How Sanjay Gandhi led Emergency-era ‘nasbandi’ campaign

The Emergency was declared on the midnight of June 24-25, exactly 49 years ago. In the 21 months that followed, Indira Gandhi ran India like a dictatorship. Among various excesses reported at the time, was the campaign of mass forced sterilisation, championed by her son, Sanjay.

Here is its story.

Population control in India

Overpopulation has long been a concern for the Indian intelligentsia, which largely agreed with the classic Western perspective on the matter which associated overpopulation with economic underdevelopment.

In 1951, when India’s population was approximately 361 million, ace demographer R A Gopalswami estimated that it would rise by roughly 500,000 every year. At this rate, he believed that India would perennially struggle to meet its food demand, even after millions of tons of imports. Gopalswami’s solution: mass sterilisation, something no other country had previously tried, certainly at this scale.

Paying heed to its top demographer, the government launched the National Family Planning Programme in 1952, which introduced awareness campaigns and monetary incentives for getting sterilised. But in a country where superstition was rife, vasectomies proved to be a hard-sell. While some believed that they led to a loss of sex drive, others feared death on the operating table.

Sanjay’s quick fix

The years preceding the Emergency had been rough for the Indian economy — below average rainfall in 1972 and 1973 had led to food shortage, the oil crisis of 1973 was draining India’s humble forex reserves, inflation was at an all-time high even as industrial production declined, and unemployment wreaked havoc.

Population control was seen as being crucial to addressing these challenges. And with civil liberties suspended during the Emergency, the government could push much harder than before.

For Sanjay Gandhi, who had quickly become very influential in the government despite holding no official position, this was a big personal mission — the lynchpin of his 5-point programme which also included afforestation, abolition of dowry, removal of illiteracy, and slum clearance.

“Of Sanjay Gandhi’s five points… the other four were humdrum, unglamorous, hardly the stuff to build charismatic leadership credentials on. But family planning was. Here was a Herculean project, the solving of which, everyone acknowledged, was vital if the nation hoped to survive, let alone prosper,” historian Ramachandra Guha wrote in India After Gandhi (2008).

Sanjay wanted results in a year — and the whole government and party apparatus were mobilised to this end. Sterilisation camps were set up, and ambitious targets were set.

According to Prajakta R Gupte, Sanjay “allocated quotas to the chief ministers of every state that they were supposed to meet by any means possible… Nothing mattered when it came to meeting the targets” (“The Emergency and the Politics of Mass Sterilization” in Demographics, Social Policy, and Asia, 2017).

Dark legacy

In Guha’s words, Sanjay “catalysed a competitive process” when it came to sterilisation, competition which percolated down to district officials and “led to widespread coercion”.

“Lower government officials had to submit to the surgeon’s knife before arrears of pay were cleared. Truck drivers would not have their licences renewed if they could not produce a sterilisation certificate,” Guha wrote. Kamble, for instance, was threatened with dismissal from his job in Barshi’s sanitation department.

In many cases more direct force was also deployed. Journalist Maseeh Rahman wrote for The Indian Express in 2015: “In January 1976, Barshi’s municipal council was told to organise a 10-day campaign to sterilise 1,000 people… Hardly anyone volunteered in the first two days. So, for the next eight days, two trucks prowled around town to achieve the target… Hundreds of farmers visiting Barshi were dragged from the streets and forcibly sterilised. Some were unmarried… some were already sterilised, and some were very old. It made little difference. Many became septic, at least one died, all were badly traumatised.”

The word nasbandi (vasectomy) became synonymous with the excesses of the Emergency. “In order to avoid sterilisation, villagers often hid in their fields for several days and nights,” Gupte wrote.

If citizens protested, things could turn deadly. Journalist Kuldip Nayar wrote about several such cases in his 1977 book, The Judgement: Inside Story of Emergency in India. For instance, in Narkadih in UP’s Sultanpur, villagers gathered for sterilisation camps attacked the police, who opened fire in retaliation — at least 13 people were killed.

There is no accurate data regarding the true scale of the campaign, most estimates put the number of sterilisations between 6-8 million in 1977, and lower in 1975 and 1976. Whatever the scale might have been, nasbandi was undoubtedly a pivotal contributor to Indira Gandhi’s 1977 defeat. Congress’ vote share tanked in northern states like UP and Bihar where the campaign was most vigorously implemented, while it did much better in the south which, by and large, did not face its brunt.

As Guha wrote: “There was a burning hatred against forced vasectomies; this extremely emotive and explosive issue had become the focus of all pent-up frustrations and resentment”.