It is impossible to disagree with the Shah Commission’s central finding that Mrs. Gandhi imposed the emergency on June 25, 1975, “in a desperate endeavour to save herself from the legitimate compulsion of a judicial verdict against her.” This fact was obvious on June 26, 1975, when the country woke up to find that the then Prime Minister had staged a virtual coup with the help of an obliging President and a dozen or so trusted lieutenants. And has remained obvious since. Indeed, neither she nor her supporters have produced the slightest evidence which can controvert the view that the country was not facing a law and order problem of such a magnitude as could not have been tackled effectively through the normal process and machinery.
The opposition might have failed to grasp that she would go to any extent to keep herself in office if she was driven the wall. It might have been well advised then to allow her to go through the legal remedy open to her – an appeal to Supreme Court – before it decided to launch an agitation to force her resignation. But nothing that happened between June 1975, when Mr. Justice Sinha of the Allahabad High court set aside her election to parliament and June 25, 1975, would have justified so drastic step as the proclamation of emergency, the arrest of thousands of opposition leaders at all levels and the imposition on the press of curbs the like of which it had not known even under the British during the war. On the contrary, it was she who had tried to create an atmosphere of crisis by summoning crowds to the roundabout outside her official residence at all times of day and making all manner of charges against those who had had the temerity suggest that she should step down in response to the judgment of the Allahabad High court.
She had herself asked one of her ministers to resign in a similar situation and she failed to cite any worthwhile reason why she should be allowed to disregard an established convention. She had enough opportunity during the emergency and she has had enough opportunity since, including the one provided by the Shah Commission, to elucidate her favourite charge that external agencies in league with certain domestic elements were out to destabilise the country and that the emergency was necessary to frustrate them. She has failed to avail of these opportunities apparently because she has not been in a position to make the charge stick.
The Shah Commission’s report on Mr. Sanjay Gandhi’s role as Delhi’s overlord is also incontrovertible. The demolition of thousands of residential and commercial buildings which he unquestionably ordered might or might not have been exactly a source of amusement to this callow and callous young man. But there cannot be the slightest doubt that he was utterly insensitive to “the miseries he was heaping on the helpless population”. Like dictators in banana republics in Latin America, he was determined to make the capital look beautiful. He did not care for the cost to the people involved. Similarly, if Mr. Justice Shah’s observation – that “not all the excesses that were committed during the emergency all over the country would surpass this one single excess in terms of the tragedy it involved” for lakhs of people and “all it meant for the country in the context of its utter illegality and unconstitutionality” – needs to be qualified, it is only because Mr. Gandhi presided over the family planning drive with the same “ruthlessness and effectiveness” and, of course, “without the slightest claim to that position except that he was the son of the then Prime Minister of India.” Nothing is or can be – not perhaps even the proclamation of the emergency and the bypassing of Cabinet colleagues, the Home Ministry, the Cabinet Secretary, the intelligence chiefs and less trusted chief ministers — as damning an indictment of the emergency regime as the rise of this extra-constitutional centre of authority, an euphemism (a la the cult of personality in Stalin’s case) for the usurpation of enormous powers and their abuse day in and day out, with the direct support of Mrs. Gandhi. Once she had secured her own position by amending the People’s Representation Act and the Constitution and getting a favourable verdict from the Supreme Court on the basis of the new laws, she was as if determined to prove that nothing, mattered to her more than to ensure Mr. Gandhi’s succession to herself. It is not necessary to give credence to ugly rumours regarding his associations in order to conclude that Mrs. Gandhi gravely undermined her credibility by investing so much authority in him and those close to him in and around her house as distinct from the office in South Block which was more or less bypassed in that dark period.
Except for the suppression of the press, for which it may be as fair or unfair to blame Mr. Vidya Charan Shukla as it would be to blame the officials in Delhi for the demolition, other instances of violations of the rules and procedures for appointments, dismissals and arrests cited by the Shah Commission pale into insignificance in comparison with the first two issues – the proclamation of the emergency and the rise of Mr. Gandhi. Perhaps Mr. Justice Shah would not have investigated these cases in such detail if he did not think it necessary to establish beyond reasonable doubt that power was abused during the emergency not only in the general sense that the people were terrorized into silence and submission but also specifically to punish those who had dared cross the path of those in authority and to reward those who were willing to comply with orders, however illegitimate. But all this having been said, the central question remains unanswered. What should be the follow up action on the part of the government? It has already taken steps to redress to the extent possible the grievances of the evictees in Delhi and elsewhere and it has introduced in Parliament one bill to scrap the MISA, which Mrs. Gandhi used with deadly effect to paralyse the opposition, and another to amend the Constitution so as to ensure that a future prime minister is not able to promulgate an emergency except in the case of an armed rebellion and to make, mincemeat of the Fundamental Rights as she did during those dark 20 months. But what is it to do with Mrs. Gandhi herself?
The government faces a terrible dilemma to which there may not be a solution. On the one hand it is under pressure from its followers and supporters to arrest her and prosecute her, and on the other, it is only too well aware of the possible risks involved. What could have been done to her in the first few months after the end of the emergency is now at best an academic question. The present reality is that any attempt to put her on trial on the charges framed by the Shah Commission can win her a lot of sympathy and divide the country in a dangerous manner. It may be unpleasant to have to acknowledge that she has successfully outmanoeuvred the government, other opponents like the CPM and her detractors in the Congress by demonstrating that she has a sizable following in the country. The Janata leadership has helped her by its ineptness. It has, for example, selected wrong men as chief ministers in certain key states; it has handled the problem of the atrocities on the Harijans and communal riots poorly; it blundered in arresting her and two full-fledged secretaries to the Union government, on flimsy charges and it has damaged itself by engaging in interminable squabbles. But whatever the reasons, she is once again a formidable factor in Indian politics and to try her on complicated charges like the ones listed by the commission is to risk making a living martyr of her. Mr. Morarji Desai appreciates the gravity of the problem. Those who mean well by the country should not try to force his hands.