India After Independence: 1947-2000 (41 page)

Following the surrender in Dacca, on 17 December, the Indian government announced a unilateral ceasefire on the western front. The continuation of the war would have been hazardous both on diplomatic and military grounds. The United States, China and the UN were then likely to intervene more actively. The Soviet Union also did not favour further fighting. War on the western front would also have been very costly both in terms of men and materials. While in the East, the people had welcomed Indian troops as saviours, in the West the people and the armed forces, still intact, would fight tenaciously to defend their homes and homeland. Moreover, continuation of hostilities in the western part would have been aimless, for after all disintegration of Pakistan or annexation of any part of it was not, and could not be, an objective of Indian policy.

Pakistan readily accepted the ceasefire and released Mujibur Rahman, who came to power in Bangladesh on 12 January 1972.

India had several gains to show from the Bangladesh war. The balance of power in South Asia had been altered with India emerging as the pre-eminent power. The grave refugee problem had been solved with the ten million refugees promptly and smoothly sent back to their homes in Bangladesh. The humiliating memory of the defeat in 1962 was wiped out and India’s lost pride and self-respect restored. India had not only defeated a troublesome neighbour but had asserted its independence in foreign affairs and in defence of her national interest. It had been shown that India was not a weak political entity on the world stage even if it was not yet a world power.

The war had also demonstrated the strength of Indian secularism. Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, all had stood together as civilians or soldiers at this moment of crisis against a Muslim country. Further, a big blow had been given to the two-nation theory, the basis for Partition in 1947. Muslims in India could now see what treatment had been meted out to Bengali Muslims by the upholders of that theory.

The Bangladesh war was also, in real terms, a personal victory for Indira Gandhi. Indians admired her toughness and determination and the superb leadership qualities she had displayed throughout the crisis. Her popularity stretched phenomenally, and her prestige went up in the community of nations. She was ‘at the pinnacle of her power and glory’. Many Indians referred to her as a modern-day Durga and an incarnation of Shakti or female energy. At this moment of her triumph, Indira Gandhi gladly shared her glory with Manekshaw who was made a Field Marshal, the first in India.

The war had ended; the ceasefire had come—but peace had not. India still held over 90,000 prisoners of war and was in occupation of nearly 9,000 square kilometres of Pakistani territory. Pakistan was yet to recognize Bangladesh. Indira Gandhi realized that a mutually arrived at Indo-Pak settlement was necessary for a durable peace. A hostile Pakistan
would not only force India to maintain a high level of defence expenditure but also enable outside powers to interfere in subcontinental affairs. A summit conference between Indira Gandhi and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the newly-elected prime minister of Pakistan, was held in Simla in June 1972; a great deal of hard bargaining took place and the two signed an agreement which came to be known as the Simla Declaration. India agreed to return the Pakistan territory it had occupied, except some strategic points in Kashmir, mainly in the Kargil sector, which were necessary to safeguard the strategic road link between Srinagar and Leh in Ladakh. In return, Pakistan agreed to respect the existing Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir and undertook not to alter it unilaterally by force or threat of force. The two countries also agreed to settle all their disputes through bilateral negotiations without any outside mediation by the UN or any other power. India also agreed to return the prisoners of war to Pakistan but this was to be contingent upon a Bangladesh-Pakistan agreement. This occurred the next year when Pakistan recognized Bangladesh in August 1973.

The justification Indira Gandhi offered to the parliament in July 1972 for signing the Simla Declaration was significant. She said: ‘All I know is that I must fight for peace and I must take those steps which will lead us to peace . . . The time has come when Asia must wake up to its destiny, must wake up to the real needs of its people, must stop fighting amongst ourselves, no matter what our previous quarrels, no matter what the previous hatred and bitterness. The time has come today when we must bury the past.’
⁶

The year 1972, which was also the twenty-fifth year of India’s independence, marked the beginning of a new period in which conditions were ripe for the government to fulfill its electoral promises. There was political stability in the country; the government had a two-thirds majority in the Lok Sabha; and Indians had acquired fresh and heightened self-confidence in their own capacities and capabilities as well as faith in the political leadership.

But before this positive process could be inaugurated, the Congress leadership felt that it must acquire the levers of power in the states, which were, after all, the agencies for the implementation of much of the reforms and developmental programme and policies. Consequently, elections were held in March 1972 for the legislative assemblies in all states except UP., Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Orissa. Once again Congress won a majority in all the states. The two elections of 1971 and 1972 led to a virtual demise of Swatantra and Congress (O). The political command at both the Centre and the states was now unified. Indira Gandhi had also acquired virtually complete control over the party, her Cabinet, and the chief ministers.

During 1971-74, the government undertook several measures to implement its left-of-centre agenda. In August 1972, general insurance was nationalized and five months later the coal industry. Ceilings were imposed on urban land ownership. The MRTP Act to check concentration of industrial enterprises in a few hands had already been passed in 1969 and a MRTP Commission appointed in 1971 to implement the Act. But Indira Gandhi refused to go any further in nationalizing industry, despite pressure from the CPI and leftists within her party; she remained fully committed to a mixed economy. Legislation to reduce ceilings on agricultural landholdings and distribute surplus land to the landless and marginal farmers was also passed in several states. The central government initiated a programme of cheap foodgrain distribution to the economically vulnerable sections of society and a crash scheme for creating employment in rural areas. It also made it compulsory for nationalized banks to open branches in underbanked areas such as small towns, rural clusters and the poorer parts of the cities and to make credit available to small industries, farmers, road transporters and self-employed persons. To reduce businessmen’s influence in politics, the government imposed a ban on donations by joint-stock companies to political parties. Mrs Gandhi also tried to strengthen the Planning Commission and the planning mechanism.

The government got passed two important constitutional amendments. The Supreme Court had in two judgements in 1951 and 1965 upheld the parliament’s right to amend the fundamental right to property so as to make any legislation regarding it non-justiciable. But in 1967 the Supreme Court had in the Golak Nath case reversed these decisions and later set aside bank nationalization and the abolition of privy purses. The 24th Amendment to the Constitution passed in 1971 restored parliament’s authority to amend the fundamental rights. The 25th Amendment passed in the same year gave parliament the power to decide the amount to be paid as compensation and the mode of payment in case of any private property taken over for future purposes. Thus, the Supreme Court would no longer have the power to declare such compensation to be inadequate. The 24th and 25th Amendments were to rectify a situation where the courts had taken a conservative social position, come in the way of agrarian reform legislation, the nationalization of industries and other business enterprises, hindered measures to check concentration of wealth and economic power in private hands, asserted judiciary’s supremacy over parliament, and assumed powers over the constitutional amendment process which the makers of the Constitution did not intend. A further, less significant, constitutional amendment abolished the privileges as well as the purses of the former princes.

India achieved a major success in terms of a breakthrough in science and technology when the Atomic Energy Commission detonated an underground nuclear device at Pokhran in the deserts of Rajasthan on 18 May 1974. The Indian government, however, declared that it was not going to make nuclear weapons even though it had acquired the capacity to do so. It claimed that the Pokhran explosion was an effort to harness
atomic energy for peaceful purposes and to make India self-reliant in nuclear technology.

Then, suddenly in 1973, the tide changed for Indira Gandhi. The economy, the polity and the credibility of Indira Gandhi’s leadership and Congress government started going downhill. The disillusionment found expression in the J.P. movement of 1974. It was followed by the Emergency in 1975. Discontent and unrest marked this phase which is taken up in the next chapter.

In 1975, India experienced its greatest political crisis since independence when Internal Emergency was declared on 26 June. How did the Emergency come about? Was there no other choice, as Indira Gandhi maintained, or was it the ultimate expression of her authoritarian tendencies, as the Opposition alleged? Or did both sides indulge in obfuscation. The issue infact, is quite complex.

By the beginning of 1973 Indira Gandhi’s popularity began to decline. People’s expectations were unfulfilled. Little dent was being made in rural or urban poverty or economic inequality, nor was there any lessening of caste and class oppression in the countryside.

The immediate provocation for the rising discontent was the marked deterioration in the economic situation. A combination of recession, growing unemployment, rampant inflation and scarcity of foodstuffs created a serious crisis. The burden of feeding and sheltering nearly 10 million refugees from Bangladesh during 1971 had depleted the grain reserves and, combined with the cost of the Bangladesh war, had led to a large budgetary deficit. The war had also 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. The drought also led to a drop in power generation and combined with the fall in agricultural production, and therefore in the demand for manufactured goods, led to industrial recession and rise in unemployment 1973 also witnessed the notorious oil-shock when world prices of crude oil increased four-fold, leading to massive increase in the prices of petroleum products and fertilisers. This drained foreign reserves, further increased the budgetary deficit and deepened economic recession. With all this, prices rose continuously, by 22 per cent in 1972-73 alone. The price rise, which affected both the poor and the middle classes, was accompanied by scarcity of essential articles of consumption. There were food riots in
several parts of the country.

Economic recession, unemployment, price rise and scarcity of goods led to large-scale industrial unrest and a wave of strikes in different parts of the country during 1972 and 1973, culminating in an all-India railway strike in May 1974. The railway strike lasted twenty-two days but was broken in the end. Mrs Gandhi’s popularity among the workers was eroded further.

Law and order deteriorated, particularly during 1974-75. Strikes, student protests and popular demonstrations often turned violent. Many colleges and universities were closed for prolonged periods. 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.

To tackle the deteriorating economic, political and law and order situation firm and clear leadership was needed, as exhibited during the Bangladesh crisis and in the handling of foreign affairs. But that was not forthcoming. The political situation was worsened by the play of other factors. Congress had been declining as an organization and proved incapable of dealing with the political crisis at the state and grassroots levels. The government’s capacity to redress the situation was seriously impaired by the growing corruption in most areas of life and the widespread belief that the higher levels of the ruling party and administratior 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.

A major new development was the growing detachment of three major social groups from Congress. While the poor continued to support it, though more passively, the middle classes, because of price rise and the stink of corruption, the rich peasantry, because of the threat of land reform, and the capitalists, because of the talk of socialism, nationalization of banks and coal mining and anti-monopoly measures, turned against Congress and Indira Gandhi. Desperation of the opposition parties also contributed to the undermining of the political system. Utterly disparate ideologically and programmatically, the only thing uniting these parties was anti-Congressism. But they were in no position, either separately or in combination, to pose a political challenge to Congress, having been thoroughly defeated and down-sized only recently in the general elections of 1971 and state assembly elections of 1972. Unwilling to wait till the next elections to test their popularity they decided, irrespective of the consequences, to blindly support any group or movement in any form against the government at the Centre or in a state.

What turned the various economic and political crises into one of the political system were two popular movements in Gujarat and Bihar against
the faction-ridden Congress governments, and the leadership provided to the Bihar movement by Jayaprakash Narayan.

A major upheaval occurred in Gujarat in January 1974 when popular anger over the rise in the prices of foodgrains, cooking oil and other essential commodities exploded in the cities and towns of the state in the form of a student movement which was soon joined by the opposition parties. For more than ten weeks the state faced virtual anarchy with strikes, looting, rioting and arson, and efforts to force MLAs to resign. The police replied with excessive force, indiscriminate arrests and frequent recourse to lathi-charges and firing. By February, the central government was forced to ask the state government to resign, suspend the assembly and impose President’s Rule in the state. The last act of the Gujarat drama was played in March 1975 when, faced with continuing agitation and a fast unto death by Morarji Desai, Indira Gandhi dissolved the assembly and announced fresh elections to it in June.

On the heels of the Gujarat agitation and inspired by its success, a similar agitation was started by students in Bihar in March 1974. The students, starting with the gherao of the assembly on 18 March, repeatedly clashed with the overactive police, leading to the death of 27 people in one week. Moreover, as in Gujarat, opposition parties quickly joined forces with the student agitators.

The Bihar movement was, however, characterised by two new features. Jayaprakash Narayan, popularly known as JP, came out from political retirement, took over its leadership, and gave a call for ‘Total Revolution’ or ‘a struggle against the very system which has compelled almost everybody to go corrupt.’
¹
Demanding resignation of the Congress government in Bihar and dissolution of the assembly, he asked the students and the people to put pressure on the existing legislators to resign, paralyze the government, gherao the state assembly and government offices, set up parallel people’s governments all over the state, and pay no taxes. The second feature was the firm refusal of Indira Gandhi to concede the demand for the dissolution of the assembly, lest it spread to cover other parts of the country and the central government.

JP also decided to go beyond Bihar and organize a country-wide movement against widespread corruption and for the removal of Congress and Indira Gandhi, who was now seen as a threat to democracy and portrayed as the fountainhead of corruption.

JP now repeatedly toured the entire country and drew large crowds especially in Delhi and other parts of North India which were Jan Sangh or Socialist strongholds. The JP Movement attracted wide support especially from students, middle classes, traders and a section of the intelligentsia. It also got the backing of nearly all the non-left political parties who had been trounced in 1971 and who saw in JP a popular leader who would enable them to acquire credibility as an alternative to Congress. JP in turn realized that without the organizational structures of these parties he could not hope to face Indira Gandhi either in the streets or at the polls.

The fervor of the JP Movement, however, did not last long and it
began to decline by the end of 1974. Most of his student followers went back to their classes. Moreover, the movement had failed to attract the rural and urban poor even in Gujarat and Bihar. Denouncing the JP Movement for its extra-parliamentary approach, Indira Gandhi challenged JP to test their respective popularity in Bihar. as also the country as a whole in the coming general elections, due in February-March 1976. JP accepted the challenge and his supporting parties decided to form a National Coordination Committee for the purpose.

It appeared at this stage that the issue as to who actually represented the Indian people would be resolved through the democratic electoral process. However, this was not to be. A sudden twist to Indian politics was given by a judgement on 12 June 1975 by Justice Sinha of the Allahabad High Court, on an election petition by Raj Narain, convicting Mrs Gandhi for having indulged in corrupt campaign practices and declaring her election invalid. The conviction also meant that she could not seek election to parliament or hold office for six years and therefore continue as prime minister.

Most observers at the time noted that Justice Sinha had dismissed the more serious charges against her but had convicted her of technical and trivial, even frivolous, offences against the election law. Mrs Gandhi refused to resign and appealed to the Supreme Court. While the Supreme Court would hear her appeal on 14 July, Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, the vacation Judge of the Supreme Court, created further confusion when he decided on 24 June that, till the final disposal of her appeal by the full bench of the Supreme Court, Mrs Gandhi could stay in office and speak in parliament but could not vote in it.

In the meanwhile, Mrs Gandhi suffered another political blow when the Gujarat assembly election results came on 13 June. The opposition Janata front won 87 seats and the Congress 75 seats in a house of 182. Surprisingly, the Janata front succeeded in forming a government in alliance with the same Chimanbhai Patel against whose corruption and maladministration the popular movement had been initiated.

The Allahabad judgement and the Gujarat assembly results revived the opposition movement. JP and the coalition of opposition parties were, however, not willing to wait for the result of Indira Gandhi’s appeal to the Supreme Court or the general elections to the Lok Sabha due in eight months. They decided to seize the opportunity and, accusing Mrs Gandhi of ‘clinging to an office corruptly gained,’ demanded her resignation and called for a country-wide campaign to force the issue. In a rally in Delhi on 25 June they announced that a nation-wide one-week campaign of mass mobilization and civil disobedience to force Mrs Gandhi to resign would be initiated on 29 June. The campaign would end with the gherao of the prime minister’s house by hundreds of thousands of volunteers. In his speech at the rally, JP asked the people to make it impossible for the government to function and once again appealed to the armed forces, the police and the bureaucracy to refuse to obey any orders they regarded as ‘illegal’ and ‘unconstitutional’.

Mrs Gandhi’s lightening response was to declare a state of Internal Emergency on 26 June.

How did the Emergency come about, what was its legitimacy, what did it mean in practice, and why was it lifted in the end and with what consequences; these issues deserve critical attention.

The main justification of the JP Movement was that it arose to end corruption in Indian life and politics, whose fountainhead was ostensibly Mrs Gandhi, and to defend democracy which was threatened by her authoritarian personality and style of politics and administration. JP often accused Indira Gandhi of trying to destroy all democratic institutions and establish a Soviet-backed dictatorship in her hunger for power. Her continuation in office, he said, was ‘incompatible with the survival of democracy in India.’
²
Later, many other critics and opponents of Mrs Gandhi expressed similar views.

Indira Gandhi justified her action in imposing the Emergency in terms of national political interests and primarily on three grounds. First, India’s stability, security, integrity and democracy were in danger from the disruptive character of the JP Movement. Referring to JP’s speeches, she accused the opposition of inciting the armed forces to mutiny and the police to rebel. Second, there was the need to implement a programme of rapid economic development in the interests of the poor and the underprivileged. Third, she warned against intervention and subversion from abroad with the aim of weakening and destabilizing India.

In fact, neither JP nor Indira Gandhi chose the democratic way out of the crisis. JP should have demanded and Indira Gandhi should have offered to hold fresh elections to Lok Sabha, which were in any case due in early 1976, earlier, in October-November 1975 itself, and thus provided a practical alternative to both the demand for her resignation and the Emergency. Both JP’s and Mrs Gandhi’s positions need to be examined critically, in light of subsequent political developments.

The JP Movement was flawed in many respects, in terms of both its composition and its actions and the character and philosophy of its leader. Jayaprakash Narayan was justly renowned for his integrity, lack of ambition for office, fearlessness, selflessness and sacrifice and life-long commitment to civil liberties and the establishment of a just social order. But, ideologically, he was vague. From the early fifties he became a critic of parliamentary politics and parliamentary democracy. For years, he tried to popularise the concept of ‘partyless democracy’. During 1974-75 he also advocated ‘Total Revolution’ (
Sampooran Kranti
)
.
Both concepts were unclear and nebulous, and at no stage was he able to delineate or explain what a political system without political parties would involve or how would the popular will get expressed or implemented in it. Similarly,
the socio-economic and political content, programme or policies of the Total Revolution was never properly defined. At the same time, JP was a democrat and not an authoritarian leader. Nor was the movement he led in 1974-75 yet authoritarian or fascist, but—and this is important—it was capable of creating a space for its fascist component. JP’s talk of partyless democracy and Total Revolution and the critique of parliamentary democracy, hazy and indistinctive, could also be dangerous, for it encouraged cynicism, scorn and despair towards democratic institutions. This could create a political climate favourable to authoritarianism and fascism, as happened in Italy and Germany after 1919 and in Pakistan and Indonesia in the sixties.