CHAPTER V BLACK DAYS OF THE NATIONAL EMERGENCY (1975-77)

CHAPTER V

BLACK DAYS OF THE NATIONAL EMERGENCY (1975-77)

On 12th June 1975, the Allahabad High Court nullified the election of Indira Gandhi as an M. P. on the petition of Raj Narayan.  The implication of this verdict has no parallel in the contemporary Indian History. The opposition was demanding resignation from the P. M. but she misused the Constitution for her own benefit resulting in the declaration of the National Emergency on June 26th 1975, which is a memorable date now for all of us.

I am neither a politician nor an expert of law, yet I think, had Mrs. Gandhi proceeded as per the law of the land, gone to the Supreme Court, making someone else the P. M. for the period till the verdict had favoured her or in the worst case till her invalidity period for an electoral post of six years had elapsed, the reverence for Mrs. Gandhi would have been really like that of Devi Durga as she was called after the 1971 war, instead of clamping the Emergency and amending the Constitution suitably in her favour, putting in jails thousands of people under the MISA, banning the organizations like the RSS, putting all important opposition leaders in jails, which included Loknayak J. P.  All these went against her and finally she as well as her party was defeated miserably in the elections for the Parliament in 1977. 

However, one truth came up on the surface that you cannot befool all people for long. People became fearless in public life and began to criticize the government freely.

The assassination of Mrs. Gandhi by terrorists though made her revered but the scars of the Emergency on the minds of the public will ever remain. 

No doubt, later on, the failure of the Janata Govt. made her succeed in becoming the P. M. once again but she was not the same autocratic, dictator Indira, who dared to censor all the civil liberties guaranteed to the people by the founding fathers of the Indian Constitution. Thus, she herself had condemned her imposition of the Emergency. 

 There are classics available on those aspects. I have only to share my own experiences.

The day the Emergency was clamped, I listened to it on the radio in the Old Hostel of the DMC.  The Students’ agitation of 1974 had already made the students and the public politically conscious.  We were having more faith in the BBC than in the AIR.  So we listened to the details from the BBC.

The BBC was popular till the Janata rule came.  It had asked the listeners to comment on its news.  I had sent a postcard writing, “When all the four pillars of democracy were demolished during the Emergency, I saw people waiting till 8 p.m. in the remote villages of the country, sitting around fire in the chilly winter.”  I do not know whether this letter was broadcast actually or not, but the BBC sent, for many years, its calendar annually and programme-sheet half-yearly to my old address of the DMC.

Next day, I went to my room in the Sangh Karyalaya and asked the front door neighbour (wife of an ophthalmologist, Dr. A. K. Roy) to keep my luggage safely in her custody. Auntie accepted it a bit reluctantly.  The police had already inspected the office and so I thought it was better to leave the place.  Thinking myself as a senior student (others were from schools/general colleges) the police might have a point to harass or even arrest me.

One of my cousins was to be married at Riga (Sitamarhi).  I went there to pass time and later when I returned to Darbhanga, I was informed that the RSS had been banned and our rooms had been sealed.

            I stayed for some days with my friends in the Old Hostel.  Later I could get a seat in the West Hostel.  Darbhanga was flooded with rainwater in those days. I shifted to the West Hostel on 3.8.1975. The other students of my allotted room probably knew that I had worked for the JP agitation and they were unwilling to accept me and so they suggested to me to go to room no.19 where other senior student activists like Prabhash Singh and another Sangh worker Prem Shankar Sharma were residing. My friends of room no. 20 were thinking probably to the tune of the time.  Their planning to put us all in one cage was not bad.  But lions do not remain in a herd.

   At last the hostel superintendent, Prof. S. S. Shrivastava had to come and sit in front of the room no. 20, till I could arrange some bed-sheets, etc. from my friends of the Old Hostel to occupy my seat. When the Janata Party Government came to power and my room at the RSS office was unlocked my beds, etc. lying there in the room were badly spoiled by then.

The same roommates later became very cordial to me.  Others, viz. Amrendra, Ramlal Mehta and Md. Halim were two years senior to me.  One could wonder at my cordial relations with a Muslim because people did not know how a RSS worker behaved with a non-Hindu.  It could only be experienced.  I had only one quarrel with him and that was not for any religious or political issue. He had cut the small grape shrub, in front of our room, which I had been protecting, from cattle by fences. Though he was senior to me, I chided him. 

He was of course, very helpful to me and I remember that he had great regards for my mother whenever she happened to visit me. He also used to take prasad of Saraswati Puja, which  I used to celebrate on a mini-scale in the room.  I was not  a professional pandit, yet students were respecting me as such as  I used to offer puja in dhoti everyday morning with Arhul’s (Hibiscus rosa-sinesis) red flowers to my family deity Kali.  I was attracted to that tree in front of the room so much that I did not change the room even when I was allotted a single-seated room in the East Hostel. 

I recall, only twice I had been a pandit – before the age of 10, once in the house of a blacksmith at Forbesganj (I cannot imagine what I would have recited) and the next, partly in my marriage.

Later, I had also gone to the home of Halim Saheb at Giridih. This was the room no. 20 of the West Hostel, which became the contact point of the medicos from all over the country after the formation of the NMO in 1977.

Since my examination was approaching, I devoted myself  to the studies and apart from attending a few meetings(distributed some books of Dr.Subramaniyam Swami).  ; I did not participate in any underground activity.  It may be so, because  I was not so well known to the Darbhanga workers, as I was to theRanchi workers where I had participated in the Students’ agitation. After my admission to the medical college at Darbhanga, I had gone to Ranchi where I had worked for the Nav Nirman Samiti.

The trains, which had become punctual, were again running late after some months of the clamping of the Emergency. Bribery continued to be rampant, of course, under the table and even outside the office. I had to give Rs. 80 for the continuation of my Loan Scholarship but it was futile.  But even then you could not argue, if your work had not been done.

I knew that giving bribe was as great a crime as taking it.  But I had seen in the courts, peshkars taking peshagi below the nose-tip of the judge and there under the Gandhiji’s portrait it was written boldly, “Receiving or offering bribe are both punishable crimes.” I had also heard that Shriprakash as the Governor had received this notification from the President.  He wrote back to the President that he could not comply with it.  On further queries he replied that one could comply with the former part of the statement but how could one live if he complied with the latter?

The above statement might have been hypothetical but was a simple student for whom going and coming to Patna was very expensive.  The centralization of power and authority in geographically bigger states are important denominators of corruption.  In Bihar, one has to make compromises with it and it was the same when I joined the Bihar State Health Services much later.

Even during the Emergency the P. M. Secretariat was not effective. Once, I had sent a registered letter complaining against the college authorities that they were charging for electricity at a high rate of Rs. 22 per student per month. As such for our room having four bulbs of 60 Watts, three fans for summer, a heater for making tea — which was occasionally used — we had to pay Rs. 88 per month. It may be added here that I neither used to take tea nor did I have a fan — till my mother-in-law insisted for it and brought one for me at Ranchi.

  So, the exploitation of students or of the public had no mitigation with the imposition of the Emergency; I would have been the happiest person to appreciate it, had it done well to the people.

And as the Emergency was relaxed, we were the first to take out a procession in the town, long before the candidature for elections were announced. Prabhash and  I  were interrogated severely near Darbhanga railway station for wall writing at midnight, and that too, when the electoral process had begun.

It took time to acclimatise the officials as you  need  a changing room before coming out from the AC and it was not the AC— for Mrs. Gandhi, it was like a political self-immolation, in the fire which she herself ignited and one could not expect other than the ashes which were but the results of the election.

It took time to acclimatise the officials as you  need  a changing room before coming out from the AC and it was not the AC— for Mrs. Gandhi, it was like a political self-immolation, in the fire which she herself ignited and one could not expect other than the ashes which were but the results of the election.

Fig. 6  — Loknayak Jay Prakash  (11.10.1902 - 8.10.1979).

Fig. 7 — Assam’s Students’ agitation                                        

 — People defying the curfew imposed to suppress the agitation as a reflection of the courage developed by success in removing the National Emergency of 1975-77. On 18th April 1979, more than 5 lakh of people defied curfew and marched towards Narengi, about 10 km from Guwahati.