The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
The Story of the Emergency
On June 25, India entered the fiftieth year of the imposition of the Emergency, an extraordinary 21-month period that saw the suspension of civil liberties, curtailment of press freedom, mass arrests, the cancellation of elections, and rule by decree
What is meant by the Emergency in the modern political history of India?
The Emergency refers to the period from June 25, 1975 to March 21, 1977, during which the government of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi used special provisions in the Constitution to impose sweeping executive and legislative consequences on the country.
Almost all opposition leaders were put in jail, and fundamental rights, including the freedom of speech and expression guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a), were curtailed.
What legal and constitutional sanction did the Emergency have?
Under Article 352 of the Constitution, the President may, on the advice of the Council of Ministers headed by the Prime Minister, issue a proclamation of emergency if the security of India or any part of the country is threatened by “war or external aggression or armed rebellion”.
In 1975, instead of armed rebellion, the groundof“internaldisturbance”wasavailable to the government to proclaim an emergency. In its press note, the government said certain persons were inciting the police and armed forcestonotdischargetheirduties—anapparent reference to Jayaprakash Narayan’s call to police to not follow “immoral” orders.
This is the only instance of proclamation of emergency due to internal disturbance. The two occasions in which an emergency was proclaimed earlier, on October 26, 1962, and December 3, 1971, were on grounds of war.
The ground of “internal disturbance” was removed by by the Janata government that came to power after the Emergency.
Article 358 frees the state of all limitations imposed by Article 19 (“Right to freedom”) as soon as an emergency is imposed. Article 359 empowers the President to suspend the right of people to move court for the enforcement of their rights during an emergency.
What were the political and social circumstances in India in the months leading up to the Emergency?
Early in 1974, a student movement called Navnirman (Regeneration) began in Gujarat against the Congress government of Chimanbhai Patel, which was seen as corrupt. As the protests became violent, Patel had to resign and President’s Rule was imposed.
Navnirman inspired a students’ movement in Bihar against corruption and poor governance, and the ABVP and socialist organisations came together to form the Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti. On March 18, 1974, the students marched to the state Assembly. There was arson, and three students were killed in police action. The students asked Jayaprakash Narayan, a Gandhian and hero of the Quit India
Movement, to lead them. He agreed with two conditions — that the movement would be non-violent and pan-indian, and aim to cleanse the country of corruption and misgovernance. Thereafter, the students' movement came to be called the “JP movement”.
Meanwhile, in May 1974, the socialist leader George Fernandes led an unprecedented strike of railway workers that paralysed the Indian Railways for three weeks.
On June 5, during a speech in Patna's historic Gandhi Maidan, JP gave a call for
“Sampoorna Kranti”, or total revolution. In the months that followed, he toured the country, and got support across India.
On March 6, he addressed a huge rally at Boat Club in Delhi, and another in Patna on March 18. JP’S rallies invoked the power of the people with the rousing slogan, “Sinhasan
khaali karo, ke janata aati hai (Vacate the throne, for the people are coming)”.
On June 12, 1975, Justice Jagmohanlal Sinha of Allahabad High Court delivered a historic verdict in a petition filed by Raj Narain, convicting Indira Gandhi of electoral malpractice, and striking down her election from Rae Bareli. On appeal, the Supreme Court gave the Prime Minister partial relief — she could attend Parliament but could not vote.
As demands for her resignation became louder and her aides in the Congress dug in their heels, JP asked the police not to follow immoral orders.
Late on June 25 evening, President
Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed signed the proclamationofemergency.powerwascutofftodelhi’s Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg where most newspapers had their offices. The Cabinet was informed the next morning. Since no newspapers could be printed, people got the news from Indira’s address on All India Radio.
What happened to opposition leaders, mediapersons, and political dissenters?
Almost all opposition leaders, including JP, were detained. About 36,000 people were put in jail under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA).
Newspapers were subjected to pre-censorship. UNI and PTI were merged into a statecontrolled agency called Samachar. The Press Council was abolished. More than 250 journalists, including Kuldip Nayar of The Indian
Express, were jailed. While most newspapers bent, some like The Indian Express resisted, fought the regulations in court, and printed blank spaces when their stories were pre-censored. The Indian Express proprietor Ramnath Goenka led the resistance of the Fourth Estate.
Indira’s son Sanjay Gandhi pushed a “fivepoint programme” that included forced family planning and clearance of slums. In April 1976, bulldozers moved to clear the slums near Turkman Gate in Delhi on the orders of DDA Vice Chairman Jagmohan. As local people protested, police opened fire and killed many. Sanjay gave officials at the Centre and in the states family planning targets, leading to forced sterilisations. On October 18, 1976, police fired on people protesting against forced sterilisations in Muzaffarnagar, UP, killing 50.
What legal changes were pushed through by Parliament and in the courts?
With the opposition in jail, Parliament passed The Constitution (Thirty-eighth Amendment) Act that barred judicial review of the Emergency, and The Constitution (Thirty-ninth Amendment) Act that said the election of the Prime Minister could not be challenged in the Supreme Court.
The Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act took away the judiciary’s right to hear election petitions, widened the authority of the Union to encroach on State subjects, gave Parliament unbridled power to amend theconstitutionwithnojudicialreviewpossible, and made any law passed by Parliament to implement any or all directive principles of state policy immune to judicial review.
In ADM Jabalpur vs Shivkant Shukla ,1976,a five-judge Bench of the Supreme Court ruled that detention without trial was legal during anemergency.thesoledissentertothemajority judgment was Justice H R Khanna.
What prompted Indira to lift the Emergency, and what happened afterward?
For no apparent reason, Indira decided to lift the Emergency early in 1977. In his book India After Gandhi, historian Ramachandra Guha listed the various theories offered to explain her decision: that IB reports had convinced her that she would win the elections, that she needed to match similar action by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in Pakistan, and even that she missed connecting with the masses.
The elections of 1977 led to a comprehensive defeat for Indira. The Janata Party, formed by a merger of the Jana Sangh, Congress (O), the socialists and Bharatiya Lok Dal, emerged as a formidable force, and Morarji Desai becameindia’sfirstnon-congressprimeminister.
What efforts were made by the Janata government to undo the damage?
The Janata government reversed many of the constitutional changes effected by the 42nd Amendment Act of 1976. It did not do away with the provision of the emergency, but made it extremely difficult to impose for the future. It made judicial review of a proclamation of emergency possible again, and mandated that every proclamation of emergency be laid before both Houses of Parliament within a month of the proclamation. Unless it was approved by both Houses by a special majority — a majority of the total strength of the House and not less than two-thirds of the members present and voting — the proclamation would lapse.
The The Constitution (Forty-fourth Amendment) Act, 1978 removed “internal disturbance” as a ground for the imposition of an emergency, meaning that armed rebellion alone would now be a ground, apart from war and external aggression.
The Shah Commission, constituted by the Janata government to report on the imposition of the Emergency and its adverse effects, submitted a damning report.
How did the Emergency change politics?
The Janata experiment gave India its first non-congress government, but its collapse demonstrated the limits of anti-congressism. The Emergency gave India young leaders who would dominate politics for decades to come — Lalu Prasad Yadav, George Fernandes, Arun Jaitley, Ram Vilas Paswan, and many others.
The post-emergency Parliament saw the coming together of the social forces behind the Jana Sangh and the socialists — Hindutva upper caste, and the Lohiaite agrarian and artisanal castes — and increased the representation of OBCS in Parliament. The Janata government appointed the Mandal Commission, which would go on to make the rise of the OBCS in North India irreversible.
The Emergency became a template of how not to do democratic politics. It dented the Congress’ reputation of leading the struggle for civil liberties against the colonial state. The Emergency has remained in the political vocabulary, with every perceived act of high-handedness by a government being attributed to an “Emergency mindset”. Even the critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi sometimes refer to his government as one of an “undeclared Emergency”.