There is much to commend in Mr Kuldip Nayar’s The Judgement. But essentially it is instant history and its true merit cannot be assessed so long as Mr Shah does not complete his inquiry into the emergency and Mrs. Indira Gandhi does not give her side of the story. Indeed, it is doubtful whether we shall know all the facts relating to this period in our history in the near future.
Instant history in our times fulfils a deep psychological need. It not only titillates the reader but also often helps him in a deeper sense. More often than not, it provides confirmation of judgements of men and events which the reader has already reached but of which he is not quite sure.
The Judgement serves an even more desperate need. The Indian intelligentsia, which has been brought up on the diet of daily journalism and free, even if often ill-informed, discussion, was badly starved during the twenty months of the emergency. Even after the initial impact of the proclamation began to wear off and the articulate sections of the community felt sufficiently secure to engage in discussions among friends in the privacy of their homes, they had to live on hearsay and rumours because the press was under strict censorship. They now want to know what happened during this terrible period.
Mr. Nayar has given them exactly what they want and in a tone which is wholly appropriate to the requirement – supremely confident (not even a flicker of doubt is allowed to creep in regarding the accuracy of the “facts”), simplistic (there is no attempt to analyse the social, economic and political forces at work), self-righteous (the elites, specially the journalists, are suitably condemned for their failure to rise to the occasion and Mr RK Dhavan, Mrs. Gandhi’s and Mr. Sanjay Gandhi’s most important aide, is quoted to substantiate the view that this failure was the result of nothing more complicated than love for the comforts of the western-style consumer society), optimistic (the ordinary people having demonstrated their deep commitment to democracy in the election to the Lok Sabha last March, there is nothing more to fear) and moralistic (the behaviour of whole groups is discussed in terms of courage or lack of it).
Instant history is, of course, a contradiction in terms. Indeed, the greatest appeal of instant history lies in the fact that it abolishes the past. In this case, for instance, history begins with Mr. Justice Sinha’s adverse judgement against Mrs. Gandhi on June 12, 1975, though it is self-evident that she could have mastered a similar crisis fairly easily in 1972 when in the wake of the victory against Pakistan and the establishment of an independent Bangladesh her popularity and credibility were high.
Since for whatever reasons, Mrs. Gandhi finally decided not to follow the honourable course of resigning, the key issue is not whether Mr. Sanjay Gandhi played a critical role at this stage but whether an option other than the declaration of the emergency was open to her. Mr. Nayar takes the view that no other alternative was available to her.
There is considerable merit in this view if it is assumed – mainly on the strength of the large gathering Mr. Jayaprakash Narayan attracted in New Delhi on June 25, 1975 – that the opposition could and would have built up a powerful countrywide movement in support of its demand for Mrs. Gandhi’s resignation and made life difficult for her. But long before the Allahabad High Court judgment, on June 12, 1975, the movement headed by Mr. Narayan had clearly lost momentum and the Sarvodaya leader himself was said to be dispirited. The opposition leaders’ fast outside Rashtrapati Bhavan in the wake of the Allahabad High Court judgement had not evoked much popular response.
The attitude of the Congress party was doubtless equally, if not far more, important. The evidence which Mr. Nayar cites – the dissident young Turks headed by Mr. Chandra Shekhar “could count their supporters on the tips of their fingers”; “the number was not more than thirty”, both Mr. Chandra Shekhar and Mr. Krishan Kant had told the author, “But only twenty turned up at the dinner Mr. Chandra Shekhar had hosted for Mr. Jayaprakash Narayan during those hectic and rumour ridden days – suggests that Mr Jagjivan Ram could not have led a revolt against Mrs. Gandhi even if he was so inclined, which I for one doubt. He was, in my opinion, willing to wound but afraid to strike.
It is possible that Mrs. Gandhi, as Mr. Nayar suggests, depended not so much on her own instinct and judgement as on the reports of the intelligence agencies and that these reports made her panic. In that case, the decision to impose the emergency was a panic move, and not the result of a cool, deliberate and long term decision to get rid of the parliamentary system of government in favour of personal dictatorship. Mr. Nayar does not draw this conclusion, though this is clearly supported by his own evidence. He has, for instance, noted that Mrs Gandhi had not thought of the follow up measures in the economic field, that she hurriedly ask all manner of people to suggest something and that she picked up 20, to begin with 21, points out of these random proposals. This should incidentally dispose of the speculation regarding external inspiration behind the emergency. The ad hoc ism was clear evidence that the enterprise was distinctly Indian, indeed wholly characteristic of Mrs. Gandhi.
Since the appeal of The Judgement is at least partly dependent on its black and white treatment of personalities and events, it would perhaps be unfair to expect Mr. Nayar to probe the fact of the lack or feebleness of protest against the declaration of the emergency and not to treat it solely as an issue of courage or lack of courage. But this and the possible factors and calculations behind Mr. Sanjay Gandhi’s decision to go in for a massive programme of slum clearance and forcible sterilisation are important issues which anyone who discusses the emergency cannot afford to ignore as Mr. Nayar does.
Mr. Sanjay Gandhi was in a sense consistent. He could, it can be argued, afford to be known as the man behind the forcible eviction of hundreds of thousands of people, bulldozing of whole localities and the herding of adults in towns and villages for forcible sterilisation because he thought he could get the elections postponed for some years. But he wanted to acquire popularity and build the Youth Congress not only as a private army of toughs but also as a popular organisation which could rival the Indian National Congress itself. This obvious contradiction does not bother Mr. Nayar, though clearly it is too important to be wished away if one seriously wants to understand what happened during the emergency and why. And how is one to square all this with Mr. Sanjay Gandhi’s passion to expand the activities of Maruti and make deals with multinational corporations?
Mrs. Gandhi doubtless changed the Constitution drastically and placed on the statute book draconian laws like the Prevention of Publication of Objectionable Matter Act with the clear objective of arming herself with extraordinary powers. She terrorised the press and tried to break the resistance of those High Court judges who were not willing to fall in line. But while these measures are easily intelligible in terms of her alleged ambitions, personal and dynastic, how is one to explain her decision to allow the magistracy and the police to let loose a reign of terror on paltry shopkeepers in the capital and elsewhere on the question of price tags and on all, especially the poor sections, of the community under the family planning programme? And why the attack on the CPI which was willing to continue to support her despite its misgivings regarding her son? Mr. Nayar merely takes note of these developments as if they were built into the original decision to impose the emergency.
If Mrs. Gandhi was as astute as she was believed to be before her exit last March, and if she was as single-minded in her devotion to power as she was thought to be, she would have surely not done many of the things she did. Instead, she would have resorted to populist measures which could still have seen her through once she had got the People’s Representation Act amended and the Supreme Court had nullified Mr. Justice Sinha’s judgement against her. Mr. Nayar has not helped fill these and other gaps in our capacity to reconstruct the events.
The present government has ordered an inquiry into the affairs of the Nagarwala affair. Pending its completion, it is not possible to say whether or not Mr. Nayar is justified in lending credence to the rumours that Mr. Nagarwala’s “heart failure” (the quotes are his) was one of the skeletons in Mrs. Gandhi’s cupboard which made it impossible for her to resign following Mr. Justice Sinha’s adverse judgement. But this is too serious a charge to have been made so light-heartedly and so is the statement Mr. Nayar has attributed to Mr. Kissinger to the effect that the then prime minister had become “purchasable”. And though it is reasonably certain that after the polling on March 16, Mrs. Gandhi did not attempt to incite the armed force, Mr. Nayar resorts to the familiar expedient of quoting a report in a foreign magazine to that effect to lend credence to it.
Mrs. Gandhi must have been very dim witted, indeed, if during her election tour she did not sense the possibility of defeat. If she is so dim-witted, that is the end of the argument. But if she is not, she could surely have thought of arranging a series of explosions in major towns and industrial installations and using that as a pretext to call off the elections and impose martial law. For all that we know, such an option might not have been open to her. But if not, why not? And if before the poll she was not sure that the senior commanders would stand by her and be able to retain the loyalty of the troops, how could she possibly believe that they would when she was facing defeat?
Finally, Mr. Nayar could have been a little more careful about some facts and names. Mr. Seshan says he was not at Mrs. Gandhi s house on the morning of June 12, 1975. He was in his office in the South Block, New Delhi. The name of the director of the intelligence bureau is Shiv Narain Mathur and not Surinder Nath Mathur and of the former home secretary Sunder Lal Khurana and not Sardari Lal Khurana. RAW was not constituted in 1962 but in 1968. Mr. Chavan was not present at the cabinet meeting at which Mrs. Gandhi announced her decision to go to the polls because he was in Eastern Europe on an official visit. He cut short the trip after he heard the announcement.
GLJ
The Times of India, 26 June 1977
THE JUDGEMENT: Inside Story of The Emergency in India: By Kuldip Nayar (Vikas, Rs. 30)