For Reasons of State Read online

  JOHN DAYAL

  AJOY BOSE

  FOR REASONS OF STATE

  Delhi under Emergency

  Foreword by Mark Tully

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  Introduction to the 2018 Edition

  Introduction

  PROLOGUE

  Bioscope

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Story of Turkman Gate

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Bulldozers

  CHAPTER THREE

  Out in the Wilderness

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Days of the Long Knives

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Dinosaurs . . .

  CHAPTER SIX

  . . . And the Primeval Slush

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Denouement

  Aftermath

  Notes

  Glossary

  Appendix I

  Appendix II

  Appendix III

  Appendix IV

  Follow Penguin

  Copyright

  ‘The State seeks to hinder every free activity by its censorship, its supervision, its police, and holds the hindering to be its duty, because it is in truth a duty of self-preservation. The State wants to make something out of man, therefore there lives in it only made men; everyone who wants to be his own self is its opponent.’

  —Max Stirner, Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (The Ego and His Own)

  Foreword

  A few years ago, I was at a conference in London marking the fortieth anniversary of the Emergency. Looking back at that time, it seemed the chief significance of the Emergency was that it could never be repeated. Two years later, I am not so certain about this any more.

  The international reaction to the Emergency, I remember, was anger and disappointment. This undoubtedly had an impact on Indira Gandhi. She did not like being described as a tyrant, as someone who had murdered democracy. There was a fear internationally that the Emergency might be the end of democracy in India. There is a theory that Mrs Gandhi was affected by this international reaction and therefore called an election to demonstrate her democratic credentials. I don’t believe this myself. I think she called an election because she was misinformed. She was completely out of touch because of the sycophants surrounding her and misled to believe that she would win the elections. This was told to me by none other than Dev Kant Barooah, the president of the Congress party. If she had won the election, I have no doubt she would have said that this was a sign that people liked the Emergency and approved of what she had done, and so maintained it. It is very important to remember that although she had called an election, she did not actually lift the Emergency till it became clear that she had been defeated.

  There are several possible explanations for a democracy like India turning into a dictatorship overnight. The first and most important one is the collapse of institutions. The institutions were so feeble—the judiciary, police, administration, the Congress party and even the President himself—they simply accepted this illegal act. Thereafter there was no real resistance to it. However, it must be borne in mind that the entire Opposition was in jail. There was an atmosphere of fear because of these arrests and because the police were taking advantage of the situation by making random arrests and demanding money to release the arrested. The powerful business community, from what I remember, did absolutely zero to oppose the Emergency. Yet there was underground resistance to the Emergency, the most famous example being George Fernandes.

  Today, once again, there is a government with an absolute majority and a very powerful prime minister dominating his party. This has created an atmosphere of fear. This atmosphere of fear is heightened among certain communities, particularly the Muslims, by the ideology of Hindu extremist groups that appear to have powerful influence on the government. It is fundamentally anti-Muslim and sets that community up as the other to create fear within the Hindu community and try to unite it on the basis of this fear. Fear is also created by the actions of groups like gau rakshaks or cow defenders.

  However, it would be incorrect to say this is like the Emergency. The Constitution has not been suspended and all the fundamental rights still remain in place. The press has not been censored and Opposition leaders have not been arrested. Democracy is continuing, in the sense that we are having all these elections. The BJP may be winning most of them but they are accepting defeats too, like they did in Bihar. So on the surface democracy is still in place. Underneath, though, there is undoubtedly an atmosphere of fear. There is fear that if the BJP is re-elected with a firm majority, this could be taken as an endorsement of its policy and its ideology. Attempts could then be made to alter the Constitution, making it more presidential than parliamentary and therefore giving more power to the chief executive.

  As far as the media is concerned, it would be wrong to compare the present situation to the Emergency. My own experience of the press was that while not all of them bowed to the Emergency regime, most of them did. There is no doubt that the press on the whole did collapse. We in the foreign press protested against the censorship. We had negotiations with the government for a month or so on how we could operate but in the end most of us, including the BBC, felt that the terms of censorship we were asked to sign were so absurd that we could not do so without signing away all our journalistic independence and integrity.

  Today there is no censorship but there may be self-censorship out of fear or pressures. It has to be said that television channels like NDTV and newspapers I read every day like the Indian Express, The Hindu and Business Standard have not collapsed. I am also very impressed with media outfits on the Internet like the Wire which certainly have not collapsed. It is true that some of the print media and television channels have become either blatantly pro-government or at least very reluctant to criticize it. Those that are owned by business groups have other business interests and fear that they will be harmed if they oppose the government. Yet there is no parallel today with what happened during the Emergency. What is, however, distressing is the misuse of investigative agencies and that is common to the Emergency and the run-up to it.

  When Indira Gandhi lost the elections because of the Emergency, it did not come as a surprise to me. I had travelled widely across the country and could sense a mood of real anger in the countryside at the Emergency. Nasbandi (forcible sterilization programme) for instance was a disastrous experiment. Frankly, I do not see today any such widespread anger but I do notice increasing signs of disappointment. I think if this disappointment is powerfully expressed by the Opposition and by sections of the press, people will ask, ‘Narendra Modi promised so much but what has he done, where are the achhe din that were supposed to come?’

  There is also anger in the farming community and one of the causes is the ruination of the cattle economy which is so crucial to farmers. There has also been resistance from Dalit groups and some other castes, and very strong resistance from student groups. This is significant because the great resistance movement of independent India was the Jayaprakash Narayan movement which grew out of student agitations. I think the student movement may get stronger because of the way some universities are behaving, imposing control on the students and changing their curriculum. If any major corruption scandal erupts, it could also derail the government.

  In the end I would like to point to a book I wrote some years ago called No Full Stops in India. For all the perceived threats today, I still believe that there will be no full stops to Indian democracy. After all, the Emergency proved to be only a comma.

  New Delhi

  April 2018

  Mark Tully

  Introduction to the 2018 Edition

  Forty-one years ago, we had warned i
n the introduction to our book, ‘the myriad beasts that had prowled the jungle so menacingly for twenty months may well be there still, albeit in an enforced hibernation, hoping for more suitable climes before they flex their muscles again’. This may have seemed unduly alarmist in the immediate aftermath of the crushing defeat of the Emergency regime but has once again become relevant in the present political context.

  Significantly, even when the Gandhi dynasty regained power in the 1980s to rule the political roost, Indian democracy appeared safe. Buoyed by her triumphant comeback over the corpse of the Janata Party, Indira Gandhi showed no interest in returning to authoritarian ways although in Punjab brutal state repression was unleashed against the citizenry after Operation Blue Star. Her son Rajiv, despite winning a massive electoral mandate after Mrs Gandhi’s assassination, too remained a democrat and a back-door attempt to muzzle the media through a defamation bill spectacularly failed.

  Even after the trauma of the successive assassinations of two leaders of the Gandhi dynasty, democracy continued to flourish. In any case, a series of coalition governments at the Centre for over two decades provided no opportunity for a national despot. The Emergency slowly became a distant memory of a faded nightmare ritually recalled every year in June at anniversary functions. Our book, although treasured for its rare account of the travails of ordinary folk in the country’s capital under the Emergency, had historical value no doubt, but appeared to have no immediate relevance.

  All this appears to have changed over the past few years after the advent of Narendra Modi heading a majority BJP government in New Delhi. Suddenly, Opposition leaders have started lamenting about an undeclared Emergency, the media is seen to have gagged itself and the civil liberties of the citizenry are feared to be once again under threat. These alarm bells have been persistently ringing despite the absence of some of the more notorious features of the Emergency—the entire Opposition put behind bars, formal press censorship and a mauled Constitution. Interestingly, there has also been a growing demand for a fresh edition of For Reasons of State, long out of print, to reread the lessons of the Emergency.

  There are indeed clear parallels between Indira Gandhi and Narendra Modi—two extremely powerful figures who dominate their respective eras. Both reduced their respective cabinets to no more than rubber stamps, and ran the government through supine bureaucrats. Both encouraged a band of extra-constitutional authorities. Mrs Gandhi had her son Sanjay and his cohorts in the Youth Congress, if not running the government, at least dominating it and the party. Modi maintains his superiority and has allowed the surrogacy of hate campaigns like Ghar Wapsi to sundry groups spouting extreme prejudice.

  On the other hand, Mrs Gandhi’s Deb Kant Barooah as party chief did not enjoy the same place as Amit Shah occupies in Modi’s heart not just as a trusted old companion, major-domo, keeper of secrets, but also for keeping a tight rein on the party apparatus and the electoral process. Barooah, with his ‘Indira is India’ catchline, appears a farcical character compared to the far more formidable figure of Shah.

  In the bureaucracy, a coterie of loyalist officers runs the country today according to the prime minister’s bidding, much as they did for Indira Gandhi. But there is no equivalent of R.K. Dhawan and the extraordinary clout he wielded during the Emergency in the current Prime Minister’s Office despite the wide-ranging powers of Modi aides Nripen Misra and Ajit Doval. The President and other constitutional offices, including even the judiciary, today have the same, if not lesser, power than they did in 1975.

  There is also a striking similarity in the psyches of Indira Gandhi and Narendra Modi battling their inner demons, inadequacies and insecurities. Both consummate politicians in the rough and tumble of Indian politics, they have not cared much for constitutional niceties and liberal principles, notwithstanding the contrast between Modi’s self-proclaimed chaiwala background and Mrs Gandhi’s patrician lineage.

  Indira Gandhi was never in doubt of her own superior status within her party, especially after vanquishing the syndicate of the Congress old guard. Indeed, after her stupendous victory over Pakistan, truncating it to form Bangladesh, her megalomania reached humongous proportions. She quite believed in Atal Behari Vajpayee’s supposed description of her as Durga, although he would later deny having described her in so many words.

  Modi has in his prime-ministerial avatar modelled himself on Narendra Dev, Swami Vivekananda in posture if not in spirit. Twice as old as the swami, Modi still crosses his arms over his chest, wears turbans wherever he can, though he has continued to sport a beard. His public photographs, both as BJP candidate and political election leader, and as head of government, have copied the steely gaze into the distant future. The countryside is plastered with facsimiles of that face, beard and gaze, as images of Mrs Gandhi with her hooked nose and silver-framed coiffure once stared out at the landscape four decades ago.

  Significantly, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society movements have been prime targets of both the Emergency regime and the current dispensation. It was Mrs Gandhi who brought in the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) to harass them, taking particular delight in hounding the Gandhi Peace Foundation. Modi has gone even further, using the FCRA to control the voluntary sector across the country. Many NGOs have been forced to close down or shift to programmes that depend on the crumbs his government throws at them.

  Both leaders have used an elaborate propaganda campaign to project themselves as champions of the poor and downtrodden fighting the rich and corrupt. Indira Gandhi’s twenty-point economic programme and Narendra Modi’s various schemes, including his dramatic demonetization caper, share a pious zeal and moral one-upmanship designed to gain maximum public support. Ironically, the poor and marginalized have actually suffered the most under both regimes. During the Emergency, the real victims of forcible sterilizations and arbitrary demolition were Dalits and Muslims at the bottom of the social heap, most vulnerable to the depredations of the State. Indeed, the atrocities suffered, particularly across north India, by these previous vote banks of the Congress during the Emergency turned them against the party, which was a major reason why it was wiped out in the region in the 1977 Lok Sabha polls. Today Dalits and Muslims are once again the worst sufferers of a breakdown in law and order.

  We feel that the plight of Muslims during the Emergency and the ordeal they face in today’s highly charged communal atmosphere make for an interesting comparison. It is true that neither Indira Gandhi nor her son Sanjay was burdened by the ideological baggage that Modi and Shah, in our opinion, carry because of their long and close association with the Sangh Parivar, with its overt anti-Muslim agenda. However, there are good reasons to believe that the Emergency regime did target Muslims as a community.

  While researching the Turkman Gate story which is one of the highlights of our book, we were told by several leaders of the walled city that there appeared to be a concerted bid by the Emergency administration to scatter the concentration of Muslim residents and businessmen around Jama Masjid. Chowdhry Kaimuddin, a Muslim resident of the area, went to the extent of quoting the then Delhi Development Authority (DDA) vice chairman, Jagmohan, that he would not allow a Pakistan to be formed in the heart of the capital city.

  Although the DDA vice chairman would later vehemently deny that he made any such threat, confirmation of a certain slant in the demolition drive around Jama Masjid came from his successor, M.N. Buch, who quoted Sanjay Gandhi in an opinion piece many years later. In the article ‘The Dharmic State’ published in Boloji.com on 6 October 2002, Buch wrote:

  I still remember my days with the Delhi Development Authority shortly after the Emergency was lifted and the Janata government came to power. We had constructed shops in the Meena Bazar area of Jama Masjid and the Payenwala area of Dariba in Delhi to rehabilitate the shopkeepers who had been uprooted from there during the Emergency. The majority of them were Muslims. Sanjay Gandhi told me that we were making a mistake because removal of the s
hopkeepers during the Emergency had eradicated a potential nest of Pakistani supporters. I was horrified to hear this from the mouth of Jawaharlal Nehru’s grandson . . .

  However, there is a vast gap between the thinly veiled prejudices against Muslims displayed by a variety of officials, including the city constabulary, during the Emergency and the systematic persecution of the minority community today. No minister in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet would have dared to make such openly offensive remarks about Muslims that have now become routine, accusing virtually the entire community or anyone who presumed to speak up on its behalf of being anti-nationals who should be sent to Pakistan. Yet the concerted attempt during the Emergency to contain the minority population by targeting Muslim ghettos for forcible sterilizations or dispersing their inhabitants by bulldozing their dwellings did reflect a mindset not so different from the rulers of today. Significantly, one of the principal movers and shakers of Delhi under the Emergency, Jagmohan, joined the BJP and became a minister and so did Sanjay’s widow, Maneka, carrying along her son, Varun.

  Looking beyond ideological nuances between the Emergency regime and the present one, the stark similarity between the two is the kind of fear both spread among citizenry and the arbitrary nature of repression by the State and its cohorts. Once Indira Gandhi’s election was overturned, and she declared the Emergency on the advice of the lawyer-politician Siddhartha Shankar Ray, the savagery with which the provisions of the Emergency were rammed through made it clear she would brook no opposition. The sheer number of people who were arrested in the initial phase—many of them kept in confinement till she decided to lift the Emergency and call for elections—is unprecedented in modern political history in the democratic world.

  Today’s undeclared Emergency is felt most in the environment of fear that pervades the country. The police are once again an authority unto themselves and the Intelligence Bureau, now abetted by the National Investigation Agency, is working in a grey zone of opaqueness that has never been the case since the Emergency, or even perhaps during it. Fake encounters or extrajudicial executions are reported to be on the rise again, most notably in Uttar Pradesh where nearly fifty people have been killed and several hundred injured by the police in over 1000 encounters1 with alleged criminals in just one year after the BJP government assumed power in the state in March 2017. Opposition parties in the state have condemned many of them as fake, the National Human Rights Commission has issued notices on several of these encounters and the news website Wire documented fourteen cases of alleged extrajudicial executions by the police.