Indira Gandhi

by Nayantara Sahgal

  The dictatorship in Bangladesh cast a shadow over India. On February 15, addressing a meeting of government employees in New Delhi at the Boat Club, JP reminded them they were permanent public servants, unlike the President, the prime minister, MPs and MLAs, who were temporary, and that they should not obey illegal, immoral or partisan orders: ‘Your loyalty is to the country, to the people and to the Constitution, not to the Government, the Prime Minister or the Home Minister. Use your rights and do your duty without any fear.’ It was over half a century since Mahatma Gandhi had launched his first civil disobedience campaign in India. This appeal seemed to arise out of an even grimmer and more urgent need. In view of the adverse publicity given to this statement during the Emergency, and the excuse made of it to launch the Emergency, I quote my own comments on it in March 1975:

  Satyagraha is a moral principle, only employable when the cause is just. Its essence is that truth, be it represented by the individual or the mass, can shake an empire… . In a purely religious context the message of Christ on the cross is somewhat the same, for how could the suffering and death of one man save millions unless the truth he stood for had the power to affect and influence beyond him?

  … In British times we broke laws we considered unjust, made by a government to which we did not give our allegiance. Today we have a Constitution and laws of our own making and a government elected through them, but one which almost daily violates them either in fact or in spirit. We … do not wish to depart from either the Constitution or the laws, but to see that they are observed by those in authority. The aim of satyagraha today is to demand their proper observance. We are in the very curious position where the government of the country needs this reminder.

  … the politician or his mouthpiece must be disobeyed when he plays fast and loose with the laws or with decent practices and conventions. The civil servant who is told to arrest 25 people who are squatting in a peaceful demonstration knows very well that there is no ground for arresting them, that the demonstrators are breaking no law, and that the executive order is arbitrary and unjust. In such a case the civil servant is not bound to carry it out. There are too many such cases nowadays where the civil servant, particularly the young and sensitive, fresh from their training or their first experience of field work, and earnest about their responsibilities, are thrust into terrible situations of being driven to act against the law and against their own conscience. The ritual enactment of MISA must put this kind of strain on many an official conscience, as it must also on the police, who must at times be confused and bewildered at what they are asked to do. The ferocious use of force, or on the other hand the total absence of the police when they are urgently needed, are signs of confused, and at times unscrupulous executive orders.3

  JP’s appeal was bound to stir interest and controversy, especially when it was repeated on other occasions, and addressed to the army and police as well. He was interviewed4 in Delhi in May:

  Question: At Bhubaneshwar your appeal to the army and police have been described by the Home Minister as ‘treasonable,’ because it may cause disaffection in the armed forces and police. Can you explain the context in which your remarks were made? And what is the role you envisage the armed forces and police to play?

  Answer: What I said at Bhubaneshwar about the army and the police, I have said earlier also at some places. Let me take up the army first. On March 3 I had said at the mass rally at the Boat Club, New Delhi, in the context of the possibility of some sort of authoritarianism scuttling our democracy, that the loyalty of the army was to the country, its flag and its Constitution. The Indian people have given themselves a democratic constitution of the parliamentary type. The President of India in his capacity as Supreme Commander of the armed forces is pledged to protect and uphold the Constitution of the country from authoritarian threats. If any party, government or party leader intends to use the army as a means to further their party and power interests, it is the clear duty, to my mind, of the army not to be so used… . If the rulers do venture to use the army to suppress a peaceful revolution, then the army should not allow itself to be so used. I have also decried sometimes the use of armed personnel to deal with civil disturbances, for which the civil armed forces, like the armed police and the paramilitary forces, should be enough. If all this amounts to committing treason, I shall not mind being prosecuted for this offence.

  As for the police, the circumstances in which I have made references to them are these: Sometimes in the course of the [Bihar] Movement, the police commits excesses, no doubt under orders of superior officers. For instance, on November 4 last, when I, with a large number of students and citizens in Patna deliberately broke prohibitory orders, the Central Reserve Police personnel present were asked to lathi-charge. The demonstration was entirely peaceful. Not even a pebble was thrown by any demonstrator, and not a single policeman or magistrate was injured, and yet there was a lathi-charge. It would have been perfectly legal if we had all been arrested. But when there was no violence of any sort, in fact even when I was hit and fell to the ground, young men kept shouting the slogan ‘Police hamare bhai hain, unse nahin ladai hai’ [‘The police are our brothers; we have no quarrel with them’], a lathi-charge was wholly unjustified.

  There have been hundreds of cases where policemen have been ordered by their superiors to commit illegal acts. Take the Calcutta incident of April 2. While thousands of hooligans milled around my car, hit it with sticks, reducing its sunshade to smithereens, and some of them got up on the hood and others on the roof, and jumped and danced on it, badly damaging the car, the police looked on disinterestedly. I saw Samar Guha MP being struck on the face with a stick just two or three yards from my car. Yet the police did nothing. Is it wrong in such cases to tell the police what their duty is? … I consider it my duty to explain to the police that … they must not obey orders that are illegal or go against their conscience.

  Contrasting sharply with Mrs Gandhi’s overreaction to JP’s open moral appeal was her government’s silence on a pamphlet published by the CPI in 1974, setting forth the thesis that armies, properly infiltrated, can be used to overthrow governments, a strategy successfully employed by the Soviet Union later in Afghanistan. The following extracts from the pamphlet, Political Role of the Army in Developing Countries,5 convey the argument:

  Communists have always attached tremendous significance to work in the army. During the preparations for socialist revolution in Russia, Lenin repeatedly emphasized the importance of propaganda and agitation among soldiers and officers, of establishing connections in the military milieu with the aim of training conscious revolutionaries among members of the armed services.6

  The role of the Army in safeguarding ‘internal security’ has recently grown appreciably. Since ‘internal security’ is not a purely military but also a political category, it has boosted the role of the army as a political, or to be more accurate, as an innerpolitical factor. This circumstance, which the officers and generals of the armies in Asia and Africa realise very clearly, could not but make them conscious of their new role in society, of their political advantages, and possibilities.7

  The position of conspirators is always difficult. On the one hand the fewer people are initiated, the safer the conspiracy, but on the other hand the more of the military have promised their support in advance, the easier it is to carry out the coup and the greater are the chances of success. The example of a number of coups in Syria, Iraq, Ghana and other countries confirms that for the success of a military coup it is insufficient for some individual military unit to take action … it is essential that they have the support of the commanders of the biggest garrisons, of those commanding over the majority of the armed forces … it is essential for the idea of overthrowing the government to be ripe in the minds of the majority of the officers in key positions.8

  Mrs Gandhi’s refusal to draw a realistic conclusion from the ‘janata’ poll victories and her relegating the national tide to ‘the forces of reaction’
and ‘certain outside forces’ amazed her younger colleagues. Leading radicals, Chandrasekhar, Mohan Dharia and Krishna Kant, rejected this daydream utterly with the stern reminder that the Bihar Movement was a result of Congress failure to fulfil its promises. They made repeated forceful pleas for a national reconciliation and an all-party effort to tackle the country’s urgent problems. The blank they came up against in Mrs Gandhi, who adopted the simple expedient of no-response, was perhaps the first sign they had of a frozen irrationality in the leader they had so exuberantly raised to power.

  Finding it difficult even to meet her for discussion, they continued their efforts to defuse the situation. Their independence released a long-dormant animation in their party. The steady hum of controversy and speculation—meat and drink to Congressmen until Mrs Gandhi’s rule—returned. In the new situation the Opposition could not be dismissed as unnatural, unpatriotic or outcast. Contacts were resumed. The processes of give and take that people and parties live by were set in motion again. The non-partisan record and integrity of JP gave these a more than political purpose. The time had come for a talk on fundamentals, an all-India debate long postponed. Mrs Gandhi’s displeasure struck Mohan Dharia first.

  On March 1, 1975 Dharia, speaking at the Harold Laski Institute in Ahmedabad, had renewed his plea for talks between Mrs Gandhi and Opposition leaders and strongly condemned the brutal treatment of youth demonstrations. He had also said ‘the CPI design to replace the tricolour with the red flag would be frustrated’. In a letter of the same date, Mrs Gandhi informed him, ‘It is not proper for you to continue in the Council of Ministers since your views are not in conformity with the thinking of the Congress Party.’ Dharia replied, expressing his astonishment, at this abrupt dismissal. He tendered his resignation to the President and said he would explain it in the Lok Sabha, ‘Had the prime minister shown the courtesy of indicating to me her intention, either directly or indirectly, I would have immediately and willingly tendered my resignation.’ On March 5 in Parliament he denied the prime minister’s charge of disagreement with party policies. Where his views on implementation or behaviour had differed, he had repeatedly used party forums or conveyed them personally to the prime minister to make them known:

  On October 7, 1974 I personally conveyed my feeling that the continuance of persons with dubious reputations in the Ministry would erode the credibility of the government… . To adopt a callous attitude toward rising doubts in the public mind is easy, but to ignore them is very dangerous… . The period between 1969 and 1971 was one of making promises and giving assurances … 1971 should have been marked by the determination of the Congress and the administration to enter upon an era of performance… . I have been of the view that the cooperation of all such parties and people should be sought who are willing to contribute in the implementation of the policies in the interests of the common man.

  Dharia said he had sent a letter and note to the prime minister on November 19, 1974, requesting a time-bound programme of action. In a letter of February 26, 1975, he had further elaborated his views. Before writing it he had tried, from February 11 onwards, to get an appointment with the prime minister and had failed to get one. He did not know what greater efforts he could have made to keep her posted with his thinking.

  Dharia’s statement was heard by a rapt Parliament and warmly welcomed by his constituency. Instructions to Congressmen of Poona city and district to boycott a reception and public rally arranged for him were blithely ignored. Dharia’s dismissal had enormously enhanced his reputation and brought him a wider celebrity. Opponents of Mrs Gandhi within her party noted the fact.

  On March 6 JP and Opposition leaders led a mammoth citizens’ procession to Parliament and presented a charter of demands to the Speaker. The Indian Express, comparing its significance with Mahatma Gandhi’s Salt March, reported that ‘when the head of the procession reached the Boat Club, its tail was still near [its starting point] the Red Fort’, a distance of about eight kilometres. JP addressed a public meeting at the Boat Club, announcing similar meetings at state capitals until April 6. The 6th would be observed as ‘Revoke Emergency Day’—(this referred to the war emergency declared in December 1971)—as it was becoming evident that the prime minister would use this emergency to call off the 1976 elections and declare a Bangladesh-type dictatorship. He categorically denied inciting the people or the army to revolt and charged Mrs Gandhi instead with wanting the movement to turn violent, so that she would have an excuse to crush it under a dictatorship.‘You should not give her this opportunity.’ So far, he said, the Bihar government had killed 200 peaceful participants in the movement, yet they had the ‘temerity’ to call the movement violent.

  Delhi wore an armed look on March 6. A Marxist MP described it in the Lok Sabha:

  … the entire police force of Haryana seems to have tumbled into the capital, and blank-faced policemen wielding anything from lathis and batons to rifles stood in their hundreds at every point. Between the Boat Club and Parliament House it was a human wall of policemen and one could not move an inch without being challenged.

  Police barricades had been erected outside the prime minister’s house, far from the procession’s route. That morning the state-owned Delhi Transport Corporation cut its bus services from about 1200 to 336—explaining the stoppage as being caused by the need for repairs—to prevent citizens from joining the march. Haryana Roadways suspended all its bus services to Delhi. Private buses were halted and delayed at three points along the Gurgaon–Delhi route for checks ‘to prevent overloading’. Trucks were denied permission to carry passengers to Delhi. Along with contingents of the state’s police force sent to the capital, these measures brought Bansi Lal’s militant authority and loyalty to the prime minister into flamboyant display.

  At Ahmedabad (Gujarat) on March 6, seventy-nine-yearold Morarji Desai led a procession to Raj Bhavan and handed the Governor a petition for an election to the state assembly, due following its dissolution in March 1974. It was given a rousing ovation along the way.

  For the movement’s participants the day had achieved a high point in corporate action that might now break through the authoritarian trend. The effect was, however, the reverse, as two state governments launched determined action to halt the spread of JP’s influence and disrupt his public engagements. Evidence of incapacity to meet the situation politically, these measures inflicted more wounds on the Congress cause than on that of its adversary. The first incident took place in Orissa.

  On March 8 the Statesman had editorially assessed substantial support for JP in Orissa because the state’s Congress ‘has never been reconciled to the arbitrary manner in which Mrs. Sathpathy [chief minister] was foisted on it’. She had made ‘as many enemies within the Congress legislature party as outside’. ‘The Orissa government has done little to mitigate distress from drought and flood; the wheat procurement effort has almost collapsed; while ambitious promises on radical land reform have yet to be implemented.’

  Mrs Sathpathy had set up an informal espionage system of young recruits to help keep official agencies informed of the extent and activities of JP’s supporters. She had refused the students’ union of Utkal University in the state capital permission to hold a conference and invite JP to address it on March 31. Relations between the students’ union and the Orissa government had been strained since late 1974, when the university had been placed under a government administrator. The students’ union had voted at the time not to allow any state minister on campus, a ban Mrs Sathpathy now decided literally to batter down. On March 24, flanked by armed guards and accompanied by the state Governor, Akbar Ali Khan (lately of Uttar Pradesh), she entered the university ‘smashing the human resistance put up by the students’ union, with the help of outsiders displaying sticks, iron rods and knives’.9 One hundred students’ union representatives barring entry to the campus were overpowered by a contingent of the Youth Congress and armed ‘outsiders’. The students’ union reacted by announcing its int
ention to hold its conference on schedule, saying it would be attended by 400 student representatives from the state’s colleges and addressed by JP.

  The Bengal government’s action was more successful. On April 2 Congress and CPI youth organizations stopped JP’s party on arrival at Calcutta University. Demonstrators climbed on his car and smashed the windscreen. Those who came out of the university building to receive him were surrounded, beaten and had their clothes torn. The meeting had to be abandoned, but the orgy continued, as JP addressed a teachers’ convention while the hall was stoned and glass panes broken. Coming out he faced a barrage of stones and missiles and was trapped with his companions for half an hour in his car before it was allowed to move. He told newsmen before leaving for Patna:

  I could have been killed… . I am sure this kind of thing could not have happened without the clearance of the Chief Minister and also of Mrs. Gandhi’s government… . I don’t think any single organisation is strong enough to face this menace because the Bengal government is behind this menace… . I appeal to all parties in the Opposition, and all student and youth organisations in Bengal to bury their differences and join hands, and before anything else destroy the rising menace of fascism.

  Methodical and open violence against workers of the Bihar Movement now appeared. On April 27 JP called attention to an incident in Arrah town in Bihar the previous week, when six of his student workers had had to be hospitalized, and twelve others had received injuries:

  It seems that the government, being unable to put down the Bihar Movement by the forces at its command, is hiring goondas and ex-criminals to do the job… . It should be a matter of joy for everyone in the State, whether he agrees with the Bihar Movement or not, that all through the time that the students were being beaten up they kept on raising slogans like ‘Hamla chahe jaisa ho, hath hamara nahin uthega’ [‘Whatever the violence used against us, we shall not retaliate’]. I myself feel proud of these students. By their heroic and peaceful action they have set an example for others to follow.