Unusual allies, BBC for news, world event as protest stage: How to fight Govt, via Narendra Modi

The book, Sangharshma Gujarat (Gujarat in Struggle), written in Gujarati, was released in 1978, a year after the Emergency was lifted. It was the first book that Modi, who was then an RSS pracharak in his late 20s, wrote. It was last reprinted in 2008 – a third reprint – when Modi was into his second elected term as the Gujarat Chief Minister.

Modi writes about spending time in hiding and gives details about the disguises and strategies they assumed to escape the authorities.

Clippings published in Narendra Modi’s book.

Gujarat was one of the nerve centres of the movement against the Emergency imposed by the Indira Gandhi government, as it had a non-Congress party in power.

The Janata Morcha regime in the state was led by Babubhai Jashbhai Patel, who had swept to power around the time the Emergency was imposed, and was supported by the Jan Sangh (the precursor to the BJP) from outside.

Modi writes about how the RSS hoped that Gujarat, which was already seething against the Centre following the student-led Navnirman Movement, would fuel the resistance against Indira Gandhi. “One priority was to keep Gujarat’s pratrikar (power to resist) alive, the other was to connect with all the underground rebellions across the country… Because there was a Morcha sarkar in Gujarat, there were no restrictions on rallies.”

“Thus, in the first week of Emergency, Gujarat used all the Gandhian weapons,” writes Modi, adding that the suggestion of socialist leader George Fernandes that armed resistance was the only way to defeat Indira was resisted by the Sangh.

According to Modi, “Shri George was of the clear view that Indiraji would never withdraw. It was his conviction that in such a situation, armed resistance was the only way out and he felt that the Sangh, without much delay, should take such a task on hand for the sake of the nation… But whatever the challenges, the Sangh was very clear. It did not wish for a revolution or change by means of violence.”

Modi says the RSS and Jan Sangh saw the anti-Emergency protests as the “Second War of Independence”, and talks about leaders from various ideologies coming together to fight against the “dictatorial leadership of Shrimati Gandhi”, with many of them visiting Gujarat.

Among the leaders he mentions are Jayaprakash Narayan, Subramanian Swamy (who is referred to as Dr Swamy in the book), Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s sister Maniben, Morarji Desai, L K Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, among others.

In 1976, Advani became a Rajya Sabha MP from Gujarat, while lodged in a jail in Bengaluru under MISA.

One of the outfits Modi mentions is the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH), which like the RSS was banned, with their members often lodged in jail together.

Modi writes: “Given the mix of people from various ideologies in jail, there would be heated debates, yet there was an amazing camaraderie. The Congress’s attempts to portray the Sangh karyakar as enemies of the Muslims were foiled by the Sangh karyarkars’ behaviour towards them in jail. There was an unbelievable brotherhood between the Sangh workers and their Muslim friends! Maintaining complete discipline when they read the namaz. In the month of Ramzan, the Sangh workers would wake up at 2 am and cook for their Muslim friends.”

Former Gujarat CM Shankersinh Vaghela learnt Urdu from JIH members, Modi writes. “The friends from Jamaat would participate in all programmes.”

The book also describes hoodwinking jail authorities to get information to the outside world. “Many solutions would have to be worked out, and it would be inappropriate to mention them at this moment, but our underground arrangement was so perfect that a letter written by Ratnakar Bharti, a spokesperson of BBC based in London, to his friend in jail, reached the latter through the underground route, and in just four days Shri Ratnakar got its reply in London,” writes Modi.

He adds that the Sangh members outside had such detailed information regarding the jail and their colleagues in it, that “if anybody would be caught with these papers, that person could be proved guilty of attempted jailbreak”. “The entire picture, the entry points, the sentries’ quarters, the police jawans in jail, the number of officers posted in jail, their daily routine, their ideology, all this information would be collected by some enthusiastic friends and sent outside… an arrangement was also made for our friends in jail to listen to BBC news,” Modi writes.

Modi goes on to write about selecting the birth anniversary of Nehru, November 14, as the day to launch a statewide agitation against his daughter Indira. The Janata Morcha government also recreated the Dandi Yatra, with a ‘Sangharsh Kooch’ from Ahmedabad to Dandi in August 15-30, 1976, that was led by Sardar Patel’s daughter Maniben.

“Those who joined this kooch were arrested under the DIR (Defence of India Rules), but the government knew the perils of arresting Maniben, thus she was spared,” the book says.

Modi recounts another instance when the protests against the Emergency were taken to the heart of the government. Sangh workers were given the responsibility of printing anti-Emergency and anti-Indira leaflets in English and distributing the same among delegates at a Commonwealth meeting in Delhi, and at a Congress Working Committee meeting in Chandigarh.

The task of distributing leaflets in Delhi fell on then Jan Sangh legislator Suresh Mehta, Modi writes. Mehta was sent as a representative of the Babubhai Patel government to the Commonwealth meeting. “With lots of courage and caution, he (Mehta) handed out these Lok Sangharsh Samiti leaflets exposing the government to the delegates, and before the government realised this, it was all over.”

Modi talks in the book of the Lok Sangharsh Samiti, founded by Jayaprakash Narayan, that spread its outreach as far as the US and UK, despite its members being under surveillance. The Sangh’s Laxmanrao Inamdar, popularly known as “Vakilsaheb”, took the lead and made Gujarat the nodal state for four centres – Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi – for resisting Indira, Modi writes.

He identifies a “Shriman K (Mr K)” as the man given the task of flying to these centres every 10 days and meeting key people.

Modi says that the Sangh also got its message across via fronts like entertainment clubs, bhajan mandalis and welfare mandalis. “Those working for undercover activities in the public domain were given new names and we got used to such undercover meetings,” he writes, revealing that he himself went by the name ‘Prakash’.

Recounting his first meeting with Fernandes, Modi writes: “ …a yellow Fiat car pulled over outside the gate. A strongly built man wearing an un-ironed Lukhnavi kurta, a green cloth wrapped around his head, a chequered lungi and a long beard, giving the impression of a Muslim fakir and known as ‘baba’… George entered.”

The then editor of Sadhana, an RSS-backed periodical, and veteran journalist Vishnu Pandya, who was among those arrested during the period, tells The Indian Express that the Navnirman Movement and the resistance to the Emergency became “a taalim kendra (school of learning) for Narendra Modi”.

On whether such a resistance would be possible today, given the strict measures seen as anti-dissent, Pandya says, “Firstly, today the Opposition does not have the strength to sustain such a movement. If the fight is to save democracy, then it will sustain, but today the Opposition is coming together not for the love of democracy but for the love of power… They don’t want Modi, or the BJP or the RSS. JP (Jayaprakash Narayan) had made it very clear that the fight should not be centred around individuals… Today nothing will be as effective.”