archive: Genesis of the Emergency of 1975-77
Genesis of the Emergency of 1975-77
Arabinda Ghose
Organiser
June 27, 1999
Title: Genesis of the Emergency of 1975-77
Author: Arabinda Ghose
Publication: Organiser
Date: June 27, 1999
On June 26, 1975, no morning newspaper made its appearances. While
people could guess the reasons for this, the then Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi made things clear for them soon. When most people tuned
in All India Radio for the eight o'clock Hindi news bulletin, it was
not the news reader who came on air, but Smt Gandhi herself. She began
by saying: "The President has declared an Emergency in the country but
there is nothing to be afraid of".
Most of us are aware of what happened afterwards. But what was the
genesis of the declaration of Emergency in June 1975? To this writer's
mind, the genesis lay in the massive mandate the Congress under
Indira's leadership obtained in the 1971 snap poll for the Lok Sabha
(350 plus seats) and in the 1972 State Assembly polls, held
immediately after India's victory over Pakistan in the Bangladesh war
of December 1971.
These successes had got into her head, more so when after the 1972
poll victory she was described by the London Economist as the "Empress
of India" She considered herself invincible in elections, and
harboured inflated ego which found expression three years later in
1975 in the words of the then Congress President Devkant Borooah
"Indira is India and India is Indira". "She started believing in the
divine right" of the family to rule India.
Soon after the 1972 Assembly elections, prices started rising. Pulses,
for example, recorded the highest rise and reached the exhorbitant
price of (in 1972) Rs five a kg. Then to compound the situation, there
was widespread drought in the country, the monsoon rains having failed
in most parts of the country. Keeping pace with the prices, the level
of corruption too increased, spawned among other factors by the ban on
company donations to political parties which Indira Gandhi had
skilfully got implemented by utilising the services of Socialist
leaders such as Madhu Limaye. The Congress needed money for elections
and this started coming in the form of black money in cash instead of
the cheque payments which was the system in vogue till the Congress
split of 1969.
It was in this ambience that the Pondicherry Licence scandal broke in
Parliament and the then Commerce Minister Lalit Narayan Mishra came
directly in the firing line of the opposition leaders. At the same
time, a small incident of hike in mess charges for the Engineering
College students of Morvi in Gujarat erupted into a major agitation
against the Chimanbhai Patel Ministry in the State. The "Nav Nirman"
agitation launched by the students of Gujarat then was ruthlessly
suppressed by Patel, and scores of students had died in police
firings.
On March 18, 1974, some miscreants, allegedly Congressmen, burnt down
the office of the Searchlight newspaper of Patna, which had launched a
tirade against Congress corruption in Bihar. That very day, Sarvodaya
leader Jayaprakash Narayan launched his movement against corruption
and this caught the imagination of the people so much that when, with
Nanaji Deshmukh as his lieutenant (K.N. Govindacharya, Laloo Yadav and
Ram Bahadur Rai were among the prominent students leaders backing him)
called a public meeting on November 4 at Patna's Gandhi Maidan. The
entire ground, the surrounding roads and the balconies of houses were
full of people. This had unnerved the Congress in no small measure.
Gujarat continued to simmer and Indira Gandhi got the State Assembly
dissolved, deferring the elections there. In protest, Morarji Desai
undertook a fast in Delhi in April 1975. At first she ignored it, but
when the condition of this octogenarian leader started deteriorating,
Indira Gandhi sent her Home Minister Umashankar Dixit to Morarji and
prevailed upon him to break the fast, promising to hold the elections
in June 1975.
Meanwhile, the Socialist leader Raj Narain had filed an election
petition against Indira Gandhi in the Allahabad High Court. Sensing
that the election expense issue would go against her, Indira Gandhi
got her Law Minister, a pseudo-communist, to get an ordinance issued
in mid-1974 declaring that expenditure incurred by the Party in poll
campaigns would not be added to the money spent by the candidate in
computing the total expenses. The Ordinance was the fall out of the
Supreme Court verdict in the Amarnath Chawla (Congress) versus
Kanwarlal Gupta (Jana Sangh) case which had unseated Chawla on this
ground.
However, this Ordinance did not take care of the participation of
Government servants in elections and Indira Gandhi learnt it to her
cost, soon after.
The Gujarat election results were announced on June 12, 1975 in which
the Janata Morcha of Congress-O, the Jana Sangh and the Socialists,
scored a narrow victory. The same day the Allahabad High Court
unseated Indira Gandhi for six years for adopting corrupt practices in
election to the Lok Sabha from the Rae Bareli constituency in Uttar
Pradesh. The same day, Indira Gandhi's most trusted colleague,
Planning Minister D.P. Dhar died of a heart attack. This three-pronged
tragedy drove her and the Congress Party mad, as it were.
Indira Gandhi refused to resign, as demanded by all opposition parties
except the CPI which was in alliance with the Congress. She managed a
Congress Parliamentary Party meeting, held in the Central Hall of
Parliament adopt a unanimous resolution (after she discrectly withdrew
from the meeting) urging her to lead the Congress Party in Parliament
"in the capacity of the Prime Minister". But the opposition was
unrelenting. We in the Motherland daily had started describing her as
a "imposter Prime Minister".
She went to the Supreme Court which granted her some reprieve. She
could continue as the Member of Parliament, but without the right to
vote. This was no less humiliating for her than her actual unseating
by the Allahabad High Court. The opposition demand, dharnas, and
public meetings reached a crescendo and on the evening of June 25,
Jayaprakash Narayan addressed a huge public meeting at Ramlila Grounds
in Delhi demanding her resignation.
The same evening she got together her supporters and got a
proclamation for declaring Emergency signed by President Fakruddin Ali
Ahmed. There was no meeting of the Council of Minsiters approving this
proclamation, Indira Gandhi got the proclamation endorsed by the
council of Minsiters afterwards.
The entire exercise was meant to ensure the continuance of Indira
Gandhi as the Prime Minister. The present generation should remember
this because the daughter in law of Indira Gandhi is now eyeing the
South Block, and probably believes in the "divine right" of the
dynasty to rule India.
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