We Need a Dispassionate Study of the Emergency

The completion of 50 years of the imposition of Emergency on the mid-night of June 25-26 provides us with an opportunity to objectively analyse the whole scenario leading to this dictatorial crackdown. At the same time, without holding any brief for the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, one must not forget that a single-member bench of Justice Jagmohan Lal Sinha of Allahabad high court on June 12, 1975 – just 13 days before the imposition of Emergency – disqualified her 1971 election from Rae Bareli parliamentary seat and barred her from holding any elected post.

Can any court in India now dare to pass such ruling against the sitting prime minister?

The June 12 judgement came at the peak of widespread movement against Gandhi's government and just hours after another important development. The Janata Morcha government came to power on that day in Gujarat, where the Congress was voted out of power. And it was in Gujarat that the Nav Nirman movement was launched in December 1973. On March 18, 1974, the students’ movement started in Bihar and Jayprakash Narayan entered the scene with the call of 'total revolution' at a rally in Patna on June 5, 1974.

Before the June 1975 assembly polls in Gujarat, four major non-Communist opposition parties came together under the banner of Janata Morcha, the precursor of 1977 Janata Party.

Following the double blow within a few hours – the Allahabad high court ruling and the defeat in the Gujarat assembly election –Gandhi imposed the Emergency. She got further panicked when a huge crowd turn out to listen to opposition rally addressed by JP on June 25 itself – a few hours before she took this decision.

What happened after that has been well documented. No doubt, a beleaguered Gandhi took some extreme steps to defend herself nine years after coming to power in January 1966.

She was installed as the prime minister by the Congress syndicate, a group of top leaders who could not settle on any other name. They thought that she would be a ‘gungi gudia (dumb doll),' who would dance to their tune.

But Gandhi came out from the shadow and cornered all the party stalwarts leading to the split in Congress in 1969. As the prime minister she achieved some significant successes. She nationalised banks in 1969 and coal mines in 1972. The Green Revolution for which groundwork was prepared during the last years of Jawaharlal Nehru started yielding result in early 1970s. Her government played a crucial role in the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971 and India first tested the nuclear bomb on May 18, 1974.

India withdrew its army from Bangladesh three months after helping the Mukti Bahini liberate the country. After the Shimla Agreement by mid-1972, the process of repatriation of 93,000 Pakistani prisoners of war started.

She led her party to victory in the Lok Sabha election held in March 1971, that is before the start of the liberation movement in Bangladesh. In 1972, the Congress bounced back to power in many state assembly elections which it had lost in 1967.

Global economic meltdown

But the factor which led to the sudden worsening of economic situation in India by late 1973 could not get due attention in the last half century. This fuelled anger among the masses. Whether it was December 1973 in Gujarat or March 1974 in Bihar the students’ unrest started after rise in college and hostel fees. The railway strike of May 8-27, 1974 – the nuclear test took place in between on May 18 – came as a big challenge to her regime. There was steep rise in prices of all essential goods and food grains.

Also read: The Economics of the Emergency

The genesis of this problem can be traced to the global economic meltdown witnessed after the 17-day long Arab-Israel War in October 1973. The Arabs used oil as a weapon and imposed an embargo on its export.

The oil price jumped four times, from $ 3 per barrel to $ 12 per barrel. No economy, even of the powerful US and Japan was prepared for this shock.

In India this development coincided with bad monsoon in 1973.

Dispassionate study

The opposition which was completely marginalised after the March 1971 election got an opportunity to politically exploit the restiveness of the common masses.

It is difficult to say as to how any government other than of Indira Gandhi could have tackled this situation. Yet the fact remains that the whole development leading to the imposition of Emergency should be dispassionately discussed. Inflation was checked, trains started running on time and office-goers were punctual in duty, at least initially.

However, more than her crackdown on opposition leaders, press censorship, large-scale amendment of Constitution and silencing of judiciary, it was the forced sterilization and the anti-encroachment drive – which led to the killing of several people in Delhi – that drove the masses against the then government.

It is also a fact that Gandhi later apologised for the excesses committed during the Emergency and her party never defended what had happened then.

She undoubtedly committed blunders, yet it is a fact that she had to pay dearly for whatever she had done. After 19 months of Emergency, she announced election never expecting that she would lose it. Yet the people’s verdict came against her. Both Gandhi and her son Sanjay lost from their own constituencies. An authoritarian, Gandhi did not manipulate this election when Emergency was
still on. She unhesitatingly bowed out of office.

One has no right to make any comment on the Allahabad high court judgement of June 12, 1975, yet one is tempted to ask: did she really indulge in mass rigging to win the 1971 Lok Sabha election from Rae Bareli?

And now

Indira Gandhi’s Emergency was different in at least one way. It was for 21 months. She imposed it when she was politically and economically cornered. Even at the height of Emergency many lower-level functionaries of Congress would in private concede that Gandhi has gone too far ahead and that the bureaucracy and police have been indulging in highhandedness – though in public these partymen would support her.

In contrast, today when there is absolutely no Emergency, the hard-boiled cadres of the ruling party will never listen to any criticism of their leader even in private. They would endorse all the wrongdoings of the permanent executive too.

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