Indira Gandhi

  In Delhi Morarji Desai informed the prime minister that, unless correct constitutional procedure were adopted in Gujarat and an election announced in the state, he would fast to death. He began his fast when Mrs Gandhi replied the election could not be held until after the monsoon. She set no date. A reader’s letter in the Indian Express on April 14 commented on this development:

  We all know that of late Mrs. Gandhi and the Congress have been losing political ground very fast… . In the wake of the JP movement which is giving her sleepless nights, Mr. Desai’s fast has become another nightmare for her. Thus the only alternative left for Mrs. Gandhi, if she wants to hold on to power, which she obviously does very desperately, is to go the Mujib way… . People feel that there are ample indications that things are gradually being manoeuvred into such an eventuality. This is what makes Mr. Desai’s fast very crucial. Had there been faith in the plighted word of the ruling party’s spokesmen, Mr. Desai perhaps would not have staked his life for advancing the election schedule by a mere three months. But unfortunately he knows, as do others, that there is no such certainty about the promise held out by the ruling party. Hence the urgency to force the issue. (Ramadhar, New Delhi.)

  Mrs Gandhi announced an election in Gujarat in early June. The death by fasting of a veteran Congressman, once her father’s cabinet colleague, might have provoked shock and outrage. Her own popularity, according to opinion surveys, was low. A reader’s letter in the Indian Express on January 31, 1975 conveys the flavour of public disenchantment:

  With the kind of massive mandate and unstinted support the Prime Minister has received from the people, which has been the lot of very few politicians in history, any shrewd and sagacious statesman could have virtually converted the country into a veritable heaven. But she has failed miserably to deliver the goods… . If the Prime Minister is the repository of all dynamism, radicalism and wisdom… why should she at all have given quarter to this corrupt clique? Secondly, having somehow done so, why should she find it difficult to extricate herself from their clutches? It is indeed odd that some six years ago she required to be protected against the so-called ‘syndicate’ which fettered her hands against the radical measures she wanted to take. Today she must be rescued from the inefficient clique that surrounds her and nullifies all her efforts. At this rate, some other hurdle may crop up tomorrow! (Badlu Ram Gupta, Sonepat Mandi).

  Raj Narain’s (Socialist MP) court case against her election to the Lok Sabha in 1971 was being reported in detail in the press, and her replies in court made ambiguous, evasive reading. The testimony of her agent, Yashpal Kapoor, did nothing to clear the air. His rise from average means and obscurity to sudden wealth and commanding political authority during the last few years had made him a highly controversial figure. In these circumstances Mrs Gandhi was ill-advised to campaign in Gujarat herself, accompanied by the impressive paraphernalia of her official position. Dressed in a Gujarati-style sari, she called herself a ‘daughter-in-law of Gujarat’. (Her husband, a Parsi, came from a Gujaratispeaking background, though his family had settled in Uttar Pradesh.) Her speeches carried the hint that Gujarat’s need of Central assistance for its fertilizer and other schemes would be judged against how the state voted. The Congress was defeated by twelve seats in an assembly of 182, a particularly humiliating blow after the loss of every critical by-election in 1974 and 1975. The Opposition Janata Front, the largest single party, formed a government with the support of the Kisan Mazdoor Lok Paksh (KMLP), a group that had earlier broken away from the Congress.

  The last election result was announced on June 12, the day of the Allahabad High Court judgement indicting Mrs Gandhi on two corruption charges in the conduct of her 1971 elections, declaring her election invalid, and debarring her from holding political office for six years. The verdict was not unexpected. Yet it made a sensation. Much of the public argument and coffee house debate had revolved around whether the judge would, if he found her guilty, be fearless enough to indict the prime minister. Public opinion had been less concerned with ‘technical infractions’ of the election law than with Mrs Gandhi’s scant regard for rules and proprieties in general and the uses she had made of authority over a period of years. Could judicial freedom survive this process? Justice Jagmohan Lal Sinha had been as much on trial as Mrs Gandhi.

  The news that Mrs Gandhi had been unseated by the Allahabad High Court judgement was announced on All India Radio at 10.25 a.m. The police had prepared for the possibility by erecting iron barricades around Mrs Gandhi’s house and closing all roads leading to it, with heavy police patrolling of the area. This left a clear field for rallies and ‘upsurges’ in her favour while it prevented public demonstrations against her from approaching. The Times of India reported:‘The capital wore the look of the days of the 1969 Congress split. In the afternoon of June 12th about 2,000 Congress demonstrators assembled near the Safdarjang Road roundabout shouting Indira slogans and “Justice Sinha murdabad.”’ The report added that between 3.00 p.m. and 8.00 p.m. the prime minister came out of her house three times to address rallies at the roundabout. Each time she warned the gathering against internal and external threats to the country and said, come what may, she would stand by the people to usher in socialism.

  The scene was, however, different in important respects from 1969. Some of her crucial supporters during the Congress split—the best known and most popular of the Young Turks—were now absent. By 1969 Mrs Gandhi had antagonized and alienated the old guard. Six years later she had dissipated her credit with key radical supporters. In 1969 there had been risk and chance in Mrs Gandhi’s battle with her party. In 1975 she stood securely at the head of it through her control of its organization, while her command of the nation relied heavily on the country’s intelligence and paramilitary forces.

  There was one vital similarity to 1969. Realizing then that her chances of succeeding against her opponents in the party were not certain if she proceeded through accepted political channels and observed the political code, she had set conventions aside and turned to street agitation to create the drama of a leader demanded by the people. The high court judgement debarred her from office. Correct procedure ruled that she resign her seat in Parliament and her leadership of her party with immediate effect. However, the high court had granted her a twenty-day stay order—a gesture of courtesy and accommodation to the party in power—to allow the Congress to choose another leader. Mrs Gandhi turned this interval to account, once again through street agitation. The slogan ‘Death to Justice Sinha’ and the burning of the judge’s effigy gave it the drama of ‘the people’s’ judgement as against the court’s. The drama continued with the stoppage of bus services for the public the next day and Delhi’s entire transport system diverted to carrying demonstrators to Mrs Gandhi’s house. This major dislocation in the capital evoked very similar accounts in leading newspapers:

  The public transport system here was virtually paralysed today (13th) as hundreds of buses were unauthorisedly diverted to points near the Prime Minister’s house to carry demonstrators affirming support and loyalty to her. Not a single DTC bus operated till 1 p.m. Some buses made their appearance around 2 p.m. By 5 p.m. only 380 vehicles out of 1400 were operating on scheduled routes… . There were heated exchanges between rival DTC workers’ union representatives… workers of the union controlled by the CPI-M protested against the sudden dislocation of the bus services. (The Times of India, June 15, 1975.)

  As DTC buses went off the roads this morning, leaving lakhs of commuters stranded, Congress volunteers were pouring into the capital from Punjab, Haryana and UP in buses and trucks, hired or commandeered by State units of the Party. This followed an understanding between Chief Ministers of these States who met here yesterday, that they would flood the capital with party volunteers to march to Mrs. Gandhi’s house to demonstrate that the people were with her in this ‘hour of travail.’… Over 200 DTC buses were used to ferry people from Gurgaon and adjoining Haryana areas to Delhi… . A resident
of Akhumpur village told this reporter that five DTC buses visited his village to collect people but all of them went back without a passenger. Only a handful of people from some areas went to Delhi to join the rally. The Haryana government also allowed DTC buses to enter its territory without road permits, in direct contrast to the March event when buses carrying people to Delhi from Haryana to attend Jayaprakash Narayan’s meeting were stopped from proceeding to the capital. (The Indian Express, June 14, 1975.)

  The mass upsurge, barring the DTC workers’ rally, was in reality ragtag bands of people hastily collected and carted in New Delhi Municipal Committee trucks and DTC buses that should really have been plying where they were needed most. Squatting on the grass behind banners prominently displaying their affiliations, the demonstrators stoically suffered the scorching heat, cheering listlessly as speaker after speaker rained a considerable amount of rhetoric and made blasphemous statements against the judge and judiciary… . For anyone not in the party of demonstrators and without credentials to prove his ranking as a Congressman, access to the roads leading to the Prime Minister’s residence was barred. The security arrangements were the tightest they have ever been… . (The Hindustan Times, June 14, 1975).

  The Opposition prevented from holding a meeting or demonstration near the prime minister’s house held one outside Rashtrapati Bhavan, condemning the dislocation of transport, the closure of many electricity units and Mrs Gandhi’s resort to street agitation when facts and legalities went against her. The rumble in her own party grew distinct. Shambu Nath Mishra, MP, issued a statement:

  Nobody has ever been indispensable in this world and nobody can be made indispensable at the cost of morality, propriety, fair play and justice, and more so the honour of the country. If she herself wants to stick to the chair, a thousand excuses can be invented. If she is honest and sincere and has no lust for power, she must save the face of the country from the greatest ridicule of the world… .

  Mrs Gandhi could come back with honour and dignity, the statement continued, if her appeal against the high court judgement succeeded. It was unfortunate that rallies and propaganda had been launched to whip up public opinion and prejudice the judiciary.

  The Congress Parliamentary Party was openly divided on the issue of retaining Mrs Gandhi as leader. Senior Congressmen, encouraged and emboldened by the high court judgement, had advanced their claims. Mohan Dharia had already called for her resignation. A move to collect pledges to loyalty failed when many members refused to sign the blank sheet handed round. Some MPs vigorously objected to the burning of Justice Sinha’s effigy and condemned this and other forms of rabble behaviour. Others wanted to know for whose benefit the rallies were being staged.

  On June 21 the executives of five Opposition parties met in New Delhi and passed a resolution:

  The joint meeting of the National Executives of the Akali Dal, Bharatiya Lok Dal, the Congress (O), Jan Sangh and the Socialist Party is deeply perturbed at the stand taken and activities indulged in by Mrs. Indira Gandhi in the wake of the judgement against her by the Allahabad High Court… . Mrs. Gandhi is not only sticking to her position but is resorting to means and methods repugnant to democracy to maintain herself in power… there has been an exhibition of mounting arrogance and a cynical disregard of moral values. It is against this terrible travesty and moral degeneration of the political structure that the people have to bestir themselves. The combined Executives appeal to the people to express themselves fearlessly and massively through all the legitimate and peaceful democratic channels.

  The national newspapers exhibited a rare unanimity, suggesting that the high court verdict warranted Mrs Gandhi’s resignation. The Tribune in an editorial titled ‘Janata on the March’ had gone further:‘Today the Indira Wave or the Indira Hurricane is only a distant memory, and slogans like Garibi Hatao raise only Rabelaisian laughter… .’ In its June 26th editorial, the Tribune said, ‘A claim to rule by staking it out on the streets must, and will, invite challenge. Already there is talk of civil disobedience.’

  Civil disobedience did not begin. The night it was announced by Opposition leaders, India came under the Emergency.

  The enormity of the high court judgement’s blow to Mrs Gandhi must be understood in terms of her assessment of herself as indispensable to the Indian scene. She considered herself more than a politician or a party leader. She believed she had played a role of glory and sacrifice in the struggle for freedom, even been classified a ‘dangerous’ prisoner by the British. Her background, she was convinced, had endowed her with wisdom and instincts since childhood that no one else in the country possessed. That anyone should regard her as a politician, subject to normal political processes, was a gross impertinence and injustice. She had come to believe she was India. In 1975 ‘Indira is India, and India is Indira’, the Congress president’s slogan, became the party’s refrain. At the party’s annual session in December, the national anthem was followed by a new song Indira Hindustan ban gai (Indira has become India).

  The high court judgement and the Gujarat election result were incontestable realities. The Opposition gave every sign of improving its strength and support as the 1976 elections drew near. Public disillusionment with Congress’s performance centred on Mrs Gandhi. None of this, however, is likely to have made the extreme step of declaring a second emergency (an emergency had been in existence since the Bangladesh war) necessary to Mrs Gandhi if she had been sure of her own party’s loyal support. But it was becoming clear that the move to replace her, now being discussed, would allow no easy return. A party far from bankrupt of leadership, in fact restless with aspiring leadership and with leaders smarting under blows to their pride and dignity, would use this opportunity to ease her out. Its brilliant rebel corps was waiting to do so. The Emergency was Mrs Gandhi’s second, and this time a literal coup against the opposition in her own party. Unless this had been so, the sweep of arrests during the night of June 25 would not have taken Congressmen from their beds, including Chandrasekhar and Ram Dhan, high office-bearers in the party. More revealing, these arrests did not have the sanction of the Emergency provision of the Constitution. Mrs Gandhi’s cabinet did not meet until the morning of June 26 to take this decision. The President signed the proclamation on Mrs Gandhi’s orders during the night of the 25th. Clearly this sequence of events was intended to be a warning to wavering cabinet colleagues as well. By June 26 they had been provided with reinforced, heavily armed guards at their gates, and some with armed escorts, ostensibly for their own protection, when they attended official engagements. Without doubt preparations for the smooth transformation to dictatorship proceeded without the knowledge of Mrs Gandhi’s cabinet. They were made in consultation with selected aides and the police and intelligence network. Her own party was as much a victim of this lightning seizure of absolute power as opposing opinion outside it.

  THIRTEEN

  The Flowering of a Style

  Mrs Gandhi’s pre-Emergency measures highlight her political strategy. Power failures arranged for the night of June 25 prevented most morning newspapers from appearing on the 26th. Arrests made that night gave her the advantage of surprise attack over political adversaries, in both her own party and the Opposition. They also presented her cabinet with a fait accompli when it met on the morning of the 26th. The cabinet’s ‘consideration’ of a proclamation of Emergency, invoking Article 352 (1) of the Constitution, came many hours after the event, when police action had been taken and an efficient network of control established.

  With its official proclamation, the Emergency went into smooth visible operation. Presidential ordinances, later converted into law, enlarged government’s powers to arrest and imprison without trial. Meetings of more than five persons without permission were forbidden, an unrealistic ban in overcrowded market areas where the streets teem with human beings. It was rigorously enforced where it could be. Casual groups collected on streets and outside coffee houses were roughly dispersed. Delhi’s most popular meet
ing-and-talking place, the crowded Janata Coffee House in Connaught Place, a people’s venture set up to combat the rising price of coffee a few years earlier, was demolished. On the other hand, officially backed ‘spontaneous’ demonstrations in support of Mrs Gandhi sprouted like mushrooms and were enacted too often to even require permission from authority. The double standard of law already in evidence was now practised quite openly. Posters of Mrs Gandhi appeared in the streets, bazaars, and at thoroughfares proclaiming her the saviour of law and order. Shop windows were required to display her picture prominently and to post a pledge supporting the Twenty-Point Programme alongside. (On July 1, 1975, the prime minister had announced a set of economic programmes that came collectively to be known as the Twenty-Point Programme.) Delegations of teachers, writers, students, workers, lawyers and trade union representatives were regularly summoned to her heavily guarded residence to congratulate her on the Emergency and endorse her programme. Government’s propaganda department claimed the police had obtained clues to secret hoards of arms and ammunition with the ‘discovery’ of ‘weapons’ in the offices of the RSS and found skulls in the offices of the Anand Marg, an occult group not connected with any Opposition party. A connection was sought to be established in the public mind through film documentaries showing Jayaprakash Narayan and Opposition leaders addressing gatherings, alternating with rows of skulls being ‘discovered’ by the police, and flashbacks to Hitler rallies and goose-stepping Nazis. These clumsy efforts tried to convey that something very sinister had been about to happen when the Emergency saved the situation. Anthony Lukas of the New York Times got the following official enlightenment about published pictures of wooden swords and staves found in RSS offices: