FRAGRANCE OF IDEAS
Exactly 50 years ago on 25th June in 1975, India passed on from a vibrant democracy to a full fledged dictatorship under Indira Gandhi, the 3rd elected Prime Minister of India. Everything happened so quickly that the whole nation was taken by utter surprise and shock; and the public declaration of Internal Emergency in the early hours on 26th June proved a curse for the whole nation for a long period of 20 to 21 months. It was Hitler & Mussolini personified in the shape of an era of emergency superintended and presided over by Indira Gandhi whom the Congress Syndicate earlier would, with purpose, call the ‘Goongi-Gudiya’.
Three developments marked the change of political priorities during the first half of the year 1975. The first was the indefinite hunger strike undertaken by the veteran leader Morarji Desai in Ahmedabad to pressurize the central government to announce elections to the state assembly in Gujarat. The state was under the President’s rule for a long time.
Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India and also the party high command of Congress was the ultimate voice both within the party and the government. She didn’t succumb to the pressure at an earlier stage, but seeing the overwhelming support of the collective opposition to Desai’s hunger strike, she ultimately agreed with the idea of holding elections in Gujarat and thus the indefinite hunger strike of Morarji came to an end; also came to an end any sort of mounting danger to his life. Elections were duly announced and the parties went into the election mode in the state.
Second development pertained to the massive student-agitation against the corrupt Abdul Gafoor regime in Bihar. The stalwart Gandhian and the freedom fighter, Jaiprakash Narain (JP) actively joined the agitation and started giving it an all-India shape with the help of the political parties namely Congress(Old), BLD, Jana Sangh, Socialist Party and the CPM. The mood of the nation started changing in a massive way and the joint opposition led this movement under the leadership of JP creating fear among the ruling Congress to lose political ground among the masses.
The third development was overwhelmingly an Indira Gandhi focussed court case filed by Raj Narain, a socialist leader from UP. He alleged corrupt practices in the Rae Bareli Lok Sabha constituency in his complaint to the Allahabad High Court. He had fought elections against Indira Gandhi in 1971 and was declared as defeated by the Returning Officer during the counting of votes thereafter, and he decided to challenge the election results in the court of law.
On 12 June 1975, the Allahabad High Court announced judgement in the case of Raj Narain v/s Indira Gandhi and found Indira Gandhi guilty of corruption and malpractices during the 1971 elections in her constituency. Justice Jag Mohan Sinha set aside her election, debarred her from contesting elections for the next six years and also reprimanded her and her complete election machinery for the bad and corrupt practices. However, it granted two weeks to PM Indira Gandhi to challenge the judgement in the Supreme Court of India.
On the same fateful day, the Election Commission of India declared the results of the Gujarat state Assembly elections. The Congress was defeated in the hustings and the Janta Morcha of five opposition parties won a clear majority enabling it to form the next government in the state. These two significant developments brought an earthquake in the Congress party, the Central government and in the entire political spectrum of the nation.
Indira Gandhi, for the first time in her life till then, was put to such an awkward and embarrassing situation. JP and the opposition leaders like Morarji Desai, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Charan Singh, L.K. Advani and George Fernadez called for her immediate resignation on moral grounds due to the Allahabad High Court verdict.
Indira Gandhi was fundamentally and essentially a dictator by instinct but democracy was her compulsion as she was born and brought up in an atmosphere where democracy was a publicly cherished way and outcry of political ideology. There are various instances to prove that she would always like to go by ‘her way or the highway’ style of functioning.
Sidelining the Congress syndicate, getting the official candidate of Congress party defeated in the Presidential elections, division of Congress, treatment with the opposition, high handedness with Field Marshal Manekshaw, Nagarwala Bank scandal, murder of Lalit Narain Mishra who was involved in a big scam while being a cabinet minister, dissolution of various Assemblies and declaring President’s rule in the states, appointment and removal of Governors and also the nomination of Presidential candidates of her choice are some of the instances to prove her credentials in this particular context.
Instead of offering her resignation consequent upon the court verdict, Indira Gandhi chose to challenge the court order and ‘influence’ the Supreme Court to deliver a desired judgement to stay the Allahabad High Court orders. The much encouraged and heavily galvanised joint opposition in the country gave a call for a big rally in Delhi and the preparations were set afoot accordingly.
People from across and all over the nation came to attend the huge rally on 25 June, 1975 in which they made a clear-cut demand for the resignation of the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The leaders also chalked out a plan for the ‘national-satyagraha’ and gave a call to the people in general to join the peaceful Satyagraha agitation against the government under the leadership of JP.
The amazing success of the opposition rally rattled the government and during the same night of 25th and 26th June 1975, the Indira regime went for an unprecedented action against the opposition leaders and the prominent leaders of other organisations known for their views contrary to the views of the government and the Congress. During the full night, all national and state leaders belonging to the opposition parties, trade union leaders, key leaders of organisations like RSS, Anand Marg, Jamaat-e-Islami, radical communist groups and student organisations belonging to the right and left leanings were arrested and put into jail without any sort of trial.
The President of the Republic, Faqrudin Ali Ahmed at the dead of the night in the Rashtrapati Bhavan was asked to sign the orders on the Proclamation of Internal Emergency, which he did. In the early hours of 26th June 1975, the Central government declared Emergency publicly through All India Radio enabling people to know that democracy as enshrined in the constitution of India was put on an indefinite halt.
The government in the most unashamed manner suspended the fundamental rights guaranteed by the constitution, clamped censorship on the media and declared all gatherings of people as unlawful and illegal unless permitted by the designated authorities. All the big national leaders including JP, Morarji Desai, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L.K.Advani, Charan Singh, Raj Narain, Madhu Dhandwate, Madhu Limaye, Prakash Singh Badal, Karunanidhi, Jyoti Basu and the other thousands of national and state leaders were put behind the bars. The whole nation was converted into a closed-ended water-tight chamber within a period of 12 hours with effect from midnight of 25th June 1975.
A number of new slogans were coined by the sycophants of Congress like, ‘Indira is India and India is Indira’ and were also publicised. Parliament was misused to make new laws to suit the dictator in power. The draconian 42nd Amendment Bill was passed by the parliament that was termed as ‘mini-constitution’ by the Indira coterie. The preamble of the constitution was amended to take away the spirit of the constitution. The laws were so amended that they impacted the outcome of the Allahabad High Court judgement. The judges of the senior judiciary were superseded and virtually instructed to fall in line or face the results. The term of the elected assemblies and Lok Sabha was amended to six years.
Hundreds and thousands of young activists were put under detention, tortured and brutally interrogated. Hundreds of employees having links with RSS and other such organisations were dismissed from government and semi-government services. A large number of dedicated activists including this author worked as underground workers. The second son of Indira Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi, symbolized a new power centre in the country. He went for unauthorised demolition drives, sterilization programmes and presented himself as the de facto Minister without portfolio before the public.
All India Radio, Akashvani and Doordarshan were converted into a government propaganda machine by the government. Prominent artists, performers, anchors, social and religious influencers were pressured, inspired and guided by the ruling elite to speak very highly of the government and its declared programmes. The opposition from Kashmir to Kanyakumari was silenced with the brute force of the government. Lakhs of people protested and offered Satyagraha and filled the jails.
Ultimately, in January 1977, the overconfident Indira Gandhi regime went for the general elections in the country scheduled to be held in March 1977. Some of the key opposition leaders were freed enabling them to participate in the elections. For two months, the joint opposition campaigned vigorously throughout the country and fought the elections with full spirit and might under the banner of Janta Party. The Congress, Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi licked the dust once the election results were announced. The Janta Party won the elections hands down and thus came to an end the darkest chapter of Indian politics sponsored by Indira Gandhi and her Congress.
We commemorate this day today on the 50th anniversary of Emergency as a reminder to our present and future generations against such a black chapter of our recent history and also to safeguard the freedom of expression, constitution and the essence of democracy and its constitutional institutions.
It is time to spread the message and we have a full year up to 2026 to organize functions and programmes in this regard. Kudos to all those warriors who fought the tyranny of the emergency era. The moral of this story is, “Satyam eva jayatey”…Truth shall always prevail…!
(The author is a senior BJP and KP leader, Human Rights Defender, author & columnist and can be reached at: [email protected])
