The Rise of Goliath

by AK Bhattacharya

  We have watched these developments with utmost patience for long. Now we learn of a new programme challenging law and order throughout the country with a view to disrupting normal functioning. How can any Government worth the name stand by and allow the country’s stability to be imperilled? The actions of a few are endangering the rights of the vast majority. Any situation, which weakens the capacity of the national Government to act decisively inside the country, is bound to encourage dangers from outside. It is our paramount duty to safeguard unity and stability. The nation’s integrity demands firm action.

  The threat to internal stability also affects production and prospects of economic improvement. In the last few months the determined action we have taken has succeeded in largely checking the price rise. We have been actively considering further measures to strengthen the economy and to relieve the hardship of various sections, particularly the poor and vulnerable and those with fixed incomes. I shall announce them soon.

  I should like to assure you that the new Emergency proclamation will in no way affect the rights of law-abiding citizens. I am sure that internal conditions will speedily improve to enable us to dispense with this proclamation as soon as possible. I have been overwhelmed by the message of goodwill from all parts of India and all sections of the people. May I appeal for your continued cooperation and trust in the days ahead?

  The speech was delivered by Indira Gandhi in less than five minutes. But its disruptive impact on India’s politics would last for many decades to come. In her address, Gandhi made no reference to the Allahabad High Court judgment that had declared her election to the Lok Sabha void or to the Supreme Court order giving a conditional stay on it. Instead, she presented a different story—one where disruptive forces were targeting her and her colleagues and distracting the government from its resolve to bring about faster economic development. It was an appeal to the people to cooperate with her instead of joining those protestors who in her view were trying to destabilize the country.

  The Son Also Rises

  The influence of Sanjay Gandhi, the younger son of the prime minister, during this period was on the rise, though not as distinctly visible as it would become after the imposition of the Emergency. Ray would recount his brief encounter with Sanjay Gandhi on the night the Emergency was imposed. Ray was apparently upset that even before the rules had been framed under the Emergency, the government had ordered the shutdown of the high courts and disconnection of power supplies to newspaper offices. He was waiting at the prime minister’s house to advise Gandhi against taking such steps before framing the rules. At this point,

  Sanjay Gandhi met him in a highly excited and infuriated state of mind and told him quite rudely and offensively that he [Ray] did not know how to rule the country. Ray stated in his evidence that he did not lose his temper, but made Sanjay understand that he should mind his own business and should not try to interfere with what was not his sphere.9

  In his book, PMO Diary-I: Prelude to the Emergency, B.N. Tandon, joint secretary in the prime minister’s secretariat, recounted three specific instances of the growing clout of Sanjay Gandhi during that fortnight. On 12 June, soon after the Allahabad High Court verdict was public, Gandhi began consultations with her colleagues including Law Minister H.R Gokhale and West Bengal Chief Minister Siddharth Shankar Ray. But a little later, Gandhi was seen having a whispering discussion with her son, Sanjay, and her personal assistant, R.K. Dhawan, after which the latter began calling ‘people around Delhi to organise demonstrations in favour of the PM’.10

  Another diary entry by Tandon shows Sanjay Gandhi’s dramatic rise. Referring to a conversation that the Information and Broadcasting Minister, I.K. Gujral, had with N.K. Seshan, private secretary to the prime minister, where Tandon too was present, the diary entry for 21 June 1975 stated the following:

  I learnt from Gujral today that Sanjay had given him a severe dressing down because yesterday’s rally had not been properly publicised. He was also annoyed that the campaign that is under way in support of the PM too is not getting proper publicity. Gujral was upset that Sanjay should upbraid him. He had been summoned to meet the PM but was asked to meet Sanjay. His meeting today with the PM was also not pleasant. She expressed her dissatisfaction at the inadequacy of the publicity and wanted the proposed demonstration in front of Morarji’s house to be properly highlighted. She said that she wanted to see the radio and TV scripts, not just of this but all news bulletins before they were broadcast. Gujral replied that he too didn’t ordinarily see the scripts. The PM then angrily remarked that if he didn’t see the scripts why was he the minister for information and broadcasting. She said that whether or not he saw the scripts, the prime minister wanted to see them.11

  Within weeks of this incident, Gujral was sent off to Moscow as India’s ambassador to the Soviet Union. V.C. Shukla was brought in as his successor and he played along with the directions that Gandhi and her son would issue on the question of media censorship.

  On 23 June, Tandon recounts another incident that is ample proof to show how Sanjay Gandhi had become more powerful in even key appointments. Tandon was told by the prime minister’s secretary, P.N. Dhar, that the chief secretary of Rajasthan, S.L. Khurana, would be replacing Nirmal Mukherji as the new home secretary. The sequence of events was as follows:

  The PM had summoned Khurana that day. He reached Delhi at night and met the PM yesterday. She met him just for five minutes. Seshan (her private secretary) said that after meeting him, she sent him (Khurana) to meet Sanjay and Dhawan, who interviewed him for about half an hour. Dhawan then went to the PM and said that Khurana was suitable for the job. After getting the green signal, the PM told Prof Dhar to inform the cabinet secretary to appoint Khurana as the home secretary and further that he should assume charge today itself.12

  Dhar, according to Tandon, looked very upset by such a turn of events. The rise of Sanjay Gandhi as an unconstitutional authority appeared to have disturbed him hugely. The incumbent home secretary’s next posting too had not been decided even though his successor had been named. The irony of the whole exercise was that even though Khurana’s appointment was cleared by Sanjay Gandhi, the home secretary was completely dark on the night of 25 June, when the Emergency was imposed. He had phoned Tandon to check if any major arrests had to be conducted or if any major orders of the prime minister had to be carried out.

  The rise of Sanjay Gandhi as an extraconstitutional power centre in New Delhi during those months was as big a political disruption as the very imposition of the Emergency in the entire country. Sanjay Gandhi derived his power from being the son of the prime minister. It also paved the way for the continuation of a dynastic rule. The Congress even till today has not been able to get rid of the stigma of being ruled and led by the Gandhi family. The growing clout of Sanjay Gandhi during the Emergency months was dangerous and disastrous for the country, but the continuation of the dynastic rule in the Congress also made the party considerably weaker and vulnerable to attacks from other political parties, particularly the Bharatiya Janata Party, where dynasty is yet to capture the organization.

  Perspectives on the Political Shock

  So much has been written about how Gandhi imposed the Emergency that it would be useful to recount how different people saw the sequence in which this decision was taken less than a fortnight after the Allahabad High Court order. What happened during that fortnight? Why did Gandhi not let the legal process take care of her prime ministership and control of her party? Why did she use a provision in the law that nobody before her had used and nobody after her has used so far?

  The best account of what transpired before Gandhi decided to impose the Emergency is given by P.N. Dhar in his autobiographical book, Indira Gandhi, the ‘Emergency’, and Indian Democracy, where he recounted how the prime minister responded to the legal challenge she faced. Dhar had a ringside view of the goings-on during those days in the prime minister’s secretariat, where he joined in 1973 as the principal secretar
y and remained in the job until 1977.

  An early morning phone call on 12 June 1975 informed Dhar that his friend, D.P. Dhar, ambassador to the Soviet Union, had died at the Govind Ballabh Pant Hospital in New Delhi after a massive heart attack. The two had been good friends since their college days in Srinagar. In early 1975 Indira Gandhi had sent D.P. Dhar to Moscow on his second stint as India’s ambassador. After he returned from his two-year tenure there in 1971, Gandhi had made him the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, but she sent him back to Moscow again from 1 January 1975.

  The previous evening, P.N. Dhar met his friend at the hospital and spent some time together as the next day he was to get a pacemaker, an electronic device that would help his heart beat regularly. He couldn’t believe that the man whom he had met just a day before and who had expressed his concern about the political situation in the country was no more. He was just fifty-seven.

  When P.N. Dhar reached the hospital, Gandhi was already there giving instructions on the funeral arrangements to be made by the government for his friend. He wanted to speak to his deceased friend’s wife who was still in Moscow. He returned to his office to make that telephone call. But even before he could speak to her, the second piece of bad news of the day hit him.

  H.Y. Sharada Prasad, information adviser to Indira Gandhi, walked into his room and told him without concealing the agitation in his mind: ‘The Allahabad judgement has come and the prime minister has been unseated.’ Dhar was already crestfallen by the news of his friend’s death. And now came the shocking news about his boss. He went over to the prime minister’s house and Congress President Dev Kant Barooah and other senior ministers were assembled in small groups discussing various options to respond to the court verdict. Gandhi was engaged in discussion with smaller groups by turn.

  On the first day after the judgment, it was clear to Dhar that Gandhi wanted that the government’s work should not suffer in any way. The prime minister also asked him to see her every morning in her house and not in her office, which she might not attend for the next few days. This was significant.

  It is remarkable that during the first two days after the Allahabad High Court judgment the discussion between Dhar and Gandhi every morning was primarily focused on the routine official work and the political crisis that had engulfed her did not figure. Only on the third day did Dhar refer to the many letters of support he had received from many people during her meeting. Gandhi looked a little relieved after hearing that Fali S. Nariman, the additional solicitor general, believed that the Allahabad High Court judgment had many flaws, based as it was on weak arguments, and it would not pass muster at the Supreme Court. What pleased Gandhi more was that the British daily the Guardian had described the charges levelled against her as similar to the violation of traffic rules. The only discordant note Dhar discerned during those conversations was that she seemed to ignore his suggestions that she should not let the Congress launch a counter-agitation against the verdict and the best response to the Opposition political parties’ demand for her resignation would be that she was waiting for the Supreme Court’s verdict on her appeal against the high court judgment. On the contrary, Dhar noted how her trusted associates like Dev Kant Barooah, president of the Congress party, Siddhartha Shankar Ray, West Bengal chief minister, and Rajni Patel, veteran Congress leader, would be busy confabulating with her. And outside her residence, there would be Congress workers shouting slogans in her support. All this did not make Dhar very happy.

  A few days later, Dhar felt slighted by Gandhi when the prime minister accused him of deliberately sitting on ‘certain home ministry files relating to appointments’. A deeply hurt Dhar checked back if indeed any home ministry files were being delayed in his office. What transpired was an indication to Dhar that a new lobby of powerful people was growing its roots around Gandhi. The file that was the trigger for Gandhi’s accusation against Dhar pertained to her direction that some appointments should be routed through Om Mehta, who was at that time the minister of state for home affairs. Dhar’s experienced eyes immediately got wind of the underlying purpose of that direction. A minister of state is a junior minister and, unless he is given independent charge of a ministry, he doesn’t even attend the meetings of the Union cabinet. Mehta did not have an independent charge of the home ministry as he had a senior cabinet minister for home affairs in Brahmananda Reddy. If some appointments were to be routed through Mehta, that would have amounted to bypassing his senior, Brahmananda Reddy. Dhar also realized that if his attention had been drawn to this procedural lapse, he would surely have apprised the prime minister what such routing of files could mean for the senior home minister. But Gandhi’s accusation had already taken the matter to a different level.

  Om Mehta belonged to the coterie of powerful officers and private secretaries in the prime minister’s house which included R.K. Dhawan. Dhar sent to Gandhi a note wherein he desired to put in his papers. There was no communication between Dhar and Gandhi on this issue for a couple of days, till one morning Gandhi became emotional and with moistened eyes said she had full faith in Dhar. She also added that it was a terribly testing time for her and her friends. Dhar felt bad that he had hurt Gandhi in that manner and did not raise the issue of his resignation again.

  On 24 June 1975, the Supreme Court passed an order that conditionally stayed the Allahabad High Court verdict that had declared Gandhi’s 1971 Lok Sabha election void.13 It looked as if Gandhi had won a major reprieve and she had succeeded in warding off the Opposition demand for her resignation and now, with the stay order, she gained the legitimacy of continuing to remain as prime minister. But a phone call at 11 p.m. the next evening asking Dhar to meet the prime minister at her residence proved all such calculations wrong.

  Dhar writes in his book:

  The atmosphere in the house was tense. Ray and Barooah were there. Ray looked grim while Barooah wore a huge grin and was trying to look relaxed as usual. Mrs Gandhi told me tersely: ‘The situation in the country is very bad. We have decided to declare internal emergency. There is going to be a Cabinet meeting early in the morning tomorrow after which I am going to broadcast the decision on AIR.’

  Having said this, she handed me the draft of the proposed speech. Just at that time Sharada Prasad, who had also been summoned, walked in. I went over the draft with Sharada and suggested the addition of the following line in the concluding paragraph of the draft: ‘I am sure that internal conditions will speedily improve to enable us to dispense with this proclamation as soon as possible.’14

  Dhar began wondering if he made the wrong decision by not pressing for his resignation a few days earlier. He did consult his predecessor Haksar, now deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, who felt that it was necessary for people like him to stay within the system to improve the situation.

  Dhar stayed on in the job till Gandhi called for elections in early 1977. After she lost the elections, Dhar left the prime minister’s secretariat at the end of March that year as Morarji Desai succeeded Gandhi to head the government.

  A Civil Servant’s Assessment

  Bishan Narain Tandon, an IAS officer, joined the prime minister’s secretariat as a joint secretary on 4 October 1969 and functioned in that capacity till 24 July 1976, when he was promoted as additional secretary and shifted to the ministry of education. Tandon, therefore, saw from close quarters how Indira Gandhi functioned as prime minister and how she changed over those years to eventually declare an internal emergency. His diary entries, captured in his book, PMO Diary-I: Prelude to the Emergency, shed additional light on the events during the days leading up to the night of 25 June 1975 when Gandhi declared the Emergency.

  A day after the Allahabad High Court delivered its order unseating Gandhi, Tandon noted how a political campaign had been mooted to prove that a government official’s resignation could be accepted orally. The court order had indicted Gandhi for having used the services of Yashpal Kapoor, before his resignation from service was formall
y accepted by the government. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna had left a note on this issue and the prime minister’s secretariat was engaged in an internal discussion on whether that as a defence would pass muster. A day later, Tandon even received a call from the prime minister’s house that inquired if Kapoor received his salaries after 13 January 1971. The suggestion seemed to be that if he had not, then it could be argued that Kapoor had ceased to be in government office after that date, when Gandhi’s election campaigning had begun.

  Gandhi’s private secretary, N.K. Seshan, had already told Tandon that the prime minister’s house had become a centre of activity for organizing public rallies in support of the prime minister. Haryana Chief Minister Bansi Lal and Delhi Lieutenant Governor Krishna Chand would convene there and plan the logistics of these rallies, and often commandeer the services of the official machinery from Delhi and Haryana. Tandon also began recording how various Congress chief ministers of states, including J. Vengala Rao of Andhra Pradesh and Devraj Urs of Karnataka, would visit Gandhi during this period. While they would tell Seshan privately that she should resign, none of them would have the courage to say so in her presence.

  Signs of the growing clout of the coterie within the prime minister’s house also became evident to Tandon, as he noted in his diary how the key appointments of senior officials were being vetted by Gandhi’s personal assistant, R.K. Dhawan, and her son, Sanjay Gandhi. An indication of the impending declaration of an internal emergency was available on 25 June, when Krishan Chand requested Tandon that a RAX telephone line (a service that is accessible and provided to only top civil servants and ministers to provide quick connectivity among them) should be immediately installed at the residences of P.N. Behl, who had joined the prime minister’s secretariat a couple of days ago, and Navin Chawla, secretary to the Lieutenant Governor.