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Democracy, Interrupted: The Emergency 1975-77
The imposition of the Emergency was a turning point in independent India’s history. Democracy was directly challenged as fundamental liberties of citizens were suspended, press was gagged and political opponents hounded by the state machinery.
In this compelling volume, five experts bring together diverse perspectives-legal, political, historical, personal, social-to shed light on the cause and aftermath of this catastrophic decision. Prashant Bhushan vividly recreates the watershed case of Indira Gandhi vs Raj Narain that led to the Emergency; Gyan Prakash offers a comprehensive historical account of the growing popular unrest that disturbed Indira’s regime; Coomi Kapoor details how she personally experienced the full fury of the establishment as her husband was arrested over a trifle; and Ajoy Bose and John Dayal, both staff reporters at the time, provide first-hand evidence of the destruction unleashed in the bylanes of Delhi.
In his illuminating introduction, Sanjaya Baru describes how the Emergency exposed the weak links in the constitutional armour-it now serves as a constant reminder to each generation to keep a constant vigil over its freedoms.
In this compelling volume, five experts bring together diverse perspectives-legal, political, historical, personal, social-to shed light on the cause and aftermath of this catastrophic decision. Prashant Bhushan vividly recreates the watershed case of Indira Gandhi vs Raj Narain that led to the Emergency; Gyan Prakash offers a comprehensive historical account of the growing popular unrest that disturbed Indira’s regime; Coomi Kapoor details how she personally experienced the full fury of the establishment as her husband was arrested over a trifle; and Ajoy Bose and John Dayal, both staff reporters at the time, provide first-hand evidence of the destruction unleashed in the bylanes of Delhi.
In his illuminating introduction, Sanjaya Baru describes how the Emergency exposed the weak links in the constitutional armour-it now serves as a constant reminder to each generation to keep a constant vigil over its freedoms.
312 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 2019
64 people want to read
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Note: WorldCat is an excellent resource for finding author information and contents of anthologies.
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March 13, 2022
I am a post emergency born Indian. So my knowledge about that dark chapter of India’s post-independence history is limited to what I have read in newspapers/magazines and what I learned from my father. In fact, it was my father who had first introduced me to the term ’Emergency’. It was from him that I learned about how the prominent newspapers protested against the declaration of Emergency by printing the Editorial page either blank or black and that the Bombay edition of Times of India had carried an obituary notice about “the death of Democracy”. I used to listen spell bound when my father waxed eloquent about the Emergency tales – about Sanjay Gandhi and his now infamous birth control, slum rehabilitation and beautification programmes, how initially the Emergency propagandists had boasted that trains ran on time, prices were coming under control and that clerks came punctually to their offices (these did not however last: fear and intimidation could not substitute for ingrained work habits), about Indira Gandhi’s attempts to dress the Emergency as an instrument of social democracy and to save the country from a major conspiracy hatched by the opposition; about the Rajan case; about the underground resistance put up by George Fernandes and how his brother was tortured to get information about him; about the brutal methods employed by the Police while clamping down on students and teachers…
This is my first book on the Emergency. The book puts together the tales told by five individuals, all of whom were based in New Delhi at that time. It has a mine load of information on the period and could be counted on as one of the most reliable accounts.
Between 25 June 1975 and 21 March 1977, the Government of the Republic of India functioned within the bounds of the Constitution and the laws of the land and yet outside the framework of a parliamentary democracy. Invoking powers granted by Section 352(1) of the Constitution, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi instructed President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed to proclaim a ‘State of internal emergency’ that allowed the Government to suspend various liberties granted to the citizen as Fundamental Rights of Citizenship. The judiciary was sought to be suborned. Most leaders of opposition political parties, many of whom were also members of Parliament, were incarcerated in jails across the country. More than conferring absolute power on Indira Gandhi, the suspended laws let loose shadow powers and shadow laws with nothing being more shadowy than Sanjay Gandhi and his coterie. Hundreds of thousands of Indian citizens living in the far corners of the country, felt the disastrous and often irreversible impact of this coercive force. The Government introduced a series of presidential ordinances that extracted further life out of the rule of law – judicial review of the Emergency proclamations and ordinances suspending fundamental rights was barred (38th amendment); challenges to the elections of the PM and speaker were eliminated by bringing them beyond the purview of judiciary (39th amendment) and so on and so forth. Judges who ruled against the Government were transferred left and right with the PM herself taking a personal interest in the matter.
Anyone who was courageous enough to stand up against the dictates of the Government were quickly shown their place; for instance, I K Gujral, then then I& B Minister, who was seen as insufficiently enthusiastic of the new dispensation was promptly booted out; Justice Khanna, whose was the lone dissenting voice in the ‘Habeas Corpus’ Supreme Court verdict, was superseded and Justice Beg who ruled in favour of the Government was named the next Chief Justice of India; foreign correspondents who refused to pledge compliance with the censorship guidelines were expelled from the Country; Kishore Kumar’s songs stopped playing on AIR because he declined the Government’s proposal to compose and wing songs lauding the twenty point programme of Indira Gandhi. Then there were those who, listening to their conscience, quietly gave up powerful positions - like Fali Nariman who resigned from the post of Additional Solicitor General and the legal luminary, Nani Palkhiwala who returned the brief as the PM’s defense counsel in her election petition in the Supreme Court.
The book gives you several glimpses into the lows to which the Indian polity stooped during that time: how several attempts were made (spearheaded by the PM herself) to threaten and/or influence Justice Sinha and Adv Prashant Bhushan to ensure that the verdict in the “Indira Gandhi vs Raj Narain” case came out in favour of Indira Gandhi; that a pyjama clad President , Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed had signed the proclamation of Emergency sent by the PM in the middle of the night on June 25 1975 and had then swallowed a tranquilizer and went to bed; that the Cabinet had met at 6.00 am the following morning to approve the PM’s decision; that the Government had cut off electricity to all but two newspapers in New Delhi on the night of June 25 to prevent them from reporting the predawn swoop; how sycophancy reached new heights inside the congress with congress stalwarts vying against each other in expressing their allegiance to Mrs. Gandhi (clue: the infamous slogan, “India is Indira and Indira is India” was coined during this period)
The impact of the Emergency was uneven across the country. Its most abhorrent face was visible in North India. The South had escaped, by and large, the worst excesses of the Emergency. The only exception to this was Kerala’s then Home Minister, K Karunakaran, who administered it with an iron hand. Consequently, one of the most prominent victims of Emergency was P Rajan, a student of the Regional Engineering College, Kozhikkode in Kerala, who was arrested on charges of being a Naxalite. Rajan died in prison succumbing to police torture. His father, Prof Eachara Varier went from pillar to post in search of a son who had simply disappeared. It was only after the emergency was lifted that his family and the country came to learn the young man’s sad fate. Rajan’s body was never found. Shaji N Karun’s movie ‘Piravi’ heart wrenchingly captures the plight of that father, played to perfection by the late thespian, Premji. In his moving book, “Memories of a father”, Professor Varier wrote:
"My son is standing outside drenched in the rain.
I still have no answer to the question whether or not I feel vengeance. But I leave one question to the world; why are you making my innocent child stand in the rain even after his death.
I don’t close the door. Let the rain lash inside and drench me. Let my invisible son at least know that his father never shut the door."
The book reminds us that the Emergency is only one among the many grim realities of how the selfish actions of a few powerful people in pursuit of power could have terrible repercussions on the psyche of an entire Nation. Unfortunately, this keeps happening again and again…in one form or the other.
This is my first book on the Emergency. The book puts together the tales told by five individuals, all of whom were based in New Delhi at that time. It has a mine load of information on the period and could be counted on as one of the most reliable accounts.
Between 25 June 1975 and 21 March 1977, the Government of the Republic of India functioned within the bounds of the Constitution and the laws of the land and yet outside the framework of a parliamentary democracy. Invoking powers granted by Section 352(1) of the Constitution, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi instructed President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed to proclaim a ‘State of internal emergency’ that allowed the Government to suspend various liberties granted to the citizen as Fundamental Rights of Citizenship. The judiciary was sought to be suborned. Most leaders of opposition political parties, many of whom were also members of Parliament, were incarcerated in jails across the country. More than conferring absolute power on Indira Gandhi, the suspended laws let loose shadow powers and shadow laws with nothing being more shadowy than Sanjay Gandhi and his coterie. Hundreds of thousands of Indian citizens living in the far corners of the country, felt the disastrous and often irreversible impact of this coercive force. The Government introduced a series of presidential ordinances that extracted further life out of the rule of law – judicial review of the Emergency proclamations and ordinances suspending fundamental rights was barred (38th amendment); challenges to the elections of the PM and speaker were eliminated by bringing them beyond the purview of judiciary (39th amendment) and so on and so forth. Judges who ruled against the Government were transferred left and right with the PM herself taking a personal interest in the matter.
Anyone who was courageous enough to stand up against the dictates of the Government were quickly shown their place; for instance, I K Gujral, then then I& B Minister, who was seen as insufficiently enthusiastic of the new dispensation was promptly booted out; Justice Khanna, whose was the lone dissenting voice in the ‘Habeas Corpus’ Supreme Court verdict, was superseded and Justice Beg who ruled in favour of the Government was named the next Chief Justice of India; foreign correspondents who refused to pledge compliance with the censorship guidelines were expelled from the Country; Kishore Kumar’s songs stopped playing on AIR because he declined the Government’s proposal to compose and wing songs lauding the twenty point programme of Indira Gandhi. Then there were those who, listening to their conscience, quietly gave up powerful positions - like Fali Nariman who resigned from the post of Additional Solicitor General and the legal luminary, Nani Palkhiwala who returned the brief as the PM’s defense counsel in her election petition in the Supreme Court.
The book gives you several glimpses into the lows to which the Indian polity stooped during that time: how several attempts were made (spearheaded by the PM herself) to threaten and/or influence Justice Sinha and Adv Prashant Bhushan to ensure that the verdict in the “Indira Gandhi vs Raj Narain” case came out in favour of Indira Gandhi; that a pyjama clad President , Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed had signed the proclamation of Emergency sent by the PM in the middle of the night on June 25 1975 and had then swallowed a tranquilizer and went to bed; that the Cabinet had met at 6.00 am the following morning to approve the PM’s decision; that the Government had cut off electricity to all but two newspapers in New Delhi on the night of June 25 to prevent them from reporting the predawn swoop; how sycophancy reached new heights inside the congress with congress stalwarts vying against each other in expressing their allegiance to Mrs. Gandhi (clue: the infamous slogan, “India is Indira and Indira is India” was coined during this period)
The impact of the Emergency was uneven across the country. Its most abhorrent face was visible in North India. The South had escaped, by and large, the worst excesses of the Emergency. The only exception to this was Kerala’s then Home Minister, K Karunakaran, who administered it with an iron hand. Consequently, one of the most prominent victims of Emergency was P Rajan, a student of the Regional Engineering College, Kozhikkode in Kerala, who was arrested on charges of being a Naxalite. Rajan died in prison succumbing to police torture. His father, Prof Eachara Varier went from pillar to post in search of a son who had simply disappeared. It was only after the emergency was lifted that his family and the country came to learn the young man’s sad fate. Rajan’s body was never found. Shaji N Karun’s movie ‘Piravi’ heart wrenchingly captures the plight of that father, played to perfection by the late thespian, Premji. In his moving book, “Memories of a father”, Professor Varier wrote:
"My son is standing outside drenched in the rain.
I still have no answer to the question whether or not I feel vengeance. But I leave one question to the world; why are you making my innocent child stand in the rain even after his death.
I don’t close the door. Let the rain lash inside and drench me. Let my invisible son at least know that his father never shut the door."
The book reminds us that the Emergency is only one among the many grim realities of how the selfish actions of a few powerful people in pursuit of power could have terrible repercussions on the psyche of an entire Nation. Unfortunately, this keeps happening again and again…in one form or the other.
Displaying 1 of 1 review