Indira Gandhi

by Nayantara Sahgal

  The early 1970s had seen dramatic changes in prime ministerial style and behaviour. Mrs Gandhi’s drive towards centralization, her concentration of powers in her own hands and her frequent use of the new arbitrary arrest law (MISA, June 1971) gave notice of a growing authoritarianism. In 1973 JP wrote to members of Parliament, outlining ways to protect citizens’ rights and democratic institutions. An organization, Citizens for Democracy, was set up by him for this purpose. In an open letter to youth, dated December 9, 1973, he urged a Youth for Democracy movement, ‘What form their action should take is for the youth themselves to decide. My only recommendation would be that in keeping with the spirit and substance of democracy, it must be scrupulously peaceful and nonpartisan.’

  In January 1974 a student revolt against food prices in engineering college hostels in Ahmedabad and Morvi, in Gujarat, erupted into a citizens’ movement against scarcity and Congress misrule in the state. A wave of anti-government demonstrations, comparable in size to pre-Independence civil disobedience, was brought under control by the Central Reserve Police and Border Security Force rather than the state’s own police. An unknown number of demonstrators had been arrested and between 85 and 100 killed by mid-March, when Mrs Gandhi was compelled to concede the outraged demand for the state government’s resignation. The Gujarat mood stayed anti-Congress. A year and a half later an election in the state ended in the Congress party’s defeat.

  The agitation in Gujarat had taken Mrs Gandhi’s government by surprise. The first sign of organized protest in Bihar found it prepared, equipped and armoured.

  ELEVEN

  The Bihar Movement—1974

  The year 1974 saw an outbreak of smallpox in Bihar, so neglected by an administration caught in the coils of political manoeuvre that it spread to epidemic proportions. And in that year Bihar demonstrated the damage an unconfident chief minister, dependent on Mrs Gandhi and with no political strength of his own in the state, could do in crippling a state government’s initiative and, in a crisis, rendering it irrelevant altogether. Matters came to a head on March 18, 1974, precipitated by two events.

  The Students’ Action Committee, representing several Patna colleges and youth groups, held a demonstration that day at the state assembly, demanding a reply to a memorandum on educational reform presented to the state education minister at the end of February. The police took brisk action. Students who crossed the barricades set up by the police were removed and thrashed. They retaliated by throwing stones, and the demonstration was dispersed by lathis and tear gas.

  On the same day a mob carrying kerosene and rags set the building housing two newspapers, Searchlight (English) and Pradeep (Hindi), on fire, destroying machines, files, records, newsprint, reels and rotary. The police arrived two and a half hours after the fire started, too late to prevent damage. The editor of Searchlight, S.K. Rau, believed the fire was the CPI’s revenge against his editorial policy, which was critical of the Congress–CPI alliance, and that the delayed arrival of the police was deliberate.

  Three days of looting and arson followed, with the police firing indiscriminately on terrified, running crowds. The Bihar government, under a chief minister and cabinet sworn in eight months earlier, seemed unable to bring the situation under control. Jayaprakash Narayan issued a statement from his home in Patna:

  In any democratic country after such a monumental failure of administration as Patna witnessed on Monday last, the government would have resigned… . Everyone talks vaguely of hooligans and goondas. Hooligans, of course, were abroad in large numbers. It also seems reasonably sure that those responsible for the major incidents of arson were outsiders, probably hailing from Bhagalpur, and had a certain measure of expertise. For one thing, some of the drivers of the hijacked buses seemed to be well-trained; for another, the incendiary used appeared to be more powerful than ordinary fire and spread very quickly… among those arrested are members of the Tarun Shanti Sena,* the secretary of the local centre of the Gandhi Peace Foundation, and the editor of Ayeena. Those who believe in and work for peace are being punished for the violence of others.

  On April 8, at the students’request, JP led a silent procession in protest against indiscriminate arrests and police excesses. It was greeted with flowers from silent spectators. He was seventyone, in indifferent health and bereaved by Prabhavati’s death the previous year. He explained his decision to enter the fray after twenty years devoted to Sarvodaya as the only possible one, in the context of recent developments. Two days earlier he had said:

  Speaking for myself, I cannot remain a silent spectator to misgovernment, corruption and the rest, whether in Patna, Delhi or elsewhere. It is not for this that I at least had fought for freedom… . I am not interested in this or that Ministry being replaced or the [Bihar] Assembly being dissolved. These are partisan aims and their achievement will make no difference. It will be like replacing Tweedledum with Tweedledee. But I have decided to fight corruption and misgovernment and black marketing, profiteering and hoarding, to fight for the overhaul of the educational system, and for a real people’s democracy.

  The students had twelve demands, eight for minor reforms at the university and four relating to corruption, unemployment, scarcity of essential supplies and the need for fundamental changes in the educational system. After March 18 these were headed by the demand for the Bihar government’s resignation. JP explained this unorthodox demand, ‘The argument that people have a constitutional remedy in that they can change the government at the next election has no validity now in view of the distortions and abuses of our democratic institutions and processes.’

  The student’s movement expanded to include the community. Committees were formed to organize processions, meetings and bandhs to demonstrate the strength of the popular demand for the state government’s resignation. Nonviolence was the condition for JP’s leadership. Violence, which could in any case be crushed, would, he said, give the Union government an excuse to launch a dictatorship.

  Everyone participating in and sympathetic with the movement must eschew violence in word and deed, whatever the provocation. It is a matter of gratification that by and large the movement has remained peaceful. That has been its strength. God knows there has been no little provocation and it is natural that young men should become excited and angry… .

  Non-violence gave the movement one of its slogans, ‘Police hamare bhai hain: unse nahin ladai hai.’ (‘The police are our brothers; we have no quarrel with them.’) The state police responded with enough sympathy for the Bihar government to summon armed aid from Delhi, as the Gujarat government had done. In shaky charge of a faction-ridden party that had no confidence in his leadership and wished him replaced, Chief Minister Abdul Ghafoor had, in any event, to rely on orders from Delhi in handling the crisis that now threatened to unseat him and overwhelm the state.

  On June 5, shots fired on a procession led by JP wounded twenty-one participants. He referred to this, as well as to an earlier incident, at a public meeting that evening:

  The government of Bihar distrusts its own police force. We have a fine army which has raised the country’s prestige and respect. Can there be a matter of greater shame than that these brave soldiers should be used to fire upon their own people? Is there no way to understand and deal with a people’s movement except bullets and lathis and jail? Are not the demands of the movement such as are readily acceptable?

  There was an incident a few days back. A bomb exploded in a room of a dak bungalow. For two days news of the incident appeared… after that it was hushed up. It is said that the men in the building were members of the Indira Brigade. Now, today, shots were fired on the procession from the flat of an [Congress] MLA, Shri Phulena Rai. The flat also houses the office of the Indira Brigade. The police raided the place after the shooting and some men were caught redhanded, while some others managed to escape. You have learned about all the arms that were recovered from that place. Our friends in the Congress want to give us lessons in democracy, le
ssons in peace. I ask the officers, who should be given lessons?

  His reference to the ‘army’ was to troops of the Border Security Force, created for the country’s defence, now brought into Bihar and supplemented as in Gujarat by the Union government’s Central Reserve Police (CRP). The arms found with the ‘Indira Brigade’ in ‘the flat of an [Congress] MLA’, indicated the currents at work in Bihar at this time.

  The Union government’s attitude towards the Bihar Movement, starting with its tough initial handling of a student demonstration, followed by a wave of arrests under the government’s arbitrary powers, showed a surprisingly weak link in Mrs Gandhi’s political and psychological armour. Her view of dissidence as unnecessary here became a refusal, or incapacity, to understand and deal in rational terms with rational demands. The movement became for her a personal insult, and disproportionate anger was visited on it when it became apparent that this was not a phenomenon that could be controlled by police action.

  JP’s speech on June 5 saw the Bihar stir as the inevitable outcome of conditions in the country and an opportunity to channel the enthusiasm of its young supporters into constructive work:

  Friends, this is revolution, a total revolution. This is not a movement merely for the dissolution of the Assembly. We have to go far, very far. In the words of Jawaharlal Nehru, the people still have to travel many long miles to achieve that freedom for which thousands of the country’s youth made sacrifices… . Hunger, soaring prices and corruption stalk everywhere… . Unemployment goes on increasing… . Land ceiling laws are passed but the number of landless people is increasing. Small farmers have lost their lands… . The government has taken the path of falsehood and violence. It has only one power, that of repression. Use the police. Use arms.1

  JP understood ‘total revolution’ as fundamental change affecting social attitudes and economic priorities. It included decentralization, with maximum power to village communities and in towns the strengthening of institutions of local self-government. The former development began soon after Independence and was followed in 1959 by Panchayat Raj for ‘democratic decentralization’. Welcoming Panchayat Raj, Nehru had said, ‘… authority and power must be given to the people in the villages… . Let them function and let them make a million mistakes. Do not be afraid about it. We are restricted in our thinking and in our movement because of our way of thinking. Let us give power to the Panchayats.’ Institutions of local government, chiefly municipalities, were already in existence at Independence with a long tradition and experience. Both developments had been neglected or eroded during the past decade. Panchayat Raj had gradually lost its independence and identity under pressure from state politicians. Municipalities had suffered from continual interference, the pattern of governmental erosion at state level being repeated at municipal and local levels.

  West Bengal exemplified the trend. Sivadas Banerjee, writing in the Times of India on February 14, 1975, noted there had been no panchayat elections in Bengal for more than a decade, and in as many as seventy-two out of ninety municipalities a poll had been due for four to twelve years. An example of direct interference by the Union government itself was its takeover in March 1975 of the Delhi Municipal Corporation, when it became clear that the ruling Congress would be defeated in the mayoral election due on March 24. The Delhi Municipal Corporation became the twentyfifth of thirty-two corporations functioning without elected representatives.

  JP’s effort to reverse this trend in Bihar began with the setting up of ‘janata sarkars’, informal ‘people’s governments’. These were to work in cooperation with government agencies where possible, and without their help, if necessary, in dealing with local problems and prejudices ranging over caste, custom, the fair distribution of commodities and the settlement of disputes outside the local court or police station. ‘Janata sarkars’ would also form committees at village, block† and district levels to make people aware of their importance in the voting process, set up candidates for final selection from each polling booth area and act as watchdogs over booths at election time. Any future government would have to reckon with these ‘permanent organs of people’s power’. Bihar, JP hoped, would become the laboratory of an experiment for which the mood of the people now seemed ripe. ‘Total revolution’ countenanced no violent change. The negative consequence of a violent revolution, he believed, was that

  power comes invariably to be usurped by a handful of the most ruthless among the erstwhile revolutionaries [inevitable] when power comes out of the barrel of a gun and the gun is not in the hands of the common people… . That is why a violent revolution has always brought forth a dictatorship of some kind or the other. And that is also why after a revolution a new privileged class of rulers and exploiters grows up in the course of time to which the people at large is once again subject.2

  He explained the need for ‘janata sarkars’ to the All India Youth Conference at Allahabad (UP) on June 29:

  In countries where democracy has developed an infrastructure there are many checks on those in power: the press, the academic institutions, the intellectuals. There is strong public opinion. We have no such structure and it will take time to develop. I wish to give the people’s movement a revolutionary direction so that the people develop their own power to become guardians of democracy. My interest is not in the capture of power, but in the control of power by the people.

  A conference to report on the progress of ‘janata sarkar’ was held in April 1975 at Khadigram (near Monghyr, Bihar). I recorded some impressions of the conference.

  Many delegates were young men, some clear and forceful, others later scolded by JP for not marshalling their facts better. There was some dolefulness, some enthusiasm, but mainly unvarnished reporting. It ranged over issues involving village justice, land, sugar, caste and custom. Considerable success was reported in setting up courts for the settlement of local disputes… . A delegate from Bhagalpur said that a temple that raised funds through gambling sessions and shared the proceeds with the police had been stopped from doing so. In areas where it had become customary to marry several wives, abandoning the previous one when a new alliance was contracted, the ‘janata sarkar’ opposed this practice but got no cooperation. It then decided to put an immediate stop to it. Its members lay in wait for the drums of the marriage party. As soon as the culprit bridegroom arrived, his attendants were ordered to scatter, he was seized, put on a donkey and sent home. This, said the speaker with satisfaction, soon put an end to 75% of these ‘double and treble marriages.’

  There were complaints that city youths considered themselves special, and few would devote time to active work. Political parties tended to be disruptive influences, diverting attention to their own camps and activities and electioneering. Talk of elections was generally condemned as an obstacle to the steady groundwork of ‘janata sarkar.’ Aware that decent representatives must serve on their committees, one delegate disconsolately remarked that there were no decent fellows in the village so they had chosen ‘fairly decent’ ones.

  All of this had proceeded without confrontation with authority. But confrontation is planned by Jagannathan, veteran Sarvodaya worker, under whom the ‘janata sarkar’ in the Bodhgaya region will launch a campaign for land backed by 5,000 women led by his wife. According to the books, a Hindu math there owns 7,000 acres. The largest permitted family holding is 40 acres, and the math‡ can only own twice as much. It has formed 18 trusts to get around the law and has been notified by the District Magistrate that he will recognize only one of these. The matter is now in government’s hands for a decision. It is further complicated by the fact that some lands donated by the math earlier, as Bhoodan, have since been sold and are now tied up in litigation—an example of the untidy snarl of land problems in Bihar, where the law remains on the statute books and is not put into effect.3

  This was, by itself, no revolutionary breakthrough, nor any portent of dangerous uprising as understood by governments. But ‘janata sarkar’ in the hands of e
xperienced Sarvodaya workers who knew their territory and its problems might make more than a dent in specific areas and might even become a challenge to long-established local institutions or government agencies. Its danger to the status quo was its dedication to its aims and a determination backed, in many instances, by a thorough knowledge of the problem it was attacking. Beyond this, it possessed neither the arms nor the belief in violence to make it dangerous. The worst a hot-headed encounter with opponents could come to might be a fist fight or the use of crude weapons, no great matter for local authority to control. Yet ‘janata sarkar’ produced a shiver down the official spine. A government claiming an exclusive relationship with the masses and a record of service and sacrifice, with both these under fire could not but be put out by the growth of ‘people’s’ agencies outside it, at times in confrontation with it. The arguments used to discredit the development called it ‘foreign-financed’ and subversive. It was stamped out with a singular ferocity under the Emergency after June 1975.

  In early November 1974 Mrs Gandhi told the Congress Parliamentary Party the Bihar Movement was aimed at her personally, to drive her out of office. She labelled it reactionary and accused it of support by the Anand Marg, an occult religious group with political overtones. JP answered these charges a week later, after a procession led by him on November 4 was severely mauled by the police and he himself was thrown to the ground under a volley of lathi blows: