45 Years Of Emergency: A Lookback At Indira Gandhi's Flirtation With Dictatorship

Indira had to resort to these extra ordinary measures because on 12 June 1975, the Allahabad High Court declared Indira’s 1971 parliamentary election in Rae Bareilli null and void because of electoral malpractice.

On 25 June 1975 night, prime minister Indira Gandhi announced a national emergency in view of ‘threats to national security.’ This was the day when Jai Prakash Narain, Morarji Desai, and other leading lights opposition had held a public rally at Delhi’s Ram Lila grounds asking Indira to step down. JP, as Jai Prakash Narain was popularly addressed, had urged the people to join them in a non-cooperation movement. Indira reached to President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed at the dead of the night to declare a national emergency in view of ‘threats to national security.’ Opposition leaders were arrested, censorship was imposed, and a ban was soon announced on grassroots organisations, including the RSS and 13 of its cover organisations.

Indira had to resort to these extra ordinary measures because on  12 June 1975, the Allahabad High Court declared Indira’s 1971 parliamentary election in Rae Bareilli null and void because of electoral malpractice. More importantly, it debarred her from holding any public office for the next six years. While Indira struggled to face the situation, her close advisor Siddhartha Shankar Ray came up with a proposal to invoke article 352 of the Indian constitution and proclaim an internal emergency.



The declaration of emergency was not unusual in developing countries like India. Even in Britain, the Edward Heath government had called for it five times in its existence. In India too, an ‘external’ emergency had been declared during the 1962 and 1971 wars. But in the summer of 1975, there was nothing to justify it. Political scientists and scholars of that era felt that if individual states like Bihar were facing problems, a presidential decree would have sufficed. In 1978, the Shah Commission, which was set up to examine the emergency and its excesses, found that there was no evidence of a threat to the constitution or law and order that warranted the emergency.

There were other bizarre events in the Sanjay saga of the emergency. In Connaught Place, New Delhi, there was a textile shop ‘Pundit Brothers’ whose 80-year old owner was the uncle of P.N. Haksar, a key Indira aide who was removed for reportedly opposing Sanjay Gandhi’s Maruti car project. It may have been just a coincidence but during the emergency, Haksar’s uncle had to spend a day in police custody. The owner of Pundit Brothers was punished by having towels and napkins at his shop not bear individual price tags though the bundles did, thus hampering his retail sales. Connaught Place also had a popular joint called Janata Coffee House where journalists, writers, liberals, and lawyers used to regularly meet. Someone told Sanjay that people at the coffee house were criticizing the emergency. One morning, the entire coffee house was bulldozed.



Indira however had a different take on her Sanjay Gandhi’s extra-constitutional role and authority.  After the defeat of 1977, noted film maker Khawaja Ahmad Abbas had sought an appointment with the former prime minister. Abbas gave specific instances of excesses ranging from forced sterilization to violence, but Indira made no attempts to defend herself. Instead, she praised Sanjay’s simplicity and sincerity, blaming her party chief ministers, the CWC, and other AICC office-bearers for ‘building up a false image of Sanjay’. She claimed to have written numerous letters to chief ministers of Congress-ruled states asking them not to accord state receptions but they insisted on lionizing Sanjay.

Significantly, during the Emergency, a constitutional amendment was introduced. The Forty-second Amendment, enacted in November 1976, after the Lok Sabha’s five-year term had expired, purported to reduce the power of the Supreme Court and the high courts. It also declared India to be a socialist, secular, republic and laid down the duties of Indian citizens to their government. One of the main authors of this amendment was D.K. Barooah, who, as Congress president, had immortalized himself by coining the ‘India is Indira, Indira is India’ slogan. When the bill was brought in parliament, A.R. Antulay, a barrister from Lincoln’s Inn, outdid Barooah in praising Indira and called for a ‘fresh look at existing constitutional provisions like five-yearly parliamentary polls.’ As if there was a battle for excellence in flattery, Bansi Lal tried to outdo both Barooah and Antulay when he told Indira’s cousin B.K. Nehru to change the provisions and ‘just make her the President of India for life.’

By January 1977, Indira realized that the emergency would have to be ended. She called for fresh elections, dissolved the already stretched Lok Sabha, released all political prisoners and braced for polls. The emergency, with its all its limitations, had not done irreparable damage. Individual and political freedom existed within it and political opponents were not shot. Even the most draconian provisions of the 42nd amendment had not abolished the Supreme Court and had not ended the electoral process.

It was also perhaps due to the fact that the Indira-Sanjay emergency era failed to usher in any significant social or economic reforms to compensate for the absence of democracy. It was evident from the manner in which Congress MPs themselves voted to repeal much of the 42nd and other emergency-era constitutional amendments when the Janata Party was in power that the Congress party could not get rid of its democratic ethos.

In a nutshell, Indira and Sanjay’s flirtation with dictatorship taught most Indians about the dangers to democracy. It educated them about demagoguery, about the perils of hero-worship, and about disregarding liberty and placing powers in the hands of a few. It taught them that, like the fight against McCarthyism in the United States, vigilance was the constant price that citizens would have to pay for the emergency not happening again. Some of these issues hold  relevance even today.

[Author-Journalist Rasheed Kidwai is a visiting Fellow of the Observer Research Foundation. He tracks government and politics and considered a specialist on Congress party affairs.]

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