INDIRA GANDHI

TWELVE

January to June 1975

The first six months of 1975 saw a crescendo of political activity, with Jayaprakash Narayan as its centre. The main Opposition parties acted in concert in Parliament and in some state assemblies and backed common winning candidates in by-elections. A series of Congress reverses at the polls, climaxed by its defeat in the Gujarat state election in June, brought the arousal represented by the Bihar Movement into sharp focus. Yet the new climate was fundamentally different from that of 1967, when Congress had suffered its first major electoral setback. As a result of the 1969 split in the party, followed by Mrs Gandhi’s victory in the 1971 election, high hopes and expectations had been roused. These had not begun to be fulfilled, and the electorate was sorely disappointed. A mood of euphoria had been dashed to the ground by grave economic crisis and the government’s inability to cope with it, by the scandal and strife within the Congress and its shielding of the corrupt, and by its apparent indifference to mounting despair. The prospect of an alternative was emerging in the form of a united Opposition. But the new atmosphere was also the result of a searing psychological experience. Those who voted anti-Congress in 1975 did so because its leader, member of a revered family—no stranger to the democratic faith—had revealed how far she could go in trifling with democratic institutions and in crushing dissent, a performance frightening in its implications for the country. In the cold political light of 1975, public sentiment, affection and indulgence, long a source of strength and succour to the Congress, had given way to distrust in its leader’s basic credentials. A rocky road had been travelled in six years, from assured political values to political extravaganza, from ethics to the lawless techniques of expediency and ambition, from open transactions to the politics of secrecy and violence. It was, in essence, the distance between Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi.

Events between January and June, profound in their effect on the political landscape, are best described in sequence.

On January 2 at 5.50 p.m. L.N. Mishra was injured by a bomb explosion at a railway platform ceremony in Samastipur, Bihar. He died at Danapur, Bihar, at 9.30 the next morning. The surgeon, R.V.P. Sinha, who operated on him at Danapur, later pointed out the inordinate delay in getting him to a hospital. The train carrying the wounded minister did not leave Samastipur until 8.30 p.m. Instead of being rushed to Darbhanga, an hour away, he was taken to Danapur where another forty-five minutes were lost while the train shunted from the wrong platform to the correct one. When he reached the operating table, six hours after the explosion, he was a case of ‘grave emergency’, his injuries so advanced, ‘it was a herculean effort to start the operation’.¹

Just before the assassination, leaders of the Jan Sangh, CPI-M and BLD had called for an inquiry into a series of ‘mysterious [road] accident deaths’ of men investigating cases with important political implications. These included D.K. Kashyap, connected with the Nagarwala case; R.D. Pandey, a deputy director of the Intelligence Bureau; Anil Chopra, collector of Daman, who had broken a smuggler gang; and recently, Ramanathan, a CBI inspector examining the improprieties of Congress MPs selling licences to well-known firms, an affair in which L.N. Mishra was implicated, and which was the subject of storm and stress in the current session of Parliament. Mishra’s death by violence raised a flurry of fresh speculation about his role in the ‘licence scandal’.

On January 7 All India Radio broadcast a portion of Mrs Gandhi’s speech at a condolence meeting organized by the Congress party’s Delhi unit. Her accusation that Mishra’s death was a ‘rehearsal’ for which she herself was the ‘real target’ was as shocking as her imputation of the crime to JP’s movement. An edge of hysteria was conveyed to listeners more startling than the printed account of her speech. Bewildered listeners heard her disown the crime herself and decry attempts to link her with it, ‘Even Congressmen have been misled by these blatant lies.’

The condolence meeting was converted into one of fervent support for Mrs Gandhi. Its most vigorous speaker,

H.N. Bahuguna, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, said ‘fifty-eight crores of people’ stood solidly behind the prime minister. Mrs Gandhi’s own wrought-up accusation had the reverse of the effect desired. On January 8 the Hindustan Times editorial pointed out:

… those who have rushed to implicate Mr. Jayaprakash Narayan by proxy with the Samastipur outrage might recall earlier bomb explosions last May at the Bankipore [Patna] dak bungalow and the subsequent firing on JP’s procession in Patna on June 5th from a government flat allotted to a Congress MLA, Mr. Phulena Rai, and occupied by workers of the ‘Indira Brigade’ … the use of bombs and firearms in Bihar is older than JP’s movement… .

There was open talk that a government agency was responsible for Mishra’s death. Controversy over the minister had reached a peak in the licence case before Parliament, involving government in its most embarrassing collision with the Opposition. His death had come at a convenient time. Jyotirmoy Basu’s (CPI-M) statement in Parliament that Mishra’s office and home had been searched immediately after his death to remove documents connected with Sanjay Gandhi’s Maruti company was not answered by the home minister. The extreme slowness of the CBI investigation created further suspicion of government involvement, while the prompt dismantling of the dais at Samastipur had destroyed primary evidence. A politician who dominated and manipulated cliques, had men and money to do his bidding and aroused disproportionate loyalties and antagonisms, Mishra had reportedly refused to resign and had a devoted following in the party to back him up.

The event served to blur Opposition differences and feed a mounting fear. The CPI-M issued a statement on January 13 from Calcutta: ‘The semi-fascist and gangster tactics of the ruling party have been continuing for the last three years, and free functioning of all opposition forces, especially the CPI-M and other Left and democratic opposition, had become an impossibility… .’ Marxist leader Jyoti Basu announced the CPI-M would, as a result, invite the Old Congress and the Jan Sangh to a conference to plan a broad-based movement in Bengal for civil liberties and free and fair elections. Each party would conduct its separate campaign but the three would be synchronized. There would be no truck, he added, with the CPI.

The CPI, also an Opposition party, was not recognized as such any more. Its interests were too closely identified with the Congress. In a recent article, Mohit Sen had explained his party’s objective as ‘unity and struggle vis-a-vis the Congress’. The unity was manifest, the struggle was not. If the CPI had disapproved of the breaking of the railways strike the previous year, its disapproval had been in a low key. During the Soviet President Brezhnev’s visit to India in 1973, the party had been told to back Mrs Gandhi regardless of her policies. The Soviet investment in India was political and geographical, not ideological. The Indian record showed that the CPI harvest out of this alliance, abundant in its share and spoils of power, had not added favourably to its reputation. An eight per cent bonus to workers, made law in September 1974 (and applicable to 1973), was withdrawn by the government in 1975. The wheat takeover, fully backed by the CPI, had been discredited by its failure. The projected takeover of the rice crop had been abandoned. The nationalization of coal mines in 1973, authored by Mohan Kumaramangalam, became linked in the public mind with the Chasnala mine disaster in Bihar in December 1975, one of the worst in mining history. It was judged to be due to ‘reckless slaughter mining endangering mine safety’ in order to increase production after nationalization. The party’s direct influence on the Congress had dwindled after its chief spokesman in government, Kumaramangalam, was killed in an air crash in 1973. The Congress–CPI combine had less logic to commend it than the Opposition of varying political complexions now drawing closer together. Developments in Bangladesh, with Mujibur Rahman taking dictatorial powers, added anxiety and incentive to this process. That the war to release a much heralded ‘Sonar Bangala’ (‘Golden Bengal’) from bondage—one that so exhaustively engaged India’s soldiery, resources and idealism during 1971— should have come to this was a reminder of what might happen next in India. The possibility of a dictatorship, with a sudden seizure of extra powers by Mrs Gandhi, was widely discussed.

On January 19, at a youth rally in Patna, JP appealed to adherents of the Bihar Movement to enlighten people about the danger ahead and mobilize them to defeat any move on Mrs Gandhi’s part to thrust dictatorship on the country. Her outburst at the condolence meeting for L.N. Mishra, he said, showed she was realizing ‘people were losing confidence in her’. Defending the multiparty membership of the movement, he said it had no labels. Members of the Jan Sangh and Old Congress had faced lathis and bullets and were in prison for their participation in it. He would not ask any party to leave it. Six weeks later (March 5), addressing the twentieth plenary session of the Jan Sangh in New Delhi, he said he wished to communicate the conclusion after a year’s work with the Jan Sangh and the RSS that he had found them neither reactionary nor fascist. Fascism was rearing its ugly head, but it came from another quarter. A similar caution was delivered by the CPI-M General Secretary, P. Sundarayya, in Hyderabad on February 12. Denying his party had joined hands with the Jan Sangh or the BLD, he said the danger of fascism, however, was much greater from Mrs Gandhi. It would not surprise him if she, aided by the CPI, repeated the Bangladesh development and called off the 1976 election.

The Opposition, though fragmented, had been a lively and talented presence in Indian politics. The combined votes it polled, even before the 1967 elections, its high point of achievement, had been more numerous than those polled by the Congress party. Single Opposition parties or coalitions had formed state governments, at times under outstanding and admired leaders, as Annadorai of Tamil Nadu and Namboodiripad of Kerala. Accomplished Opposition speakers had exerted pressure on the Congress majority in Parliament and contributed to the quality and maturity of parliamentary debate. The near-impossibility of dislodging the Congress even gave the enterprise a certain gallantry. The challenge called for discipline and dedication. Thus the Jan Sangh built up a student cadre, the Vidyarthi Parishad, a successful foil to the CPI’s All India Students’ Federation, and prided itself on the allegiance it commanded among the young. A quarter century of democratic opportunity had left the Opposition divided. When it surfaced after Nehru’s death, it did so with a distinct regional bias. It took Mrs Gandhi’s autocratic tread to goad the Opposition to unity. In this it had an advantage it had not had before—the decay of the ruling party’s image and its impotence on the economic front. Unwilling to give up party identities, the Opposition formed a single bloc in Parliament and some state assemblies and fielded common ‘janata’ candidates for approaching by-elections. After the Emergency of 1975, prison and suppression furthered the process, with the Janata Party finally challenging the Congress in the national election of 1977. This development can best be understood in terms of a scene reduced by Mrs Gandhi’s style to a warlike confrontation between the Congress and other opinion, leaving no room for compromise or manoeuvre.

Yet there was more to Opposition unity than this. If Mrs Gandhi’s categorical style had broken with the whole texture of the Congress’s past, initiated alignment with the CPI at home and the Soviet Union abroad, and in the process fundamentally altered Indian politics and the working of Indian political institutions, Opposition parties had also undergone degrees of transformation. Some old stock images had changed and no longer applied.

The Old Congress, the rump left by the split, tainted at the time by accusations of conservatism and ‘bossism’, and expected shortly to capitulate to the ruling party and disappear from the scene, had not done so. Its president, Asoka Metha, once a leading theoretician of the Socialist Party, had always been associated with the Left. Its elder statesman, Morarji Desai, had acquired added stature as an honourable man in the hurricane of desertion and defection encouraged by the split. He stood out now as one of the last Gandhians, recalling receding values, a symbol of dignity in the muddy political landscape. The charge levelled by Congress radicals some years earlier that Desai’s businessman son, Kanti, had used his father’s position to promote his business, now looked meagre next to Mrs Gandhi’s vigorous sponsorship of her son and the official apparatus freely used to assist him. The conservative taint had faded in view of Mrs Gandhi’s lack of radical or credible performance, while her party’s extortion and use of money on a scale as yet unparalleled had given ‘bossism’ and ‘black money’ a new life and dimension.

The Jan Sangh had since its founding been open to all communities. On this issue it had parted with the Hindu Mahasabha and, under the leadership of Shyama Prashad Mukherjee, had avoided the word ‘Hindu’ altogether in its official title, using ‘Bharatiya’ instead. Its espousal of Hinduism and Hindi as the dominant culture and language of India was, it claimed, based on statistical realities, Hindi being spoken or understood by 42 per cent of the population, as against the next largest figure, 9.24 per cent speaking Telugu. Its attitude towards these two issues had, of circumstance and necessity, become more tolerant, for religion ceased to be a profitable issue in politics once the fever following the Partition subsided, while the search for support in the south and among the Muslims produced a modified stand on Hindi. Mrs Gandhi’s angry militancy towards the Jan Sangh showed its front-rank leadership up in a sober, balanced light by contrast. Even the RSS, noted for militant activities in the past and denounced for its anti-secularism and cultivation of the Hindu mystique, now contrasted favourably with the growing aggressiveness of the Youth Congress, protected when it transgressed the limits of law-abiding behaviour.

The Socialist Party, always anti-doctrine and experimental, felt vindicated in its demand for a redistribution of economic priorities and more decentralization. Mrs Gandhi’s drive for world recognition and her definition of ‘achievement’ as victory in war and the explosion of a nuclear device did not accord with these.

The Old Congress, the Jan Sangh and the Socialist Party found common ground with Congressmen who opposed the alliance with the CPI and feared the consequences of Mrs Gandhi’s present unyielding posture.

The CPI-M, its ideological purity intact, kept out of the Opposition bloc, but extended its cooperation where it thought fit. Battered by police action, its chief enemy was the ‘fascism’ of the Congress–CPI combine.

Mrs Gandhi had two choices. Influential members of her party were urging a reconciliation with the Opposition and a basic programme inviting the cooperation of all parties to meet the urgent needs of the population. She chose her second option, rejecting a conciliatory course. This meant the manufacture of a ‘right reaction’ obstructing her, with which no talks were possible.

That the time had come for a new political combine, ignoring conventional left–right divisions, was apparent to the public, for the effect of jointly fielded ‘janata’ candidates was immediate and electric. The Congress had already lost two by-elections when, in the third week of January, the Opposition won a spectacular victory in the important by-election to the Lok Sabha from Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh). The seat had been a Congress bastion for fifty years, vacated by the death of Seth Govind Das, who had held it since his membership of the Central Assembly during British rule. The New Congress candidate was his grandson, Ravi Mohan, backed by the chief minister, P.C. Sethi, who put state transport (including helicopters) and resources to lavish use in the campaign. Mohan was defeated in all eight segments of the Lok Sabha constituency, all eight of whose assembly seats were occupied by Congress MLAs—an anti-Congress wind the Times of India described as ‘a veritable tornado’. The ‘janata’ candidate, a virtually unknown gold-medal engineering student, Sharad Yadav, became Parliament’s youngest member. Welcoming the victory, JP told an interviewer in Bombay on January 22 that the people’s force now at work was more powerful than the ‘greatest and grandest alliance’:

The ‘grand alliance’ seems to have become for Mrs. Gandhi the same kind of cry as Bonaparte had become for British mothers in those times… . Mrs. Gandhi makes herself out as radical and suggests she stands for policies and ideals of which Jayaprakash Narayan and the Bihar Movement are afraid. But the people of Bihar, or for that matter, the people of India, would like to ask her what she has done in nine years of her reign. What radical change has she brought about?

The Opposition’s ‘janata’ candidate won next at the Govindpura (Madhya Pradesh) by-election. February brought further defeats for the Congress in two (Meham and Rori) out of three by-elections to the Haryana assembly. The victories of the ‘janata’ candidates, one of them a young lawyer new to politics, were particularly galling to Chief Minister Bansi Lal who had campaigned extensively with several cabinet colleagues. The Barpeta (Assam) by-election to the Lok Sabha on February 20 revealed a degree of panic in the Congress party and the government. The seat had been vacated when Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed was nominated to the presidency. Now President, he paid a visit to Assam timed to coincide with the Congress election campaign. The ‘janata’ candidate, B. Goswami, with a dramatic lead of 41,000 votes in a constituency of 1,00,000 was declared defeated by 28,000—more votes than the constituency had—in favour of the Congress candidate. Goswami’s messenger, on his way to Delhi to lodge a complaint with the Election Commission, was detained at Guwahati (Assam) airport and not allowed to proceed, though the ballot papers he was carrying as evidence bore the signature and seal of a presiding officer.

Mrs Gandhi described the new wave as ‘certain outside forces’ taking a deep interest in India’s internal affairs, a theme she expounded for newspaper and magazine interviews, and in open and closed-door meetings with selected academics, businessmen and other groups. Her remarks were repeated as part of the news bulletin, or following it, over radio and television. She did not support her statements with facts, figures or precise information. Along with secret conclaves being held by the Congress party in parts of the country, her remarks shrouded the atmosphere in insinuation and vague menace, but presented no argument.

Indira Gandhi’s view of JP as a mere epiphenomenon or a shadow, or a puppet controlled by sinister forces is a typical attitude of the established reaction against the rising forces of revolution… . Each day a new scandal, a new Watergate that exposes the ruling party and the government confirms the absurdity of JP’s caricature at the hands of our rulers. Almost all the forces of fascism, such as big business, black money, bureaucratic power, secret police etc. are all lined up against JP’s movement, and on the side of the Congress-CPI alliance. Indian fascism will have a radical face, as is the case of many other countries in the Third World.²

The above comment, by no means isolated, represented the opinion of several distinguished non-partisan commentators that Mrs Gandhi was pursuing a neurotic line, unrelated to facts. In her view of a black-and-white, either-or world, peopled with elements ‘for’ and ‘against’ her, it is probable she could not see the situation objectively. The act of coming ‘down from the clouds’, which her father had seen the need for years earlier, had never been accomplished. She had continued to be ‘extraordinarily imaginative and self-centred or subjective’, and the line between fact and fantasy was one she was unaware of. ‘A great actor when he is acting, never forgets that it is all a game,’ Ignacio Silone wrote of the distinction consummate actors and politicians make between deceiving others and themselves. Mrs Gandhi seemed, however, fully identified with the fictions she was playing. Her opening speech at the Jamaica Commonwealth Conference in May made admirable reading, showing a touching idealism divorced from her own reality, ‘I was brought up in an atmosphere where politics denoted neither power nor riches… . But as I look around I find that politics are taken to be the art of acquiring, holding and wielding power. International relations are said to deal with power equations among nations… . ’ Yet it was her expert use of the levers of power that marked her own success in the politics she herself had initiated—a far cry from the upbringing she had had when ‘politics denoted neither power nor riches’.

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 intention 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.

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.