Gautam Sharma
(higautamsharma@yahoo.com)
How it started: Forty-eight years have passed since late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed an internal state of emergency in India, and many of us who call ourselves the Millennials and the Zilleniels aren’t aware of the horrifying days of complete anarchy, dictatorship, and censorship that the nation went through during the emergency. The period of emergency from June 25, 1975, to March 21, 1977, has been called the “darkest period” of independent India, as all civil liberties were suspended and freedom of speech and expression were muzzled. The state of emergency was a severe blow to the democratic principles that the country had upheld after independence. The internal emergency imposed by Mrs. Gandhi in 1975–1977 had its roots in the preeminent position she had attained in the country. Imposing an emergency on the nation for political reasons was an unethical act. Success in the Bangladesh Liberation War increased Mrs. Gandhi’s influence and power in office. The power structure within the Congress Party also changed. There was an increasing sycophancy and a consolidation of the cult of leadership for Mrs. Gandhi, which was subsequently accompanied by her intolerance of criticism. Despite her triumph in foreign policy and her omniscient status in Indian politics, she failed to rein in political dissent in the country.
In 1973, in Gujarat, a mass agitation sparked off over the shortage of food and the rise in food prices. The Nav Nirman movement led to the dissolution of the state legislature and the imposition of the President’s rule in the state. When re-elections were conducted in June 1975, the Congress was defeated by an alliance of the opposition parties. In Bihar, in April 1974, Gandhian leader Jayprakash Narayan, popularly known as JP, threw his weight behind a student agitation against the Congress state government. His call for “Total Revolution” led to an agitated mass movement. As JP drew on the enormous discontent prevalent in the country to force a nationwide movement against Indira Gandhi, he came to represent the voice of opposition in an era when official opposition had all but disappeared. He came to represent people fed up with three decades of corruption, misrule, and ineptitude in Congress. The main justification of the JP movement was to end corruption in Indian life and politics, whose fountainhead was allegedly Indira Gandhi, and to defend democracy, which was endangered by her dictatorial personality and her authoritarian administrative style. The stage was set for an electoral confrontation between Mrs. Gandhi and JP in the parliamentary elections scheduled after a few months. But a court verdict on June 12, 1975, changed the entire political situation. Justice Jagmohanlal Sinha of the Allahabad High Court, hearing a petition of electoral malpractices, convicted Mrs. Gandhi of indulging in corrupt campaigning practises in the parliamentary elections of 1971 and declared her election null and void. The conviction meant she could not hold on to the office of prime minister as well. JP and the opposition seized the occasion, accused her of “clinging to an office corruptly gained,” and demanded her immediate resignation. In a rally in the national capital, JP and his associates announced a nationwide civil disobedience movement to force her resignation. In his speech, JP asked people to make it impossible for the government to function and asked the armed forces, police personnel, and bureaucracy to refuse to obey orders they considered “illegal and unconstitutional”. Mrs. Gandhi’s lightning response was to declare a state of Internal Emergency in the whole country on June 26, 1975. It was the darkest hour for democracy in post-Independence India.
Voices Behind Bars: During the Emergency, India’s Constitution was mutilated, Parliament was reduced to a mere formality, and the media was silenced. Even the judiciary failed to resist the oppressive regime, resulting in the loss of basic freedoms for the Indian people and the rise of fascism. Many prominent leaders, including Jayaprakash Narayan, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and LK Advani, were arrested soon after the President’s proclamation. The Sarsanghchalak of the RSS and many other leaders of the RSS and the Bharatiya Jana Sangh were also jailed. The political landscape of India changed drastically with the midnight arrests on June 25, 1975. During the Emergency (1975–77), it is estimated that 1,10,000 persons were arrested under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA), the Defence of Internal Security of India Rules (DISIR), and the Conservation of Foreign Exchange And Prevention of Smuggling Activities Act. Many of them were arrested simply by virtue of being members of banned organisations who were opponents of the Indira Gandhi regime. MISA allowed Indian law enforcement agencies very broad powers without any checks: indefinite preventive detention of individuals, search and seizure of property without warrants, and very importantly, it forbade the courts from applying the concept of “natural justice” in cases involving detainees; no one, including a foreigner, could challenge detention on grounds of natural or common law; and grounds of detention were defined as confidential matters of state, and their disclosure, including to the detainee, was against the public interest. Thousands in Assam were also put behind bars. Narayan Chandra Deka from Nagaon was put behind bars citing political reasons and was even rejected parole to attend his daughter’s wedding. Basiruddin Sheikh from Goalpara was refused parole after the death of his father. Socialist leader Golap Borbora was denied parole to attend the wedding of his adopted daughter.
Indian Constitution Robbed: Indira Gandhi, after imposing the emergency, was to push through the 39th Amendment to bar courts, with retrospective effect, from entertaining election petitions against the Prime Minister. This was to overcome the verdict of the Allahabad High Court, which had found her guilty of corrupt electoral practise. The extraordinary aspect of this episode was the speed with which this deed was accomplished. The Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha on August 7, 1975, and, much against the rules, debated and passed the same day. It was passed by the Rajya Sabha on August 8 and ratified by the legislative assemblies of 17 states the very next day. Then an obliging President gave his assent on August 10, and an even more obliging bureaucracy notified it that very same day. Taken together, these amendments robbed the Constitution of its soul and turned India into a dictatorship.
This Amendment knocked out the principle of equality before the law enshrined in Article 14. The basic features of the Constitution were subjected to much greater bombardment in the 42nd Amendment that was passed by Parliament in November 1976, after the Lok Sabha had extended its life. This Amendment, which mutilated the Constitution, was done after the Swaran Singh Committee formed by Indira Gandhi conducted a spurious constitutional review. It introduced a new article to deal with “anti-national activity,” put constitutional amendments beyond judicial review, stripped the high courts of their powers, and bolstered the emergency powers of the executive. But the most obnoxious clause was the one that empowered the President to amend the Constitution when necessary. Indira Gandhi, after she imposed the Emergency, got the President to rubber-stamp an order suspending all fundamental rights, including the right to life and personal liberty.
The Committee headed by Swaran Singh to review the Constitution worked at great speed, consulted party MPs, party chief ministers, and Pradesh Congress chiefs, and came up with a horrendous list of amendments to cripple the judiciary, destroy the federal character of the Constitution, and give Parliament untrammelled power to alter this. While all this was going on, citizens were barred from holding meetings to discuss the proposed amendments, and the media was prohibited from criticising the proposals. A major recommendation of the Swaran Singh Committee was that “the constituent power of Parliament to amend the Constitution as provided in Article 368 should not be open to question or challenge”. In order to achieve this, the Committee said Article 368 should be amended to categorically prohibit judicial review. Further, the high courts should be barred from entertaining writ petitions challenging the constitutional validity of a Central law “and any rule, regulation, or byelaw made thereunder.” In short, the Swaran Singh Committee was hitting at the very foundations of the Constitution by suggesting measures to weaken the judiciary and alter the federal features of the Constitution. Armed with such dangerous recommendations from a party Committee that was deliberating the issue when Indira Gandhi’s dictatorship was at its worst, the Congress Government led by her pushed through the Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act that virtually sanctified authoritarian rule and knocked the bottom out of India’s Constitution.
Inhumanity: One of the worst features of the Emergency was the forcible sterilisation of the population. Sanjay Gandhi was convinced that unbridled population growth was pulling India down. Whatever was being done on the development front would be neutralised by the untrammelled growth of the population. He felt that unless drastic measures were taken to contain the population, India would have no future. Therefore, since he was the de facto head of the Congress party, he directed all chief ministers and party leaders to work out a strategy for mass sterilisation of both men and women. The chief ministers developed a simple strategy. They fixed quotas for all, including government servants, policemen, teachers, and municipal employees. Everyone had to fulfil his or her quota; they had to induce men and women to go to family planning camps and have themselves sterilised. The message that went around was that all those who failed to meet their quotas would be punished. They could lose their jobs, get demoted, or face some other penalty. The same was true for members of the public. Anyone resisting the call to ‘The Camp’ would be marked and ‘taken care of’ in some way or another. Such was the level of sycophancy that chief ministers of Congress-ruled States doubled or even tripled the sterilisation quotas fixed for their States by the Centre. For example, the Union Government fixed a quote of 0.5 million sterilisations for Uttar Pradesh in 1976–77. The State proudly announced that it had revised its quota to 1.5 million! No wonder, then, that some of the most frightening stories of forced sterilisations came from various States. There were instances where families weren’t provided rations if the male member wasn’t able to show the sterilisation card. In Assam, a gentleman named Moti Ram Kakoti was detained on the occasion of Mahapurush Madhab Dev Tithi because he questioned Mr. Neog, who made himself subject to sterilisation. The government detained Mr. Katoki, citing reasons that he hampered the government’s mass sterilisation programme. States like Nagaland, Manipur, and Meghalaya were allotted yearly sterilisation targets.
After the declaration of emergency, Sanjay Gandhi took on the responsibility of beautifying Delhi, for which unlawful demolitions of structures were conducted. Reckless demolition was done without corresponding to the concerns of the people whose houses were demolished. No notices were served before the demolition. It was complete anarchy and chaos. There was no place to go to complain about the inhuman treatment met by the residents of the demolished houses; the judiciary wasn’t able to echo its voice against such barbarity. Delhi is full of stories of atrocities during the emergency. Whatever Sanjay wished was the government’s Command. Corruption and personal vendettas were at their peak among government officials during the emergency.
25 June 1975 is a black day. India, with a large population below the poverty line and a lack of basic amenities like education, still stands apart globally in the democratic tradition. The only black spot in Indian democratic history is the period of emergency from June 25, 1975, to March 21, 1977. Any proud Indian believing in a democracy cannot but understand and remember those horrifying days of complete anarchy, dictatorship, and censorship. The Indira government unleashed terror, systematically denouncing every democratic institution and compromising the judiciary. We should be aware of the mistakes that leaders have made in the past that have made the nation lose faith in institutions and democracy. Many of us haven’t experienced the horrors of Congress’s rule and cannot relate to its anarchy and dictatorship. The history of the emergency must be known to understand the hardships our nation has been put through by the leader whom Indians loved and adored like their own daughter.