There is no greater indictment of the top Congress leadership than the fact that a single person without the backing of a private army was able to impose the emergency in utter violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the Constitution. Such a thing could never have been possible if the party leadership had the nerve to resist it.
Even after Mrs. Gandhi had arrested thousands of opposition leaders and workers without any legitimate reason on the night of June 25, 1975, the cabinet could have opposed the declaration of the emergency and insisted on convincing evidence to show that the political situation called for such a drastic step. Nothing at all could have happened to the ministers. For Mrs. Gandhi could not have arrested them without running the grave risk of forfeiting the very legitimacy she greatly valued. As things were, she had neither decided nor was in a position to stage a coup. Indeed, a strong president by himself could have stopped her in her tracks by refusing to sign the proclamation which had to be issued in his name.
Many ministers, including some fairly senior members of the cabinet, have said that they were too stunned to act. Perhaps they were. But that does not speak well of their political courage or acumen. They had sufficient reason to fear that Mrs Gandhi was preparing to take certain unconstitutional steps which would dispose of the question of her obligation to resign in view of the Allahabad High Court’s judgment and the Supreme Court’s refusal to give her an unqualified stay.
Warning
For, even if the officially-sponsored rallies outside her residence and her highly-strung speeches were not warning enough, she had delivered the message in the Supreme Court through her counsel, Mr. N.A. Palkhivala, who had said on specific instructions from her that the consequences of its refusal to grant her an absolute stay would be dangerous and far-reaching.
The top Congress leaders’ acquiescence in so dangerous a step as the proclamation of the emergency and the arrest, both before and after it, of thousands of innocent men and women, who had not violated any law of the land, is, of course, a case by itself. Nothing else in the long history of the party, either before or after independence, can bear comparison with it. But it is also a fact that in New Delhi, Congress ministers have since the time of Sardar Patel’s death in 1950, acted largely as individuals interested solely in their own prospects. Neither under Mr. Nehru from 1951 to 1959 nor under Mrs. Gandhi from 1977 till the time of her exit, have like-minded persons among them been willing to come together and to press their point of view. Indeed, this inability or reluctance or both of responsible men to act responsibly, is the source of the trouble culminating in the emergency and the growth of an extra-constitutional centre of power which was potentially even more dangerous.
Mr. Nehru towered above other Congress leaders on account of his ability to draw large crowds and catch votes. But since he respected senior colleagues like Mr. Govind Ballabh Pant, Maulana Azad and Mr. B. C. Roy, and essential features of democracy like the freedom of the press, the independence of the judiciary and the inviolability of the constitution, there was no danger of subversion of democracy so long as he was around. But in Mrs. Gandhi’s case, it should have been obvious even to her supporters at the time of the Congress split in 1969 that unless they developed the capacity to consult each other and act in concert they would be rendered wholly ineffective. But they did nothing of the kind.
Failure
Some basic causes lay behind this failure. Congressmen have, for instance, grown up in the dual tradition of obedience to the chief leader and of factional infighting at the state level on the basis of caste or region or some other consideration of personal gain. They have not, as a rule, been used to discussing issues on their merit. Indeed, persons inclined to debate policies have been considered inconvenient in the party, dubbed as ideologues and discouraged. The leftists alone were non-conformists in the Gandhian era and once they had left by 1945 only the conformists remained in the organisation. Except for the clash over Mr Krishna Menon in 1962 and over the selection of the party nominee for presidentship in 1969, both non-policy issues, one can at best cite only a couple of instances in recent years when the Congress party has engaged in a serious internal debate. Congressmen have merrily endorsed socialism and sabotaged modest land reforms at the same time.
This conformism has often been confused with consensus. But a consensus must by definition be preceded by debate which has been conspicuous by its absence in the case of the Congress party. By and large party leaders have tended to conform to the views of the leader on the one hand, and to social compulsions on the other. That is why men who were devoted to Sardar Patel when he was alive, cheerfully endorsed socialism, at least on paper, four years later at Avadi. Similarly, Mrs. Gandhi faced no difficulty with the party when after seven years of cooperation in whatever measure with the CPI, she suddenly adopted an anti-CPI stance last December. The party could have gladly gone to the polls on an anticommunist platform, utterly unmindful of the fact that the CPI had helped it consistently since 1969.
But any analysis of the behaviour of the Congress leadership before, on and after June 26, 1975, must also take note of two other points. Mrs. Gandhi had waged a war of nerves against some of the senior Congress leaders with the help of the so-called left in the party and some journals and she had armed herself with extra-ordinary powers since 1969. If democracy is to survive, it is absolutely necessary that such a tiling must never be allowed to happen again.
Once she had managed to place her nominees, by adoption if not free choice, in the presidential palace and retain the support of an overwhelming majority in the Congress parliamentary party in 1969, she began to concentrate powers in her hands. As a first step she decided to shift Mr. Y.B. Chavan from the home ministry and deprive it of control over the intelligence services, augment them greatly and place them under her direct control, though in name they were made accountable to the cabinet secretariat. The revenue intelligence was not formally taken out of the charge of the finance ministry but in fact it took orders from the Prime Minister’s secretariat in South Block and at 1, Safdarjung Road, New Delhi. Last year, incidentally, the finance minister was divested of revenue and banking and revenue intelligence placed under the charge of the minister of state known to belong to the Sanjay court.
It is difficult to say whether Mrs. Gandhi was herself the architect of these moves or some subsequent victim or victims of her power revised these for her. But that is immaterial. The pertinent fact is that the change in the control over the country’s intelligence agencies placed enormous powers in the hands of the prime minister, vis-à-vis her cabinet and party colleagues and that without these she might not have been in a position to impose the emergency.
Coalition
Since the Janata Party is and is likely to remain essentially a coalition of fairly strong and well-defined constituents and strong characters will be present in the cabinet, there is little danger that the next prime minister can amass the kind of power that Mrs. Gandhi had amassed. Even so, it is necessary to restore old norms and safeguards. Thus the intelligence services must go back to the home ministry and the revenue intelligence put exclusively under the charge of the finance ministry.
It is also no secret that paramilitary forces and intelligence services have expanded greatly in recent years to the detriment of the people’s liberty. They should be trimmed which, by the way, may also add to their efficiency.
Several other steps taken before and during the emergency need to be reversed. One of these is the formation of the Samachar. It must be wound up not only because it has thoroughly disgraced itself by dishing out false and fabricated reports but also, indeed mainly, because it is necessary to have competing news services. Similarly, intelligence men cannot have any place in the information ministry. And it is vital to make sure that no individual is ever again in a position to deny advertisement to newspapers on behalf of public sector undertakings or bully and blackmail proprietors and editors. These measures are as essential as the repeal of the notorious 42nd amendment to the Constitution and the Prevention of Publication of Objectionable Matters Act.
The Times of India, 24 March 1977