India After Independence: 1947-2000 (42 page)

The nebulousness of JP’s politics and ideology is also illustrated by the fact that he took the support of political parties and groups which had nothing in common in terms of programme and policies and were ideologically incompatible. The JP Movement came to include the communal Jan Sangh and Jamaat-e-Islami, the neo-fascist RSS, the conservative and secular Cong (O), Socialists and the extreme left Naxalite groups. Almost entirely negative in its approach, the movement could not fashion an alternative programme or policies except that of overthrowing Indira Gandhi.

In its later phases, the movement depended for organization on the RSS-Jan Sangh, which alone among its constituents had a strong well-knit organization, trained cadre and branches all over the country, especially in northern and central India. Even in Bihar, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), a front organization of RSS, had come to form the backbone of JP’s main political vehicle, the Chhatra Yuva Sangharsha Vahini. Consequently, though JP remained the movement’s chief mobilizer, it came to be increasingly dominated by RSS-Jan Sangh. This resulted in the political character of the movement also undergoing a major change; not change of policies or of the state governments but the removal of Indira Gandhi became the movement’s main goal. Furthermore, it had a potentially undemocratic character in terms both of its demands and the methods adopted or planned. It’s objective was not the blocking of or bringing about changes in particular government policies but undermining first the government of Bihar and then at the Centre. The democratically elected legislatures and governments were to be dissolved and replaced not through elections but through extra-constitutional mass agitations mainly confined to urban areas. This amounted to a covert demand for a basic change of the political system.

The agitational methods adopted and propagated by the JP Movement were also extra-constitutional and undemocratic. Going far beyond peaceful processions, demonstrations and public rallies, in Bihar, as earlier in Gujarat, the tactic was to force the government to resign and the legislatures to be dissolved by gheraoing government offices, the assembly, and the Governor and thus paralyze the government and to intimidate and coerce individual elected legislators to resign from the assemblies. This tactic was to be repeated in June-July 1975 at the Centre.

More serious was JP’s incitement to the army, police and civil services to rebel. Several times during the course of the movement, he urged them not to obey orders that were ‘unjust and beyond the call of the duty’ or ‘illegal and unjust’ or ‘unconstitutional, illegal or against their conscience.’ The decision regarding unconstitutionality, and so on, of the orders was to be made by the individuals concerned themselves. But these various exhortations could possibly be considered more an expression of JP’s hazy thinking than an actual call for rebellion.

As we have seen earlier, the climax of the JP Movement came on 25 June 1975 when a public call was given for a nation-wide mass civil disobedience movement which would culminate in a gherao of the prime minister’s residence, thus forcing her to resign or to enact another Jallianwala Bagh massacre—a massacre she would never be able to live down. The entire opposition game plan was made explicit by Morarji Desai in an interview later in the evening: ‘We intend to overthrow her, to force her to resign. For good . . . Thousands of us will surround her house to prevent her from going out or receive visitors. We’ll camp there night and day shouting to her to resign.’
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In other words, the opposition plan had all the hallmarks of a coup d’état.

The situation that was being created by the JP Movement was that of insurrection without revolution. The tactics it evolved over time amounted to a revolution. But this was to be a revolution without a revolutionary party, organization, ideology or programme to give it direction and leadership. In fact, it was to be a revolution to be made with reliance on a mix of the ideologyless cadre of the Chhatra Vahini, the conservative cadre of Cong (O), BKD and Swatantra party and the communal neo-fascist cadre of RSS-Jan Sangh.

The adoption by a popular movement of the rhetoric of revolution and of extra-legal and extra-constitutional and often violent agitational methods is not compatible with the functioning of a democratic political system. But, what is more important, when such rhetoric and methods are not part of a revolutionary design to change the socio-economic order in a fundamental manner, when masses enter into a chaotic and disorganized movement without the leadership of a properly constituted and led revolutionary party, when faith in a political system is destroyed without creating faith in an alternative system, the resultant possibility is that of the establishment of an authoritarian, often fascist, regime or of political chaos, anarchy and disintegration of the political entity. Historically, such a mix has been the hallmark not of a revolution but of a counter-revolution, as the history of the rise of fascism in Europe and dictatorial regimes in Latin America indicates.

Let me add a caveat here. The danger of authoritarianism did not come from Jayaprakash Narayan who was not planning or giving direction to an authoritarian coup d’état. But there were, as pointed out above, others around him who were so inclined and who were increasingly coming to control the movement and who could capitalize on his ideological woolliness and basically weak personality.

In any case, the proper democratic options open to the Opposition were: (i) to wait for the Supreme Court judgement and, if it went against Mrs Gandhi, to demand its implementation; (ii) to wait for the general elections to Lok Sabha due in early 1976 and in the meanwhile use peaceful agitation and propaganda to erode Mrs Gandhi’s standing among the people; (iii) to demand that, because the Allahabad judgement had eroded Mrs Gandhi’s mandate to rule, fresh elections should be held immediately—say in October-November 1975.

In fact, those in the opposition who wanted to defeat Mrs Gandhi at the hustlings had won out in October-November 1974 when JP had accepted Mrs Gandhi’s challenge to let the next general elections decide the fate of his movement’s demands. But one year or even six months is a long time in politics. A popular movement could both gain or lose momentum in that period. There was also no guarantee of success in the coming elections, especially as Congress’s base in South India and among the rural poor, women and the minorities seemed to be intact. Even in Gujarat elections in early June, Congress had failed to get a majority but so had the opposition Janata combine despite JP and Morarji Desai leading its election campaign. The Allahabad judgement marked a turning-point in this respect. Sensing the real possibility of the immediate ouster of Mrs Gandhi, JP, Morarji and others went over to the coup d’état school.

The imposition of the Emergency by Mrs Gandhi was also flawed. She was to claim later that faced with an extra-constitutional challenge she had no other option. Resignation, she said, would have strengthened the forces that were threatening the democratic process and bringing the country to the edge of anarchy and chaos. There was, moreover, no legal, political or moral reason why she should step down during the hearing of her appeal.

But, as already indicated earlier, in reality she too had another democratic option. She could have declared that Lok Sabha would be dissolved and fresh elections to it would be held in October-November. If JP and the Opposition had accepted her offer, the door to a democratic resolution of the political impasse through an appeal to the electorate would have been opened. If they did not, and stuck to their demand for her resignation and their declared methods to bring it about, she could legitimately declare an Internal Emergency as the only viable and available option for meeting their extra-constitutional challenge. Simultaneously, she could announce that the Emergency would be lifted as soon as the Opposition gave up its demand for her resignation, agreed to adhere to the Supreme Court or parliament’s judgement, and accepted the test of elections. Interestingly, it may be pointed out, this is exactly what General de Gaulle did when faced with the much more pervasive and radical upsurge of students and workers in May 1968. And, of course, the
protesting students and workers and most of their leaders accepted the challenge to face de Gaulle in elections. In any case, there was no justification for the longevity (about nineteen months) of the Emergency, once the perceived threat to law and order was over, or for the draconian character of the Emergency measures.

The political tragedy was that both the JP Movement and Indira Gandhi shunned the option of elections, which are in a democracy the vehicles for the legitimation of a political regime and for expression of popular will. This was, of course, so in part because of the manner in which the political conflict during 1974-75 had developed, with the tragic consequence that a political atmosphere had been created in which dialogue and accommodation between the two opposing forces was not possible.

Mrs Gandhi proclaimed a state of Internal Emergency under Article 352 of the Constitution on the morning of 26 June, suspending the normal political processes, but promising to return to normalcy as soon as conditions warranted it. The proclamation suspended the federal provisions of the Constitution and fundamental rights and civil liberties. The government imposed strict censorship on the Press and stifled all protest and opposition to the government. In the early hours of 26 June, hundreds of the main leaders of the Opposition were arrested under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA). Among those arrested were Jayaprakash Narayan, Morarji Desai, and Atal Behari Vajpayee and Congress dissidents such as Chandra Shekhar. Several academics, newspapermen, trade unionists and student leaders were also put behind bars. Many of the arrested were gradually released: JP in 1975 on grounds of health and others, including Charan Singh and Vajpayee, during 1976. Several extreme communal and ultra-left organizations, including RSS, Anand Marg, Jamaat-i-Islami and Maoist CP(ML), were banned. Arrests continued throughout the period of the Emergency though most of the arrested were released after a few days or months. In all, more than 100,000 were arrested during a period of nineteen months. Among those arrested were also a large number of anti-social elements such as smugglers, hoarders, blackmarketeers and known goondas.

During the Emergency the parliament was made utterly ineffective. The opposition of a few brave MPs, who had not been arrested, was nullified as their speeches were not permitted to be reported in the Press. The state governments were rigidly controlled. The two non-Congress governments of DMK in Tamil Nadu and Janata in Gujarat were dismissed in January and March 1976 despite being quite compliant. The Congress chief ministers of U.P. and Orissa, were replaced for not being reliable enough. The Congress party was also strictly controlled. Internal democracy within the party was more or less completely snuffed. From the second half of 1976 the Youth Congress led by Sanjay Gandhi became more important than the parent organization.

A series of decrees, laws and constitutional amendments reduced the powers of the judiciary to check the functioning of the executive. The Defence of India Act and the MISA were amended in July 1975 to the detriment of the citizens’ liberties. In November 1976, an effort was made to change the basic civil libertarian structure of the Constitution through its 42nd Amendment. Putting an end to the judicial review of a constitutional amendment, because it was said that the judiciary was obstructing pro-poor socio-economic measures such as land reform legislation in the name of defending fundamental rights, it was laid down that there would be no limitation whatever on the power of parliament to amend the Constitution. Fundamental rights were indirectly emasculated by being made subordinate to an expanded version of the Directive Principles of State Policy embedded in the Constitution.

Thus, the Emergency concentrated unlimited state and party power in the hands of the prime minister to be exercised through a small coterie of politicians and bureaucrats around her.

While a section of the intelligentsia reacted to the Emergency with marked hostility, the large majority of the people initially responded to it with passivity, acquiescence, acceptance or even support. It was only from the beginning of 1976 that the Emergency started becoming unpopular. Why was this delayed reaction? For one, the people had no experience in recent memory, that is since independence, of an authoritarian rule. There was bewilderment as also personal fear of the unknown. Moreover, apart from the arrest of opposition leaders, the repressive measures were almost entirely directed either against anti-social elements or against the extreme communal right or the miniscule far left, who had enjoyed little popular support before the Emergency and who were in any case known to be averse to democracy. The number of persons arrested in the first few days in the entire country was less than 10,000. But many of the detenus were released within a short span of time. Above all, a large number of people were impressed by the positive outcome of some of the well-publicized Emergency measures most of which could, of course, have been taken without an Emergency.

With the restoration of public order and discipline, many felt relieved that the country had been saved from disorder and chaos. There was less crime in the cities; gheraos and uncontrolled, often violent, demonstrations came to an end; there was a perceptible lessening of tension in the air; there was calm and tranquility on the campuses as students and teachers went back to class rooms. Inder Malhotra, a perceptive journalist, was to write later: ‘The return of normal and orderly life, after relentless disruption by strikes, protest marches, sit-ins and clashes with the police, was applauded by most people . . . In its initial months at least, the Emergency restored to India a kind of calm it had not known for years.’
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There was also an immediate and general improvement in administration, with government servants coming to office on time and being more considerate to the public. Quick, dramatic and well-publicized action was taken against smugglers, hoarders, blackmarketeers, illegal traders in foreign currency and tax evaders, with several thousand of them put behind bars under the MISA. There was a major, dramatic improvement in the economy, though only some of it was really due to steps taken under the Emergency; some of it being the result of excellent rains and some of the policies initiated much before the Emergency. Most welcome was the dramatic improvement in the price situation. Prices of essential goods, including foodstuffs, came down and their availability in shops improved.