Examine the list of those detained and you notice that besides her political opponents, it included many who she and members of her immediate family and friends were allergic to. They included two girls who were organising farm labourers around Indira’s farm, Maharani Vijayaraje Scindia of Gwalior who was flirting with the Jan Sangh and Rajmata Gayatri Devi of Jaipur who belonged to the Swatantra Party but was guilty of the more serious offence of being a lot better-looking than the Empress of India. Anyone who was related to, friendly with, or seen having tea with Kuldip Nayar was in trouble. Even one of her closest advisors, P.N. Haksar, was not immune. His relatives were arrested, his wife questioned by income-tax sleuths. All this because he had dared to note on an official file that the family ‘chacha’, Mohammad Yunus—who was provided with a government job simply to be able to retain a government bungalow—amounted to zero.
Among the important changes ushered in by the Emergency regime were shifts of power centres. Earlier, the cabinet’s suggestions were closely examined by the PMO comprising of specially selected advisors like Haksar, P.N. Dhar, H.Y. Sharada Prasad (press relations) and several civil servants of proven ability and integrity like N.K. Seshan, T.C.A. Srinivasa Varadan, B.N. Tandon and others. After the Emergency, the cabinet and the PMO were sidelined. Attendance in both houses of Parliament thinned. The PMO was reduced to a coterie of clerks drafting memos for the PM’s attention. She took scant notice of them. The real centre of power shifted to the PM’s house. Tandon describes them as "palace guards" without naming them. My guess is that they comprised Sanjay Gandhi, his wife Maneka and her mother Amteshwar Anand, Sanjay’s lady friend Rukhsana Sultana (wife of my nephew and mother of actress Amrita), R.K. Dhawan (stenographer-cum-personal secretary to the PM), Chacha Yunus, S.S. Ray who had drafted the Emergency regulations and Pranab Mukherjee. They were actively supported by Om Mehta (home ministry), Bansi Lal (chief minister of Haryana), H.R. Gokhale (law minister), Kishen Chand (the Lt Governor of Delhi who later ended his life by jumping into a well because he could not bear the zillat—shame), Navin Chawla (now member, Election Commission). There were others like Rajni Patel in Bombay and Natwar Singh in London who kept assuring Indira Gandhi that the Emergency had popular backing. Natwar, being more adept at darbardari, assured her how former UK prime minister Macmillan and the British people supported her. The truth was exactly the opposite.
What did the PMO do during the Emergency? Precious little besides drafting briefs on people being considered for appointments. The PM passed them on to her "palace guards". They were an unhappy lot but did not dare resign. They knew Mrs G could be very vindictive. Tandon came home and wrote all this in his diary. He gives two reasons for keeping a diary: to record facts not recorded in official files and to get the better of his sense of suffocation. On June 26, 1976, he wrote: "The events of the past year reveal that the aim of all these actions...was not just the protection of the prime minister’s own chair, but was also to ensure that her family continues to be in power. In the last year a personality cult has been created around Sanjay Gandhi and apart from dynastic hopes and ambitions there is no other reason for it."
Tandon’s book is not likely to be of much interest to the common reader except for gossip such as Nargis Dutt being caught and convicted for shoplifting in London. But it will remain a valuable source of reference for Indira Gandhi’s future biographers. Existing biographies are largely hagiographies of her. There is little in them about her being a petty liar, listening to gossip, being rude to people who couldn’t hit back and unforgiving to those she imagined had wronged her. Tandon has filled us in on the negative side of Indira Gandhi’s character.
