Internal Emergency

Internal Emergency is back in the news courtesy a book released during the Congress party’s recent plenary, which gives its account of the events of 1975. The news reports reveal that late Sanjay Gandhi, younger son of Indira Gandhi has been largely blamed for what went wrong. These must be references to shifting of slum-dwellers to resettlement colonies on the outskirts, forced sterilisation & bull-dozing in areas near Turkman Gate to shift Muslims to Inderlok. There may be some truth in it since Sanjay Gandhi was not only the active face of Congress party at that time. Most ardent supporters of emergency, including V.C.Shukla, who implemented press censorship & Jagmohan who executed Turkman Gate plan appeared to be directly reporting to him. Curiously many members of Sanjay Gandhi’s coterie, including his wife Maneka and son, Varun, subsequently found place in BJP (see Pankaj Vohra’s piece in today’s HT). One wonders whether blaming Sanjay for what has been described by Advani as a ‘Nazi rule’ is, in part, family politics since Congress is today headed by the senior sister-in-law while the junior and her son are in the Opposition camp.
Needless to recollect that Internal Emergency was hastily declared in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s disqualification by Jagmohan Lal Sinha of Allahabad High Court on a petition filed by Raj Narain alleging misuse of govt. machinery during the polls. I recollect a cartoon by Abu showing the then President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed handing over the signed declaration from a bath tub and asking them wait if there were more papers to sign. Beginning June 12, 1975, Opposition leaders were taken into preventive custody and many innocent people, including college teachers of DU, ended up in jail. Therefore it is incorrect to put the entire blame on Sanjay Gandhi for a step meant to save his mother from being unseated. The way many people, who occupied prime places later, crumbled like a pack of cards during the police raj was shocking as well as revealing. Barring Indian Express, which had the temerity to leave the edit space empty to protest censorship and invited retaliatory raids as a consequence, the media ‘kneeled when it was asked to bend’. Seminar was the only magazine, which continued to debate the issues freely. The reason, explained by a friend in I & B Ministry, perhaps was the academic nature of its content and small circulation, which posed little danger to those in power. Most people saw Emergency only in terms of punctuality in offices and running of trains and most critics of establishment turned sycophants for the sake of convenience and out of fear. Several diehard activists of political parties, taken into custody under DIR apologised to secure release from prison while those under the more strident MISA spent the entire 18 months behind bars.
Those who were born later and did not see the dictatorial face of Indian officialdom will be amused by the way Emergency affected people at the micro level. Shyamlal College, which was experiencing trouble in the Seventies, got a new Principal, G.C.Ahuja, courtesy DU’s then VC. The Governing Body of the Trust was sent packing and both the Vice-principals were out of sight-one under detention and the other underground. The temporary staff of the Evening College, a part time D.P.E & two office clerks, was removed arbitrarily. There was a curious reversal with new faces, either with an anti-Trust image or keen to acquire one to escape the ordeals of Emergency, thronging the office of the officiating Vice-principal. Colleagues spied on one another and official complaints went to local police alleging opposition to infamous 20-point/ 5-point programs of Indira Gandhi & Sanjay Gandhi. A teacher went all the way to Jammu to help police apprehend the Vice-principal who had fled in time. A senior teacher was summoned from his Kidwai Nagar residence at midnight to explain the ‘RSS connections’ alleged in the college complaint. What was heartening was the way more than half of Evening College refused to be cowed down and even issued a legal notice to the management when wages were denied to the staff to protect the Principal. Signed by ‘I.J.Bhatia & 18 others’, it created an identity for the rebels. Teachers, who were soft-spoken or remained quiet revealed exemplary fortitude when the more militant ones sometimes wavered, felt insecure and needed to be convinced. A few even indulged in double-dealing with the authorities. Emergency became a good example of how people could indulge in vindictiveness or settle personal scores: it brought out the worst in us. Fortunately, a Stay Order prevented the college from initiating any disciplinary proceedings against permanent employees throughout the Emergency. Indira Gandhi lost the election & the new Principal fled the college the same evening with lots of files, never to return.
The wheel had come full circle!