The Emergency (India)
The Emergency (India)
The Emergency in India was a 21-month period from 1975 to 1977 when Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi had a state
of emergency declared across the country.
Officially issued by President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed under Article 352
of the Constitution because of the
prevailing "internal disturbance", the Emergency was in effect from
25 June 1975 until its withdrawal on 21 March 1977. The order bestowed upon the
Prime Minister the authority to rule by decree, allowing elections to be cancelled and civil
liberties to be suspended. For much of the
Emergency, most of Indira Gandhi's political opponents were imprisoned and the
press was censored. Several other human
rights violations were reported from the time,
including a mass campaign for vasectomy spearheaded
by Sanjay Gandhi, the Prime Minister's
son. The Emergency is one of the most controversial periods of independent
India's history.
The final decision to impose an
emergency was proposed by Indira Gandhi, agreed upon by the president of India, and thereafter ratified by the cabinet and the
parliament (from July to August 1975), based on the rationale that there were
imminent internal and external threats to the Indian state.
Prelude
Rise of Indira Gandhi
Between 1967 and 1971, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi came to obtain near-absolute control over the
government and the Indian National Congress party,
as well as a huge majority in Parliament. The first was achieved by
concentrating the central government's power within the Prime
Minister's Secretariat, rather than the Cabinet, whose elected members she saw as a threat and
distrusted. For this, she relied on her principal secretary, P. N.
Haksar, a central figure in Indira's inner circle
of advisors. Further, Haksar promoted the idea of a "committed
bureaucracy" that required hitherto-impartial government officials to be
"committed" to the ideology of the ruling party of the day.
Within the Congress, Indira
ruthlessly out maneuvered her rivals, forcing the party to split in 1969—into
the Congress
(O) (comprising the old-guard known as the
"Syndicate") and her Congress (R).
A majority of the All-India Congress Committee and Congress MPs sided with the prime minister.
Indira's party was of a different breed from the Congress of old, which had
been a robust institution with traditions of internal democracy. In the
Congress (R), on the other hand, members quickly realized that their progress
within the ranks depended solely on their loyalty to Indira Gandhi and her
family, and ostentatious displays of sycophancy
became routine. In the coming years, Indira's influence was such that she could
install hand-picked loyalists as chief ministers of states, rather than their
being elected by the Congress legislative party.
Indira's ascent was backed by
her charismatic appeal among the masses that was aided by her government's
near-radical leftward turns. These included the July 1969 nationalization of
several major banks and the September 1970 abolition of the privy purse; these changes were often done suddenly, via ordinance,
to the shock of her opponents. She had strong support in the disadvantaged
sections—the poor, Dalits, women and
minorities. Indira was seen as "standing for socialism in economics and
secularism in matters of religion, as being pro-poor and for the development of
the nation as a whole."
In the 1971 general
elections, the people rallied behind Indira's
populist slogan of GaribiHatao! (abolish
poverty!) to award her a huge majority (352 seats out of 518). "By the
margin of its victory," historian Ramachandra Guha later wrote, Congress (R) came to be known as the
real Congress, "requiring no qualifying suffix." In December
1971, under her proactive war leadership, India routed arch-enemy Pakistan in a
war that led to the independence of Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan. Awarded the Bharat Ratna the next month, she was at her greatest peak; for
her biographer Inder Malhotra, "The Economist's
description of her as the 'Empress of India' seemed apt." Even opposition
leaders, who routinely accused her of being a dictator and of fostering a personality cult, referred to her as Durga, a Hindu goddess.
Increasing government control of
the judiciary
In 1967's Golaknath case, the Supreme Court said that the Constitution could not be amended by Parliament if the changes affect basic issues such as
fundamental rights. To nullify this judgement, Parliament dominated by the
Indira Gandhi Congress, passed the 24th Amendment in 1971. Similarly, after the government lost a
Supreme Court case for withdrawing the privy purse given to erstwhile princes, Parliament passed the
26th Amendment. This gave constitutional validity to the government's abolition
of the privy purse and nullified the Supreme Court's order.
This judiciary–executive battle
would continue in the landmark KesavanandaBharati Case,
where the 24th Amendment was called into question. With a wafer-thin majority
of 7 to 6, the bench of the Supreme Court restricted Parliament's amendment power by stating it could not be used to alter the "basic
structure" of the Constitution. Subsequently,
Prime Minister Gandhi made A. N. Ray—the
senior-most judge amongst those in the minority in KesavanandaBharati—Chief Justice of India. Ray superseded three judges more senior to him—J.
M. Shelat, K. S. Hegde and Grover—all members of the majority in KesavanandaBharati. Indira Gandhi's
tendency to control the judiciary met with severe criticism, both from the
press and political opponents such as Jayaprakash
Narayan ("JP").
Political unrest
This led some Congress party
leaders to demand a move towards a presidential system emergency
declaration with a more powerful directly elected executive. The most
significant of the initial such movement was the NavNirman movement
in Gujarat, between December 1973 and March 1974. Student unrest against the
state's education minister ultimately forced the central government to dissolve
the state legislature, leading to the resignation of the chief
minister, Chimanbhai Patel, and the imposition of President's
rule. Meanwhile, there were assassination attempts
on public leaders as well as the assassination of the railway
minister Lalit Narayan Mishra by a bomb. All of these indicated a
growing law and order problem in the entire country, which Mrs. Gandhi's
advisors warned her of for months.
In March–April 1974, a student
agitation by the Bihar ChatraSangharshSamiti received the support of Gandhian socialist Jayaprakash Narayan, referred to
as JP, against the Bihar
government. In April 1974, in Patna, JP called for "total
revolution," asking students, peasants, and labor unions to
non-violently transform Indian society. He also demanded the dissolution of the
state government, but this was not accepted by the center. A month later, the
railway-employees union, the largest union in the country, went on a
nationwide railways strike. This
strike was led by the firebrand trade union leader George Fernandes who was the
President of the All India Railwaymen's Federation. He was also the President
of the Socialist Party. The strike was brutally suppressed by the Indira Gandhi
government, which arrested thousands of employees and drove their families out
of their quarters.
Raj Narain verdict
Raj Narain, who
had been defeated in the 1971 parliamentary election by Indira Gandhi, lodged
cases of election fraud and use of state machinery for election purposes
against her in the Allahabad High Court. Shanti
Bhushan fought the case for Narain
(NaniPalkhivala fought the case for Indira). Indira Gandhi was also
cross-examined in the High Court which was the first such instance for an
Indian Prime Minister (Indira Gandhi had to present herself for 5 hours in
front of judge).
On 12 June 1975,
Justice Jagmohanlal Sinha of the Allahabad High Court found the prime
minister guilty on the charge of misuse of government machinery for her
election campaign. The court declared her election null and void and unseated her from her seat in the Lok
Sabha. The court also banned her from contesting any election for an additional
six years. Serious charges such as bribing voters and election malpractices
were dropped and she was held responsible for misusing government machinery and
found guilty on charges such as using the state police to build a dais,
availing herself of the services of a government officer, Yashpal Kapoor,
during the elections before he had resigned from his position, and use of
electricity from the state electricity department.
Because the court unseated her
on comparatively frivolous charges, while she was acquitted on more serious
charges, The Times described it as
"firing the Prime Minister for a traffic ticket". Her supporters
organised mass pro-Indira demonstrations in the streets of Delhi close to the Prime
Minister's residence. The persistent efforts of Narain were praised
worldwide as it took over four years for Justice Sinha to pass judgement
against the prime minister.
Indira Gandhi challenged the
High Court's decision in the Supreme Court. Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer, on 24 June 1975, upheld the High Court judgement and
ordered all privileges Gandhi received as an MP be stopped, and that she be
debarred from voting. However, she was allowed to continue as Prime Minister
pending the resolution of her appeal. Jayaprakash
Narayan and Morarji Desai called for daily anti-government
protests. The next day, Jayaprakash Narayan organised a large rally in Delhi,
where he said that a police officer must reject the orders of government if the
order is immoral and unethical as this was Mahatma Gandhi's motto during the freedom struggle. Such a statement
was taken as a sign of inciting rebellion in the country. Later that day,
Indira Gandhi requested a compliant President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed to
proclaim a state of emergency. Within
three hours, the electricity to all major newspapers was cut and the political
opposition arrested. The proposal was sent without discussion with the Union
Cabinet, who only learnt of it and ratified it the next morning.
Preventive Detention Laws
Before the emergency, the
Indira Gandhi government passed draconian laws which would be used to arrest
political opponents before and during emergency. One of these was the Maintenance of
Internal Security Act (MISA), 1971, which was
passed in May 1971 despite criticism from prominent opposition figures across
partisan lines such as CPI(M)'s JyotirmoyBasu, Jana Sangh's Atal
Bihari Vajpayee, and the Anglo-Indian nominated
MP Frank Anthony. The Indira
government also renewed the Defense of India rules, which was withdrawn in
1967, Defense of India rules were given an expanded mandate 5 days into
the emergency and renamed as Defense and Internal Security of India Rules.
Another law, Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of
Smuggling Activities Act (COFEPOSA) passed in
December 1974, was also frequently used to target political opponents.
Proclamation of the Emergency
The Government cited threats to
national security, as a war with Pakistan had recently been concluded. Due to
the war and additional challenges of drought and the 1973 oil crisis, the economy was in poor condition. The Government
claimed that the strikes and protests had paralysed the government and hurt the
economy of the country greatly. In the face of massive political opposition,
desertion and disorder across the country and the party, Gandhi stuck to the
advice of a few loyalists and her younger son Sanjay Gandhi, whose own power had grown considerably over the last
few years to become an "extra-constitutional authority". Siddhartha
Shankar Ray, the Chief Minister of West
Bengal, proposed to the prime minister to impose an
"internal emergency". He drafted a letter for the President to issue
the proclamation based on information Indira had received that "there is
an imminent danger to the security of India being threatened by internal
disturbances". He showed how democratic freedom could be suspended while
remaining within the ambit of the Constitution.
After resolving a procedural
matter, President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed declared a state of internal
emergency upon the prime minister's advice on
the night of 25 June 1975, just a few minutes before the clock struck midnight.
As the constitution requires,
Mrs. Gandhi advised and President Ahmed approved the continuation of Emergency
over every six months until she decided to hold elections in 1977. In 1976, Parliament voted to delay elections, something
it could only do with the Constitution suspended by the Emergency.
Administration
Indira Gandhi devised a '20-point'
economic programme to increase agricultural and industrial production, improve
public services and fight poverty and illiteracy, through "the discipline
of the graveyard". In addition to the official twenty points, Sanjay
Gandhi declared his five-point programme promoting literacy, family planning,
tree planting, the eradication of casteism and the abolition of dowry. Later
during the Emergency, the two projects merged into a twenty-five-point
programme.
Arrests
Invoking articles 352 and 356
of the Indian
Constitution, Indira Gandhi granted herself
extraordinary powers and launched a massive crackdown on civil rights and
political opposition. The Government used police forces across the country to
place thousands of protestors and strike leaders under preventive
detention. VijayarajeScindia, Jayaprakash Narayan, Raj
Narain, Morarji Desai, Charan
Singh, JivatramKripalani, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Lal Krishna Advani, ArunJaitley, Jai
Kishan Gupta Satyendra Narayan
Sinha, Gayatri Devi, the dowager queen of Jaipur, and other protest
leaders were immediately arrested. Organisations like
the RashtriyaSwayamsevakSangh (RSS) and Jamaat-e-Islami, along
with some political parties, were banned. CPI(M) leaders V.S. Achuthanandan and JyotirmoyBasu were arrested along
with many others involved with their party. Congress leaders who dissented
against the Emergency declaration and amendment to the constitution, such
as Mohan Dharia and Chandra
Shekhar, resigned their government and party
positions and were thereafter arrested and placed under detention. Members
of regional opposition parties such as DMK also
found themselves arrested.
Most of these arrests happened
under laws such as MISA, DISIR,
and COFEPOSA. During the emergency
34,988 people were arrested under MISA,
and 75,818 people were arrested under DISIR.
This included both political prisoners and ordinary criminals. Most states
classified those arrested under MISA into multiple categories. For instance
in Andhra Pradesh they were
classified into three categories- Class A, Class B, and Class C. Class A
prisoners included prominent political leaders, members of parliament, and
members of the legislative assembly. Class B prisoners included less prominent
political prisoners. Class C included those detained for "economic
offenses" and other offenses. Class A and B prisoners were treated better
and received better amenities in prison than other categories of prisoners.
Those arrested under COFEPOSA and DISR, depending on the state, found themselves detained with
ordinary criminals, as Class C prisoners, or their own separate category.
Cases like the Baroda dynamite case and the Rajan case became exceptional
examples of atrocities committed against civilians in independent India.
Laws, human rights and elections
Elections for the Parliament
and state governments were postponed. Gandhi and her parliamentary majorities
could rewrite the nation's laws since her Congress party had the required
mandate to do so – a two-thirds majority in the Parliament. And when she felt the
existing laws were 'too slow', she got the President to issue 'Ordinances' – a
law-making power in times of urgency, invoked sparingly – completely bypassing
the Parliament, allowing her to rule by decree.
Also, she had little trouble amending the Constitution that exonerated her from
any culpability in her election-fraud case, imposing President's
Rule in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu,
where anti-Indira parties ruled (state legislatures were thereby dissolved and
suspended indefinitely), and jailing thousands of opponents. The 42nd
Amendment, which brought about extensive changes to
the letter and spirit of the Constitution, is one of the lasting legacies of
the Emergency.
In the conclusion of his Making of India's Constitution,
Justice Khanna writes:
If the Indian constitution is
our heritage bequeathed to us by our founding fathers, no less are we, the
people of India, the trustees, and custodians of the values which pulsate
within its provisions! A constitution is not a parchment of paper, it is a way
of life and has to be lived up to. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty
and in the final analysis, its only keepers are the people. The imbecility of
men, history teaches us, always invites the impudence of power.
A fallout of the Emergency era
was the Supreme Court laid down that, although the Constitution is amenable to
amendments (as abused by Indira Gandhi), changes that tinker with its basic
structure cannot be made by the Parliament.
In the Rajan case, P. Rajan of the Regional Engineering
College, Calicut, was arrested by the police
in Kerala on 1 March
1976, tortured in custody until he died and then his body was disposed of
and was never recovered. The facts of this incident came out owing to a habeas corpus suit
filed in the Kerala High Court.
Many cases where teens were
arrested and imprisoned have come to light, one such example is of Dilip Sharma
who aged 16 was arrested and imprisoned for over 11 months. He was released
based on Patna
High Court's judgment on 29 July 1976.
Economics
Christophe Jaffrelot considers
the economic policy of the emergency regime to be corporatist, five programs in the 20 point program were aimed at
benefiting the middle classes and industrialists, these included- liberalizing investment
procedures, introducing new schemes for workers' associations in the industry,
implementing a national permit scheme for road transport, tax breaks to the
middle class by exempting anyone earning under Rs. 8,000 from income taxes, and
an austerity program to reduce public spending.
Trade Unions and Worker's Rights
The emergency regime cracked
down on trade unionism, banned strikes, imposed wage freezes, and phased out
wage bonuses. The largest trade unions in the country at the time such as
the Congress' INTUC, CPI's AITUC,
and Socialist affiliated HMS were
made to comply with the new regime, while the CPI(M)'s CITU continued its opposition for which it had 20 of its
leaders arrested. State governments were asked to form bipartite councils composed
of representatives of the workers and the management for firms having more than
500 employees, similar apex bipartite committees were formed by the Centre for
major public sector industries, while a National Apex Board was set up for the
private industries. These were meant to give a veneer of worker participation
in decision making but were in reality stacked in the favor of the management,
and tasked with increasing "productivity" by cutting holidays
(including Sundays), bonuses, agreeing to wage freeze, and allowing layoffs.
Worker demonstrations that took
place during the emergency were subject to heavy state repression, such as when
the AITUC organized a one-day strike to protest the slashing of bonuses in
January 1976, to which the state responded by arresting 30,000-40,000 workers.
In another such instance, the 8,000 workers of the Indian Telephone
Industries (a Banglore-based state-owned
company) took part in a peaceful sit-in protest in response to the management
reneging its promise of a 20% bonus to just 8%, they found themselves
lathi-charged by the police who also arrested a few hundred of them.
Coal miners were forced to work
in abysmal conditions with irregular pay, collieries were made to run for all
seven days of a week, complaints of workers and unions about the abysmal and
dangerous working conditions were ignored and met with state repression. These
terrible workplace conditions led to the deadliest mining disaster in Indian
history on 27 December 1975, at Chasnala coal
mine near Dhanbad which claimed the lives of 375 miners due to more than 100
million gallons of water flooding the mine. This was the 222nd such accident
that year, the previous incidents having claimed 288 lives.
Inflation and Price control
The emergency government enjoyed
a degree of popular support due to lower prices of goods and services at least
during 1975. This was due to many reasons such as RBI's policy of putting in place a 6 percent ceiling on
annual money supply growth months before the emergency, record monsoon in the
year of 1975 leading to record harvest of foodgrains which led to food prices
declining, increased import of grains, and reduced demand due to cutting of
worker's wages and bonuses. In addition to this half of the dearness
allowance of workers was withheld as part of
the Wage Freeze act as compulsory deposits to combat inflation. However, these
reduced prices only lasted till March 1976 when the prices of commodities
started to go up again, on account of foodgrain production declining by 7.9%.
Between 1 April and 6 October 1976 the wholesale price index rose by 10%, in
which the price of rice rose by 8.3%, groundnut oil rose by 48%, while the
prices of industrial raw materials as a group rose by 29.3%.
Tax Policy
The emergency regime exempted
those earning between Rs 6,000-8,000 from taxation, provided tax breaks for
those earning between Rs 8,000-15,000 in the range of Rs 45-264. There were
only 3.8 million (38 lakh) taxpayers in the country at the time. Wealth taxes
were also cut from 8% to 2.5% while the income taxes on those earning more than
Rs 100,000 were reduced from 77% to 66%. This was expected to lower the
government's revenue by Rs 3.08-3.25 billion. To compensate for this indirect
taxes grew, the ratio of indirect taxes to direct taxes was at 5.31 in 1976.
Despite this there was a loss in revenue of Rs 400 million (40 crores), to
compensate for this the Indira Gandhi government decided to cut spending in
education and social welfare.
Forced sterilisation
In September 1976, Sanjay Gandhi initiated a widespread compulsory
sterilization program to limit population
growth. The exact extent of Sanjay Gandhi's role in the implementation of the
program is disputed, with some writers holding Gandhi directly responsible
for his authoritarianism, and other writers blaming the officials who
implemented the programme rather than Gandhi himself. It is clear that
international pressure from the United States, United Nations, and World Bank
played a role in the implementation of these population control
measures. Rukhsana Sultana was a socialite known for being one of
Sanjay Gandhi's close associates and she gained a lot of notoriety in
leading Sanjay Gandhi's sterilization campaign in Muslim areas of old
Delhi. The campaign primarily involved getting males to undergo vasectomy. Quotas were set up that enthusiastic supporters and
government officials worked hard to achieve. There were allegations of coercion
of unwilling candidates too. In 1976–1977, the program led to 8.3 million
sterilizations, most of them forced, up from 2.7 million the previous year. The
bad publicity led many 1977 governments to stress that family planning is
entirely voluntary.
·
Kartar, a cobbler, was taken to a Block Development Officer
(BDO) by six policemen, where he was asked how many children he had. He was
forcefully taken for sterilization in a jeep. En route, the police forced a man
on the bicycle into the jeep because he was not sterilized. Kartar had an
infection and pain because of the procedure and could not work for months.
·
ShahuGhalake, a peasant from Barsi in Maharashtra, was taken for
sterilization. After mentioning that he was already sterilized, he was beaten.
A sterilization procedure was undertaken on him for a second time.
·
Hawa Singh, a young widower, from Pipli was taken from the bus
against his will and sterilized. The ensuing infection took his life.
·
Harijan, a 70-year-old with no teeth and bad eyesight, was
sterilized forcefully.
·
Ottawa, a village 80 kilometers south of Delhi, woke up to the
police loudspeakers at 03:00. Police gathered 400 men at the bus stop. In the
process of finding more villagers, police broke into homes and looted. A total
of 800 forced sterilizations were done.
·
In Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, on 18 October 1976, police
picked up 17 people, of which two were over 75 and two under 18. Hundreds of
people surrounded the police station demanding they free captives. The police
refused to release them and used tear gas shells. The crowd retaliated by
throwing stones and to control the situation, the police fired on the crowd. 30
people died as a result.
Demolitions
Demolitions in Delhi
Delhi served as the epicenter
of Sanjay
Gandhi's "urban renewal" program,
aided in large part by DDA vice
president Jagmohan Malhotra who himself had a desire to
"beautify" the city.
During the emergency Jagmohan
emerged as the single most powerful person in the DDA, and went to
extraordinary lengths to do the bidding of Sanjay Gandhi, as the Shah commission notes-
"Shri Jagmohan during the emergency,
became a law unto himself and went about doing the biddings of Shri Sanjay
Gandhi without care or concern for the miseries of the people affected
thereby"
In total, 700,000 people in
Delhi were displaced due to the demolitions carried out in Delhi.
|
Demolitions carried out in Delhi |
||||
|
Period |
Structures Demolished by |
|||
|
Pre-Emergency |
DDA |
MCD |
NDMC |
Total |
|
1973 |
50 |
320 |
5 |
375 |
|
1974 |
680 |
354 |
25 |
1,059 |
|
1975 (up to June) |
190 |
149 |
27 |
366 |
|
Total |
920 |
823 |
57 |
1,800 |
|
Emergency |
|
|
|
|
|
1975 |
35,767 |
4,589 |
796 |
41,252 |
|
1976 |
94,652 |
4,013 |
408 |
99,073 |
|
1977 (up to 23 March) |
7,545 |
96 |
- |
7,641 |
|
Year unspecified but |
- |
1,962 |
177 |
2,139 |
|
during the emergency |
||||
|
Total |
1,37,964 |
10,760 |
1,381 |
1,50,105 |
Demolitions outside Delhi
During the Emergency, various
state governments also carried out demolitions to clear
"encroachments", undertaken to please Sanjay Gandhi. In many of these
cases, residents were given very short notices, state governments like those of
Bihar and Haryana avoided giving official notices to the residents of
"encroachments" to avoid a case in a civil court, instead, they
notified them through public channels, or in the case of Haryana through drum
beats, and in some cases gave no prior information. States passed various laws
to aid them in this process such as Maharashtra Vacant Land Act 1975, Bihar
Public Encroachment Act 1975, and Madhya Pradesh Land Revenue Code (Amendment)
Act. These demolitions were often accompanied by the police to threaten the
residents with arrest under MISA or DIR. In
Maharashtra, Mumbai alone saw demolitions of 12,000 huts, while Pune saw
demolitions of 1285 huts and 29 shops.
Criticism
Criticism and accusations from
the Emergency era may be grouped as:
·
Detention of people by police without charge or notification of
families
·
Abuse and torture of detainees and political prisoners
·
Use of public and private media institutions, like the national
television network Doordarshan, for government propaganda
·
During the Emergency, Sanjay Gandhi asked
the popular singer Kishore Kumar to
sing for a Congress party rally in Bombay, but he refused. As a result,
Information and broadcasting minister VidyaCharan Shukla put an
unofficial ban on playing Kishore Kumar songs on state broadcasters All
India Radio and Doordarshan from 4
May 1976 till the end of Emergency.
·
Forced sterilization.
·
Destruction of the slum and
low-income housing in the Turkmen Gate and Jama
Masjid area of Old Delhi.
·
Large-scale and illegal enactment of new laws (including
modifications to the Constitution).
Resistance movements
Sikh
opposition
Shortly after the declaration
of the Emergency, the Sikh leadership convened meetings in Amritsar where
they resolved to oppose the "fascist tendency of the
Congress". The first mass protest in the country, known as the
"Campaign to Save Democracy" was organised by the Akali Dal and
launched in Amritsar, 9 July. A statement to the press recalled the historic
Sikh struggle for independence under the Mughals, then under the British, and
voiced concern that what had been fought for and achieved was being lost. The
police were out in force for the demonstration and arrested the protestors,
including the Shiromani
Akali Dal and Shiromani GurdwaraPrabandhak Committee (SGPC)
leaders.
The question before us is not
whether Indira Gandhi should continue to be prime minister or not. The point is
whether democracy in this country is to survive or not.
According to Amnesty International,
140,000 people had been arrested without trial during the twenty months of
Gandhi's Emergency. Jasjit Singh Grewal estimates that 40,000 of them came from
India's two per cent Sikh minority.
The role of CPI(M)
Members of CPI(M) were
identified and arrested all over India. Raids were conducted in houses
suspected to be sympathetic of CPI(M) or the opposition to the
emergency.
Those jailed during the
Emergency include the current general secretary of the Communist Party of
India (Marxist), Sitaram Yechury, and his predecessor, Prakash Karat. Both
were then leaders of the Students Federation of India, the party's student
wing.
Other Communist Party of India
(Marxist) members to be jailed included the current Chief Minister of
Kerala PinarayiVijayan, then a young MLA. He was taken into
custody during the Emergency and
subjected to third-degree methods. On his release, Pinarayi reached the
Assembly and made an impassionate speech holding up the blood-stained shirt he
wore when in police custody, causing serious embarrassment to the then C. Achutha Menon government.
Hundreds of Communists, whether
from the Communist Party of India (Marxist), other Marxist parties, or the
Naxalites, were arrested during the Emergency. Some were tortured or, as
in the case of the Kerala student P Rajan, killed.
Elections of 1977
On 18 January 1977, Gandhi
called fresh elections for March and released several opposition leaders;
however, many others remained in prison even after she left office, despite the
Emergency officially ending on 21 March 1977. The opposition Janata movement's
campaign warned Indians that the elections might be their last chance to choose
between "democracy and dictatorship."
The Indian general election
of 1977 was held from 16–20 March, and resulted in a landslide
victory for the Janata Party and the CFD, securing 298 seats in the Lok Sabha whereas
the ruling Indian
National Congress only managed to win 154—a decrease of 198 as compared to
the previous election. Indira Gandhi herself was voted out of
office in the Rae
Bareli constituency, losing to electoral rival Raj Narain by
a margin of over 55,000 votes. INC candidates failed to win a single seat
in the constituencies of several northern states, such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. The
Janata Party's 298 seats were further augmented by an additional 47 seats won
by its various political allies, thereby giving them a two-thirds
supermajority. Morarji Desai became the first non-Congress Prime
Minister of India.
Voters in the electorally
largest state of Uttar
Pradesh, historically a Congress stronghold, turned against Gandhi and
her party failed to win a single seat in the state. Dhanagare says the
structural reasons behind the discontent against the Government included the
emergence of the strong and united opposition, disunity and weariness inside
Congress, an effective underground opposition, and the ineffectiveness of
Gandhi's control of the mass media, which had lost much credibility. The
structural factors allowed voters to express their grievances, notably their
resentment of the emergency and its authoritarian and repressive policies. One
grievance often mentioned was the 'nasbandi' (vasectomy) campaign in rural
areas. The middle classes also emphasized the curbing of freedom throughout the
state and India. Meanwhile, Congress hit an all-time low in West Bengal because
of the poor discipline and factionalism among Congress activists as well as the
numerous defections that weakened the party. Opponents emphasized the
issues of corruption in Congress and appealed to a deep desire by the voters
for fresh leadership.
The Tribunal
The efforts of the Janata administration to get government officials and Congress
politicians tried for Emergency-era abuses and crimes were largely unsuccessful
due to a disorganized, over-complex, and politically motivated process of
litigation. The Thirty-eighth Amendment of the Constitution of
India, put in place shortly after the outset of the
Emergency and which among other things prohibited judicial reviews of states of emergencies and actions taken during
them, also likely played a role in this lack of success. Although special
tribunals were organized and scores of senior Congress Party and government
officials arrested and charged, including Mrs. Gandhi and Sanjay
Gandhi, police were unable to submit sufficient
evidence for most cases, and only a few low-level officials were convicted of
any abuses.
Legacy
The Emergency lasted 21 months,
and its legacy remains intensely controversial. A few days after the Emergency
was imposed, the Bombay edition of The Times of India carried
an obituary that read
Democracy, beloved husband of
Truth, loving father of Liberty, brother of Faith, Hope and Justice, expired on
June 26.
A few days later censorship was
imposed on newspapers. The Delhi edition of the Indian Express on 28 June, carried a blank editorial, while the Financial Express reproduced in
large type Rabindranath Tagore's poem
"Where the mind is without fear".
However, the Emergency also
received support from several sections. It was endorsed by social
reformer VinobaBhave (who called it AnushasanParva, a time for discipline), industrialist J. R. D. Tata, writer Khushwant Singh, and Indira Gandhi's close
friend and Odisha Chief Minister NandiniSatpathy.
However, Tata and Satpathy later regretted that they spoke in favour of the
Emergency.
In the book JP Movement and the Emergency,
historian, Bipan Chandra wrote, "Sanjay Gandhi and
his cronies like Bansi Lal, Minister of Defence at the time, were keen on postponing elections and prolonging
the emergency by several years. In October – November 1976, an effort was made
to change the basic civil libertarian structure
of the Indian Constitution through
the 42nd amendment to it. ... The
most important changes were designed to strengthen the executive at the cost of
the judiciary, and thus disturb the carefully crafted system of
Constitutional checks and balance between
the three organs of the government."
In culture
Literature
·
Writer RahiMasoom Raza criticized the Emergency
through his novel Qatar bi Aarzoo.
·
Shashi
Tharoor portrays the Emergency allegorically
in his The Great Indian
Novel (1989), describing it as
"The Siege". He also authored a satirical play on the
Emergency, Twenty-Two Months in
the Life of a Dog, that was published in his The Five-Dollar Smile and Other Stories.
·
A Fine Balance and Such a Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry take
place during the Emergency and highlight many of the abuses that occurred
during that period, largely through the lens of India's small but culturally
influential Parsi minority.
·
Rich
Like Us by NayantaraSahgal is partly
set during the Emergency and deals with themes such as political corruption and
oppression in the context of the event.
·
Booker
Prize-winner Midnight's Children by Salman
Rushdie, has the protagonist, Saleem Sinai, in
India during the Emergency. His home in a low-income area, called the
"magician's ghetto", is destroyed as part of the national
beautification program. He is forcibly sterilized as part of the vasectomy
program. The principal antagonist of the book is "the Widow" (a
likeness that Indira Gandhi successfully sued Rushdie for). There was one line
in the book that repeated an old Indian rumor that Indira Gandhi's son didn't
like his mother because he suspected her of causing the death of his father. As
this was a rumor; there was no substantiation to be found.
·
India: A Wounded Civilization, a
book by V.
S. Naipaul is also oriented around The
Emergency.
·
The Plunge, an
English-language novel by Sanjeev Tare, is the story told by four youths
studying at Kalidas College in Nagpur. They tell the reader what they
went through during those politically turbulent times.
·
The Malayalam-language novel Delhi Gadhakal (Tales from Delhi) by M. Mukundan highlights many waves of abuse that occurred during
the Emergency including forced sterilization of men and the destruction of
houses and shops owned by Muslims in Turkmen Gate.
·
Brutus, You!, a
book by Chanakya Sen, is based on the internal politics of Jawaharlal Nehru
University, Delhi during the period of Emergency.
·
VasansiJirnani, a
play by Torit
Mitra, is inspired by Ariel Dorfman's Death
and the Maiden and effects of the
Emergency.
·
The Tamil-language novel MarukkozhunthuMangai (Girl with Fragrant Chinese Mugwort ) by Ra. Su. Nallaperumal which is based on the
history of Pallavas Dynasty and a popular uprising
in Kanchi during 725 A.D. It explains how the widowed Queen and the
Princess kill the freedom of the people. Most of the incidents described in the
novel resemble the Emergency period. Even the name of the characters in the
novel is similar to Mrs. Gandhi and her family.
·
The Malayalam-language autobiographical diary by political activist R.
C. Unnithan, penned while the author was imprisoned
as a political prisoner during the Emergency under MISA for sixteen months at
Poojappura state prison in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, gives a personal account
of his travails during the dark days of Indian democracy.
·
The Tamil-language novel Karisal'' (Black
Soil) by Ponneelan deals with the socio-political changes
during the period.
·
The Tamil-language novel Ashwamedam by Ramachandra Vaidyanath deals with the political movements during the period.
·
In the 2001 book Life of Pi by
Canadian author Yann
Martel, Pi's father decides to sell his zoo and
move his family to Canada around
the time of the Emergency.
·
The graphic novel Delhi
Calm, by Vishwajyoti Ghosh, was published in 2010, that narrates
the events of the Emergency.
Film
·
Gulzar's Aandhi (1975)
was banned, because the film was supposedly based on Indira Gandhi.
·
AmritNahata's film KissaKursiKa (1977)
a bold spoof on the Emergency, where ShabanaAzmi plays 'Janata' (the
public) a mute, dumb protagonist, was subsequently banned and reportedly, all
its prints were burned by Sanjay Gandhi and his
associates at his Maruti factory in Gurgaon.
·
Yamagola a 1977 Telugu film (Hindi re-make LokParlok)
spoofs the emergency issues.
·
I.
S. Johar's 1978 Bollywood Film Nasbandi is sarcasm on the
sterilisation drive of the Government of India, where each one of the characters is trying to find
sterilization cases. The film was banned after its release due to its portrayal
of the Indira Gandhi government.
·
Although Satyajit Ray's 1980 film HirakRajarDeshe was a children's
comedy, it was a satire on the Emergency where the ruler forcefully mind washes
the poor people.
·
The 1985 Malayalam film Yathra directed
by BaluMahendra has the human rights violations by the police
during the Emergency as
its main plotline.
·
1988 Malayalam film Piravi is
about a father searching for his son Rajan, who had been arrested by the
police (and allegedly killed in custody).
·
The 2005 Hindi film HazaaronKhwaisheinAisi is
set against the backdrop of the Emergency. The film, directed by Sudhir
Mishra, also tries to portray the growth of the Naxalite movement during the Emergency era. The movie tells
the story of three youngsters in the 1970s when India was undergoing massive
social and political changes.
·
The 2012 Marathi film Shala discusses
the issues related to the Emergency.
·
Midnight's Children, a 2012 adaptation of
Rushdie's novel, created widespread controversy due to the negative portrayal
of Indira Gandhi and other leaders. The film was not shown at the International Film
Festival of India and was banned from further
screening at the International Film Festival of Kerala where it was premièred in India.
·
Indu Sarkar, 2017 Hindi political thriller
film about the emergency, directed by MadhurBhandarkar.
·
21 Months of Hell, documentary film about the torture methods performed by the police.
·
SarpattaParambarai, 2021 Tamil language
sports film which is set in the backdrop of the Emergency and shows the arrest
of DMK political members.
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