Time alone will show conclusively whether the Janata parliamentary party and its leadership will have reason to rue their decision to expel Mrs. Gandhi from the Lok Sabha and imprison her on the charge of breach of privilege. But on the present reckoning, it does look as if they will have reason to regret this fateful decision. Three points appear pertinent in this connection even if it is assumed that the committee of privileges did the right thing in finding her guilty by a majority vote in disregard of its own established practice of reaching decisions in such matters by consensus. First, Mrs. Gandhi is to be tried in a court of law on the same charge of obstructing the work of four STC officials who were looking into the affairs of Mr. Sanjay Gandhi’s Maruti in order to collect the information that was required for answering a parliamentary question. As such the former Prime Minister has a point when she says that she could not have testified before the committee without prejudicing her case in the court.
Secondly, she is the leader of a party which is recognised as the official opposition in both Houses of Parliament, runs the administration in the important states of Andhra and Karnataka and has perhaps the largest following in the country, next only to the Janata in the Hindi-speaking belt and next to none in the two southern states mentioned above. As such any action against her, however justified otherwise, has political implications which cannot be ignored. Finally, she has been in search of something which could have helped her divert the people’s attention from her and her younger son’s misdoings during the emergency. The atrocities on the harijans and the communal riots have already enable her to do that to a very substantial extent so much so that even in those by-elections, since March 1977, which her party has lost, it has secured the second largest number of votes. What she has needed is concrete evidence that when it come to dealing with political opponents, the Janata leaders are no better than her. The expulsion from parliament and imprisonment provides her that piece of evidence which she and her supporters can now display to good effect all over the country.
This would not have worked if the people in the countryside were, indeed, as hostile to the emergency regime as most members of the intelligentsia or if the Janata governments in New Delhi and in the Hindi-speaking states, where alone they exist, had performed so well that the common man was reasonably satisfied. But neither of these is true. Else she would not have remained as popular as she has, and that despite the fact that she deliberately split the Congress last January and thus lost the support of men who still command considerable influence and respect in their states. To say all this is not to make a special plea for her, the time for that having in any case passed once the executive committee of the Janata parliamentary party decided to stick to the hawkish line on Tuesday. The purpose now can only be to affirm the view expressed earlier in these columns that democratic institutions cannot prosper in the absence of a clear appreciation of the political implications of their decisions by those in authority. Majorities do not settle such issues in historical terms, as our experience of the emergency clearly demonstrates. After all, Parliament had endorsed the emergency proclamation, though in the absence of opposition MPs in detention. Nor can reliance on legality do so.
If the decision proves counter-productive, as in all likelihood it will, Mr. Desai will bear a heavy responsibility for it. As Prime Minister and leader of the Janata parliamentary party, it was his duty to resist the hawks in it and persuade them to recognise the political reality for what it is and award only nominal punishment to Mrs. Gandhi. That he himself was inclined that way in the beginning cannot absolve him of that responsibility. And the same must be said of other senior Janata leaders, especially those who have been seriously concerned over the possible political consequences of the action and have yet chosen to go along with the majority view. Perhaps they woke up to the grimness of the situation when it was already too late, that is, when the parliamentary party met and it became evident that the hawks commanded the support of the majority. If that is indeed the case, it does not speak too well of their capacity to anticipate events and try to forestall them. Surely this cannot augur well for the future of Indian democracy, irrespective of what one thinks of Mrs. Gandhi’s own commitment or lack of commitment to democracy. In fact, the more dangerous one considers her to democracy, the greater one’s obligation to avoid playing into her hands, which is precisely what the Janata has done.
Mrs. Gandhi is not a great parliamentarian. She could not have made much of an impact in the Lok Sabha. On the face of it at least, she appeared reluctant to accept the leadership of her group in the Lok Sabha which, if it had turned out to be true, would have detracted from her authority. She fights best when she believes she has been cornered. On her own testimony, she has a Joan of Arc complex. She can now give it free play. She is already the leader of the majority in the most depressed communities. And her expulsion from the Lok Sabha and imprisonment can greatly strengthen her hold on them. It looks as if the Janata leaders think that they owe a debt to her and as if they are trying to pay it back. They paid the first installment on October 3 last year when the then Home Minister, Mr. Charan Singh, ordered her arrest on flimsy charges which could not stand even preliminary scrutiny by the court, leaving the judge little choice but to order her unconditional release. It is paying the second installment now. After the first arrest, she received massive welcome in south Gujarat. This time she can be depended upon to storm the country, purged as it were of the misdoings of the emergency regime, with or without her knowledge and acquiescence. And if she arouses the same kind of response as she did then, the Janata party will be in serious trouble unless of course its leaders manage by some chance to overcome their differences and unite to face the challenge.
It does not look as if in bowing fairly readily to the wishes of the hawkish majority in the parliamentary party even at the risk of inviting the charge of vendetta, Mr. Desai has been guided by the calculation that this will help to reunite the party behind him. Instead it appears that he has been guided by his view that a Prime Minister should go by the wishes of the majority in his party. But it is possible, though not probable, that voices, of dissent in the Janata may subside in view of the trouble that the Congress (I) is determined and is bound to try to create in the country. If that happens which again seems doubtful, it will be a gain. For the approaching confrontation can serve a useful purpose if it helps consolidate the Janata, as it is almost certainly going to help consolidate Mrs. Gandhi’s supporters. But even that will not be an unmixed blessing. For on both sides the position of the hawks will be greatly strengthened. Moderate elements in the country’s political life are already facing heavy weather as is evident from the poor performance of the Congress(S) in one by-election after another. They are likely to find themselves in an even more unenviable position as the confrontation develops between the ruling party and the Congress(I). The Rajya Sabha has been paralyzed for a week. Now the same thing can be expected to happen in the Lok Sabha. Thus, whichever way one looks at the Janata’s decision, it is a sad one for Indian democracy.