50 years of Emergency: Have any lessons been learnt?

JUNE 25-26 hardly creates a ripple in Indian polity anymore, save for a couple of newspaper articles by a dying breed of journalists and politicians who have lived through those tumultuous times. Many among the younger generation got to know about this dark chapter in India's democratic evolution through the eponymous Bollywood film, 'Emergency', starring Kangana Ranaut, panned for its "selective storytelling."Two generations of Indians have grown into adulthood since Indira Gandhi, in a midnight crackdown, invoking the then Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) on June 25, 1975, curtailed fundamental rights, jailed political and other opponents of her rule and imposed press censorship in the enforcement of a declaration of internal emergency. Democratic India had not seen anything like this since the British colonial rule and the next 21 months marked a watershed in the country's chequered history.For me, then a rookie sub- editor working on late night duty in the newsroom of the United News of India (UNI), the period marked a loss of political innocence. The events are still vivid in memory: the first startling reports of the closure of newspaper printing presses, switching off of power and seizure of newspapers from places as far apart as Jalandhar and Indore; sightings of unusual security movement at many places; rumours of midnight arrests of Opposition leaders, and then the first call from a leading Opposition figure of his impending arrest.Acting on a tip-off, a colleague, Arul Louis, and I — in the absence of any senior reporters at that hour — rushed to the nearby Parliament Street Police Station to get the latest information. It was an era where there were no mobile phones and landlines worked fitfully. It was past 2.30 am and the city was asleep, blissfully unaware of the retributory machinations of a democratically elected PM, who was going to such lengths to subvert democracy to stay in power in order to trump an adverse judicial verdict holding her guilty of electoral malpractices.Outside the police station, there was unusual activity and the riot police were driving out in trucks. The air was taut with tension. The two of us were asked to leave, but we hung on in the shadows. The defiant wait proved journalistically rewarding as soon, a white Ambassador car drove up in a flurry of escort vehicles. Wedged in between two plain-clothed police officials was the familiar sight of Jayaprakash Narayan, hailed as "Lok Nayak" (people's leader), who the day before had given a call to the military at a massive public rally in Delhi to act on its conscience and disregard unconstitutional and immoral orders and called for a programme of social transformation, which he termed "Sampoorna Kraanti" (total revolution).As the tough-looking cops tried to shield the frail man, Narayan gave his terse reaction with words that were to make history: "Vinash kaale vipreet buddhi" (Reason takes flight as doom nears). We rushed back to office to file the breaking news.From then on, the few of us who were privileged to be on the nocturnal beat worked feverishly to a climactic dawn. With the printed phone directory on our laps, every Opposition leader was rung up and the tracking efforts proved rewarding. UNI's General Manager GG Mirchandani encouraged us to keep the truth flowing and the public informed. The government censors arrived in the morning and took charge as censorship set in.Aides of Moraraji Desai, who was to later become PM in 1977, heading a short-lived government, said he had been woken up by the police and was being taken to jail. Similar stories were heard from the homes of AB Vajpayee, Chandra Shekhar, Charan Singh, all of whom were to become PMs. Sikander Bakht, who later became a cabinet minister in the Desai government and was a stalwart of the Jana Sangh/BJP, said he had hidden in the bathroom when the police came and appealed to us to save him from arrest.Tales of midnight knocks and police swoops on homes of targeted people came from around the nation as every opponent of Indira Gandhi was thrown into prison.A few, like Subramanian Swamy, were tipped off and escaped in time, catching the first flights to the freedom of the West, from where they organised opposition to the repressive regime.Dissenting teachers, students, journalists, intellectuals were all put behind bars as India experienced living in an authoritarian system for the first time.The crackdown on newspapers and news agencies came a little later as the authorities belatedly realised what havoc unrestricted information flow about the crackdown had caused. In the pre-internet analogue era, it would have otherwise been a swift, silent operation in the dead of the night.The Emergency rule made heroes of some but revealed the clay feet of most. BJP patriarch LK Advani, then leader of the Jana Sangh party, made a telling comment where he said that people when asked to bend crawled. Many journalists, officials, industrialists ended up singing paeans to Gandhi's virtues, lest they also were arrested.Many historians have charitably said that it was a tribute to the innate democratic spirit of Indira Gandhi, as the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, that she lifted the Emergency after 21 months and ordered free elections in the hope that people would endorse her move.But the truth was that her intelligence reports had told her that the underground movement against the Emergency could pose a threat to her life and that of her upstart son Sanjay Gandhi; the gross abuses of power by the police and regulatory officials, like the demolition of slums and forcible sterilisation; the criticism abroad, particularly the West, and finally, the realisation that the Indian people can be gagged but their democratic spirit can never be crushed.The elections in March 1977 were a fitting riposte to her and Sanjay Gandhi's calculations. There was an element of disbelief when results showed that Gandhi, her son, her acolytes and cheerleaders of the Congress had all been routed.The repressive regime went, but the scars it left took a long time to heal and in some cases, caused lasting damage to the body politic. The credibility of the vital pillars, like the judiciary, stood badly eroded, corruption became institutionalised in the name of party mobilisation and politics became the last refuge of the criminalised and the lumpen as long as they served its political ends.That fateful March 1977 election vindicated democratic traditions and proved the triumph of freedom over bread. Ballot after regular ballot has shown that just because a man is poor and maybe cannot read does not mean that he does not care for his liberty and human rights.It may be difficult for another PM to impose Emergency under similar circumstances because of a constitutional amendment made in 1978. But whether the lessons the Emergency taught to the ruler and the ruled are still remembered remains doubtful.Views are personalTarun Basu is former Chief Editor and Director, IANS.

50 years of Emergency: Have any lessons been learnt?

Tarun Basu

Unlock Premium Insights in This Article