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Towards Emergency: Why Indira took to dictatorship
The condolence meeting (for LN Mishra) was converted into one of fervent support for Mrs Indira Gandhi. Its most vigorous speaker, HN Bahuguna, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, said fifty-eight crores of people stood solidly behind the Prime Minister. Mrs Gandhis own wrought-up accusation had the reverse of the effect desired. On January 8 the Hindustan Times editorial pointed out:
. . . those who have rushed to implicate Mr Jayaprakash Narayan by proxy with the Samastipur outrage might recall earlier bomb explosions last May at the Bankipore (Patna) dak bungalow and the subsequent firing on JPs procession in Patna on June 5th from a Government flat allotted to a Congress MLA, Mr Phulena Rai, and occupied by workers of the Indira Brigade . . . the use of bombs and firearms in Bihar is older than JPs movement. . . .
There was open talk that a Government agency was responsible for Mishras death. Controversy over the Minister had reached a peak in the licence case before Parliament, involving Government in its most embarrassing collision with the Opposition. His death had come at a convenient time. Jyotirmoy Basus (CPI-M) statement in Parliament that Mishras office and home had been searched immediately after his death to remove documents connected with Sanjay Gandhis Maruti company was not answered by the Home Minister.
The extreme slowness of the CBI investigation created further suspicion of Government involvement, while the prompt dismantling of the dais at Samastipur had destroyed primary evidence. A politician who dominated and manipulated cliques, had men and money to do his bidding and aroused disproportionate loyalties and antagonisms, Mishra had reportedly refused to resign and had a devoted following in the party to back him up.
The event served to blur Opposition differences and feed a mounting fear. The CPI-M issued a statement on January 13 from Calcutta: The semi-fascist and gangster tactics of the ruling party have been continuing for the last three years, and free functioning of all opposition forces, especially the CPI-M and other Left and democratic opposition, had become an impossibility. . .
Marxist leader Jyoti Basu announced the CPI-M would, as a result, invite the Old Congress and the Jana Sangh to a conference to plan a broad-based movement in Bengal for civil liberties and free and fair elections. Each party would conduct its separate campaign but the three would be synchronised. There would be no truck, he added, with the CPI.
The CPI, also an Opposition party, was not recognised as such any more. Its interests were too closely identified with the Congress. In a recent article, Mohit Sen had explained his partys objective as unity and struggle vis-a-vis the Congress. The unity was manifest, the struggle was not. If the CPI had disapproved of the breaking of the railways strike the previous year, its disapproval had been in a low key.
During the Soviet President Brezhnevs visit to India in 1973, the party had been told to back Mrs Gandhi regardless of her policies. The Soviet investment in India was political and geographical, not ideological. The Indian record showed that the CPI harvest out of this alliance, abundant in its share and spoils of power, had not added favourably to its reputation. An eight per cent bonus to workers, made law in September 1974 (and applicable to 1973), was withdrawn by the Government in 1975. The wheat takeover, fully backed by the CPI, had been discredited by its failure. The projected takeover of the rice crop had been abandoned.
The nationalisation of coal mines in 1973, authored by Mohan Kumaramangalam, became linked in the public mind with the Chasnala mine disaster in Bihar in December 1975, one of the worst in mining history. It was judged to be due to reckless slaughter mining endangering mine safety in order to increase production after nationalisation. The partys direct influence on the Congress had dwindled after its chief spokesman in Government, Kumaramangalam, was killed in an air crash in 1973.
The CongressCPI combine had less logic to commend it than the Opposition of varying political complexions now drawing closer together. Developments in Bangladesh, with Mujibur Rahman taking dictatorial powers, added anxiety and incentive to this process. That the war to release a much heralded Sonar Bangla (Golden Bengal) from bondageone that so exhaustively engaged Indias soldiery, resources and idealism during 1971should have come to this was a reminder of what might happen next in India. The possibility of a dictatorship, with a sudden seizure of extra powers by Mrs Gandhi, was widely discussed.
(Nayantara Sahgal has written nine novels and eight works of non-fiction. She is the recipient of the Sinclair Prize for Fiction, the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Amember of the Sahitya Akademis Advisory Board for English till she resigned during the Emergency, Sahgal served on the jury of the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1990 and 1991. She has held fellowships in the United States at the Bunting Institute, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the National Humanities Center. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was awarded an honorary doctorate in literature by the University of Leeds in 1997. She is associated with the founding of the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties and served as its vice-president during the 1980s.)
The condolence meeting (for LN Mishra) was converted into one of fervent support for Mrs Indira Gandhi. Its most vigorous speaker, HN Bahuguna, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, said fifty-eight crores of people stood solidly behind the Prime Minister. Mrs Gandhis own wrought-up accusation had the reverse of the effect desired. On January 8 the Hindustan Times editorial pointed out:
. . . those who have rushed to implicate Mr Jayaprakash Narayan by proxy with the Samastipur outrage might recall earlier bomb explosions last May at the Bankipore (Patna) dak bungalow and the subsequent firing on JPs procession in Patna on June 5th from a Government flat allotted to a Congress MLA, Mr Phulena Rai, and occupied by workers of the Indira Brigade . . . the use of bombs and firearms in Bihar is older than JPs movement. . . .
There was open talk that a Government agency was responsible for Mishras death. Controversy over the Minister had reached a peak in the licence case before Parliament, involving Government in its most embarrassing collision with the Opposition. His death had come at a convenient time. Jyotirmoy Basus (CPI-M) statement in Parliament that Mishras office and home had been searched immediately after his death to remove documents connected with Sanjay Gandhis Maruti company was not answered by the Home Minister.
The extreme slowness of the CBI investigation created further suspicion of Government involvement, while the prompt dismantling of the dais at Samastipur had destroyed primary evidence. A politician who dominated and manipulated cliques, had men and money to do his bidding and aroused disproportionate loyalties and antagonisms, Mishra had reportedly refused to resign and had a devoted following in the party to back him up.
The event served to blur Opposition differences and feed a mounting fear. The CPI-M issued a statement on January 13 from Calcutta: The semi-fascist and gangster tactics of the ruling party have been continuing for the last three years, and free functioning of all opposition forces, especially the CPI-M and other Left and democratic opposition, had become an impossibility. . .
Marxist leader Jyoti Basu announced the CPI-M would, as a result, invite the Old Congress and the Jana Sangh to a conference to plan a broad-based movement in Bengal for civil liberties and free and fair elections. Each party would conduct its separate campaign but the three would be synchronised. There would be no truck, he added, with the CPI.
The CPI, also an Opposition party, was not recognised as such any more. Its interests were too closely identified with the Congress. In a recent article, Mohit Sen had explained his partys objective as unity and struggle vis-a-vis the Congress. The unity was manifest, the struggle was not. If the CPI had disapproved of the breaking of the railways strike the previous year, its disapproval had been in a low key.
During the Soviet President Brezhnevs visit to India in 1973, the party had been told to back Mrs Gandhi regardless of her policies. The Soviet investment in India was political and geographical, not ideological. The Indian record showed that the CPI harvest out of this alliance, abundant in its share and spoils of power, had not added favourably to its reputation. An eight per cent bonus to workers, made law in September 1974 (and applicable to 1973), was withdrawn by the Government in 1975. The wheat takeover, fully backed by the CPI, had been discredited by its failure. The projected takeover of the rice crop had been abandoned.
The nationalisation of coal mines in 1973, authored by Mohan Kumaramangalam, became linked in the public mind with the Chasnala mine disaster in Bihar in December 1975, one of the worst in mining history. It was judged to be due to reckless slaughter mining endangering mine safety in order to increase production after nationalisation. The partys direct influence on the Congress had dwindled after its chief spokesman in Government, Kumaramangalam, was killed in an air crash in 1973.
The CongressCPI combine had less logic to commend it than the Opposition of varying political complexions now drawing closer together. Developments in Bangladesh, with Mujibur Rahman taking dictatorial powers, added anxiety and incentive to this process. That the war to release a much heralded Sonar Bangla (Golden Bengal) from bondageone that so exhaustively engaged Indias soldiery, resources and idealism during 1971should have come to this was a reminder of what might happen next in India. The possibility of a dictatorship, with a sudden seizure of extra powers by Mrs Gandhi, was widely discussed.
(Nayantara Sahgal has written nine novels and eight works of non-fiction. She is the recipient of the Sinclair Prize for Fiction, the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Amember of the Sahitya Akademis Advisory Board for English till she resigned during the Emergency, Sahgal served on the jury of the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1990 and 1991. She has held fellowships in the United States at the Bunting Institute, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the National Humanities Center. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was awarded an honorary doctorate in literature by the University of Leeds in 1997. She is associated with the founding of the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties and served as its vice-president during the 1980s.)
