NEWSLINKS
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTION 99
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

The Rediff Interview/P N Dhar

'The Emergency gave the middle class a taste of what the poor people go through under normal circumstances...'

P N Dhar was working in the Prime Minister's Office when the Emergency was declared on June 25, 1975. He was thus intimately connected with the events that led to the declaration of Emergency and those that followed, much of which he has penned in his book, Indira Gandhi, Emergency and Indian Democracy which was released recently.

In an exclusive interview to rediff.com's Amberish K Diwanji he recounts some of the events that led to the imposition of the Emergency, the role played by Sanjay Gandhi and offers his own views of what has been called the "darkest period" in the history of Indian democracy.

In your book, you have said that a single person or family cannot be blamed for the Emergency. Yet, was Emergency an inevitable outcome of the events leading up to June 25, 1975?

As I have said in my book, every political system requires a matching political culture. We in India adopted the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy but the political culture that should accompany it is taking a long time to evolve. There is thus this hiatus between system and culture, something which continues to this day in our country.

Today, we in India assume that democracy means election after election. Elections are a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition of democracy. To be effective, we must inform the system with liberal values.

The result is that, for instance, the Opposition parties often behave as though they are not facing a representative government and often adopt methods that amount to insurrection. So although I am not saying that Indira Gandhi is not to blame, I am also saying that it was brought about by circumstances.

Take the railway strike of 1974 and the methods used to press the demands of railwaymen. Mughalsarai, the largest railway yard in Asia, was to be made a graveyard for goods trains. Then the Jaiprakash Narayan movement sought to force elected members of Parliament to resign and Morarji Desai's fast unto death was nothing more than blackmail.

The Opposition gave the movement a Gandhian, moralistic aura forgetting that Gandhi did it against an alien government. And specifically in the context of Emergency, when Justice Sinha passed his verdict against her (Indira Gandhi), he also gave her time to appeal to the Supreme Court but the Opposition mounted a movement for her to resign right away. All this put her under tremendous pressure.

Did Indira Gandhi think of resigning rather than imposing Emergency?

She certainly did think of resigning but she was worried that it might lead to the breakup of the party. She was distrustful of any person who would have succeeded her and moreover, she was concerned about Sanjay Gandhi. He had some skeletons in his cupboard and she feared that her successor might take advantage of it.

These were her personal reasons. But she also had some public concerns. She believed that the Opposition was a motley crowd that would not be able to run the country and which in fact, I must say, was proved right after the Janata government came to power. The Janata government showed an enormous ineptitude for governance.

What about the excesses during the Emergency, especially those carried out by Sanjay Gandhi?

The Emergency became an ugly episode with the emergence of Sanjay Gandhi. He had some chief ministers under his grip, men who, in order to flatter Sanjay Gandhi, indulged in excesses like vasectomies, the Turkman Gate demolitions etc.

The Congress party's defeat in the 1977 elections in the north Indian states was due to these excesses. Also, the press censorship gave rise to wild rumours, so wild that if you actually believed them, India would have solved its family planning problem! The very fact that the southern states voted for the Congress only showed that there were no excesses in the south.

What was the impact of the Emergency?

It certainly brought some order to the country. There were no disturbances on the university campuses and strikes came to an end. The people did like the return to some sort of a peaceful atmosphere. And people did go to their offices on time, had less coffee breaks. All this is true.

But the problem was that Sanjay and his associates had no sustainable ideology behind it. It was not a coup or the capture of power to implement some revolutionary programme. Indira Gandhi said that democracy was being derailed and that she wanted to bring it back on track by administering the harsh medicine of Emergency.

Also, there was no economic programme save the 20-point programme. The much-needed land reforms were not implemented.

Why did she lift the Emergency?

So much has been written about the Emergency but no one remembers that she did lift it in 1977 and held elections. There was no compulsion for her to do so.

One day, an old school teacher from Haryana came to me and said that he had been given a target of getting 20 people sterlilised within a week. The old man broke down while narrating the story. The next day, I told Indira Gandhi this story and I also told her that there was no need for her to check if it was true because I was sure that it was true.

And for the first time she did not say anything, did not deny it as she used to. She just kept quiet. Then she asked me how long should the Emergency continue and I told her it should have ended yesterday. Then she told me that Sanjay Gandhi was getting out of control, that some of his cronies had even thought of setting up another constituent assembly that would nominate Indira Gandhi Prime Minister for life!

One of the criticisms made is that no bureaucrat opposed the Emergency. Why did that happen?

It is not easy to generalise. I think most civil servants behaved very professionally, very correctly. There were some bureaucrats who behaved in an excessive manner, mainly to catch the eye of Sanjay Gandhi and get a quick promotion. Indira Gandhi kept the Prime Minister's Office out of the reach of influence of her house, till Sanjay Gandhi got upset with me and wanted to get rid of me. I got such feelers but I refused to heed them.

In retrospect, how do you view the Emergency? Can it happen again?

Let me quote from my book (page 263): "So how do we assess the phenomenon of the Emergency? Was it an aggravation of the tendency to disregard the law which had become a part of Indian political culture? In which case, was it the logical climax of this culture? Or was it an aberration caused by Indira Gandhi? One conclusion is clear from the events preceding and following the Emergency declarations: It was not a contest between a revolutionary leader leading the host towards a new social and political order and a wily politician anxious to impose her personal dictatorship on the country. The actual outcome, on both sides of the barricades, was much less spectacular. JP proved a ineffectual revolutionary and Indira Gandhi a half-hearted dictator."

If you mean by Emergency disregard for the rule of law and liberal values, that part of the Emergency still continues. Imagine, former prime ministers defy Section 144 (of the Indian Penal Code that governs prohibitory orders), are arrested and then released and it enhances their political standing but brings law into contempt.

There are two-and-a-half million court cases pending, this is our kind of justice; people are locked up without trial for years. What the Emergency did was to give the middle class a taste of what the poor people go through under normal circumstances. It was only because the middle class was affected that there was a sense of outrage.

However, today, I don't think a formal declaration of Emergency and suspension of the Constitution will occur.

Do you think there were certain international reasons for the Emergency, such as the OPEC price hike?

I do agree that the events abroad impacted upon us here. In the early 1970s, OPEC's four-fold price hike of crude oil and consequent inflation was occurring all over the world. People see these primarily as economic events, but they had political implications, which we in India tend to ignore.

For instance, overnight the OPEC action imposed an additional burden of $1 billion (in 1973) and this affected our balance of payment most adversely. Then there was the bad harvest of 1973 which led to an unprecedented inflation. In fact, one reason for the 1974 railway strike was the massive inflation that hit India.

In retrospect, how do you look back on your years in the Prime Minister's Office?

I was the only person in the PMO who was not from either the IAS or the IFS and it was thus a great opportunity for me to participate in decision-making. It was for me a tremendous experience. I had moments of elation as well as those of frustration.

I joined the PMO in November 1970 because I felt that I'd be able to make a difference in economic policies that would accelerate economic growth. But within a few months the Bangladesh crisis broke out and the PMO was busy pestering the finance minister for funds for the refugees. As an economist I did feel frustrated, especially since I was a supporter of economic liberalisation.

During the Emergency, I was unhappy but believed that it could be used for beneficial purposes. That is why I even carried on negotiations with Jaiprakash Narayan. I must say that JP agreed to have negotiations, he realised that democracy did not mean anarchy, but then Indira Gandhi did not trust him.

Let me quote from my book again (page 255): "JP was sentimental about many things and had some sort of affection for her (Indira Gandhi). Nehru had been like an older brother for JP and his wife Prabha Devi was a friend and source of solace for Kamala Nehru. Indira Gandhi had not only neglected her filial duty, she had done something worse; she had, according to JP, come under the influence of Moscow through her liaison with the CPI after the 1969 split in the Congress party. That had enraged him and that was the reason why he had tried to help organise a consolidated opposition of non-communist parties against her at the time of the 1971 elections. Indira Gandhi, for her part, had some respect for JP as a human being, but not a great deal for his ideas, which she thought were woolly and often irresponsible. According to Indira Gandhi, JP was a theoretician of chaos, and politics for him was the art of the impossible. With such perceptions about each other, it would have been difficult for JP and Indira Gandhi to develop a common political understanding. The fact that both sides were endowed with fierce egos made this virtually impossible. JP's self-righteousness and Indira Gandhi's paranoia reinforced each other and destiny seemed to have no other alternative in mind for them but to collide."

In any case, I had decided to leave the PMO even if Indira Gandhi had won in 1977.

The Rediff Interviews

Tell us what you think of this interview