by Kuldip Nayar
The overall picture was too jagged, too confused for a call, but it was apparent that by and large the Left-inclined parties had lined up behind Indira Gandhi and the rightist ones behind the syndicate. This gave an impression of polarization which was not altogether correct. There was, however, a palpable fear that the split Congress, the party which had won Independence for India, would unleash such forces that might destroy individual freedom, if not freedom itself.
Indira Gandhi set the ball rolling by asking Morarji Desai to give up his finance portfolio. As she explained to him in a letter, he had come to be ‘identified with certain basic approaches and attitudes’. D.P. Mishra, Indira Gandhi’s principal political strategist, told me that the person who deceived her was Y.B. Chavan because he had sided with the syndicate at the parliamentary board to defeat Jagjivan Ram. ‘But Chavan’s image was that of a radical,’ and as they had made the split appear to be a separation of the progressives from the rightists, Morarji was the correct target.
Ideology hardly played any role in the split, although Indira Gandhi was able to exploit the bogey. She would point out that the party bosses had among them Morarji who, as Indira Gandhi told me in an interview, ‘has a public image of a rightist which is not erased by his denials’.
Morarji, however, countered it by telling me: ‘I am more socialist than she is.’ He recalled how, in reply to a remark by Alexei Kosygin during his visit to Delhi in January 1968, that the general impression about him (Desai) was that of an anti-public sector person, he had replied: ‘This is the propaganda by the Communists in India; otherwise give me one instance where I have opposed the public sector.’ Many years later, when he was on a visit to the Soviet Union as prime minister, he asked Kosygin why they financed the Communists in India. I was sitting behind them in the plane. Kosygin denied the charge, but when Morarji said that he had evidence of this, Kosygin remained silent.
Indira Gandhi wore the halo as Nehru’s daughter and she was acceptable to most. Hers was an India-wide image and her reputation was that of a person who was personally honest despite Ram Manohar Lohia’s allegation that she had once accepted from Russia a mink coat as a gift.
Indira Gandhi refurbished her ‘progressive’ image by nationalizing the banks and insurance companies and banning the entry of foreign capital to fields in which local technical know-how was available.
That she did not like members of the syndicate, particularly Kamaraj who placed her in the gaddi, was apparent when they wanted details about the government’s functioning. She thought that they were trying to run the government from the back seat, and in an interview to me, she once observed that it eventually depended upon the people to decide whom they liked, them or her. Kamaraj specially rang me to find out whether she had made the comment in those words. I played the recorded interview.
She individually explained to editors that Morarji’s outdated views did not fit in with the finance portfolio. I was left out because I was critical of her. Inder Gujral, information minister and a member of her kitchen cabinet, prevailed upon her to call me. She told me that Morarji could not come to terms with progressive measures. I tried to defend him by arguing that he was honest and had brought values to politics. She inquired how long I had known him. Before I could reply, she uttered a single word to describe him: ‘Humbug’.
Morarji did not accept the change in his portfolio and decided to resign. The syndicate was caught on the wrong foot, having been angered by the unceremonious way in which Desai had been ousted but was helpless (Desai told Nijalingappa that he must be reinstated and given back his portfolio). Any protest would give them a bad name.
After all, nationalization of banks had been an integral part of the Congress party’s manifesto for the past two decades. How could they now suggest, even by implication that they were not in favour of the measure? In a country where money was hard to come by, the nationalization of banks was considered a step towards making money. Every individual, from a business executive to a cab driver, saw in it an opportunity to draw money from banks, invest it in his or her business or just spend it. Was this the dawn they had been long awaiting? Her defeat at the hands of the party bosses in Bangalore was forgotten and overnight she appeared taller than anyone else in public perception. She was a champion of the people. The government-controlled All India Radio helped her to blow her trumpet.
Although late, the syndicate decided to act. They could hardly acquiesce to the dubious precedent of ‘free voting for members on “a vital political issue” involving the party’s very existence’. What had happened was that Indira Gandhi, Jagjivan Ram, and Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed had voted against Sanjiva Reddy, the official candidate of the Congress and were asked to explain why they had worked against the official candidate.
S.K. Patil said in public that Indira Gandhi and her supporters had used ‘the propaganda technique of the Communists and Hitler’ and that Giri was ‘basically a Communist candidate and perhaps for that reason the favourite candidate of the prime minister’. When I interviewed Giri, he said he was not ‘a rubber stamp’, although he praised Indira Gandhi for her support and never differed with her throughout his tenure.
Indira Gandhi began explaining to her party MPs in groups, often breaking into tears when in the process of speaking, that she had fought back ‘not because I was involved but because the dignity of prime minister of India was involved’. She said she knew what anguish her father, Nehru, had suffered during his last years because he could not stop the Congress party from straying from the socialist path. Thus it was not she who was leading the people to socialism but it was the factional behaviour of leadership that was resulting in it.
The syndicate now openly said that Indira Gandhi was a communist and pointed out the way in which the communists had rallied behind her. This angered her more and she hit back by saying that the party bosses had given the communists a foothold in India. I thought she was not wrong in saying this. The states of Kerala and West Bengal had slipped from the hands of the Congress because the party bosses had quarreled among themselves and had put up wrong candidates in elections.
That unity was necessary to save the party was the line adopted by her supporters in the Congress. Y.B. Chavan, who had voted with the syndicate and had annoyed Indira Gandhi, wanted a position at the Centre. His belief was that he would be acceptable for prime-ministership if and when the Congress split. Nijalingappa was ready to rescind the show-cause notice provided she withdrew her charge against him for aligning with the Jana Sangh and the Swatantra party. She refused to take back her allegation because this was her trump card. After much wrangling she agreed to have the words ‘while it is painful and unfortunate that a large segment of the Congress voters failed to support Reddy’s candidature’ incorporated in the resolution.
A week after the unity resolution, D.P. Mishra told her that even though she had won by defeating Sanjiva Reddy, she must control the organization if she wanted to remain in power. He suggested that a meeting of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) be requisitioned to consider a no-confidence motion against Nijalingappa.
Indira Gandhi was initially indifferent to the suggestion. When Mishra left Delhi, the signature campaign for the requisition stopped, but later even she realized that she needed to capture the organization for her own survival. People saw in her ‘the leader of the new generation’ and ‘a friend of the poor’, and even her critics conceded that she was a ‘man among women in the party’. She also plugged the line that the top Congress leaders were against her because she refused to compromise on ‘matters vital to the interest of the people’.
Shankar Dayal Sharma, who was later rewarded with the office of the country’s president, kept Indira Gandhi informed about the discussions within the syndicate. He was the party’s general secretary who pretended to be on the side of the old guard. She asked four junior ministers, Parimal Ghosh, M.S. Gurupadaswamy, Jagannath Pahadia, and J.B. Muthyal Rao, considered to be supporters of the syndicate, to qu
it.
The atmosphere was now building up to a climax. The waning lustre of bank nationalization bothered Indira Gandhi but she was still the only leader who had an all-India image. Morarji was confined to Gujarat, Nijalingappa to Karnataka, and Kamaraj to Tamil Nadu.
The party bosses did not mistake Indira Gandhi’s intentions this time. They tried to win back Chavan but he preferred to stay with her. He had changed his loyalty once, had earned a bad name, and did not want to repeat that. He told me that leaving Indira Gandhi was his biggest mistake. Moreover, he could not run away from the fact that Indira Gandhi’s opponents were those with a rightist image while he stood left of centre.
The syndicate expelled Indira Gandhi from the Congress party and she in turn blessed the meeting of the members who were on her side. They (441 of the 705 elected party members) met in Delhi on 22 November 1969 and passed a vote of no-confidence against Nijalingappa. It was followed up with a larger session in Bombay for confirmation of this. Others met near Ahmedabad and also put up an impressive show.
Now there were two Congress parties and both claimed to be the ‘real Congress’. In newspaper offices it was a problem differentiating one from the other. We in the Statesman thought that we should call the syndicate’s Congress ‘old’ and Indira Gandhi’s ‘new’. We however abandoned this idea because the word ‘old’ had a connotation of something outdated, and this would not be fair to the party bosses. Still, we settled for (O), meaning thereby the Congress organization. Once, when I referred to the syndicate’s side as the Congress (organization) during an interview with Indira Gandhi, she objected to it: ‘What do you mean by organization? We are the organization.’ For Indira Gandhi’s side we used the word Congress (R) which really meant the party of requisitionists, but (R) came to be known as the ruling party.
Her claim was that she stood for ‘progressive and pro-people policies while the syndicate represented feudalism and capitalism; that she had parted company with the party bosses for the sake of India’s development.
Who was correct? Probably both. She wanted her leadership to be supreme and the party bosses did look like leaders steeped in outdated policies. In the process, however, the two sides murdered a party which provided a centre. Now the field was open for the extreme Right, particularly the Jana Sangh, and the extreme Left, particularly the Marxists. Subsequent events testified to this polarization in the country although Hindutva gained more ground than Marxism.
To bolster her image, Indira Gandhi effected an amendment to Article 26 of the constitution to provide for the abolition of the privy purses and other princely privileges. M.C. Chagla told me that this amounted to the government going back on its solemn pledge at the time of the states’ integration. Indira Gandhi’s real purpose was to play to the gallery and she exploited the populist measures to the hilt.
However, before Indira Gandhi could make use of such amendments to lessen disparities, her government became embroiled in what came to be known as the Bangladesh problem. Already, New Delhi’s relations with Islamabad had suffered a setback when an Indian plane was hijacked from Jammu to Lahore where it was allowed by Pakistan authorities to be set on fire. New Delhi still did not make it an issue. On the contrary, its informal suggestion was that the two countries should support each other whenever there was an election for any UN agency. Pakistan considered this a peripheral issue as all it wanted was to discuss Kashmir.
India continued its goodwill gesture by allowing the surplus waters of the Beas and Ravi to flow to Pakistan even after the expiry of the date, 31 March 1970, mentioned in the Indus Waters Treaty (the water still flows to Pakistan). This was in consonance with Nehru’s views. He had said in a note on the Indus waters even before the treaty was signed: ‘In this matter we have proceeded with extreme patience and far greater caution than I myself am perhaps capable of. It had never been our desire to injure Pakistan, much less to make the large number of people there suffer.’
Yahya Khan, who by this time had seized power from Ayub Khan after he resigned following serious rioting in Peshawar, was reluctant to open a dialogue with New Delhi. Elections were due in Pakistan and he did not want politicians to make capital out of the talks and accuse him of trying to build an image for himself at the expense of ‘Pakistan’s honour’.
9
The Bangladesh War
India’s problem was that there was an exodus of refugees to West Bengal from East Pakistan. As many as one million of them, largely Hindus and some Muslims, had arrived for relief and rehabilitation, entailing relief measures on a massive scale. There was also an incipient movement for freedom in East Pakistan.
Indira Gandhi sent Jayaprakash Narayan, the prominent socialist leader, around the world to acquaint other countries with the burden India was shouldering on account of the massive influx of refugees. He also explained how difficult it was for a Bangladeshi to live in East Pakistan because of the persecution at the hands of West Pakistan.
In the National Assembly poll (17 December 1970), the Awami League, which was leading the movement for autonomy, won 167 of the 169 seats in East Pakistan, giving the party an absolute majority in the House of 313. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) won 88 out of the 144 seats in West Pakistan. The Awami League won no seat in West Pakistan and the PPP any in East Pakistan. The people voted either as East Bengalis or as West Pakistanis. According to Bhutto, the entire Hindu vote went to the Awami League.
The Awami League chief Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who had swept the polls, now demanded provincial autonomy and the prime-ministership on the basis of his majority in the National Assembly. There was no prospect of a compromise between the two, or for that matter between the two wings of Pakistan.
Yahya Khan and Bhutto joined hands to fight what they considered a secessionist movement to divide Pakistan. Mujib was arrested and his party, the Awami League, was declared unlawful, and a reign of terror let loose in East Pakistan which by then (26 March 1971) had declared itself an independent country, Bangladesh.
The military crackdown by Islamabad resulted in murder, rape, and plunder. The trickle of refugees flowing into India became a torrent. New Delhi thought of sealing the border (Swaran Singh repeatedly pressed for this) but the proposal was rejected on the ground that it would go against the grain of India’s policies, and it would be inhuman to close its doors on people who were of the same stock. Even Nehru had taken a stand on this: ‘if a demand comes to us for protection, more specially from women and children, who are in danger of death or worse, it is difficult and ultimately impossible to remain unaffected by not to do something for them’.
India took a policy decision at that time. New Delhi’s first high commissioner to Bangladesh, Subimal Dutt, told me so when I met him at Dhaka after the liberation war. The decision was to support the uprising against West Pakistan and help the movement for the creation of Bangladesh. This would ensure that no power would attack India from that side. As for 10 million Hindus living in that country, Dutt said, it was agreed to leave them to their fate. New Delhi’s estimate was that many would migrate to India, some would embrace Islam, and some would reconcile to the living conditions in Bangladesh. It was cold-blooded logic but there it was.
That the two wings shared very little became more and more apparent as the days passed. The language, customs, and way of life of East Pakistan were totally different from West Pakistan’s. The only connect was Islam. The moment the religious fervour for the creation of Pakistan cooled down the contradictions began erupting and acquired assertiveness. To cap it was Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s observation at Dhaka that East Pakistanis would have to learn Urdu, Pakistan’s national language. The language issue became a rallying point for East Pakistan to express its resentment against West Pakistan.
New Delhi began giving assistance to Bangladesh guerrillas in terms of training and arms, much as Pakistan had done when some Nagas and Mizos rose in revolt against the Government of India. The Border Security Force (BSF), led by m
ilitary officers, gave them a helping hand.
For every ill they suffered, East Bengalis blamed West Pakistan which, in turn, developed a feeling that whatever good West Pakistan did for East Bengalis, remained unacknowledged. ‘Left to me,’ Ayub Khan said when I interviewed him in 1972, I:
would have told East Bengal in 1962, when a new constitution was introduced, that if they wanted to go they could do so. It was no use keeping them if they did not want to remain with us. In fact, once I had a plan to ask them straightway whether they wanted to secede. Were they to say “Yes”, that would have ended the problem there and then but certain things came in the way and I could not go ahead with my scheme.
Although East Bengali Muslims could be roused against Hindus, especially when communal riots occurred in India, there was no hiding their ire against West Pakistanis. Over the years it became clearer that the Bengali Muslim disliked West Pakistanis more than Bengali Hindus. Similarly, the West Punjab Muslims found Hindus more akin to them than Bengali Muslims.
East Pakistan’s alienation was visible to Jinnah. His naval ADC, Colonel Mazhar Ahmed, several years later wrote about the conditions in those days:
West Pakistan’s order (1952) to make Urdu, nearer to Arabic and hence to Islam as Pakistan’s first language, was greatly resented in East Pakistan which even taunted that Bengali was akin to Sanskrit and hence to Hinduism. East Bengal Muslims and Hindus stood side by side against the West. (East Bengal ultimately won and equal status for Bengalis).
Secularism was strengthened by the emergence of a fatherly figure, Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rehman, on the scene. Although an associate of H.S. Suhrawardy, who was Bengal’s chief minister at the time of great Calcutta killings of 1946, Mujib was openly on the side of secular and progressive forces. He had spent half his adult life in jail for agitating for a better deal for his people. West Pakistan thought it would strengthen its hands if it brought a federal type of constitution (1954) to appease the Eastern wing, but the scheme was shelved. The idea that the Bengalis would have a majority in the constituent assembly was dismissed. Punjab, NWFP, Sind, and Baluchistan were grouped into ‘one unit’ so that, the integrated province would be at par with East Pakistan.