The Emergency: How It Came About

What led Indira Gandhi to take such a drastic step? Did she have to pick up the gauntletthrown down by JP on the Ramlila grounds? There is no simple answer. Her problem was much more complex thanJP's, for whom what was happening in the country was like a medieval morality play in which all the angels wereon his side. He had no dilemmas, his mind was full of certitudes. He was more attuned to the rhetoric ofrevolution than to the complexities of administering a difficult country. Indira Gandhi's situation, on theother hand, was agonizing for her. Not only was her own political future at stake, her party was under severestrain by the infighting and factionalism. Above all, she was the prime minister and she had to worry about the consequencesof her exit on the governance of the country. Her mind was a jumble of all these personal and public concerns, whichwere not easy to disentangle.

First, her personal interest. She was aware that if she resigned even before the supremecourt could rule on her appeal, she would impress some sections of public opinion and could probably come backto power if the court decided in her favour. Had the opposition leaders, particularly JP, left the onus of thedecision entirely to her, it is not improbable that she would have resigned. But they were keen to exploit thesituation, exercise their newly gained strength, and demonstrate that they had forced her to resign.Even before she could file her appeal, to which she was enticed, a delegation of oppositionleaders from the Congress (O), JS, BLD, SP and Akali Dal called on the president and presented a memorandum tohim saying that 'a grave constitutional crisis had arisen as a result of Mrs Gandhi continuing to occupy theof office of the prime minister despite a clear and categorical judicial verdict They pressed for herresignation. In their public utterances she was mercilessly demonized. This exhibition of personal animus broughtout the fighter in her and strengthened her resolve to defend herself. She was also worried about the goingson in the party. Though the Congress Parliamentary Party had reiterated its 'fullest faith and confidence' inher leadership, she was unsure about her pro-tem successor's attitude. Would he let her comeback? He mightrattle some skulls in the cupboard, especially the ones in that of her son Sanjay, to keep her out of office Such wereher personal worries.

As regards her public concerns, Indira Gandhi was almost certain that her party would splitif she resigned even temporarily. She was unsure about the intentions of Jagjivan Ram and so-called youngTurks like Chandra Shekhar, who had not forgiven her for not compromising with JP. Her worst fears were about theopposition coming to power; it was a spectre that haunted her because she believed it would be a disaster forthe country. She agonized over all these considerations.

Those who would lose power and influence by her exit were quick to soothe her perplexedmind by organizing demonstrations of support and loyalty in front of her house. Sanjay and his supporters andvarious Congress party workers were prominent in this campaign. The ideologues urged her to stand firm against'right reaction' and refuse to resign. The CPI passed a resolution to that effect only a day after theAllahabad judgement. Legally minded people dismissed Justice Sinha as a stickler for the letter of the law.They maintained that while what had been proved (according to the high court) might constitute technical violations ofan 'impractical' end 'stringent' election law, there was no logic in unseating a prime minister for minor technical irregularities. The judgement rested on such technicalities as whether the services of a gazetted officer had been utilized beforehis actual date of resignation from government service, and whether the erection of rostrums by stategovernments for the security of the prime minister, according to long-standing practice, could invalidate anelection.

Judges are human beings and not necessarily like the blindfolded lady holding the scales ofjustice in one hand and the sword of law in the other. They suggested that Justice Sinha may have been swayedin his opinions by the prevailing political atmosphere. They found it difficult to understand why he gave somuch importance to the exact date of resignation of Yashpal Kapoor, the official who had become her electionagent, particularly as the resignation did take place and he had not drawn his salary from the date of hisresignation letter. Some made dark references to Justice Sinha's caste, which was the same as JP's. In fact afortnight earlier Indira Gandhi had been told that the judgement would go against her because Justice Sinhawas under strong pressure to make it so. She did not do anything about it except mention it to R.N. Kao, thehead of RAW. Others maintained, somewhat facetiously, that the country was paying for the mistake of havingenacted such a detailed and self-righteous election statute.

In the midst of this cacophony Indira Gandhi withdrew into her lonely self. At the momentof her supreme political crisis she distrusted everybody except her younger son, Sanjay. He disliked those ofhis mother's colleagues and aides who had opposed his Maruti car project, or had otherwise not taken him seriously.It so happened that these were the people who he rightly thought would advise his mother to quit office. He knew hewould get into serious trouble if his mother were not around to protect him. For all her childhoodinsecurities, Indira Gandhi had compensated, one should say over-compensated, her sons, particularly Sanjay,with love and care. She was blind to his shortcomings. Her concern for Sanjay's future well-being was not aninconsiderable factor in her fateful decision.

All these cogitations and counsels came to an end on 24 June when Justice Krishna Iyer ofthe supreme court, before whom she had moved her appeal for absolute stay order against the Allahabad highcourt judgement, granted her only a conditional stay, which meant that she could continue as primeminister but not function as a full voting member of the Lok Sabha. This was the fateful moment of decisionfor her. Feeling diminished in her authority by Justice Iyer's verdict to cope with the threatened disorderthat was looming large -- the opposition parties announced their plans of countrywide satyagraha -- shepressed the panic button and her contingency plan for the declaration of an internal emergency came intooperation.

When the fateful moment arrived, JP did not let the law take its own course. Whether it washis mistrust of Indira Gandhi's motives, or his own lack of faith in the democratic method, or his ambition togo down in history as a political messiah of the Indian people is beside the point. Similarly, Indira Gandhishowed more faith in the repression of political opponents and dissidents in her party than in her own abilityto engage them constructively or fight them politically. Whether she opted for the Emergency to save herselffrom loss of power or as shock treatment to bring the country back to sanity is also beside the point. The fact remainsthat both JP and Indira Gandhi, between whom the politics of India was then polarized, failed democracy and betrayedtheir lack of faith in the rule of law.

The limitation of the period for which the enquiry was to be conducted effectively prevented the commissionfrom scrutinizing what led to the Emergency. Consequently, the commission conducted an extensive probe intothe 'excesses' committed during the Emergency. Its detailed reports reveal cases of transgressions of law, thesettling of personal scores by people in authority, unhealthy relationships between political bosses and civilservants, the highhandedness of police officers, and so on. The most important aspect of these excesses wasnot that they happened for the first time, but that they occurred on a large scale and to people who werehitherto shielded from such unpleasant experiences. 

As the commission pointed out, similar things had happened in several states earlier, when there was noEmergency. In this context they referred to reports by commissions of enquiry into the conduct of Pratap SinghKairon (chief minister of Punjab), Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad of Jammu and Kashmir, Mahamaya Prasad (chiefminister of Bihar), Govind Nair and T.V. Thomas (ministers in Kerala), and so on. While emphasizing theenormity of what had happened during the Emergency, the Shah Commission thought it fit to refer to 'excesses'which had become a part of the normal way in which the Indian political and administrative system had beenfunctioning even before the Emergency.

How then do we assess the phenomenon of the Emergency? Was it an aggravation of thetendency to disregard the law which had become a part of Indian political culture? In which case, was it thelogical climax of this culture? Or was it an aberration caused by Indira Gandhi's personality, twisted by hersense of insecurity? Whatever the final assessment that historians may make about Indira Gandhi, oneconclusion is clear from the events preceding and following the Emergency declaration: it was not a contestbetween a revolutionary leader leading the hosts towards a new social and political order and a wilypolitician anxious to impose her personal dictatorship on the country. The actual outcome, on both sides ofthe barricades, was much less spectacular. JP proved an ineffectual revolutionary and Indira Gandhi ahalf-hearted dictator.

After the arrest of JP and other opposition leaders, the movement they led simplycollapsed. The political situation quickly stabilized and subversive activities suddenly came to an end. Therewas no mass upsurge, no spontaneous demonstration. The opposition parties' attempts to whip up an agitationfailed to generate support. The collapse of the movement puzzled many people at home and abroad. The NewYork Times wondered how the movement could just 'melt away'. The Guardian of London wrote: 'India'sState of Emergency is almost  three months old now, and rapidly becoming the Mystery of the MissingOpposition'; it lamented the absence of 'the angry voice' against the Emergency. C.G.K. Reddy went around thecity of Delhi and was disappointed not to find 'at least a few of the lakhs of people who had gathered onlythe previous evening to hear JP, determined to bring down the prime minister and who would now organizethemselves to resist what was virtually a dictatorship.' JP himself agonized over the question, 'where have mycalculations gone wrong?'

The obvious explanation was that the JP movement was not as widespread as the media hadmade out. It had no grassroots organization of its own to carry out the leader's behests in his absence. Thehard core of the movement was confined to the Jana Sangh and its RSS cadres. The students who provided thevanguard had lost their enthusiasm even before the Emergency began. The poor did not see JP offering anyworkable solutions to their problems. The organized working-class was never a part of the movement. Theunderclass which provides recruits for noisy demonstrations withdrew from the scene when the organizers of therent-a-crowd were no longer around with money and transport for the exercise. When people felt reallyoppressed, as they did during slum clearance and compulsory sterilization programmer, they demonstrated spontaneouslyand forcefully and their 'voice of anger', which The Guardian missed in the first phase of theEmergency regime, became loud and clear. But that was the result of the Sanjay phenomenon, a by-product of theEmergency, to which I will return later.

The first impact of the Emergency was in the urban areas, on people mostly of the middleclass. These were impressed by the immediate gains of the Emergency: no strikes, no bandhs, industrialpeace, quiet on the campuses, suppression of smugglers and hoarders, stable prices, spurt in economicactivity. The twenty-point programme, announced five days after the declaration of Emergency, held out hopefor the alleviation of poverty for the rural poor. The programme included implementation (so far avoided) ofland-ceiling legislation, a big increase in the allotment of house sites for the landless, a moratorium on ruraldebts to give relief to small farmers, village artisans and landless farmers, and the abolition of bondedlabour. The adoption of these measures was possible only under the new regime as the issues they addressedcame under the jurisdiction of the states, many of which had ignored them in the past. All these measures, puttogether, provided the Emergency with some legitimate political and social purpose. But not for long.

As weeks passed into months, the realities of Indian political and social life began toreassert themselves. Before the Emergency, Indira Gandhi used to say she did not have the power to implementpolicies she thought India needed for its regeneration. But when she did acquire all the power she needed, shedid not know what to do with it. When the PMO sought to broaden the anti-inflation policies initiated in 1974into amore liberal economic regimes critical voices were raised against what was deemed a subversion of theNehruvian ideology by the pragmatists. This criticism came not only from the CPI but also from the so-calledprogressive elements within the Congress Party. Since both these groups were staunch supporters of theEmergency, Indira Gandhi withdrew her support to her secretariat. She herself was unimpressed by the prospectsof the liberalization policies which were to put India on a high-growth path, and which would ultimatelyeliminate poverty and make India truly an economically self-reliant power. Her economic horizons did not gobeyond the medium term. The sad fact was that she did not have an outline of a socio-economic framework forthe realization of which her power could be used. Nor did Sanjay and the hand-picked group which surroundedhim.

She was more satisfied with what had already been achieved in the economic field. Aftergaining effective control over runaway inflation, she was particularly satisfied with the success of thetwenty-point programme in the area of rural development, where some of the immediate gains were, no doubt, impressive. Theimplementation of the land ceiling legislation, for example, yielded by December 1976, 1.7 million acres for distribution amongthe landless as against 62,000 acres between 1972 and1975. Similar results were achieved in the allocation ofhouse sites; over three million sites were allotted in the first year of the Emergency. But these resultssuffered from a fatal weakness. They were achieved by official fiat; there was no durable institutional  mechanism that would carry these and other elements of agrarian reform forward.

At the national level the Congress Party did talk about radical land reforms but at the local level theparty organs were opposed to them. The lower rungs of the party continued to be dominated by agrarianinterests which would have been hurt by such reforms. Thus the economic power structure that had evolved sinceindependence remained undisturbed by the Emergency and the economic policies that had led India into alow-growth syndrome remained essentially unaltered.

The era of industrial peace which prevailed for more than a year seemed to be nearing itsend by September 1976. Union leaders were feeling restive about the continuation of restrictions on bonus anddearness-allowance payments which were required to be put in compulsory deposits, under the anti-inflationprogrammes of 1974.White collar employees, particularly in banks and insurance companies, were agitated. Thegovernment tried to mollify union leaders by making changes in labour laws which made the lay-off of labour insick businesses even more difficult than before. There was, therefore, no hope of making labour markets moreflexible despite the recent experience of the railway strike. 

The Emergency made no difference to factionalism in the Congress Party. In many statesparty leaders faced a serious challenge from rival factions which functioned virtually as an open opposition.The emergence of Sanjay and his Youth Congress marginalized the Congress Party leadership which had alreadybeen emasculated. The Congress president, Dev Kant Barooah, was more a sycophant than a leader. He could notgo beyond laboured witticisms which made him seem some sort of an amiable court jester. Reshaping the partyinto an instrument of economic and political change was beyond his capacity. Indira Gandhi herself showed nointerest in reforming and rejuvenating her party, not even for the implementation of the tweny-point programmeby which she set so much store. Under these circumstances, we had a regime in which concentration of power wasdivorced from the guiding hand of an ideologically motivated party with a well articulated and concreteprogramme. In the field of administration the system returned to its normal rhythm after a brief period of brisk activity.The policeman and the babu returned to their petty tyrannies. The only field in which there was demonstrable activity,particularly in Delhi, Haryana and western UP, was in family planning and slum clearance. Schemes in these twoareas were given emphasis in order to please Sanjay Gandhi, who had become an alternative power centre inDelhi.