Between Emergency And Now, Uncanny Parallels And Delicious Ironies

Among the many delicious ironies that permeate our public life was the recent decision of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to officially commemorate the Indian Emergency of 1975-77 as “Samvidhan Hatya Diwas” (Constitution Murder Day). The irony is particularly rich since the Emergency gave the Hindu Right—then represented by the Jana Sangh—and its storm troopers, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a chance to wash off the stubborn stains of the assassination of M K Gandhi. By serving jail time, the Jana Sangh also made up for the significant absence of the Hindu Right in India’s freedom struggle. By being banned, once more since 1948, the RSS was able to rehabilitate itself as an oppositional force to the Congress. Many who were jailed for just a month or more were able to claim, thereafter, fat ‘Emergency pensions’ in some BJP-ruled states of the Indian Union. No such fortune was bestowed on the members of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, which was also banned.

The irony is deepened further by the fact that the 21-month suspension of democratic rights and freedoms, a first in Independent India, was a mere baby step compared to what would become, as Arvind Narrain’s detailed analysis has it, ‘India’s Undeclared Emergency’ since 2014. Was the Emergency, then, just a forerunner of what an authoritarian state could achieve? Or does the dramatic backsliding of democracy of the past decade cast a rosier light on the earlier short stint?

Thirdly, the current regime insists on reminding Indians that the two words that are anathema to its pet ideology, secularism and socialism, were insertions to the Preamble dating from the dark days of the Emergency. But it has quietly adopted and aggressively foregrounded a third addition to the Constitution—the concept of fundamental duties. This constitutional amendment, introduced by Swaran Singh in 1976, avers that the citizens of the country, in return for the rights that the state has given them, must be required to perform certain duties for the state. As political scientist Partha Chatterjee has pointed out, ‘‘No liberal constitution in the world describes anything called the fundamental duties of citizens—it is a concept that belongs to the authoritarian state.’’ If the BJP in power has clung to this term, (it is even enshrined in the New Education Policy, which has decided to give fundamental rights a go-by) it is not for its Nehruvian aspirations, but because it buttresses the demand for obedient citizens in a totalitarian state.

Historians look for the patterns of the past that might explain or at least situate some dilemmas and predicaments of the present. But that is not their only task. Recounting historical events as chronicles of the present foretold have yielded place to understanding historical processes, to make an argument about the past. Charting disjuncture and breaks is equally important. So we might rightly ask, is our democracy deep-rooted and stable enough to reject those forces that threaten to undermine, if not extinguish, hard-won rights and freedoms? As historical analogies go—is June 4, 2024 really equal to the triumph of March 20, 1977—when India’s first (declared) Emergency was brought to an end, through the ballot box?

Not quite, but note the uncanny parallels between our time and the forms of authoritarianism that were pioneered by Indira Gandhi’s Congress, even before 1975. Although the misuse of Article 356 of the Constitution to dismiss state governments has sharply declined since the 1994 judgement in S R Bommai, the regime that dreams of a New India has pioneered novel—and blatantly ‘unlawful’—ways of destabilising legitimately elected, Opposition-run state governments. The indiscriminate use of agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate (ED), the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to politically capture and destabilise governments has been perfected by the present government, even in its currently weakened state. No historical example exists for such drastic inroads into the federal principle.

Indira Gandhi definitely understood the importance of subordinating the judiciary to the executive. There was the arbitrary elevation of judges, as in the 1973 appointment of A N Ray as the Chief Justice of India (CJI), superseding three others. But judges showed themselves equally willing to sacrifice constitutionality for political appeasement. In the (in)famous ADM Jabalpur case, the Supreme Court ruled 4-1 that the suspension of the right to habeas corpus was not subject to judicial oversight. (It took forty years for this to be overturned in 2017). The heroic dissenter, Justice Khanna, was denied his place as CJI, and his dissenting opinion was not published. The judiciary’s capitulation to the party in power today is too painful to recount.

Likewise, the supineness of the press and the media in New India was also assured during the Emergency. No doubt, while the Emergency saw a brutal suppression of fundamental rights, Indira Gandhi herself expressed surprise at the quiet acceptance of the Emergency in a time of defiant unrest. But states, even where the Congress ruled, did not evenly implement the diktats from Delhi.

We are yet to learn fully how states like Karnataka held their own in a time of increased centralisation. The few over-zealous deputy commissioners who applied themselves to implementing the 20-point programme, were asked to go easy. One scholar has even claimed that states like Karnataka might have inflated their family planning figures in order to meet Central targets. Indeed, Devaraj Urs focused more on the 20-point programme than on Sanjay Gandhi’s five point programme, which included family planning. He drew the line at the illegalities of the Central government’s orders. As Chiranjeev Singh, then deputy secretary to Urs in Karnataka, and chief censor at the time recalled, when he received the orders from Delhi to hold back the copy of The Indian Express until well past the deadline of 3 pm, he consulted Urs, who agreed that this was illegal. Thus, the edition that was the most trenchant critic of the regime did not see a shift in reader allegiance. (Abu Abraham, then the outspoken critic at The Indian Express, also recalls that pre-censorship of cartoons ended a few months into the Emergency, and his iconic cartoon of then President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed signing the Emergency declaration was cleared in December 1975). Urs saved Karnataka from the worst of the Emergency ‘‘excesses’’ and Karnataka swept the Congress back to power in 1977.

So there are reasons not to draw the line of ‘‘continuity’’ with the present too strongly. Although student leaders were attacked, and jailed (some, such as Prabir Purakayastha, even on mistaken identities), there was no determined attack on educational institutions. The Centre introduced programmes that disproportionately impacted Muslim-dominated areas (during demolitions in Delhi), and during the infamous nasbandi, but espoused no programmatic communalism. It had no boots on the ground, unlike the present regime, which has consciously subcontracted its power to myriad vigilante groups, granting immunity from prosecution for grave crimes such as lynching. The demolitions at Turkman Gate were intended for the ‘‘beautification’’ of Delhi, not to demonstrate majoritarian power, as today’s bulldozers do.

Finally, we can look back at the Emergency as having had some unexpected positive outcomes. The first was the birth of the People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) on October 17, 1976 with Jayaprakash Narayan as its president. PUCL has continued to be the strong, vibrant voice against the atrocities and injustices the state perpetrates on its citizens since its founding. Another unexpected outcome, as feminist scholar Mary John has shown, was the rise of Women’s Studies as a critical discipline, revealing, through the landmark study Towards Equality, the shocking truths about what had been denied to women in independent India in all spheres.

These two positive outcomes are a sign of how democracy has flourished in the most difficult of times in India. But there is no doubt that ‘‘eternal vigilance’’ is imperative, especially since the current regime has learned the lessons of the Emergency well, namely, that it is better to achieve its objects without recourse to the law; by engaging instead in novel forms of sustainable communalism, it inflicts daily wounds on freedom, equality and citizenship.

(Views expressed are personal)

Janaki Nair is a retired professor of History, the Centre for Historical Studies, JNU. Her books include The Promise of the Metropolis & Mysore Modern