Derailment of Democracy

THERE ARE CERTAIN experiences that don’t age well. It is sometimes difficult to believe that 50 years have lapsed since the declaration of Emergency by Indira Gandhi on June 26, 1975. Many of those who played important roles either propping up or opposing the 21-month derailment of democracy in the country are no longer with us. For those who remain, memory tends to play tricks, either wilfully or because history has been rewritten to suit contemporary sensibilities.

For those familiar with the way the history of the German Occupation of France between 1940 and 1944 was chronicled, the remoulding of memory was a part of the game. Even to this day, France remains divided between those who claim to be Gaullists and those who regarded Marshal Pétain as a national hero, without whose intervention the French experience of German rule would have been more bitter. The novel The Propagandist by the French novelist Cécile Desprairies is an amusing account of how a group of women reinvented their wartime experiences to suit post-War realities.

My friend, the late Patrick French, had a very wicked perception of the past. “How come,” he once asked publicly, “everyone’s family participated in the freedom struggle? Who, in that case, supported British rule?” I was one of the few who found his observation funny. But that is because in my family, there were divided loyalties. The paternal side of my lineage were ardent nationalists, khadi-wearing Congress loyalists, some of whom (including my great-grandmother) were jailed for participating in Mahatma Gandhi’s movements. A branch of my grandmother’s family who lived in Chittagong (alas, now in Bangladesh) were deeply involved in the Chittagong armoury raid and other armed attacks on British officials. The maternal side of my family— they owned a small zamindari in the Hooghly district and hosted one of the oldest Durga Pujas dating back to Mughal times—were unabashed loyalists. My grandfather was awarded a CBE for his work in preparing the first Companies Act of India. He died at a very early age of diabetes in 1943. My mother’s unending lament was that my grandfather didn’t live long enough to secure a knighthood. For Bengalis of a certain generation, adding Sir as a prefix was the highest possible honour. Therefore, while Rabindranath Tagore relinquished his knighthood in protest over the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh, others proudly flaunted this award from the King-Emperor without the slightest hint of ignominy.

The reason for circumnavigating the globe to address the selective amnesia over Emergency is simple: history is invariably written by the victors. Therefore, regardless of the Janata Party messing up its resounding mandate in 1977 and Indira Gandhi returning to power triumphantly in 1980, Emergency stands condemned in the court of history. Even die-hard Congress loyalists who would have been expected to defend everything and anything connected with the Nehru-Gandhi family, are somewhat squeamish over Emergency, some even privately admitting it to be an unfortunate error of the otherwise great Indira. For their part, the anti-Congress parties never lose any opportunity of reminding people of the great derailment of democracy. Terms such as “undeclared Emergency” and “second Emergency” are bandied about liberally to describe anything that seems remotely high-handed.

The comparisons are mostly unwarranted. There is an imperious and authoritarian streak in almost every otherwise democratic leader. This may be a function of either exasperation/ frustration or a belief that Indians love a strong leader. That Indira Gandhi reacted in exasperation and detected conspiracies to unseat her is undeniable. What, however, prompted the dictatorial impulses of the civil servants, the judges, the diplomats and the intellectuals? Many of them reinvented themselves post-1977 but it is worth asking the question: What if the electorate had reaffirmed its faith in Congress at the election, as Indira Gandhi expected it to? The constitutional order governing India would have been changed unrecognisably, and India would have become imitations of countries such as Syria, Egypt and Indonesia. The intellectual ammunition for this political perversion would have been provided by the pro-Moscow intellectuals who lived on holidays by the Black Sea and other courtiers of the first family who took pride in their intellectual sophistication. These included the likes of BK Nehru and the entire Kashmiri Brahmin cabal.

A reason why we should always remember the little details of who did what during Emergency is because the country came precariously close to becoming yet another debased Third World country. We escaped narrowly in 1977, but that is no reason to believe that the gods will always smile on us.

1975 EmergencyCécile DesprairiesideologyIndian politicsIndira Gandhi