Beyond the Lines: An Autobiography

by Kuldip Nayar

  Somewhere I also ran into Om Mehta, minister of state for home affairs. He was at that time in charge of the ministry because the home minister, Brahmananda Reddy, was not a member of Sanjay Gandhi’s inner coterie. Om asked me cynically how I had enjoyed ‘our jail’. I countered by asking him why they had allowed it to get so dirty. Laughingly, he said that their intention had not been to send me to Ashoka Hotel.

  I once was at a press conference called by Sanjay Gandhi. It was a placid affair. The fear generated by the Emergency had palpably caused pressmen to err on the side of caution. No one asked him any inconvenient questions, and I just sat there impassively facing him, observing him closely. He oozed confidence and did not appear to be someone who would have had a second thought about the excesses for which he was responsible.

  Notwithstanding virtual control over the press, Shukla spoke of ‘restructuring the entire press industry so as to make it accountable and answerable to the people, society, and the country’. His underlying meaning suggested a permanent arrangement that was not dependent on the special powers available under the Emergency.

  For this purpose, the amalgamation of the two major English news agencies, PTI and UNI, and two Hindi news agencies, Hindustan Samachar and Samachar Bharti, into a single entity was deemed essential. That would mean only a single point of control. Shukla used the known arm-twisting methods against newspaper proprietors and owners of news agencies to bring them to agree to a single agency which later came to be known as Samachar. It began functioning on 1 February 1976 and G. Kasturi, editor of the Hindu, was appointed its chairman. I failed to understand how a person like him, who always spoke about a free press and courage preferred to carry the stigma of being termed stooge demonstrated no resistance.

  While the reorganization of the press was in progress, Sanjay focused his attention on the more important issue of restructuring the government. He had always told his mother that left to him, he would ‘change the entire government’, and replace one-fourth of its fifty-four member council of ministers with representatives of the Youth Congress. He was already scrutinizing senior appointments at the Centre. Bureaucrats too were summoned to 1 Safdarjang Road, Indira Gandhi’s residence, and both politicians and bureaucrats were interviewed by Sanjay and R.K. Dhawan for eligibility.

  This was not all. Sanjay wanted his men in the cabinet and in the states to ensure that his instructions were fully complied with. He had Bansi Lal, a hundred per cent loyal and committed leader, inducted into the cabinet. For some reason Bansi Lal wanted the defence ministry and got it.

  Bansi Lal did not however wish to be isolated from his principality, Haryana, and therefore his successor as chief minister, Banarasi Das Gupta (Bansi Lal himself had chosen him), was told that Bansi Lal would continue to remain the ‘real chief minister’ and that he should ‘listen’ to him.

  Indira Gandhi also bowed to Sanjay’s wishes to get rid of the eighty-year-old minister, Uma Shankar Dikshit. For her it was a major decision because as the party treasurer since the 1971 elections, he had collected and distributed crores of rupees on her behalf. Of late, she had been somewhat unhappy with him because she found his daughter-in-law, Sheila Dikshit, interfering in the administration. Indira Gandhi had already transferred Dikshit’s son, a distinguished civil servant, out of Delhi to keep the meddling daughter-in-law at arm’s length but Sheila had stayed back to help her father-in-law. Indira Gandhi had experience in dealing with daughters-in-law. Some time earlier she had curbed the power of another daughter-in-law, the bahuji of Kamlapati Tripathi when he was brought to Delhi.

  Dikshit’s exit from the cabinet (he was soon appointed governor of Karnataka) shocked other ministers. If it could happen to him, it could happen to any of them. This caused them to become even more servile.

  Haksar, once her principal secretary, did not however stop corresponding with her. He protested against the raid on the Pandit brothers, close relations of his, at Connaught Place in New Delhi. Sanjay had ordered the raids because he wanted to send a message to show who controlled the government, and the truth was that the transfer of Haksar from the PMO was at Sanjay’s behest. Once Yashpal Kapoor asked me rhetorically: ‘How can we have a communist in the prime minister’s office?’ Sanjay loathed both Haksar and Dhar but Indira Gandhi valued their advice.

  A few persons, whom Indira Gandhi respected, found no respite from the authoritarian rule nor from the whimsical administration run by Sanjay Gandhi’s caucus and voiced their exasperation. The advice of her personal friends in the West to hold elections and a similar suggestion by Haksar, supported by P.N. Dhar, Haksar’s successor, made her consider this seriously.

  Indira Gandhi was gratified by an official report that her popularity graph was high and decided to relax the Emergency. Sanjay was furious when he learnt that apart from doing that, she was contemplating holding elections. He did not want any polls to be held for many years into the future. There was heated discussion between the two but he had to tone down his objections when he found she was adamant.

  Whatever Indira Gandhi’s compulsions might have been to go to the polls, her decision to hold elections was an admission that no system could work without the consent and concurrence of the people. In a way, she paid tribute to the patience and sufferings of people during the Emergency, and the truth is that it was they, the illiterate, the backward, and the poor who eventually triumphed.

  She proved what was heard all the time that Indira Gandhi was uncomfortable with the Emergency. Someone said she was riding a tiger which she dearly wished to dismount. Holding fresh elections seemed to be the only way for her to retrieve the situation. As a newsman, I suspected that something akin to an election was in the offing but despite my best efforts could obtain no confirmation of this. Being a persona non-grata, no Congress leader or bureaucrat wished to have anything to do with me.

  One day a police officer from Punjab, apparently in the IB, whispered to me at a reception that elections were in the offing. His inference was from an order he had received to assess the prospects of the various political parties if polls were to be immediately held. It was a valuable lead but the problem was how to verify it.

  I knew Kamal Nath after he was inducted as director of the board of the Indian Express. I went to his house early one morning. His wife was having tea, so I introduced myself as Kamal Nath’s friend. She had heard my name, offered me a cup of tea, and told me that her husband was sleeping. Within a few minutes, Kamal Nath emerged from the room through a connecting door and joined us in the balcony.

  After he had poured a cup of tea for himself, I asked him straightaway which constituency Sanjay Gandhi would be contesting from. He was taken aback but did not try to evade the question. He said it had not yet been decided because they were awaiting the return of an emissary who had gone to Ahmedabad jail to meet Chandra Shekhar, a radical Congressman who had been a consistent critic of Indira Gandhi. Kamal Nath further said that the Congress wanted a rapprochement with him. I imagined that this implied that elections could be held in the coming few weeks. When I asked him how soon the elections would be held he asked where I had received information about the impending elections. That only confirmed the story.

  I knew I had not obtained sufficient information to break the news but decided to take the risk. At worst they would rearrest me, and this I argued to myself would not be too difficult. One stint of imprisonment had given me confidence in dealing with such a predicament.

  All editions of the Express ran the story as a banner in bold type. A little after midnight, RNG, by now in harness after the heart attack, rang me from Bombay to find out more about the story. All that he said was: ‘Hope you are right.’ I assured him that elections were only a few weeks away. He was overjoyed to hear that because his future or, for that matter, of the newspaper, depended upon a change in government.

  Only a few days earlier he had told me that he was at the end of the road. He had exhausted his resources during the 19 months of the Eme
rgency, and keeping the Indian Express running was his first priority because it had brought him both fame and wealth.

  RNG had then asked me if I could arrange a meeting with Khushwant Singh who was close to Menaka Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi’s wife. Khushwant Singh had taught me company law at Law College in Lahore, and I had always addressed him as Professor Sahib, even when he had become a Gandhi family sycophant, praised them unabashedly, and justified the Emergency. I was indebted to him because he had promised to publish my articles when I told him that I might be obliged to leave the Indian Express.

  The meeting between RNG and Khushwant Singh was fruitful. RNG offered him the position of editor-in-chief. Once Khushwant Singh accepted the offer, RNG told him that he didn’t need to trouble himself about the emoluments. Khushwant Singh said that he would give his management a notice and join the Express in a fortnight or so. The news spread like wildfire. Inder Malhotra from the Times of India rang me up to confirm the Khushwant story. In the end, however, Khushwant Singh did not join the Express because no written offer was sent to him. As soon as RNG saw my story about elections he told me not to pursue the offer to Khushwant Singh.

  It was still early in the morning when I received a call from the chief censorship officer, Harry D’Penha who had been a colleague of mine at the PIB. He told me that he had been asked to contradict the election story and issue a warning to me that such news items could result in my arrest once again. That eventuality did not occur because within a few days of my scoop, elections were announced. The Emergency was, however, relaxed to enable public meetings to be held and other forms of canvassing to take place.

  JP rushed from Patna and got the editors of the Express together at the paper’s guest-house. He was in favour of boycotting the polls. His argument was: ‘How can fair elections be held when the Emergency has not been withdrawn but only relaxed?’ Would people dare to vote? To test the water, JP wanted to hold a public meeting at the Ramlila ground. The crowd overflowed on roads surrounding the ground. JP then requested us to propose the names of candidates. Better people should be harnessed for clean politics, he said, but did not ensure that.

  My information was that he had left most of the selection to L.K. Advani, Chandra Shekhar, and Jagjivan Ram. All three got their ‘own men’ to contest. They had come together when JP had threatened that he would not participate in the poll campaigns if they did not form a single, united party. It was then that the Janata Party was constituted and comprised the various political parties with their leaders pushing their own nominees for election. Very few state leaders had a say. The Akali Dal was however the boss in Punjab.

  The Akali Dal leader Prakash Singh Badal came to my office and requested me to contest from Chandigarh. I had no hesitation in declining his offer. I told him that some people should stay out in order to be in a position to criticize the government when necessary. Badal argued that I could do that from within but I stuck to my stand after consulting my wife who said that as both our sons had yet to complete their education we still needed the Express salary.

  I, however, often look back and wonder whether I should have taken the plunge. The bickering in the Janata Party often made me think that if I had joined politics I could possibly have been of some help in resolving differences. A few friends who had been in jail with me did their utmost to persuade me to join the party and abandon journalism. My father-in-law had also advised me when we were together in Tihar jail that I should carry a jhola over my shoulders and travel the country to awaken people to Gandhian values. He said: ‘We’ll have to persuade your wife [his daughter],’ but she firmly rejected the idea. The real reason I did not take the plunge was my sense that I could reach out to and influence more people through my columns. But I have been proved wrong; there is no alternative to parliament, for that is where the real power lies.

  I was disappointed over the selection of candidates. After all, the party, the Janata Party, which was formed in the wake of the Emergency, should have encompassed people who believed in parivartan, the message to overhaul the system that JP broadcast when initiating the poll campaign.

  Most people thought, and newspapermen were no exception, that the polls would be a very close race, with Indira Gandhi’s party having a slight edge over the opposition. It was difficult for anyone to have imagined that Nehru’s daughter, or for that matter the Congress which had been in power since Independence, could be defeated. This was indeed the impression in the West. Though small Scandinavian countries did not lose hope in the prospect of the Indian people reaffirming their faith in democracy, all the larger nations were on Indira Gandhi’s side. At one time, West Germany had warned India that if ever any German correspondent was expelled from New Delhi, it would cut off aid. Now the same country’s envoy in New Delhi was convinced that Indira Gandhi was the ideal leader for India. Privately, he rationalized that if all Western countries were to turn against her, she would tilt towards the Soviet Union.

  British High Commissioner Michael Walker told London that they had better accept Indira Gandhi and forget about democracy. US Ambassador William B. Saxbe was all in favour of Indira Gandhi from the day she had accepted his invitation to a private dinner party. She was the only one who stood between India and chaos, he told Washington. He was on friendly terms with Sanjay who openly favoured free enterprise. Saxbe had arranged collaboration between Maruti and International Harvester, a US firm.

  From among the major countries, the Soviet Union’s was the sole voice predicting Indira Gandhi’s defeat. Russian officials informed the Indian embassy in Moscow that things did not look favourable for her and that they were concerned.

  Elections were held in March 1977 and the people in all the northern states of India rejected the Congress outright. They demanded the restoration of their personal freedom and all that they had lost during the 19 months of the Emergency. Their revolt was not only against forced sterilization but against the system which had left them with no recourse to seek remedy against any form of injustice: the police would not write reports, newspapers would not print their grievances, the courts would not entertain their applications, and neighbours would not, out of fear, come to their help.

  The defeat of the Congress was phenomenal. It was able to muster only 153 seats as against 350 in the 1971 elections, the Janata Party won 298. The Congress did not win a single seat out of 84 in UP, 54 in Bihar, 13 in Punjab, 11 in Haryana, and 6 in Delhi. It won 1 seat in Madhya Pradesh, 1 in Rajasthan, 3 in West Bengal, 4 in Orissa, and 10 each in Assam and Gujarat.

  While the Janata swept the north, it fared poorly in south India, winning one seat each in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka. Obviously, the Janata wave did not sweep through the Vindhyas; it was apparent that the excesses in southern India had been fewer and tales of torture had not reached them.

  The thunderous victory of the Janata Party, which fought on the plank of democracy and freedom, came as a great surprise to the intelligentsia in India and the people in the West. Both were cut off from the people. Little did they realize that the poor loved their liberty as much as anyone else. Their approach might not have been sophisticated or ideologically pure but their faith in what they considered democracy was unflinching. A vote gave them the power to elect the leader they wanted and they used it to prove that they were the real masters. Indira Gandhi and her party had usurped that right and this was their judgement.

  I honestly believe that Indira Gandhi’s defeat saved the country and its democratic structure. Had she returned to power at that time, she would have felt that what Sanjay was doing was right. An open society, strengthened by free and fair elections, is a sine qua non for a country’s unity and homogeneity. Pakistan knows this from its experience.

  An apology by the Congress might have atoned for some of the sins of its leaders. What about the government machinery? The police were most to blame, but the condemnation was due in equal measure to the services as a whole. Was there any soul-searching on the part of public funct
ionaries? I don’t think so. The result was that the honest and upright among them were harassed to such a degree that others thought it wise not to fall foul of their political masters. The younger among them learnt that out-of-turn promotions and cushy jobs were available only if they were ‘obedient’.

  A few days after the elections I flew to Lucknow to visit Rae Bareilly, Indira Gandhi’s constituency. I wanted to meet Vinod Malhotra, the deputy commissioner, who was also the returning officer (RO) and compliment him for the courage he had demonstrated in announcing her defeat. He could not have had any inkling that the Congress had been routed from the entirety of northern India. No radio broadcasts were permitted when counting was in progress nor were results announced till the evening.

  The deputy commissioner’s residence was located at the back of his office. A peon took in my card and Malhotra came out and guided me to his office. My question was simple: What persuaded him to decide to announce the result? He said that he could judge from the first round of counting that Indira Gandhi was losing. M.L. Fotedar, her agent, had got the ballots counted thrice. Om Mehta rang him twice and R.K. Dhawan thrice asking him not to declare the result.

  Then Malhotra took me to his house, where his wife with a small child in her lap was sitting on a charpai. He said that when Indira Gandhi’s defeat was confirmed and reconfirmed, he went to consult his wife. He told her that if he were to announce the result, they would have to face Indira Gandhi’s wrath because she would return through a by-election. He presumed that her defeat was a freak and that the Congress party would win a majority.

  Malhotra’s wife told me that when he sought her advice she told him: ‘Hum bartan maanj lange magar baimani nahi karenge. [We shall clean utensils but not indulge in dishonesty].’ This gave him courage to announce the result. After Indira Gandhi’s return to power in 1980 I reached him with great difficulty to find out if he was alright. He had been transferred to some routine posting outside Lucknow. He requested me not to contact him again as he had had ‘enough of it’.