India will rise from the grave

Where have my calculations gone wrong? I almost said 8220;our8221; calculations, but that would be wrong. I must bear the full, the whole, responsibility. I went wrong in assuming that a Prime Minister in a democracy would use all the normal and abnormal law to defeat a peaceful democratic movement, but would not destroy democracy itself and substitute for it a totalitarian system; I could not believe that even if the Prime Minister wanted to do it, her senior colleagues and her party, which has had such high democratic traditions, would permit it. But the unbelievable has happened. One could have understood such a result if there had been a violent outbreak and there was fear of a violent takeover. But a peaceful movement resulting in such a denouement! What can the people do, the youth do, to fight against corruption, unemployment, poverty? Wait quietly for the next general elections! But what if, in the meantime, the situation becomes intolerable? Then what are the people to do? Sit quietly and fold up theirarms and silently bear their miseries? That would be Mrs Gandhi8217;s image of democracy: silence of the grave. And what if the elections themselves are neither free nor fair? For that they must awaken and organise, I do not think in any democratic society the people have relied wholly and solely on elections to change their plight. Everywhere there have been strikes protests, marches, sit-ins, sit-outs, etc.

There is no need here to recount the steps taken by the Prime Minister to strangle democracy to death and clamp down her dictatorial regime. Here was this same Prime Minister who used to accuse us time and again of wanting to destroy democracy and establish fascism. And here we see the same Prime Minister destroying and establishing fascism herself in the name of the same democracy. She is saving democracy by murdering it with her own hands and burying the corpse deep down in the grave. Has she not declared that India cannot afford to go back to the pre-emergency state of licence? Licence! She has the cheek to talk of licence. Has she forgotten the Congress youth rally convened by her in Delhi on 9th August 1974?8230;

I wonder what all those ladies and gentlemen are saying now who used to tell me that I was the only 8220;hope8221; for the country. Are they invoking curses on my head for bringing about this terrible doom? I should not be surprised. They may even be saying that hemmed in from all sides as Mrs Gandhi was she could not but act in the manner she has. But I hope there are some people at least, particularly among the young, who may still be loyal to me and to the cause I represented. They are the hope of the future. India will arise from the grave, no matter how long it might take.

Excerpted from Jayaprakash Narayan8217;s Prison Diary 1975, Popular Prakashan