Lessons From The Emergency

Even before a holier-than-thou Narendra Modi government declared June 25 as ‘Samvidhaan Hatya Diwas’ to mark the imposition of the Emergency by the Indira Gandhi government on that day in 1975, there has been total unanimity that it was a rotten enterprise.

If there were any differences among scholars and partisans, these were to do with what was the dark side and what were the darker aspects of the Emergency. It is mostly agreed upon that the dark side included the suspension of fundamental rights, press censorship, the arrest of Opposition leaders, etc., whereas the darker side had to club the extraconstitutional power exercised by Sanjay Gandhi and his goonish aides. As it happens in all political debates over history, the villains are easily identified as are the heroes.

But even after nearly 50 years, we are nowhere near any understanding of the nature of the breakdown of normal politics that led to that midnight denouement on June 25, 1975.

It is helpful to keep in mind that the “JP Movement” was the first instance of mass mobilisation aimed at a regime change. Prior to the 1974-75 invocation of street power, the Indian State had faced only limited mass agitation. Early in the life of free India, there was the Vishal Andhra agitation; then the demand for bifurcation of Bombay between Gujarat and Maharashtra; and, later, the anti-Hindi agitation in south India. Each of these mass eruptions could be successfully dealt with because each was based on a clear-cut demand that could be conceded. The JP Movement, on the other hand, was expressly seeking a “total revolution”.

On March 23, 1974, the day of a Bihar Bandh, the Sarvodaya leader (JP) was sweepingly categorical in his expectations and demands:

“Lastly, a word about Sarvodaya. Those who think that Sarvodaya is made up of goody-goody people, who no doubt talk of non-violent revolution but do not mean it seriously are in for a surprise. Speaking for myself, I cannot remain a silent spectator of misgovernment, corruption and the rest….I am not interested in this or that ministry being replaced or in the Assembly being dissolved. It will be like replacing Tweedledum with Tweedledee. I have decided to fight corruption and misgovernment…and for a real people’s democracy.”—Emergency Chronicles—Indira Gandhi and Democracy’s Turning Point.

Except no one, including “the dream catcher” (JP) himself, had any idea of what a “real people’s democracy” would look like. Admittedly, the Indian State and its political executive had considerable experience and tested aptitude for dealing with external security threats. Lessons learnt from the 1962 Chinese invasion were put to effective use in the 1965 war with Pakistan, and, by the time the Bangladesh crisis erupted, India had acquired sufficient knack for marshalling all resources—military, political, diplomatic, psychological–to undertake a precise surgical operation. Earlier, the problem of food shortage had also been tackled in a reasonably efficient manner.

But faced with the demand of a “total revolution”, the political leadership and administrative apparatchiks were found to be lacking the requisite temperament or the skills to defuse or accommodate or appease the “JP Movement.” It is necessary to recall that it was a time of economic hardship for the masses. The Indian economy was groaning under the Oil Shock of 1973 in the aftermath of the Israeli-Arab War, a humongous disruption over which the Indian policymakers had no control.

As if this calamity was not enough, the economic consequences of the 1971 Bangladesh War were making themselves deleteriously felt. Because the Indira Gandhi regime was floundering in getting a handle over the rapidly deteriorating economic scenario, it had very little elbow room to address the demands of student movements in Gujarat and Bihar. Both “movements” had been taken over by Indira Gandhi’s political opponents.

A sober historian gives us a flavour of the breakdown: “Even though Jayaprakash advised students to remain non-violent, by February 20,1974, full-scale riots erupted once more in Ahmedabad and spread to districts of north and central Gujarat and Saurashtra. It was a period of excesses—flash mobs went around trying to loot banks and cooperative societies, setting fire to public and private property. Several assembly members were gheraoed and forced into submitting resignations.”—Bimal Prasad, Sujata Prasad, The Dream of a Revolution—A Biography of Jayaprakash Narayan.

In retrospect, it was sheer political ineptness that allowed a simple issue of poor quality of food being served in a student hostel in L.D. College of Engineering in Ahmedabad that was allowed to snowball into a major crisis for the Indira Gandhi regime. The Congress leaders, in Delhi and Gandhinagar, lacked finesse in tackling a motley crowd of “student leaders” they just could not find the right mix of administrative firmness and political flexibility. Crowds, chaos and conspiracies coalesced into a major breakdown of political rules of the game when JP allowed himself to be enticed in providing leadership and guidance to the “student struggle.” What began as provincial skirmishes were to acquire the consequential edge of a total war. Unintended consequences followed.

There was to be no easy solution once it became a clash of two personalities: an incumbent prime minister, who was at the top of her game after the 1971 massive electoral victory and the Bangladesh War triumph; and on the other side of the confrontation was a towering freedom fighter with the impeccable moral authority of a saint.

The fact that JP and his wife, Prabhavati, were personal friends of Jawaharlal Nehru and Kamala Nehru, and that JP looked upon Indira Gandhi as his niece added, a note of personal bitterness to the political falling out between the prime minister and the challenger.

Behind the clash of personalities was a contest over the very nature of power in a democracy and how the Indian State would retain its coherence and efficacy. The Gandhi corner saw the JP Movement as a gathering of all those forces and personalities who had lost the electoral battle in 1971 and again in the 1972 Assembly elections; the losers, under JP’s moral umbrella, were now insisting that the “Janata” had a right to determine when an elected government had exhausted its legitimacy and hence its right to continue in office. This was a sure recipe for permanent chaos and instability. On the other hand, JP, wrapping himself in Gandhian colours, was anchoring his contention as a moral duty to question and demand accountability from the ruler for misgovernance and incompetence.

Consumed by a righteous rage, JP gave in to the heady spirit of Ramdhari Singh Dinkar’s intoxicating poetry, “Singhasan khali karo/Janata aati hai,” and, allowed himself to, at a massive rally at the Ramlila Ground in Delhi, make that double-edged appeal to the Army and police not to obey the orders of the government, which they considered unlawful. No lawfully elected government could countenance a policeman deciding for himself lawfulness or otherwise of an order from a superior authority.

This invitation to defiance was seized upon by an already besieged Gandhi to do the midnight coup. It was not just the Emergency proclamation that was disquieting; inevitably an echo-system of intimidation, coercion and assorted harassment followed. It was, to quote Professor Gyan Prakash, “a paradigm of government that was neither fully lawful nor fully lawless.”—Emergency Chronicles—Indira Gandhi and Democracy’s Turning Point.

It was equally inevitable that Sanjay Gandhi and his goons should run amok, hijacking the governance processes, committing excesses, earning public wrath and eventually bring about Indira Gandhi’s downfall.

Political partisanship can be expected to continue to depict the Emergency as Indian democracy’s darkest hour­­—and, indeed, it was. This was the first time the nation found itself experiencing first-hand what JP called “the logic of unlimited power.” All rulers proclaim they work for the nation’s welfare and to safeguard its interests; yet no ruler can be granted—certainly not in a democracy—a carte blanche. But it also needs to be understood that the Indian State learnt some valuable lessons in handling and coping with mass agitations.

The political community, cutting across all ideological persuasions, learnt a vital lesson in the dangers of overreach. It is now almost cast in stone that there can be legitimate challenges to the legitimacy of the Indian State. No political movement can be deemed justified in demanding the overthrow of the state order; and if any group does dare to use violent means to prevail against the state, New Delhi has the legitimate authority to put that challenge down, if necessary, with equally violent means. Punjab, Kashmir, and the North-east were critical points in our collective learning curve, and so was the rise of a VP Singh in 1989, or the emergence of a Modi in 2014.

That Indira Gandhi opted to hold general elections in 1977 settled once for all the legitimacy of the electoral process as the only instrument of regime change. This is perhaps the most significant lesson learnt after the Emergency experience; the citizens have a powerful weapon available to them to force an insensitive government or an arrogant ruler. The political class is thus forced to appease, humour or indulge the voters and their preferences and prejudices.

When the Emergency happened, we were only 25 years into our existence as a constitutional democracy; but because of this trauma, we are better off as a democratic nation and a constitutional republic because the political elite learnt a new protocol of tolerance and co-existence after suffering the Sanjay Gandhi nightmare.

(Views expressed are personal)

Harish Khare is a delhi-based senior journalist and public commentator

(This appeared in the print as 'Emergency Takeaways')