EIGHT
Reaping the Whirlwind
Victory in Bangladesh and the return of the refugees gave the country a psychological lift unequalled since Independence. Mrs Gandhi’s prestige and popularity were at their height. To the mandate she had received in the 1971 election was now added the resounding success of the Congress in the 1972 State Legislative Assembly elections, reflecting the country’s hope that stable majorities in the states would provide the base for economic improvement. With an immense fund of goodwill and no political challenge to impede her, Mrs Gandhi could begin her programme for the removal of poverty. Urban and rural unrest, the growing militancy of organized labour, the general impatience of the electorate, all demanded it. Yet this proved to be a period of total political involvement for Mrs Gandhi, to the neglect of economic affairs, though her party kept up a high temperature of vocal demand for ‘radical’change, along with a denigration of those said to be obstructing it. This may have been a useful strategy where, in the nature of things, lightning changes cannot take place, while it also furnished a smokescreen for measures that had profoundly altered the body politic under the guise of ‘constitutional’ change.
India’s political system, a marriage between the British liberal constitutional tradition and Mahatma Gandhi’s humanitarian ideals, was also a deliberate choice at Independence. It rested on the belief that a country so large and diverse could most humanely preserve its unity, as well as its legitimate diversity, within a parliamentary and federal system. While Mrs Gandhi functioned within the system she had inherited, an obsessive concern with her own importance led her progressively to tamper with the brakes and balances it provided and to block the vents that might in time and in the natural course of events give the system a chance to replace her. She did not openly challenge it. She simply maintained the continuous contradiction of publicly professing concern for parliamentary institutions, while undoing their inner scaffolding, a style that had significantly altered the Indian landscape.
She had used Parliament to endorse ordinances promulgated when she encountered resistance to a measure. An assembly in which Nehru’s meticulous regard for democratic principle and procedure had produced a high level of debate had descended to the bulk and intimidation of sheer numbers, blunted to or contemptuous of an opposing opinion. Nehru had run government on big majorities, but much of the modification or acceptance of policy had come from an exchange of views within the party as well as criticism outside it. Mrs Gandhi treated the Opposition as illegitimate, and this inevitably affected fresh air and freedom within her own party. The strict conformity demanded as patriotic paralysed expression and ideas. The civil service was similarly affected. Administrative reform, accented by her as a vital need, had in actual working become an arbitrary exercise, with administrators dependent on government favour, instead of an overhaul of administrative procedures themselves.
The atmosphere for magnanimity and cooperation, now that her own political strength was secure, was vitiated when Congress MPs were told not to foregather with Opposition MPs in the central lobby of Parliament, traditionally a meeting place for politicians and journalists, where political crosscurrents met in a relaxed exchange of views and humour. The directive was condemned as absurd by A.B. Vajpayee ( Jan Sangh), Hiren Mukerjee (CPI) and Madhu Limaye (Socialist Party), but the absurdity had a sombre touch. The ruling party behaved not only as dominant but permanent, and the prime minister seemed temperamentally unable to adjust to the very concept of Parliament. In an article published in August 1973, Hiren Mukerjee wrote:
Unlike her father, who rejoiced in Parliament, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, though Leader of the Lok Sabha, apart from being Prime Minister, has an allergy to it. One may understand a certain personal reticence, for Parliament today is a peculiar and sometimes repellant kettle of fish, very different from what it was till ten years ago; but it is representative of our people’s soured mood and the Prime Minister must come to terms and make friends with it. She prefers, however, to let hordes of people interview her, and listen rather than talk, keeping away even when most needed in Parliament sessions. One wonders if she prefers the Presidential form of government, but meanwhile the business of the country suffers. Her massive majority and the fact of the Opposition being miscellaneous and very differently motivated, has enabled a gloss to be placed even over what can be called a political enormity, namely, the phenomenon of unprecedentedly heartless treatment of political prisoners, large numbers of whom have been beaten up and killed, inside and outside of jails, without anything like a judicial process, without conformity with routine regulations regarding post mortem and other investigations.
Her style had affected the balance between the states and the Central government. With many, and eventually all, of Congress chief ministers her nominees—not the choice of the party’s state units—the Centre’s* detailed interference became the norm in state affairs. While this enormously strengthened Mrs Gandhi’s own grip on her party’s state units and made reward and punishment in the form of granting or withholding loans and assistance from the Centre to state governments her own prerogative, the damage to the federal structure soon showed. State politics revealed an instability resembling the period of unsteady coalitions after the 1967 election, with bargaining and defections confined now to factions of the Congress. A jungle of intrigue and intra-party feuding sprouted, unlike the factional differences of the Nehru era, when state leadership and considerations had resolved crises. The rungs of the ladder of command now dispensed with, all decisions issued from the top. The results were detrimental to both party and country. In her grasp of the nuts and bolts of the machinery of power, so essential to control, Mrs Gandhi exhibited a curious lack of overall vision, if power was to be vested in a community and not in the person of a single leader. She installed a strategy of command that depended entirely on personal loyalty. It did not train a leadership for the future, taking care to remove or subdue any sign of emerging leadership. Her vision stopped at the machine, and her hold on it produced near-chaotic conditions in the states. Faction quarrels in Orissa forced Nandini Sathpathy (sent there by Mrs Gandhi as chief minister in 1972) to quit. Kedar Pandey in Bihar and Ghanshyam Oza in Gujarat followed suit. In Madhya Pradesh P.C. Sethi fought the rebel faction in order to retain control as chief minister. In Andhra Pradesh where a separatist agitation started, Mrs Gandhi’s nominee faced rough weather. By 1973 faction fighting in many states was endemic, with state units in disarray and their leaders abandoning deteriorating conditions of law and order and economic decline while they sought the prime minister’s intervention to keep their seats from rivals in their own party. Shaky on their own ground, each problem sent them hurrying to Delhi for orders.
The props and conventions of political behaviour had been set aside by Mrs Gandhi during 1969, and her own party felt the recoil. She was acknowledged leader over its mushrooming indiscipline, but did not seem able to prevent it. There was disgrace in the spectacle of the ruling party in its exalted, unrivalled position fallen into a snarl of schemes and intrigues. The Patriot lamented editorially in July 1973:
While the Congress factions were busy cutting each other’s throats, Ahmedabad witnessed a shameless outbreak of communal violence, a gruesome reminder to the ruling party that communal gangsters, if not the more unscrupulous elements in its own ranks, are ever on the prowl to exploit every unstable situation for their own ends.
In another July editorial the Patriot described the condition of the ruling party as an
… epidemic of petty factionalism that is spreading in the Congress from State to State, paralysing its organisational structure, benumbing whatever mind it had and threatening to create a mortal political crisis when the country is reeling without any sense of direction in a chaotic economic morass… .
These indictments by a CPI-owned newspaper and supporter of the Congress were almost indistinguishable from the right wing Jan Sangh organ, Motherland’s comment on Madhya Pradesh’s affairs:
Mr. Sethi’s personal fate or the outcome of the Congress faction fights, however, is of little concern to the people. What is really tragic is that the destiny of the nation should be in the hands of these morally sick leaders of a sick political party.
There was an increasing awareness of corruption at high levels. The public was convinced of authority’s lucrative alliance with corrupt elements in the country, important smugglers among them, and with the ‘black money’ that flowed from sections of industry.
It was finally the state of Bihar that showed the most dire effects of federal corrosion when, in 1974, the state government gave up all pretence at decision-making during a period requiring the most careful judgement and action.
Tension mounted within the Congress over its alliance with the CPI. The Nehru Study Forum considered it unnecessary and harmful to the party’s image in the country. The Young Turk, Chandrasekhar, spoke scathingly of communist ‘management’ of the Congress, violently objecting to this new political elite, the control it exercised and the communist stamp that flourished under Mrs Gandhi’s umbrella. It was feared the extent of Indian commitment to the Soviet Union was cutting out other options when India needed wheat and skills. Yet the alliance with the CPI was officially and publicly affirmed in March 1973 when the CPI and the Congress took part in a New Delhi seminar organized by the Congress Forum for Socialist Action, presided over by Congress President Shankar Dayal Sharma, to alert the people against ‘the Rightist counterrevolutionary challenge’. Mrs Gandhi ordered both forums to wind up when they clashed in open recrimination. But the tension continued.
As the bloom faded from the ruling party’s image, disillusionment focused on two of its prominent figures: Lalit Narayan Mishra, Union minister for railways, and Bansi Lal, chief minister of Haryana. The 53rd Report of the Estimates Committee of the Bihar Assembly had recorded that L.N. Mishra and his family had made substantial fortunes out of contracts connected with Bihar’s Kosi project. Specific charges of corruption and misuse of authority had been brought against Bansi Lal by Opposition leaders. These, addressed to President V.V. Giri, were contained in three documented memorandums, calling for an inquiry. As the demand for an inquiry gathered force during the 1972 monsoon session of Parliament, Mrs Gandhi gave the charge sheet against him to a sub-committee of the cabinet, of which D.P. Dhar, Kashmiri head of the Planning Commission, was an important member. It exonerated Bansi Lal and dismissed the charges. If Mrs Gandhi was disturbed by the reputations of these colleagues she gave no indication of it. Her public references to them were warm and appreciative. The expectation that she would replace or reprimand them did not materialize. The impression grew that these were key figures in her confidence whose services could not be easily replaced. Her patronage of them made them flashpoints of a rising resentment. While L.N. Mishra, associated with fund-raising for the party, remained in the background, Bansi Lal, a cruder and more colourful political figure, was involved in open controversy and was known to have the prime minister’s special protection in return for his staunch support and 291 acres of requisitioned land provided for her son’s car factory in his state.
In her capacity as leader, Mrs Gandhi apparently did not feel accountable to her party. She cultivated a monarchical remoteness, above and beyond the growing uproar of factionalism and criticism, untouched by and oblivious to it. Indeed she denied any interest in leadership. She had told the Congress Parliamentary Party on March 13, 1972, ‘I am not one of those who believe in leadership. My whole attempt is to create a society in which people do not need leaders.’ The society she was creating showed all the grotesquerie of the opposite trend. For those who had long known it, there was a peculiar pathos in watching the Congress, once a national movement inspired by high ideals, in its best days devoted to hard work and a constructive purpose, thus succumb. The idea of a leader as the focus of admiration and adulation was not new to Indians, a people more willing than most to follow a leader. But modern India’s leadership had been built and based on professional excellence or on great example, not on the emblems or actuality of power. Mrs Gandhi’s citadel attracted an older simile, that of a reigning medieval monarch surrounded by the panoply of a court, its flattery, its intrigue and the swift retribution that visits offenders. Backed by the modern machinery of state power in a country where the majority were uneducated and could be easily manipulated, her scope for the exercise of arbitrary leadership was almost unlimited. The pedestal she occupied, high above the party, served her well. Indicative of her lack of the common touch, her inability to tolerate equals, her trust of no one created the necessary regal distance between her and the party, her and the crowd, so that, though the muddy tide of corruption and confusion lapped at her, it could not overwhelm her. She could remain unsullied by it.
This became harder to do as questions arose and a storm broke in Parliament over the non-appearance of Maruti, her son Sanjay’s car project, his failure to account for the delay and his personal financial gains from government contracts. There was critical comment in the press and talk in marketplaces and coffee houses, where most controversial issues and political scandal ended for dissection. Industry was called to account and penalized for failing to produce under a licence. No strictures had been served on the Maruti factory, built in record time in a period when building was handicapped by shortages of cement and other materials.
One newspaper, the Hindustan Times, was expected to withhold both unfavourable comment and neutral assessment. K.K. Birla, its proprietor and financial backer of Sanjay Gandhi, conveyed Sanjay’s annoyance to the editor. B.G. Verghese replied on September 19, 1973, with his customary clarity and composure:
Dear Mr. Birla,
Following your telephone call yesterday I checked through our file of items published on Maruti. According to our library clippings there is only one item recently published and this is an interview with Mr. Sanjay Gandhi published in the Evening News of September 5. This interview gave Mr. Gandhi an opportunity to project his project in the best manner possible.
Earlier in July we had published a news item about the automobile industry in which the opening reference was to Maruti.
Wing Commander Chaudhury of Maruti Ltd. sent us a letter discussing some of the points contained in our news report. This was published extensively. The clippings are enclosed. Some time later Wing Commander Chaudhury sent us a second letter apropos of nothing, which very largely repeated the points contained in his earlier letter. This we did not publish as it made no new point and came within a few weeks of the publication of the earlier letter.
I am, therefore, surprised that Mr. Sanjay Gandhi should feel that we have been unfair to him or his project. On the contrary we showed great forbearance in accepting the letters sent by Wing Commander Chaudhury although these were sent to us personally through a senior information official of the Prime Minister’s Secretariat. This was very improper and is the kind of thing that arouses a great deal of suspicion, and lends credibility to the various public charges being made about official favours being bestowed on Maruti Ltd… .
With kind regards,
Yours sincerely,
(Sd.) B. G. Verghese
Verghese’ editorship of the Hindustan Times was terminated on Sanjay Gandhi’s order and with Mrs Gandhi’s knowledge and tacit consent. Actual dismissal was held up by the Delhi High Court’s stay order and did not become official until September 22, 1975. Verghese’ case became a cause celebre with a macabre twist. The issue it raised—proprietal interference—gave a handle to the government’s ‘diffusion of ownership’ scheme and later its steps to ‘restructure’ the press, while in fact the proprietor was carrying out the orders of Mrs Gandhi’s son. The government’s claim that it wished to end the ‘monopoly’ of the larger newspapers stood revealed as hypocritical when in 1976, K.K. Birla, publisher of the Hindustan Times, was made chairman of the board of directors of the Indian Express newspapers in obvious recognition of his services to the Gandhi family, with control over a larger newspaper ‘monopoly’ than before.
Indian agriculture depends crucially upon the period of rain between June and September. Its failure in 1972 was the beginning of a severe economic crisis laying bare the government’s lack of programme. Prices rose by 14 per cent, essential supplies fell short, and drought and famine gripped large areas. Constant and crippling power crises affected vital areas of public and private industry. The anxiety over food and unemployment set off agitations, often violent, at nine universities. These had to close for a time, including Delhi University and the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology in the capital. Government’s announcements that disparities must end, ‘crash’ programmes would be launched for employment and agriculture, and ‘big’ business would be drastically limited in its scope of manufacture and would have to abandon the profit motive, got no further than cutting off existing initiative and performance. The excitement of bank nationalization had died away and with no clear credit policy had become a non-event. The optimism following the Bangladesh victory was turning into shock and anger. Remedy, or even an attempt at it, seemed blocked by an atmosphere of moral decay surrounding and supporting political functioning at the highest level. No one expected purity of politicians, but the conviction that things had gone too far was not confined to critics of Mrs Gandhi’s party. Addressing a convocation of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, of which Mrs Gandhi herself was chancellor, film actor Balraj Sahni, a star in the Left firmament, created a stir when he named Union and state ministers as corrupt. The sins of the undivided Congress looked pale and sedate compared with the lawlessness of Mrs Gandhi and her lieutenants and their assumption of non-accountability at the bar of any opinion.
In October 1972 a debate on fundamental rights began before a thirteen-member bench of the Supreme Court. Counsel for the petitioners who challenged the validity of the recent amendments was N.A. Palkhivala, eminent constitutional lawyer and authority on tax law.The government was defended by a galaxy of state advocates general in addition to the attorney general. The judgement, a mixed one, was delivered on April 23, 1973. The main issues before the judges were: (1) Can Parliament amend fundamental rights under its normal amending power consisting of a two-thirds majority in both Houses of Parliament? (2) Assuming it can, are there any areas affecting the use of these rights that the amending power cannot override? The majority of judges decided that fundamental rights can be amended by the normal amending power, but that essential features of the Constitution cannot be so changed. These, however, were not demarcated, leaving the fundamental rights in a grey legal area to be variously interpreted. A bulwark against possible dictatorship was heavily eroded, and the government’s use of its mandate became a palpable anxiety.
The annual Congress session at Bidhan Nagar near Calcutta, held in December 1972 amid flourish and display during India’s worst economic crisis, aroused comment, both despairing and caustic, from leading newspapers. Some of its severest critics were Congressmen themselves, the ebullient younger element, unawed and unsilenced, whose crusading fire had helped to raise Mrs Gandhi to her powerful pedestal, and who had pinned great hopes on her for the fashioning of a clean, cohesive instrument to bring about change.
Key speeches at Bidhan Nagar took no searching look at the party’s ills or the economic crisis. The Congress president, Shankar Dayal Sharma, spoke instead of ‘the forces of reaction eager to take advantage’. Defence Minister Chavan called the violent agitations in Andhra Pradesh and Assam the efforts of right and left extremists to obstruct socialism, ‘We have to do everything possible to frustrate their machinations. They are not yet reconciled to the massive victory of the Congress in the last two elections.’ Mrs Gandhi predictably declared, ‘We are with the people. Neither the capitalists nor the press can detract us from our path.’ This monotonous chant added thin comfort to what the Tribune editorially called:
… a year of less hope and more despair, of rich rhetoric and poor performance, of more bogeys and less realism in India. For Mrs. Gandhi personally and the Congress generally, it was in some ways the worst year since the historic split in 1969. Both were at the crossroads again, totally uncertain of the future.
*The term ‘Centre’ is commonly used for the Union government (as opposed to the state governments).