This will be 49th Year when the dreaded Emergency was declared by the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. During this period civil rights were suspended, there was censorship on the Press and a crackdown on opposition leaders and the popular movements. This was the first dark period of Indian democracy when democratic rights were severely eroded by the administrative fiat. Hindustan Times wrote, “The Emergency is often regarded as a dark phase in independent India’s history because this period was marked by unbridled state incarceration, stifling of dissent, and government crackdown on civil liberties. There were reports of frequent human rights violations and the press being censored to a repressive extent.”
There were two major backgrounds due to which Emergency was imposed. One was that the Election of Indira Gandhi was challenged by the Socialist leader Raj Naryan in the Court. The High Court of Allahabad declared her election as null and void. The Supreme Court put a stay on the order but restricted her right to vote in the parliament. This is when on her advice the President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmad issued the proclamation bringing in Emergency.
Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) Movement
The parallel political process was the Jaya Prakash (JP) Naryan’s movement. This movement was launched against corruption. The uprising of Gujarat students (1974) precipitated by increase in the mess fees spiraled and forced the Chief Minister of Gujarat to resign. Later, Bihar students also launched a movement. This was the time when in the backdrop of Indira Gandhi’s popularity which peaked after the 1971 war leading to formation of BanglaDesh. This was followed by rising prices and worsening the plight of people in general. This period saw various social movements coming up and it seemed India was in turmoil.
JP gave a call to people to protest and there was a massive response. JP had a strong prestige as an indefatigable freedom fighter. But by 1950 he came to believe in ‘party less democracy’ and gave a call for ‘total revolution’. This reduced people’s faith in parliamentary institutions. His call to state officials, army in particular, was not to obey the orders given by the state.
RSS became the major component of the JP movement, it had good presence in North India, ABVP and Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Vahini were strong in Bihar. These played an important role in the JP movement.
On June 25, 1975, Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) called for a Satyagraha and a rally which demanded that the PM should resign. This was a significant part of the movement. JP had given a call for total revolution, social justice and equitable distribution of resources. There was a massive response and most opposition parties endorsed it.
Emergency Proclaimed
Same night emergency was proclaimed and major leaders of the opposition, JP himself, George Fernandes, Vajpayee, Chaudhari Charan Singh, Chandrashekhar and many left leaders were arrested. RSS, Jamat-I- Islami and CPI ML were banned. Nearly one lakh people were arrested.
As the media was gagged many editors left their editorial columns blank as a protest. The painful strangulation of democracy continued for 19 months, when it was lifted and fresh elections were announced. During this period Indira Gandhi’s son, Sanjay Gandhi, practically took over the administration along with Bansilal and Vidya Charan Shukla.
Sanjay had crude methods and he wanted the slums to be cleared and forcible vasectomy to be implemented. The slum dwellers, mainly Muslims were totally shattered. The slums were demolished and forced sterilization of youth put them in a quandary. The result was the firing by police on the assembled mob at Turkman Gate, leading to rise in anti Congress feeling among Muslim community.
During this period the ‘twenty point program’ was launched which enabled the poor of the community to avail of bank loans and other facilities with ease. Black marketers were put behind the bars and administration became a bit more efficient initially. At the core of this program was to uplift the poor and dalits. Under this program. Three million house sites were provided to the deprived sections. About 1.1 Million acres of land was distributed to the land less. Minimum wages for agriculture work were enhanced.
As the Emergency was declared under the Article 352 as a measure to deal with the abnormal situation a section of the population did accept it as a temporary imposition on democratic liberties. Many social activists concerned about erosion of civil liberties formed the People’s Union for Civil Liberties. The PM promised that she believes in multi party democracy and freedom of press. Later for various reasons she lifted the Emergency and announced fresh elections. She also hinted that there is a foreign hand behind the worsening internal situation and is trying to uproot her rule.
The Emergency period was like a bad dream in which 11 Million Indians were forcibly sterilized, 1 Lakh people were locked up in Delhi alone, seven lakh people were displaced, 20% of opposition MP’s were locked up. Media was prevented from reporting the speeches of opposition leaders. Congress went on to pass laws widening the state powers restricting people’s liberty. The democratic values lay in shambles.
JP Movement RSS and Right Wing Politics
The JP movement had a broad support from many parties, very importantly from RSS, Janasangh, Socialist party, Congress (O), CPI (M) among others. In this movement the core position of General Secretary was given to Nanaji Deshmukh, one of the General Secretaries of Janasangh. It is the same Nanaji Deshmukh who has been given the highest civilian honor of Bharat Ratna by the BJP Government a couple of years ago. He was a diehard Pracharak of RSS. This was the first time that RSS came out from the ignominy of Gandhi Murder. While RSS tried to deny any relations with Nathuram Godse, it was well known that he had been trained as Pracharak of RSS. RSS chief Balasaheb Devras was also arrested for some time. While in jail he tried to open channels with Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi. He wrote warm letters to Mrs. Gandhi congratulated her for the Independence Day speech also. Mrs. Gandhi did not reply to him. Once RSS workers were in jail, the attempt to come out was very strong. They also did some underground work to spread the message of the Movement.
Nehru in particular and many scholars pointed out that RSS has traits of fascism. JP, a tall leader of freedom movement, Socialist with deep convictions and very committed to democracy was overawed by his dissatisfaction with Indira Gandhi and had no compunctions in taking RSS into the fold of the movement launched by him. He seems to have been so desperate to oppose the Prime Minister that in order to bring together opposition and to make it strong it took along RSS-Janasangh and went on to declare, ‘If RSS is fascist, I am also a fascist’. Apart from other things the taking in of RSS changed the national scene for the worse. Most of the movements which mouth at the center of their protest ‘anti-corruption’ land up shifting the fulcrum of National politics, towards the right wing. With the JP movement RSS gained respectability. The recently held anti corruption movement where Anna Hazare was the face of the whole movement, it was RSS which was pulling the strings openly to defame Congress in particular. No wonder the real beneficiary of this movement at political level has been BJP.
Emergency Period: Disenchantment Rises
The people started getting disenchanted as the measures undertaken for implementation of the twenty point program did not yield the desired result after one year. The implementation of all this was in the hands of Government officers. Their powers increased but the sheen of the initial benefits started wearing off and dissatisfaction started rising. There is no clear answer to why Mrs. Gandhi lifted the Emergency. The uncharitable view is that the agencies reported to her that she may win the elections if they are held that time. But this seems unlikely as she was inherently a democrat and though she had little direct contact with the people, she could sense the unease among the people. For her; international prestige was also important and she did not want to go down with the global impression that India, like other post colonial states, is also embracing authoritarianism.
With lifting of emergency and declarations of elections the opposition parties, Jana sangh, shades of socialists in particular came together as Janata Party under the patronage of JP. In the elections which followed Janata Party made a spectacular victory and Indira’s party bit the dust.
Post Emergency
There was a good deal of rivalry between opposition leaders for the post of Prime Minister. Finally Morarji Desai became the P.M. with two Deputy Prime ministers, Chaudhary Charan Singh. The coalition was unstable. One of the issues raised by Socialists was that the Janasangh leaders should break their connection with RSS. This was impossible for Jansangh leaders as they were primarily RSS pracharaks (Preachers). They left Janata party and emerged as Bhartiya Janata Party with the slogan of Gandhian Socialism. They were totally opposed to socialism, but this word had a high currency at that time. Their ideological fellow traveler Nathuram Godse had killed Mahatma Gandhi; still they used Gandhi’ name as they wanted to raise their credibility in the public eye.
With the collapse of Janata party and fall of Government, first Charan Singh and then Chandra Shekhar became Prime minister for brief while till elections were held and Mrs. Gandhi was back in the saddle of power.
Emergency: Evaluation
While Congress itself has not overtly criticized the act of its leader Indira Gandhi, it needs to be recalled that Mrs. Gandhi had regretted the excesses during this period in a speech in Yavatmal in 1978. Interestingly the CPI (M), Socialist parties etc. do not make much noise of it now. They do commemorate it and talk of strengthening democracy now. They look at it as a period of authoritarianism. It is RSS BJP which comes out every year with a big bang to overprotect their role in fighting the emergency and saving India from the clutches of dictatorship of that period. Many of their leaders like the late Arun Jaitley compared the emergency with the fascist regime.
What is common between Emergency and Hitler’s Fascist regime: it is an authoritarian dictatorship from the top. It’s true that during this period there was also a serious violation of democratic freedoms. The similarity with Hitler’s fascist regime ends here. The main mechanism of Hitler’s regime was to instigate emotions, intensifying divisiveness by activating the storm troopers and targeting the racial minority; the Jews. Other characteristics of his regime were to promote the interests of big business houses and suppress the rights of the working class in particular. It projected the golden past and also promoted ultra nationalism and implemented muscular foreign policy leading to sour relations with neighbors.
Hitler’s regime was based not only on the fiat from the top; its main strength was to promote foot soldiers in ‘Hail Hitler’ ideology and to launch a rampage against the weaker sections of society, workers in particular. The Turkman Gate, slum clearance and forced vasectomy was not based on religion, no Hate against Muslims in that sense.
Undeclared Emergency of Recent times
What is close to Hitler’s regime is what we saw during the last one decade. This was labeled as an undeclared emergency by many. Nayantara Sahgal who was very critical of Emergency 1975 in an interview talks about the prevailing situation “Well, we have an undeclared Emergency; there is no doubt about that. We have seen a huge, massive attack on the freedom of expression. We have seen innocent, helpless Indians killed because they did not fit into the RSS’s view of India. …And there has been no justice for the families of the wage earners who have lost their lives in this fashion… So we have a horrendous situation, a nightmare which is worse than the Emergency… (During Emergency, added)The Opposition was in jail, there was no freedom of speech, etc. Now we are living in a battered, bleeding democracy. And though no Emergency has been declared, people are being killed, people are being jailed; people are being hauled up for sedition and for being anti-national. It is an absolutely nightmarish situation which has no equal.“ Incidentally she had also written a book criticizing the emergency which was published after the emergency was lifted.
L.K. Advani also hinted at the same thing, “Today there is an undeclared emergency in the country. Even senior BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) leader Lal Krishna Advani hinted the same after the government formed but after pressure from RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), he became silent…” While we look back to the period of Emergency 1975, we need to introspect and ward off the periods like undeclared Emergency which the country has been witnessing from the last decade.
It is also important to reiterate the difference between the Emergency regime and Modi decade (2014 to 2024). Modi regime’s authoritarianism was aided by the oppressive foot soldiers, Bajrang Dal, ABVP among others. It collaborated with the top Corporate Institutions from ED to Election Commission played the role of extended arm of the Government. The Media got converted to Godi media. The regimes targeted the minorities and suppressed the rights of workers and farmers. The unemployment reached the peak, never earlier seen in the country. The past is being presented as a golden period. Many similarities with what Germany witnessed under Hitler.
With the electoral power of BJP diminished and its ruling as a coalition, what policies it follows remains to be seen. Can we hope as optimists that democracy will be revived partially?
