Fifty years after the Emergency, as fresh material and new books throw more light on a dark chapter in India’s history, it is still tantalising how Indira Gandhi, the central character around whom the events of the 1970s revolved, could be a “Durga” in 1971, a dictator in 1975 – and even as a dictator, call for elections in 1977, displaying a democratic streak in her — all within a timespan of five-six years.
Mrs Gandhi’s opponent Atal Bihari Vajpayee had hailed her as “Durga” after she helped split Pakistan to create Bangladesh, changing geo-political realities. In a preemptive move, she signed a Treaty of Friendship with the then Soviet Union (now Russia), to counter the new Pakistan-China-America axis that was being formed. Displaying her steely side, she did not wilt when then US President Richard Nixon sent the Seventh Fleet to the Bay of Bengal in a show of strength.
Early on in life, Indira Gandhi had learnt not to panic in a crisis. There is a story about a trip to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) with her parents, when the jeep in which they were travelling skidded. The 14-year-old Indira, who was sitting in the front, jumped out. The driver prevented the vehicle from going over the precipice, but Jawaharlal Nehru was furious with his daughter and admonished her for what she had done. After that she rarely lost her cool in a crisis, which came in handy in the 1971 Bangladesh War.
Actually, even before the opposition to her began internally, Mrs Gandhi’s woes started, with the outbreak of the Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur war in the Middle East in 1973 – rather like the crisis in West Asia today. It led to spiralling inflation in India, creating a fertile ground for the rise of the Navnirman Movement in Gujarat, followed by the Jayaprakash Narayan-led movement against corruption and rising prices in 1973-74. The two agitations brought Opposition forces together to demand Mrs Gandhi’s resignation.
But, even as she kept her cool, her instinct was to “choose order above democracy” when faced with situations that spelt conflict or instability. According to her biographer Katherine Frank, she did not share “Nehru’s faith that democratic institutions would survive unstable circumstances”.
(In 1959, as the Congress president, she had prevailed on a reluctant Nehru to dismiss the Communist government in Kerala when there was unrest in the state.)
In 1975 again, Mrs Gandhi chose so-called “order” over democracy in imposing the Emergency on the night of June 25-26.
This was 13 days after Justice Jagmohan Lal Sinha of the Allahabad High Court unseated her as MP, holding her guilty of electoral malpractices. She toyed briefly with the idea of resigning while hoping for reprieve from the Supreme Court, and appointing someone of her choice as PM. But very quickly she abandoned the idea – it was too risky and might jeopardise her kursi.
Ultimately, Mrs Gandhi imposed the Emergency even without calling a meeting of the Union Cabinet (which was informed at 6.30 the next morning – and not consulted). A compliant President, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, just signed on the dotted line. The Congress government then went about arresting leading Opposition figures – including JP, Vajpayee, L K Advani, Morarji Desai, Charan Singh, Chandra Shekhar – as well as thousands others opposed to her politics.
The families of many did not know for three-four months where they had been taken. There were allegations of torture in prison. What followed is now well-known – the suspension of fundamental rights, press censorship, amendments to the Constitution, the strengthening of the Executive’s powers, the weakening of the Judiciary. Besides, the forcible sterilisation of thousands, in one of the worst exhibitions of Sanjay Gandhi’s “extra-constitutional authority” in his mother’s government.
In 1976, I worked with the news magazine Himmat in Mumbai, which resisted Mrs Gandhi’s authoritarian rule. (Many small papers similarly put up a valiant fight.) Himmat was first required to submit to “self-censorship”, then to pre-censorship when the authorities claimed “violations”, and finally pressure was mounted on the printing press, till it succumbed and refused to print Himmat. Chief Editor Rajmohan Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, put out an appeal for funds to buy a small printing press so that Himmat could continue publication. It was so exciting to see the money orders – worth Rs 10, Rs 5, even Re 1 – come in, demonstrating a will to freedom. Finally, with around Rs 60,000 in, Himmat could buy its own press.
Not long after that, Mrs Gandhi announced elections, to be held in March 1977.
It is one of those supreme ironies of politics that “dictator” Indira announced polls when she need not have done it. There were no external pressures like sanctions (though there were critical voices in the West). Most importantly, the elections held were free and fair – or the Congress would not have been routed all over North India. Later she also admitted to “excesses” during the regime.
Mrs Gandhi pressed ahead with polls even in the face of Sanjay’s opposition. Then Haryana Chief Minister Bansi Lal, a member of Sanjay’s core team, had stated publicly: “Get rid of this election nonsense. Just make our sister (Mrs Gandhi) President for life, and there is no need to do anything else.”
The debate continues to this day as to why Mrs Gandhi called for elections (which finally led to the lifting of the Emergency)? Was it because she was more democrat Nehru’s daughter than Sanjay Gandhi’s mother, as some would like to believe? Had Nehru and the freedom movement profoundly influenced her thinking in the early years?
Or did she want to win back the approval of her friends in the Western world whom she had antagonised? Or was it a “spiritual” impulse which goaded her, given J Krishnamurti’s influence on her? Or, and this is more likely, did she hope to legitimise, nationally and internationally, Sanjay as her successor through elections, allowing him more time to work under her – and build a new team around him?
Mrs Gandhi may have also calculated that elections would restore her weakening grip over the government. She was worried about the power Sanjay had come to wield, often going above her head and taking decisions on his own. He and his coterie wanted to move towards a Presidential form of government – and had even got four state Assemblies to pass resolutions to set up a new Constituent Assembly.
As for Opposition leaders, she had managed to soften some of them in 1976 – and thought she would win. The balance of advantage, she would have calculated, lay in going for elections in early 1977.
She had not foreseen Opposition leaders getting together to form a unified Janata Party within a few days of being released. Or on Babu Jagjivan Ram quitting the Congress soon thereafter, which hampered her efforts to induct new faces.
Whether as Durga, dictator, or displayer of democratic sensibilities, Indira Gandhi understood the nature of power – and how to capture it at any cost. Successive generations of politicians across party lines studied and emulated her model of saam, daam, dand, bhed (using any means necessary to meet one’s goals) – which de-institutionalised politics as also de-ideoligised it.
Indira Gandhi (and Narendra Modi) have shown that the more powerful and popular a prime minister, the greater the likelihood of power getting concentrated in his or her hands and of democratic institutions coming under stress. The weaker the leader – as seen in coalition governments – the more the chances of safeguards against excesses of power.
Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Express, has covered the last 11 Lok Sabha elections. She is the author of How Prime Ministers Decide
