Mrs. Gandhi And The 1974 Emergency

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Mrs. Gandhi And The 1974 Emergency - ramana - 02-18-2005

From Telegraph, 17 Feb., 2005

QUOTENot in the accepted sense of the wordÂ
Even three decades after the Emergency, India continues to miss its political relevance, just as it did during the crisis, writes N.J. Nanporia

In evil hour
Thirty years after the event, reactions to the Emergency continue to be shaped by political bias, platitudes like âmurder of democracyâ and an overwhelming sense of political correctness. Not long ago, Rahul Gandhi âadmittedâ that âexcessesâ had occurred, an admission that hardly made sense because no one has denied that people were arrested, that censorship was imposed or that a wide variety of oppressive acts were perpetrated, some under the directions of Sanjay Gandhi. Sonia Gandhi herself is on record saying that she regretted the Emergency, all of which reinforced the view that the 1975 crisis is not something to be understood but to be condemned. The Prasar Bharatiâs decision to drop the film on Jayaprakash Narayan hasnât helped matters either.

But neither apologies nor admissions can ever provide a key to what the Emergency was about. It can only be found by focussing on the one individual who matters â Indira Gandhi herself. And also by asking the only question that matters â what were her motives and what moved her to do what she did?

Shortly after the Allahabad judgment in 1975, Indira Gandhi said that she was ânot a politician in the accepted sense of the wordâ. Though she had her share of egotism, this was not a display of defensive arrogance. Nor was she implying here that she occupied a position of exceptional privilege and that the normal rules of public conduct did not apply to her. It was an unintended and indirect disclosure of a subject that governed her turbulent career since the 1969 split â her disgust for and absolute rejection of politicking.

As a member of the Congress working committee in 1955 and later of the central parliamentary board; as president of the Congress in 1959 (when she played a persuasive role in the bifurcation of bilingual Bombay and the dismissal of the communist government in Kerala); as her fatherâs political hostess; and in 1964, as Lal Bahadur Shastriâs minister of information and broadcasting, Indira Gandhi was exposed to the full blast of politicking. At this point, we have another of her revealing comments, âThe nation is in a hurry and we cannot afford to lose time.â Combine her strong aversion to politicking with her sense of time draining away, and arguably we have the first intimation of the approaching tragedy.

During this time, the Congress was also running out of the energy that had sustained it as a movement. There was a mismatch, unseen by the party, between the old guard that was firmly in the saddle and the new challenges that confronted it. There was, additionally, a sense of a mission having been accomplished and lost moorings. War with Pakistan and the partyâs internal dissent induced organizational paralysis and an inability to redefine itself. These could not have been acceptable to someone of Indira Gandhiâs temperament, though she was, undoubtedly, aware that her own elevation to prime ministership under the auspices of K. Kamaraj was itself a prime example of politicking. Of course the atrophied old guard hadnât the remotest clue to what Indira Gandhi was about to do. Confined within the stagnating limits of syndicate culture, it was unable to realize that she could read its motivations and calculations like an open book.

Her conclusions are not difficult to guess. The syndicate culture was incompatible with her idea of national achievement and the urgency of the task. All those associated with the syndicate were victims of a mindset that couldnât conceive of a politician having any concern other than those held by it. There was a complete lack of comprehension about a prime minister who refused to be a run-of-the-mill politician. The old guard came to regard her as a pliable instrument in its hands.

On her part, Indira Gandhi realized that she could survive only by mastering the techniques of politicking. She did this with the panache and determination. She beat the syndicate at its own game. Her expulsion from the syndicate marked her out as someone with a bold, uncompromising and dynamic approach to national affairs.

Psychologically and symbolically, for her, this was one way of disinheriting the politicking politicians. Yet, tragically, this was the only kind of politicians available, given the system that had bred them. Indira Gandhi also realized that her convictions could not be translated into an understandable public ideology or into terms the Constitution would find acceptable. An appreciation of this persuaded her to repeatedly try and reach out to what she called the âmassesâ. With them, she felt a rapport that was impossible to replicate with anyone else in the political jungle. Jayaprakash Narayan spoke of âtotal revolutionâ, signalling a break with the past. For Indira Gandhi, the revolution was primarily in her mind, while for Narayan, it was out there physically, which unfortunately was also a recipe for chaos and indiscipline. In the event, neither could make a headway against factionalism, violence, corruption, the pursuit of power, regionalism and so on. Collectively, these represented âparliamentary democracyâ, but actually, it was the âgreatest demagoguery in the world.â

Indira Gandhi helped popularize the legend of a ruthless person, frequently hiring people and firing them, thus lending credibility to the Janata campaign against the âpersonality cultâ. Yet, even in her increasing isolation, she kept hoping to find some empathy that would elude her forever. JP too was frustrated and, confronted by the crisis, pushed himself to the limits â as the romantic idealist is apt to do â calling out to students to agitate, to the armed forces to revolt, and to civil servants to disobey orders that were not to their liking. The infamous railway strike and 92 derailments followed. Under total revolution, all the ills of the system, all that Indira Gandhi wanted to uproot, came to be magnified.

Prakash Tandon struck a note of sanity and balance when he said: âFor years we wished an end to chaos and willingly promised to forgo some rights for some order and an end to how a whole town of ten million could be held to ransom by whoever chose to call a strike for whatever cause. A question we should ask is whether Mrs Gandhi was carrying, somehow, unknown to her, the cumulative will of a democratic people looking for a catharsis, long tired of incompetent governments.â Indira Gandhi did what her father could never have done â critically question a system imposed on India for the sole reason that it was favoured by the departing colonialists.

As for the Shah commission and the legal trivialities into which it sunk, it should be said that the commission was more keen to pursue Indira Gandhi than on ensuring an inquiry into the origins of the Emergency. So much so that it is pointless to ask whether it was competent to investigate the circumstances or the way in which the Emergency was declared. In the end, Indira Gandhi realized that she had all the right reasons for doing the wrong thing in conditions in which she could never succeed. All she could do was administer what she called âshock treatmentâ, which, nevertheless, left the system largely unchanged.

On the sidelines were those who expediently applauded Indira Gandhi without the slightest understanding of her motives, but became her harshest critics post-Emergency. There were others sincerely associated with her but who remained entirely innocent about what was going on. And then there were the would-be Emergency heroes, so remote from reality and so full of their egotistic concerns that they waited eagerly to be arrested, only to be ignored by an unimpressed Emergency authority. We are indebted to them for injecting some comedy into an otherwise tragic affair.

As for Indira Gandhi, she remained the way she had started, a person whose image was writ large on the national and international scene, but whose core remained private and intense. The statement that âonly a political illiterate could disapprove of the Emergencyâ is well worth pondering over.

Mrs. Gandhi And The 1974 Emergency - Guest - 02-18-2005

Towards Emergency

Pokhran test 18 May 1974.
Beginning of 1973 Indira Gandhiâs popularity began to decline.

Economic situation -
Recession, growing unemployment, rampant inflation and scarcity of foodstuffs created a serious crisis.
10 million refugees from Bangladesh during 1971 had depleted the grain reserves
Cost of the Bangladesh war
A large budgetary deficit.
Drained foreign exchange reserves.
Monsoon rains failed for two years in succession during 1972 and 1973, leading to a terrible drought in most parts of the country and a massive shortage of foodgrains, and fuelling their prices.

Drop in power generation and combined with the fall in agricultural production
Rise in unemployment 1973
Crude oil increased four-fold
Massive increase in the prices of petroleum products and fertilisers.
Prices rose continuously, by 22 per cent in 1972-73 alone.
Scarcity of essential articles of consumption.
An all-India railway strike in May 1974, lasted twenty-two days.
In May 1973, there was a mutiny in U.P. by the Provincial Armed Constabulary, which clashed with the army sent to discipline it, leading to the death of over thirty-five constables and soldiers.

Congress had been declining as an organization and proved incapable of dealing with the political crisis at the state and grassroots levels.
Growing corruption in most areas of life
Widespread belief that the higher levels of the ruling party and administration were involved in it.
The whiff of corruption touched even Indira Gandhi when her inexperienced younger son, Sanjay Gandhi, was given a licence to manufacture 50,000 Maruti cars a year.

Mrs. Gandhi And The 1974 Emergency - Guest - 02-18-2005

QUOTEThe Trains ran on Time. Clerks came to office on time, but democracy disappeared along with freedom of the people during the tryst with dictatorship of Mrs. Indira Gandhi and her second son Sanjay during the "Internal Emergency" of 1974, declared with the sle purpose of saving her parliament seat and overturning the judicial verdict of the Allahabad High court.

The Emergency was a nightmare in the history of independent India. The press was gagged. There was censorship of press - something even the British did not do. Anyone who showed some courage to bring truth out was arrested and the press was destroyed. While some brave souls were struggling for largest democracy in the world, there were also some who crawled when only asked to bend. Some of the scums, termed as 'chamchas' included Professors in far away USA. The August institutions, supposedly watchdogs of democracy like the Supreme Court and parliament became lap dogs of a megalomaniac family. In other words, they became "commited" and "captive". Even the constitution of India got corrupted. Two dirty words - Socialism and Secularism entered into the preamble through the infamous 42nd Amendment - ramrodded through a captive parliament. The laws designed to prevent smuggling weere used to imprison people such as Balasaheb Deoras, Jaya Prakash Narayan, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani, Morarji Desai and Charan Singh. Atleast 200,000 were arrested for no crime except for demanding of restoration of democracy. 85% of these detenues were members of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Countless thousands were tortured in jail and countless houses demolished, scores dead in coustody, and a personality cult for the Nehru family was instituted.link

Mrs. Gandhi And The 1974 Emergency - G.Subramaniam - 02-18-2005

The one good thing that happened

Sanjay Gandhi sterilised a million muslims

Sanjay Gandhi demolished illegal constructions of Bukhari and shot muslim rioters

After IG, with all the incompetent PMs we had, a ruthless guy like Sanjay Gandhi is sorely missed
It is extremely unlikely he would have reversed Shah Bano, more likely to have shot Bukhari instead

Mrs. Gandhi And The 1974 Emergency - Guest - 03-10-2005

Khuswant Singh on Indira Gandhi

QUOTEThe fact is after Shastri, people did not want Gulzarilal Nanda or Morarji Desai, and so she became prime minister, selected by a bunch who thought they could control her. But this bunch had not reckoned with her innate political sense or that being prime minister has its own power.


QUOTEHow do you look back at her rule?

There is nothing spectacular about her rule.

She was incapable of tolerating any criticism and she picked up an aversion to some persons because she thought they were challenging her, among them Jayaprakash Narayan, a good, honest man. She couldn't stand him because he was a challenge to her as the leader of the country, especially as people grew disillusioned with her rule. There were problems, droughts, challenges and Jayaprakash Narayan had emerged as a leader.

During her reign, corruption increased to enormous levels. She was really very tolerant of corruption, which was another negative mark against her. She knew perfectly well that some of her ministers were extremely corrupt, yet she took no steps against them till it suited her.

...

Also, she felt uncomfortable with educated, sophisticated people. So you have the rise of people like Yashpal Kapoor, R K Dhawan, who was a stenographer who worked in her office, Mohammad Yunus, who just hung around her.

I believe this was because she had no real education.

She went to Shanti Niketan, then she went to Badminton School abroad, then to Oxford. Nowhere did she pass an exam or acquire a degree.


QUOTEBut the problem of reaching a height is that you can only come down from there. And then we have the Emergency.

Yes, that is true. But when it came to the Emergency, I think the Opposition too behaved very recklessly. There was no doubt that the country was fast sliding into chaos. I recall schools not opening, colleges not opening, huge processions, riots.

I think Jayaprakash Narayan made a mammoth mistake when he led this huge rally in New Delhi where he told the people to gherao legislators, not allow them to attend office, like it was happening in Gujarat at that time (where the Nav Nirman riots were going on and crowds had mobbed the Gujarat legislature). He asked people to do the same to Parliament in New Delhi and not allow elected people to attend to their duties. Worse, he asked the police and the Indian Army personnel to remove (the legislators).

Now, there are limits to protests in any democracy and this was exceeding the limits altogether. There were the other leaders, you can name them all, who were thoroughly enjoying her discomfiture, thinking she would fall on her own.

I wrote a letter to Jayaprakash Narayan. I knew him and was very fond of him, but I wrote that he was transgressing the boundaries of limits in a democracy. He wrote back a long letter, which I published in The Illustrated Weekly.

But before anything else could happen, the Allahabad high court judgment came through and she clamped the Emergency. I believe she was right and there was no other choice.
Do you believe after all these years that the Emergency was justified?

I still believe that when she imposed the Emergency, she had every right then because leaders of the Opposition were behaving in a total reckless, irresponsible and anti-national manner, just enjoying the spectacle.

I recall very clearly that when the Emergency was imposed, there was a general sense of relief throughout the country. Schools reopened, colleges reopened, trains ran on time, and there was a sense of gratitude that the country was back to normal.

Of course, the freedom of the people had been taken away. I called on her and told her she must not gag the press. I told her there were people like me who supported her but that no one would believe us, saying you can't say anything else or she will lock you up.

But she didn't agree saying you can't have (a state of) Emergency and freedom of the press because that would create problems. I thought she'd lock me up but she didn't, maybe because I had defended her and her son, Sanjay, long enough.

Anyway, she lifted the Emergency because she was totally misled by the CBI into believing that she was hugely popular and would win the election. And when elections were held, she was surprised to learn that she had earned so much hatred throughout the country that she was defeated.


QUOTEIf I can step back a bit, you said when she imposed the Emergency, there was relief in the country, yet she lost the election? So what went wrong?

What went wrong was, I think, the misuse of power by someâ¦

Sanjay Gandhi includedâ¦

When you say Sanjay, he had no legitimacy. He was only the prime minister's son. What he had in mind was absolutely correct. All the family [planning] propaganda was not working so he made it the top priority. Then slum clearing. People took the cases to court and they went on for years. He said demolish the slums but give them alternative arrangements that were done. The family planning stories were vastly exaggerated: people being picked up from cinema line queues, from villages, etcâ¦ only a tenth of them was true but these stories spread like wildfire and she paid the price. The Emergency was made into a monster.

But there must have been reasons for the Emergency to be demonised?

She had locked up so many people, including 85 year olds. Anyone who said anything was locked up. But it wasn't her alone. It was Sanjay, his wife Maneka, his mother-in-law, Mohammad Yunus, who were running riot and anyone who said anything suddenly found himself in the lockup.

But if you have the Emergency and draconian laws, such excesses are bound to occurâ¦

True, but I don't think she realised it.

Perhaps the problem started from the fact that you had the Emergency in the first place, or that you had it for so long?

I think it could have been a short Emergency and she could have handled the situation better. She could have put her foot down when she realised that people were misusing the Emergency, and there were far too many people around her who were misusing it. Also, putting the maharanis of Jaipur, Gayatri Devi, and of Gwalior, Vijaya Raje Scindia, in jail with pickpockets and prostitutes simply revealed the vindictive nature of her character. It also created a large number of enemies in very important places. That all together created hatred for the whole family.


QUOTEBut then she came back to power. Now was this because the Janata Party was inept or was it also because the people said, 'Okay, we punished you, but now we want you back!' Or was it a combination of both?

Yeah, I think you are right. The anger and rancour against her had mitigated by then. Morarji Desai and Charan Singh proved totally inept in handling the situation and people said she was better than this lot.Â (remark: Some say it was because they were so obsessed by taking revenge on her that they neglected other issues)

But was not her next few years in power her worst? None of the strength of purpose that she had earlier seemed to be there.

I think that can be timed from Sanjay Gandhi's death (barely six months after she took office in January 1980). She lost her moorings when he died because he dominated her. He was a very dominating figure and she was certainly building him up to be the prime minister, totally ignoring Rajiv who she thought was a buddhu (lacking in intelligence).

Mrs. Gandhi And The 1974 Emergency - Guest - 03-11-2005

Indian democracy imperiled QUOTEThe first year of the emergency was, in hindsight, not that harmful for Indira Gandhi or the country. Poorer Indians still trusted the premier and intellectuals noted that they were under an authoritarian, not totalitarian, government. Arun Shourie, the famous journalist, called it "the mildest possible dictatorship" compared to China, the USSR or some of the banana republics. By mid-1976, though, the glow had begun to fade both among the masses and the intellectuals. Denial of civil liberties began to pinch common people and Gandhi herself admitted ex post facto, "The emergency did get a little bit out of hand because people started misusing power at different levels." QUOTEChandra concludes that both the JP Movement and the emergency threatened Indian democracy. New Delhi in 1976 may not have been Berlin under Hitler, but the emergency was obviously "flirting with totalitarianism". The JP Movement, especially its RSS component, was positively hostile to parliamentary democracyÂ <!--emo&

--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rolleyes.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='rolleyes.gif' /> . Its vanguard in the petit-bourgeoisie contained the "classic base of potential fascism". (p 274) Chandra warns of the consequences of an "unthinking mass movement" like JP's as well as the perils of strong-state ideologies and Rasputins like Sanjay Gandhi. The lessons learnt for India from 1974-1977 are that violent or coercive protests pose threats to the functioning of democracy, just as insensitive suppression of normal political agitation is undemocratic

Mrs. Gandhi And The 1974 Emergency - Guest - 03-11-2005

QUOTEIn the Emergency jail
Arun Jaitley
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
June 26, 1975, has gone down as the blackest day in the history of India's democracy. On that day, for utterly phoney reasons, a state of Emergency was declared. On June 12, the Allahabad High Court had unseated Indira Gandhi by allowing an election petition against her. The legitimacy of her continuance in power was questioned. The evening of June 25 witnessed Jayaprakash Narayan addressing a mammoth crowd in Delhi. He had called for a satyagraha from the next day. Indira Gandhi, pushed to a corner, decided to strike back. At midnight, she proclaimed a state of internal Emergency.

I had returned home in the late hours of June 25 after attending the rally. There was a knock at the door around 2 a.m. The police had come to arrest me. My father, a practising lawyer, demanded to be shown my detention order. None existed. He got into an argument with the police while concealing my presence in the house. The police whisked him away, only to release him a few hours later. I used this altercation to escape from the house and go to a friend living nearby for shelter. I made hectic phone calls which revealed that arrests were going on all over the country. We got on to a two-wheeler scooter to find out what was happening. There were raids at the houses of prominent leaders and political party offices. On Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, the electricity supply had been cut off at the newspaper offices. Many senior leaders were held in New Delhi and taken to detention centres in Haryana, then ruled by Bansi Lal with an iron hand.

We were young students full of idealism. I got together a few student activists. Among them were Vijay Goel, now an MP from Delhi, and Rajat Sharma, now a well-known TV personality. We organised a large group of students and youth activists in the Delhi University campus. The crowd had swelled to a few hundreds. Goel, with his customary enthusiasm, hurriedly prepared an effigy of the government. We organised the first and, perhaps, the only protest of the day. We marched from college to college shouting slogans against the government and reached the Vice-Chancellor's office. There I delivered a speech and burnt the effigy. We could see hundreds of policemen gathering around. I knew that I had to be arrested. I advised my colleagues to slip out and continue the protests and offered myself for the arrest. I was taken to the Civil Lines police station where I heard that the Emergency had been proclaimed and the newspapers were subjected to censorship. Mass arrests were going on all over the country. A detentionorder was served on me and I was taken to the Tihar jail.

Conditions in the jail were pathetic. The wards were not equipped to take the load. Newspapers were not permitted. For the first few days the source of information was limited to the new detenus who kept pouring in. After about 10 days, the jail superintendent arrived in the ward and announced a list of about 20 names. We were asked to assemble in the jail office along with our baggage. Late in the evening, we were taken to the Ambala jail.

The detenus were a mix of political workers mostly from the Jan Sangh, the RSS and the ABVP and some from the old Congress and various socialist factions. There were some activists of the Naxalite movement, Ananda Marg and Jamat-e-Islami. Political differences did not prevent bonhomie amongst the detenus. The Ananda Margis would dance in one corner to the tune of Baba Naam Kewalam and repeated the sentence in different rhythmic modes several times. The activists of Jamat-e-Islami were all committed to their ideological philosophy but cultured in their behaviour. The conditions here were stricter than in Delhi but the jail was cleaner. The food allowance under the conditions of detention order was Rs 3 per day. After a hunger strike, this was increased to Rs 5 per day. After protests, we were given newspapers to be shared among us. These were hardly of any use since they were totally censored and carried columns eulogising the government.

There was a sycophantic build-up of both Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay. The government had announced a 20-point economic programme and Sanjay added five points to it. The great M. F. Hussain painted Indira Gandhi as Durga. Yamini Krishnamurthy performed a dance to the tune of the 20-point programme and some religious leaders talked of the programme as the 19th chapter of the Bhagwad Gita. One of India's tallest citizens, Acharya Vinoba Bhave, hailed the Emergency as Anushashan Parva, a festival of discipline. <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ohmy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ohmy.gif' />

Besides the detention orders, false prosecutions were filed under the Defence of India Rules. Not one police officer stood up to resist the registration of fraudulent FIRs. Not one district magistrate stood up to say that he would not issue a detention order under Maintenance of Internal Security Act in the absence of legitimate grounds for detention.

Seven cases were filed against me. These proved a blessing in disguise as I had to be transferred from Ambala to Delhi to stand trial. No trial ever took place and, when the government at the Centre changed, the cases were withdrawn. But this enabled me to be taken at least twice or thrice every week to the criminal court in Delhi. By this time the jail conditions were slightly relaxed. We started paying for our own newspapers. The Indian Express and The Statesman stood out as honourable exceptions. Once back in the Delhi jail, 13 of us were housed in five small rooms of Ward No. 1. This ward had a large garden and we planted saplings of roses. We had a regular badminton court and played for a few hours every day. In Ward No. 2, where there were about 200 detenus, we had a large volleyball court and played matches.

The jail is a state of mind. If you allow yourself to be unduly worried and disturbed, there is a danger of your morale collapsing. But if you retain the strength of your conviction, it can become a challenging period.

Months passed by and we were not sure how long the detention would last. Periodically, our detention orders would be extended. One of the saddest days in jail was when the Supreme Court pronounced the judgment in the preventive detention case, holding a detention order non-justiciable.

On January 18, 1977, the radio informed us that Indira Gandhi was to address the nation. She announced general elections. There was a debate on whether the elections should be contested or boycotted. The overwhelming view was that they should be contested and used as an occasion to campaign against the Emergency. Over the next few days, a number of us were released. My release order came on January 25, 1977, almost 19 months after my arrest. Bag in hand, I stopped a taxi outside the jail and reached my residence.

When I arrived home, it was a happy coincidence that my mother was present and, in the regular course, had organised a kirtan. We were unsure how long this freedom would last. Once the campaign started and the mass upsurge against the Emergency was visible, I had not the slightest doubt that the worst for Indian democracy was over.

The writer is a Union minister

Mrs. Gandhi And The 1974 Emergency - Guest - 03-28-2005

http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.p...&pid=70&page=26

QUOTEA âcock and bullâ story by a ârationalistâ
By Arabinda Ghose

Shri Vasant Sathe has claimed that Smt.Indira Gandhi wanted to quit office after the Allahabad High Court judgement of June 12, 1975, disqualifying her as a member of the Lok Sabha and debarring her from contesting elections for six years. Shri Vasant Sathe is a politician from Nagpur who made it big after joining the Congress party in 1972 and winning the Lok Sabha by-election from Akola in Vidarbha region.

âBunkumâ is the mildest word that came to mind when one read this claim published by the Hindustan Times on March 5, 2005 in a news story about the autobiography he has written and which was released in New Delhi on March 6, 2005.

For someone who, as the Chief of Bureau of Motherland, the daily newspaper which had launched a relentless struggle against the dictatorial rule of Smt. Indira Gandhi, this claim of Madamâs renunciation wish is as ridiculous as Satheâs âfarce (fast) unto deathâ operation at the feet of the Mahatmaâs statue in Parliament House some years ago.

âWhat made her change her mind?â asks the special correspondent of the Hindustan Times and then finds the answers from the book, Memories of a Rationalist. The first, according to Sathe, was that Indira âcould not tolerate the manner in which Opposition leaders like Jayaprakash Narayan (JP), Morarjibhai Desai and Atal Behari Vajpayee were holding demonstrations to put pressure on her to quit.â

Pray, what should have been the manner of airing their demand? Of course, one would imagine, these leaders were supposed to pray before her with flowers and incense (Jayaprakash Narayan was like Indiraâs father ) and appeal to her to resign?

But Shri Sathe, on the eve of his 81st birthday, unwittingly reveals the real reason behind Indiraâs decison not to quit office after this damning judgement, as any self-respecting politician should have done.

Says Sathe: âThere was no consensus within the Congress on the caretaker PM,â while anyone during those days would have suggested the name of Jagjivan Ram, the Defence Minister, and senior to even Indira. Sathe says, âJagjivan Ram, the Defence Minister, added to the crisis by staking claim for the job as the seniormost cabinet minister.â

Why should this name have created a crisis? It was apparent that Indira had already made up her mind that her son Sanjay would succeed her and thus handing over power, even temporarily, to Babu Jagjivan Ram might had had disastrous consequences for the family.

The Hindustan Times quotes Sathe as saying that things had come to a crunch on June 24, when JP and Morarjibhai announced that their countrywide dharna would also include a siege of her residence. âWith Indiraâs supporters also converging at her residence every day, the position would have become explosive,â says Sathe.

What had happened on or after June 12? Indira Gandhi was in tears even as a West Bengal Congress leader, Smt. Purabi Mukherjee, had started wailing loudly at 1, Safdarjung Road. Indira later attributed her lachrymose mood to the death of her most trusted lieutenant and Planning Minister, D.P. Dhar, that very day. Another body blow to her party and so to herself was the defeat of the Congress party in the Gujarat state assembly elections, the results of which came on June 12 itself.

Since the Allahabad High Court had given 20 daysâ time to file an appeal against Justice Sinhaâs judgement in the Supreme Court, the lawyers had started getting ready to prepare the appeal. And efforts were on to make the Congress Parliamentary Party adopt a resolution reaffirming its support to Indira.

Accordingly, on or about June 20, a special meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party was convened at the Central Hall of Parliament House in the afternoon. After making a brief speech, Indira withdrew from the meeting since the subject matter of the meeting was she herself and it would not have been proper for her to preside over such a meeting. In her absence, and perhaps without anyone presiding, Babu Jagjivan Ram took the floor and asked fellow members to adopt a resolution saying that âIndiraji should continue to lead the party in her capacity as the Prime Minister.â

So Babu Jagjivan Ram asked members to raise both their hands and support the resolution which he read out. Interestingly, he repeated the phrase, âPradhan Mantri ke roop meinâ (âIn the capacity of the Prime Ministerâ) not once, but twice. This exercise was staged by Indira Gandhi in order to accord some sort of legitimacy to her continuance as the Prime Minister, and she got Jagjivan Babu involved in this exercise in order to preclude any claim by him for the office at that stage.

This meeting took place much before June 24 that Vasant Sathe speaks of. In any case, that date should be June 25. That evening, the Opposition parties had organised a huge public meeting at the Ram Lila Ground. No newspaper published the report of this meeting because on the night of June 25 itself, Indira Gandhi saw to it that no newspaper came out the next morning. The Motherland too was a victim of the move since its power-line was cut off at three in morning, just when the last stage of printing was to commence. It is another matter that we, in the Motherland, got this item published in the special supplement we brought out on June 26, when power was restored and the government had imposed censorship. We brought out the supplement by defying the censor and the âprizeâ for this was the shutting down of the Motherland office the same evening by the police.

The ârationalistâ Congressman sings paeans about the Emergency. One may well ask, why then did Indira Gandhi along with her son and the Congress party suffer defeat in the 1977 elections?

One more word about Shri Sathe. Being a fellow Nagpurian, I am aware of his younger days in politics. He was a Praja Socialist Party (PSP) leader till 1971 and joined the Congress just on the eve of the Lok Sabha by-election from Akola constituency in Vidarbha. It was this PSP which had betrayed the cause of Samyukta Maharashtra in 1957 (in the Vidarbha region only, not in western Maharashtra or Marathwada-Konkan), when all non-Congress parties of Maharashtra had come together (yes, including the Jan Sangh and communists) to defeat the Congress. The PSP of Vidarbha region, however, did not join and the result was a Congress sweep in that region. On the strength of the seats won by the Congress in the Vidarbha and Gujarat regions of the composite Bombay state, the Congress party formed the government under the chief ministership of Yashwantrao Chavan then. Gujarat and Maharashtra were bifurcated on May 1, 1960.

Mrs. Gandhi And The 1974 Emergency - Guest - 03-28-2005

QUOTESo Babu Jagjivan Ram asked members to raise both their hands and support the resolution which he read out. Interestingly, he repeated the phrase, âPradhan Mantri ke roop meinâ (âIn the capacity of the Prime Ministerâ) not once, but twice. This exercise was staged by Indira Gandhi in order to accord some sort of legitimacy to her continuance as the Prime Minister, and she got Jagjivan Babu involved in this exercise in order to preclude any claim by him for the office at that stage.


From the tabloid section... but then it's Kushwant Singh, so here it goes.....Behind the scenes by Kushwant Singh

QUOTEI was editor of the National Herald in 1978. We were not paid any salary then as the Congress was short on funds. Indira Gandhi was out of power after the Emergency debacle swept the Janata Party to power.

Her daughter-in-law Maneka Gandhi had started a magazine called Surya and Indira Gandhi asked me to help her out with the magazine.

Earlier Amteshwar Anand, Maneka's mother who claimed to be my distant relative had personally visited me at my residence with Indira Jaising and sought my help for Maneka's magazine Surya.

One fine Sunday morning, an important day for a sardar as he has to wash his hair that day, they arrived unannounced draped in chiffon and perfume only to be greeted by me in a sardarji's kachcha (underwear) with my hair, a tangled mane, wet and streaming open.

They requested me to help Maneka with the magazine she was planning to launch Surya. I relented.

I worked with Surya as the consulting editor and would invariably end up writing or rewriting all the stories.

One day when I reached the National Herald office, I saw an envelope lying on my table. I opened the envelope, had one look and recognised who was in the picture.
Suresh Ram, son of Jagjivan Ram.

If the Kamasutra has 64 poses of making love, this one certainly had 10.

By evening, an interesting development took place. An emissary arrived from Jagjivan Ram saying that if the pics were not published, Jagjivan Ram would dump Morarjee and join Indira Gandhi. I took the pictures to Indira Gandhi and showed them to her.

I conveyed the message to Indira Gandhi and she said: "First ask him to dump Morarjee and then only will I guarantee the pictures will not be published". It never happened. Maneka was very keen to use the pics in her magazine Surya.

And so the pics got published as a centrespread in Surya and were also published by the National Herald. We had to use tapes on strategic body organs. They were so graphic that we could be sued for obscenity. And all these pictures had been organized by Suresh Ram who had a self timed Polaroid camera placed in his room.

Suresh and his father Jagjivan were great womanisers. They often used to share their women between them.

Years later, Maneka took me to court because I wrote about her in my book. She held up the release of my book for six years on charges of invasion of privacy when she herself published the pictures!

I was walking down the Bahadurshah Zafar Marg from Indian Express office to the Times of India, when a gentleman, he was a Hindi journalist I think, came to me and showed me the pictures. I knew the party people pretty well and had the story confirmed from KC Tyagi.

Whether Charan Singh had a hand in the entire affair is not sure but well the Jat network connection was definitely there - the girl, Sushma Chaudhary was a Jat, so were the men involved in the beating up of Suresh Ram.

But what struck me was the security aspect angle. I got the story from my sources in the police that there were some defence deals related papers lying in the car. SP Chibber, an arms dealer had given the car to Suresh Ram.

He was handling the sale-purchase of the Jaguar aircraft. Significantly then, negotiations were on for the Jaguar which was being preferred over the Mirage though the Mirage had superior features. The government did eventually sign the Jaguar deal!

A defence ministers son, in a defence dealers car, related papers in the backseat of the car and the car was used for a romantic rendezvous - was it right that the son of the defence minister should be so careless about affairs which could imperil the nations security ? That set me off !

Sushma Chaudhary was the daughter of a person who arranged for the procurement of wood at Nigambodh Ghat. Beautiful but not very bright, Sushma used to work at the Payal cinema at Naraina . It was widely known that she was having an affair with the two Sikh brothers who were the then proprietors of Payal cinema.

Sushma was not of a very sound character herself. And from the very beginning was hand in glove with Jagjivan Rams opposing camp which consisted of Chaudhary Charan Singh. KC Tyagi and Om Pal Singh.

Charan Singh' s camp conspired to set a relationship going between Suresh Ram and Sushma Chaudhary. Suresh Ram did not have a happy married, which helped to support their plan.

Suresh was married to Kamaljit Kaur, older to him by around 7-8 years and a senior of his at Delhi University. By temperament, Kamaljit Kaur was extremely erratic. Very often when Suresh Ram would be sitting in a restaurant or at a public place, she would land up there and simply start abusing him !

Suresh would very often frequent Maqsood Pur, an MP putting up at Western Court. Maqsood pur was an old friend of Jagjivan Ram's family.

And the opposing camp planned to place Sushma in a job with the MP so that Sushma and Suresh would be able to meet. And that is how the relationship began.

Suresh was a bright boy but perverted. He was in the habit of capturing his sexual exploits on camera. And Sushma was aware of this. Suresh had captured the intimate and uninhibited moments of the sexual dalliance between Sushma and him on camera too.

All along Sushma was aware of the events. On that fateful day, August 20, 1978, Suresh as usual went to pick up Sushma from her Nigambodh Ghat residence. But before they could leave Sushma had a request: She wanted to see the pictures of their intimate moments spent together.

Suresh tried to wave it off to a later date but Sushma insisted. Suresh was forced to go back to his residence and get the pics in his Mercedes.

This entire routine was a plot hatched by Sushma in connivance with the Charan Sngh camp. It was meant to besmirch Jagjivan Ram's name. The goal: To put an end to Jagjivan Ram's career who was widely tipped then to be the next prime minister.

The method: To smear his name by exposing his sons perversion.

As Suresh sped away with his ladylove Sushma, unknown to Suresh, around 10 - 11 young men, jats, in three taxis were on his trail. Soon they overpowered him, forced open the car and started roughing up Suresh. But this was just a cover operation. All along they knew that the porn pictures were in the car. Their motive was laying a hand on the pics.

Once they obtained the pictures, they lost no time in making thousands of copies of the same and distributing it all over the town.

The incident broke Jagjivan Ram's heart. It broke him mentally and physically and was a big factor in the downslide of his career. A year later, in 1979, Jagjivan

Once the incident had been publicised I had two choices. Either I could be shameless and go to town talking about the episode or like the down-to-earth person I am, I could have chosen to spend my days with Suresh. Since we were married and Babu Jagjivan Ram had accepted me as his bahu, I did not want to enter into dirty politics and chose to remain quiet.
I know the kind of life Maneka leadsâ¦, I have seen her closely but I have never gone to town spreading stories about her. What right did she have to interfere in somebody's personal life. It was entirely politically motivated.

I am a firm believer in God. I pray three times a day and I have full faith in my banke bihari (Lord Krishna). I believe that God watches everything and those who do bad are repaid in the same coin.

If Maneka destroyed my life, she is not a happy person today. She lost her husband and is all alone now.

For those who say that I have taken money, let them show me where the money is. None in our family ever took money from Jagjivan Ram. If I did, would my bhabhi (sister-in-law) be working in a college as a cashier.

After Suresh's death, I left Babuji's house. I was not being treated the way I would have liked and thought it best to leave.

Mrs. Gandhi And The 1974 Emergency - Guest - 04-26-2005

Tussle within and without
QUOTEThe first few months after Sanjay's death did not throw up much challenge within the party. However, events back home were creating wide rifts between family members. Worse, these differences showed no signs of disappearing. The events between 1977-79 had created a rift between Mrs Gandhi and her elder son and his wife, Sonia. 
Because they were out of power first time or financial problem or something else.
Any clue why?

QUOTEEven as Ms Maneka Gandhi left, the internal power equations was far from over as Rajiv now sought to establish his control. For all that, Mrs Gandhi would not part with power till she was convinced that the other power centres towed the line

Mrs. Gandhi And The 1974 Emergency - Guest - 04-26-2005

Power-centric politics
QUOTEThe most remarkable aspect to Mrs Gandhi was that she respected both her political friends and foes. I never heard her utter a derogatory remark about her adversaries even when the criticism against her for imposing Emergency was at its height. The victory in 1971 was after a prolonged period of struggle. In fact, after her resounding success in these polls, few doubted her ability to lead the party and the nation. That she had tremendous political acumen and leadership qualities was proved by her victory in this election. That she had the potential to lead became evident, too. No longer was she referred to as Pandit Nehru's daughter because she had carved a niche for herself. A new power base was clearly emerging in the form of Sanjay Gandhi. Thus in no time the the laudatory verdict of 1971 was reversed. This was in the backdrop of conflict and dissent as the situation in Gujarat deteriorated. Jayaprakash Narayan's movement was to soon erupt as a political storm. The power base headed by PN Haksar was slowly losing ground with the rise of Sanjay Gandhi. All these political developments soon resulted in the proclamation of Emergency.

The Emergency did have many detractors. In fact, Rajiv Gandhi on many occasions raised "issues": That there were excesses, etc. In his own way, he intimated his mother about what was happening in the country but it did not have mush of an effect. I had also talked to Sanjay and Mrs Gandhi, bringing to their knowledge specific instances that I witnessed in Calcutta. It had little or no impact on the two. Things grew worse with each passing day and gradually the Congress had no dissenters whose opinion was contrary to the reigning power centre.

Sanjay Gandhi was undoubtedly responsible for most of the excesses during the dark days of Emergency but it would be a mistake to blame him for all of them. The shattering defeat in 1977 did little to alter the phenomenon of prevailing power structures. Mrs Gandhi exonerated Sanjay who had a major part to play in the disaster. According to her, all were equally responsible because there were many leaders who actively pursued and supported Emergency. Clearly, the power base that Mrs Gandhi had visualised for the future had Sanjay in the driver's seat. However, simultaneously within the family, an alternative structure had developed that had been "dormant" for the better part of 1978-79.Â

Mrs. Gandhi And The 1974 Emergency - ramana - 04-27-2005

From Dhar's book one can see that Rajiv Gandhi quickly built up his power center soon after Sanjay's death in the light plane crash. In fact he became adept and ran his own mini PMO that had to be monitored by IB. In light of Subramaniam Swamy's allegations one wonders if the crash was so accidental. One thing is clear that the Nehru line held by Maneka Gandhi was hoped to whither. Why? Mrs Gandhi did have reservations about Maneka's mom but it was till an indegenous line.

Mrs. Gandhi And The 1974 Emergency - Guest - 04-27-2005

QUOTEMrs Gandhi did have reservations about Maneka's mom 
Sanjay was locked by Maneka's parents in their Safdarjang residence and forced into marriage by them. But it was Rajeev hatred towards Maneka's mother and sister Ambika Shukla was main problem.

Mrs. Gandhi And The 1974 Emergency - ramana - 04-28-2005

Phir bhi after marriage she is the bahu. In retrospect the death of Sanjay Gandhi was a crucial event in the recent history of modern India. It enabled the Rajiv Gandhi line to come to power and with it the elevation of Mrs Sonia Gandhi to become the head of the clan and command the family loyalty.

Mrs. Gandhi And The 1974 Emergency - Guest - 04-28-2005

QUOTEIn light of Subramaniam Swamy's allegations one wonders if the crash was so accidental.

Many rumours have been going around for years about this. The crash MO has been repeated in different variations many a times since then.

Mrs. Gandhi And The 1974 Emergency - Guest - 07-01-2005

It's the 30 annv. some articles on the topic...

http://us.rediff.com/news/2005/jun/28spec1.htm
http://specials.rediff.com/news/2005/jun/28sld1.htm
http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/jun/25spec.htm
http://us.rediff.com/news/2005/jun/24spec3.htm

Mrs. Gandhi And The 1974 Emergency - Guest - 07-05-2005

This is the time for imposing Emergency

Mrs. Gandhi And The 1974 Emergency - Guest - 07-08-2005

QUOTEWhat the Emergency revealed about Congress
BY Amulya Ganguli

Every party carries an albatross round its neck a traumatic event which exposes its negative features. For the BJP, it is the Babri masjid demolition. For the Congress, it is the Emergency. In the foreseeable future, the two parties will constantly have to defend themselves on questions relating to the two events, especially when they try to climb up to the moral high ground.

The reason is that the two episodes underline crucial but unflattering aspect of their outlook in the BJPâs case, it is antipathy towards the minorities, especially the Muslims, and in the Congressâs case, it is the streak of authoritarianism in the partyâs mental make-up.

It is instructive that neither of the two parties has offered a genuine apology for what happened on December 6, 1992, and on June 26, 1975. L.K.Advani has described December 6 as the âsaddest dayâ of his life, but no one is sure whether he was sad because the mosque was demolished or because the incident revealed a previously unsuspected lack of discipline among the cadres of the Sangh parivar and the BJP.

Similarly, the Congress has been ambivalent about the Emergency, only saying that it will not happen again. But it continues to give the impression that it is not too sorry for the suppression of liberties that occurred at the time.

In fact, this is exactly what one of Indira Gandhiâs aides, R.K.Dhawan, who is now a Rajya Sabha M.P., has said. In an article in the Hindustan Times, he has reiterated the old line that the Emergency was unavoidable because of the anarchic conditions created by the opposition led by Jayaprakash Narayan with his call to the police to disobey orders.

But as is common in the case of all distortions and half-truths, he has, perhaps unwittingly, demolished his own argument when he wrote: âI reiterate that there was no effective political threat to Mrs Gandhi. She was the unquestioned leader of the Congress. The Opposition was decisively beaten in the general election of 1971 and was deep down with frustrationâ.

If this claim is true, why were such draconian powers necessary? Does a leader who faces âno effective political threatâ call for the snuffing out of all liberties, including the right to life, as the judiciary acknowledged at the time, surreptitiously in the middle of the night? If Indira Gandhi was the âunquestioned leader of the Congressâ, why were leading Congressmen like Chandra Shekhar, Mohan Dharia and Krishan Kant arrested along with the opposition leaders like Jayaprakash Narayan? 

If she was the âunquestioned leaderâ, why wasnât the Union cabinet called to discuss the proclamation of the Emergency ? She did expect that her patently uncalled for act would meet with some resistance from the senior members of the party like Swaran Singh and Jagjivan Ram?

Clearly, the glib explanations offered by Dhawan are unconvincing. Instead, what is obvious that the midnight proclamation was the act of a person who knew that she was in the wrong and, therefore, wanted the Emergency to be a fait accompli before presenting her party members with her decision signed by the President.

Continuing with his game of being economical with the truth, Dhawan writes that the âcountry was paralysed because of the railway strike, students were told to boycott their classes, civil servants were told to disobeyâ.

The railway strike took place in 1974 and was over well before the Emergency was declared in 1975. The students may have been told to boycott classes and the civil servants to disobey, but were they actually doing so ? Were there any instances of empty classrooms in colleges and universities and of civil servants actually refusing to follow orders?

These are the kinds of wild allegations that are made when politicians play hide and seek with the truth. Far more relevant than these totally unsubstantiated charges is what a PTI reporter, R.C.Rajamani, has written in The Statesman one of the two English newspapers (other than The Indian Express) which had the courage to oppose the Emergency.

âHardly a month after she imposed the infamous Emergency on the midnight of June 25/26, 1975â, Rajamani has written, âIndira Gandhi told Parliament, presumably in the heat of the moment, `You have been calling me a dictator, when I was not. Now, I amâ. This was on July 22. 

The story sent out by the Press Trust of India was killed five minutes later by the censorâ. This is closer to the truth than Dhawanâs garbled account. Indira Gandhi needed to be the dictator because she had been found guilty of electoral malpractice by the Allahabad High Court, a judgment which was partially upheld by the Supreme Court.

To overturn these verdicts, she needed the fiction of âanarchyâ, as propounded by Dhawan. Since there was no anarchy, she had to act virtually alone and impose the Emergency without consulting the Union cabinet, waking up President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, an old Congress party loyalist, at the dead of night to sign the proclamation.

All of this is known, but what is noteworthy three decades after the event is that the Congress is still basically unapologetic about this blatant attempt to stifle democracy for the first time in the countryâs history and, hopefully, for the last time.

It is Indiaâs good fortune that the attempt did not succeed. But its failure was not due to any realization on Indira Gandhiâs part that she had acted wrongly. Instead, it was a miscalculation on her part to call for elections because she was unaware of the rebellious popular mood as a result of the press censorship.

So, when the voters got a chance to exercise their will, they threw out the dictator. As a party, the Congress apparently has no option but to continue to peddle untruths about that period because the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty remains the partyâs mascot.

Even Sanjay Gandhi, the enfant terrible of the Emergency, cannot be criticized by the party because he belongs to the family after all. If his son, Feroze Varun, joins the Congress, as has occasionally been suggested, the party will have to tread even more carefully when referring to those days.

However, no matter how hard it tries, the taint will not go away. Like Bofors, the Emergency will continue to haunt the party because it reflects one of its inherent traits.

If Bofors points to the reputation of corruption which Congress earned during its days in power in the first two decades after Independence when it had no worthwhile opponents, the subversion of democracy during the Emergency reflected two aspects of the party and its leadership.

The first is Indira Gandhiâs personal failing her contempt for democratic norms which she first exhibited as Congress president in 1959 when she orchestrated the removal of the first elected communist government of Kerala. In 1975, her dictatorial ambitions may have been accentuated by the thoughts of establishing a dynastic line, evident in her turning first to Sanjay and then to Rajiv, rather than leave the matter of succession to the party.

The second is the Congressâs lack of spine, born of the decades in office which made its leaders hanker for power at the expense of principles. The principled people at the time were former Congressmen like Jayaprakash Narayan and Acharya Kripalani. Few were in the Congress.

Only Swaran Singh is believed to have demurred slightly when Indira Gandhi informed the cabinet at dawn on June 26, 1975, that an Emergency was already in force and that she wanted post facto approval.

All the others, including heavyweights like Jagjivan Ram, kept quiet, evidently because they did not want to lose the perquisites of office while sycophants like Congress president Devkant âIndira is Indiaâ Borooah and Siddhartha Shankar Ray were happy to bow their heads.

But they had all reckoned without the wisdom of the people of India who could sift the fiction of âanarchyâ from the fact of tyranny.

Send in your comments on this article to samachareditor@sify.com

Mrs. Gandhi And The 1974 Emergency - Guest - 07-08-2005

QUOTEThe first is Indira Gandhiâs personal failing her contempt for democratic norms which she first exhibited as Congress president in 1959 when she orchestrated the removal of the first elected communist government of Kerala.
Hey, Nehru got to PM when 19 out 20 had voted for Sardar Patel to be the first PM of free India. In that sense, the acron didn't fall far from the tree.

Mrs. Gandhi And The 1974 Emergency - Guest - 12-18-2005

The final outcome of the Emergency was that it proved the political maturity of the Indian voters in no uncertain terms.Even the world had to stop doubting that the Indian voters are not mature enough to handle democracy. It for the first time brought in the polarisation of the different political forces in the country.It made the Congress Party realise that it is not indispensable .
Several good things did happen in the country but these were overshadowed by the excess committed by the official machinery.