The Rise of Goliath

by AK Bhattacharya

  The Account of a Trusted Insider

  Pranab Mukherjee, who was a minister of state finance in the Indira Gandhi government in 1975, had an understandably charitable view of the Allahabad High Court judgment on 12 June. In Dramatic Decade: The Indira Gandhi Years, he wrote that the court found her guilty on two ‘technical grounds—taking assistance of government officers to construct rostrums and supply power for loudspeakers at two election rallies and taking the assistance of Yashpal Kapoor, a government official, for furthering her election prospects’. But he also noted that she was acquitted of other charges like exceeding the ceiling on election expenses, bribery of voters with gifts etc., use of Air Force aircraft during electioneering and the use of the cow and the calf symbol to exploit the voters’ religious sentiments.

  Political rumblings after that judgment increased. Jayaprakash Narayan said that her ‘failure to bow to the High Court verdict would not only be against the law as found by the Allahabad High Court, but also against all public decency and democratic practice’.15 Opposition party leaders in New Delhi sat on a dharna outside Rashtrapati Bhavan and demanded Gandhi’s resignation. The dharna by these leaders went on for about four days, till President V.V. Giri returned from his tour of Jammu and Kashmir on 16 June and gave them a hearing.16

  Congress members of Parliament loyal to Gandhi did not take these protests lying down. The Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) held a meeting on 18 June, where Gandhi said: ‘My continuance does not depend on what the Opposition demands but on what my own party and the people want.’ Having thus put the onus on the Congress party on her continuing as prime minister, Gandhi gave the entire issue a different dimension. A resolution was passed by the CPP, which reposed complete faith and confidence in Gandhi and resolved that her continued leadership as prime minister was ‘indispensable for the nation’. It was at this point in time that the Congress president, Dev Kanta Barooah, made his famous statement that India was Indira and Indira was India. Barooah added that the Allahabad High Court judgment did not diminish her moral authority and observed that the party might have lost a battle, it must now win the war. Even Mukherjee felt that such statements reeked of sycophancy and reflected the desire of the Congress to fight back for sheer survival. They also held a public meeting at the Boat Club, near Raj Path, on 20 June, which was attended by a large number of Congress supporters. Gandhi addressed the rally and said quite ironically that democracy in India had been endangered and the Opposition parties had hatched a conspiracy in the name of rule of law, but essentially aimed at removing her from office.

  Almost in response, the Opposition parties held a huge rally at the Ramlila grounds on 25 June, a day after the Supreme Court vacation judge, Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, had given Gandhi a conditional stay against the Allahabad High Court order. Urging people to start a civil disobedience movement, JP also requested the Chief Justice of India, A.N. Ray, that he should not hear Gandhi’s appeal as he was obliged to her for his appointment that took place after superseding other senior judges. The same evening Gandhi informed President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed of her decision to proclaim an internal emergency. A few minutes before midnight on 25 June, the President promulgated an ordinance to announce a state of emergency under Article 352 of the Indian Constitution.

  Ray had played a key role in helping Gandhi make up her mind on the need to proclaim an internal emergency in the country. Gandhi had called Ray to meet her on the morning of 25 June and told him how she had received reports of country-wide agitation, lawlessness and indiscipline, leading to a crisis and requiring strong corrective action. Ray’s response was that there were adequate legal provisions within the existing administrative framework which she could use to quell such early signs of instability and violence. Gandhi shared with Ray the intelligence reports that suggested at the proposed public rally to be held at the Ramlila grounds on 25 June, Jayaprakash Narayan would call an all-India agitation, suggest the setting up of parallel administrative networks across the country and appeal to the army and police forces to disobey illegal orders.

  Ray’s understanding of Gandhi that evening was that the prime minister was clear in her mind that the country was heading towards instability and chaos. The West Bengal chief minister sought some time and promised to come back to her later in the evening. At a meeting that began at 5 p.m., the idea of proclaiming an internal emergency was mooted by Ray, citing provisions of Article 352 of the Constitution. Once that idea was accepted, Gandhi and Ray visited President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed to convince him of the need to urgently declare the Emergency.

  Mukherjee, however, was not with Gandhi that evening, when many of her other advisers were discussing with the prime minister what steps needed to be taken in response to the 25 June public rally to be addressed by JP and Desai. He was in Calcutta for his Rajya Sabha election scheduled for 26 June. He learnt of the decision on the Emergency only on the morning of 26 June as he got a call from Gandhi to return to Delhi as soon as possible. Mukherjee at that time was a minister of state for finance, in charge of the departments of revenue and banking. Siddhartha Shankar Ray, who was then the chief minister of West Bengal, had returned to Calcutta on 26 June and he met Mukherjee and D.P. Chattopadhyaya, who was then the minister of state for commerce at the Centre.

  Many years later, Gandhi would tell Mukherjee that until Ray gave her the idea of an internal emergency, she was unaware of such a provision in the Constitution, particularly when there was already an external emergency in the country after the 1971 India–Pakistan War. It was also ironical that when it came to taking the blame for who mooted the idea of proclaiming an internal emergency, many of those who had endorsed it had disowned it and disclaimed any responsibility.

  Mukherjee’s analysis of why Indira Gandhi responded to the 25 June meeting with the Emergency is interesting, as she went for that extreme step in spite of the opinion of several international leaders that she should resign instead and gain popularity like Gamal Abdel Nasser did in Egypt though under slightly different circumstances. The Opposition parties, according to Mukherjee, were desperate to challenge Gandhi’s growing authority and charisma and the Allahabad High Court judgment seemed like a golden opportunity to them. There was no apparent unity among these political parties but with JP providing them moral leadership, they could come together and launch a united attack against Gandhi.

  In the final analysis, Mukherjee felt that even though the Emergency brought about many ‘positive changes—discipline in public life, a growing economy, controlled inflation, a reversed trade deficit for the first time, enhanced developmental expenditure and a crackdown on tax evasion and smuggling’, it was an avoidable event as it led to the suspension of fundamental rights, large-scale arrests of political leaders, censorship of the media and an extension to the tenure of the Lok Sabha beyond the normal period of five years. Coming from a Congress leader who was a close associate of Gandhi during that period, Mukherjee’s qualified assessment of the Emergency shows how disruptive Gandhi’s decision was for the country.

  A Student Activist’s Take

  Arun Jaitley’s account of the days in the run-up to the declaration of the Emergency was equally telling. Jaitley then was a young student leader at the helm of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Jana Sangh, which later became the Bharatiya Janata Party. In his foreword to Coomi Kapoor’s book The Emergency: A Personal History, Jaitley recalls how soon after the verdict of the Allahabad High Court the Opposition political parties were getting together under the overall leadership of Jayaprakash Narayan, popularly known as JP, who had already tasted considerable success while leading a students’ agitation against the government. That the economy was not doing well only helped the movement launched by JP, which was now ably supported by other parties ranged against the Congress. Gandhi’s appeal against the Allahabad High Court verdict was heard by the Supreme Court vacation judge, V. R. Krishna Iyer. According to Jaitley, Justice Krishna Iyer’s verdict s
taying the Allahabad High Court order was qualified in many ways. He writes that the judge ‘admitted an appeal and passed the usual interim order that she could attend the House but not vote, nor could she draw her salary as a member of Parliament. She could speak as the prime minister but not as an MP.’

  It is possible that Justice Krishna Iyer’s stay order did not fully satisfy Gandhi and she sensed that the Opposition demand for her resignation and the movement against her leadership would not see any respite or decline. On the evening of 25 June, JP, along with Morarji Desai, addressed a massive rally on the Ramlila Grounds in Delhi. His address that evening was explosive and he gave a clarion call to the people for an open rebellion against the authorities:

  Friends, the civil disobedience will be of varied types. A time may come when, if these people do not listen, it may be necessary to derecognise the government. They have no moral, legal or constitutional right to govern; therefore we would de-recognise them; we would not cooperate with them; not a paisa of tax shall be given to them.

  Gandhi and her advisers who had kept track of the rally at the Ramlila grounds had reasons to believe that the Opposition parties were raising the pitch to a level where the government could be in serious trouble. In the same address, JP had asked the army, the police and government servants to disobey the orders which they felt were wrong. JP knew he was treading a risky path when he challenged the government to try him for treason for having made such a statement at a public rally. Morarji Desai added fuel to fire when he asked the audience for their approval of the programme of agitation outlined by JP.17

  Jaitley recalls that he returned home late in the evening after attending JP’s rally .18 At around 2 a.m., the doorbell at his residence rang and the police were outside to arrest him. His father, a lawyer, engaged with the police officers demanding on what grounds they were seeking his son’s arrest. Meanwhile, Jaitley slipped out of his home from the rear door and escaped arrest. But the next morning, he decided to go to the Delhi University and addressed a rally, which led to his arrest.19 By the time he was arrested, Gandhi had announced over All India Radio her government’s decision to declare the Emergency, press censorship was imposed, senior Opposition leaders including even those Congress leaders like Chandra Shekhar and Ram Dhan, who were close to JP, were arrested and the fundamental rights of people were suspended. To his horror, Jaitley found that he was served a detention order under the dreaded Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA), which gave the government powers to detain people for an indefinite period of time. Worse, blank detention orders were signed by an additional district magistrate and the names of the detainees were filled in at the time of the arrest. A bigger blow came when a petition filed in the Supreme Court to seek its intervention in upholding a detained citizen’s right to move a court was defeated. It was a majority verdict of four judges in favour and only one opposing it. The Emergency and authoritarian rule over the nation had caused the most harmful political disruption in India.

  A similar fate had befallen Lal Krishna Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, both of whom at that time were the two tall leaders of the Jan Sangh. From 26 to 27 June, a Joint Parliamentary Committee to examine a law against defection was to hold its meeting in Bangalore (as Bengaluru was known then). Vajpayee had left New Delhi on 24 June and Advani took a flight out of Delhi a day later. At around 7.30 a.m. on 26 June, Advani received a call from Delhi informing him that senior leaders of the Jana Sangh and other Opposition leaders including Jayaprakash Narayan and Morarji Desai had been arrested at midnight and both Advani and Vajpayee, too, were likely to be arrested soon. Advani and Vajpayee had a quick chat and decided not to evade arrest. They heard Gandhi’s radio address about her decision on declaring the Emergency, issued a statement condemning the move and by around 10 a.m., the local police knocked their doors to arrest them.

  CHAPTER 13

  WHY IT ALL HAPPENED

  Without doubt, the imposition of the Emergency in June 1975 would be classified as India’s most dangerous disruption. It was a shock to the political system that few could anticipate less than thirty years after India’s Independence. Grave forecasts made earlier about the future of India’s democracy came back in circulation. Democratic practices were suspended. Press freedom was curbed. Elections to the Lok Sabha were postponed. A small coterie of ministers, including Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, along with her son, Sanjay Gandhi, who enjoyed no constitutional authority, ran the government. Citizen’s rights were abrogated so much so that even a habeas corpus appeal to challenge the legality of an imprisonment was not upheld by the Supreme Court. And all this largely because the Allahabad High Court had ruled that Indira Gandhi was found guilty of two corrupt practices while fighting her 1971 Lok Sabha elections.

  The imposition of the Emergency on 25 June 1975 is often seen as a political response to a political challenge Indira Gandhi faced from a host of opposition parties. There can hardly be any disagreement with that proposition. But what is often not appreciated in the popular narrative about the causes of the Emergency is that Gandhi’s response was also shaped by the economic plight India was going through in the early 1970s.

  India’s economic woes had ironically begun when Gandhi was at the peak of her political power, after India’s successful intervention in East Pakistan. This had led to the birth of a new nation in Bangladesh in 1971. India’s western neighbour was taught a lesson in a war where it was at the receiving end in every respect. But that war had also meant a huge economic burden on India in the form of an influx of over 10 million refugees who had crossed over from then East Pakistan and many of them did not go back after normalcy returned. The war with Pakistan also had an economic cost, which was aggravated by the US decision to suspend aid to India. Monsoons in the summer of 1972–73 failed and even the winter rains virtually disappeared that year. The resulting drought impacted India’s agriculture, largely dependent on rainfall, with a consequent drop in output by about 8 per cent.

  If that was not enough, OPEC decided in October 1973 to raise crude oil prices by imposing a production cut and an embargo on supplies to the United States and a few of its allies. The cost of importing fertilizers went up as a consequence of the OPEC crude oil price hike. This, in turn, affected agricultural output also. Inflation soared and by 1973 it had crossed the 20-per-cent mark and reached about 30 per cent by the middle of 1974.

  The Indira Gandhi government had to take a series of measures that were tough and even made her unpopular among her political supporters. India had to apply for a loan from the IMF. Licensing controls had to be relaxed and large business houses were allowed to expand production. In a bid to rein in the runaway inflation rate, the government had to curb demand in the economy. One such measure it adopted was to ban all increases in wages and half of the dearness allowance (meant for compensating employees for inflation) for salaried government employees was frozen and converted into compulsory deposits—a move that made Gandhi’s government extremely unpopular. Even taxpayers in the higher income brackets were made to park an additional 4–8 per cent of their income into compulsory deposits.

  In his book, P.N. Dhar analysed how Gandhi’s old policies of state-led controls were becoming a liability for her in the new situation that obliged her to look at economic policy options that ran contrary to the spirit of her earlier policies.1 ‘The government thus became vulnerable to criticism for ideological retreat. Mrs Gandhi found herself in a difficult situation as she was now subjected to contrary pulls from her professional advisers and her party colleagues,’ Dhar wrote.2

  One instance that reflected this tension was Gandhi’s decision to nationalize wholesale trade in wheat, a move she had to withdraw after it faced many implementation problems. While B.S. Minhas, an eminent economist and a member of the Planning Commission, had opposed the idea, the idea was supported by her party leadership. But when problems erupted over its execution, she had no option other than to withdraw her order.

  Another major eco
nomic crisis that Gandhi faced just before the Emergency was the national strike by workers of the Indian Railways. In August 1973, militant trade unionism in the Indian Railways reared its ugly head when workers in the locomotives division went on an indefinite strike. The government made the mistake of succumbing to such pressure tactic and made the trade unions more bold and demanding. By November 1973, George Fernandes replaced Peter Alvares to lead the railway workers union. Alvares was a moderate, while Fernandes, who would later become the industry minister in the Janata Party government in 1977, upped the ante as soon as he took charge, demanding among other things, higher bonus and wage parity for railway workers with those prevailing in Central public-sector undertakings like BHEL and HMT.

  In May 1974, Fernandes declared an indefinite strike in the Indian Railways, but Gandhi did not relent and forced the workers to resume work after twenty days of the strike. It was a victory for Gandhi, a failure for the railway workers, but it emboldened the Opposition political parties. Indeed, this was also the time the Opposition political parties, in spite of their ideological differences, came closer to each other to oppose Gandhi.

  Just about five years earlier, Gandhi had unleashed a series of economic policy measures by which she had changed the way the Indian economy operated. Politically also, she had risen to the zenith of her political power and popularity by 1971. But the worsening economic situation in the country led to a series of policy decisions by the government that ironically strengthened the political unity among Opposition parties. This unity got a shot in its arm when the Allahabad High Court verdict declared Gandhi’s 1971 election invalid and the Opposition demanded that she should step down. That cornered Gandhi and one of her options could have been to wait till her petition appealing the Allahabad High Court judgment was heard. She could have even considered stepping down, an option she clearly chose to ignore even though it could have made her more popular. Why she did not choose such a path, following the rule of law, will remain a mystery. But an attempt to analyse why she chose to go for an extreme step like the Emergency will be useful.