Gandhi when she went to meet President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed. The President signed the proclamation, which was approved by the Union Cabinet early in the morning on June 26. Eminent journalist Inder Malhotra had written: “She should have carried with her a resolution of her Cabinet to this effect. But Ray explained to the President that under the rules of government business, it was not necessary for the Cabinet to endorse the decision in advance”. In her broadcast to the nation on June 26 evening Mrs 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 imperiled?”
Joe Elder, a British sociologist, visited India a month after the Emergency was declared. In his report to the Quakers, a group of pacifists, he wrote: “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 overreacted in imposing the Emergency.” In other words, Elder held that the Emergency was a script jointly written by JP and Indira Gandhi.