The anti-Indira Movement of the 70s

CNN-IBN's recent show 'The Greatest Indian after Gandhi' shed some light on the forgotten heroes of this country. While watching the show, I was discussing the anti-emergency politics with a friend. I was shocked that she was completely unaware of the heroes of the emergency era politics.

After the Bangladesh triumph in 1971, Indira Gandhi hailed as 'Goddess Durga', storms into power with a massive mandate. After this huge victory, she becomes increasingly autocratic, dismantling the old Nehruvian Congress party structure and filling the party at all levels and ministries with sycophants who are personally loyal to her. The Congress party to this day is struggling to come out of this problem. Ironically, her very landslide victory in 1972 sets the clock ticking for her downfall and the rise of the Janata movement.

Raj Narain, who had been defeated by Indira in the parliamentary elections, lodged cases of election fraud against Gandhi in the Allahabad High Court. On 12 June 1975, the High Court found the PM Indira guilty of misuse of the government machinery for electoral purposes, declared her election null and also banned her from contesting any election for 6 years.

Midnight of July 25-26, 1975, the then President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, a 'rubber-stamp' appointee signed a proclamation of internal emergency merely based on a letter from his boss PM Indira in which she says there is an imminent danger to India's security by inernal factors. What followed were 21 months of the darkest period in independent India. With fundamental rights suspended, press censorship imposed, and opposition leaders in jail, Indira ruled the country like a dictator.

Jayaprakash Narayan emerges out of retirement as the staunch critic of autocracy and with the slogan 'Dilli ki rani dekho janta kiske saath hai' calls for 'Total Revolution'. George Fernandes leads a national railway strike which the government crushes through 20000 arrests. The government issues order to arrest the opposition leaders all over the country.

In 1977, four main opposition parties and numerous other cultural and political organisations come together to form the 'Janata Party' under the over reaching appeal of the anti-emergency crusader Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan. Morarji Desai becomes the first party president, Ramakrishna Hegde the party general secretary and LK Advani the party spokesperson. Even though Indira travelled the length and breadth of the nation, the newly formed Janata Party won a sweeping victory and was able to form the first non-Congress government at the centre.

Janata Party and its allies had swept North India, almost 330 seats out of 542. Indira and her son Sanjay both suffered humiliating defeats in their constituencies. One could finally travel from Calcutta to Amritsar without traversing an inch of Congress-ruled territory.

India and the world had welcomed the outcome of the 1977 election as a "revolution by the ballot-box". Within 34 months of it coming to power, the Janata government fell under its own weight due to the clashing ambitions of its leaders mainly Morarji Desai, Jagjivan Ram and Charan Singh. Though Janata Party was in power for just 2 and odd years, it had far-reaching consequences. It uprooted the Congress' supremacy in several states and forever diminishing the hold of Congress party over the Indian polity. The Janata movement also brought thousands of young men and women into politics and many of whom go on to become PMs, CMs and regional satraps changing the Indian political landscape forever further democraticising India. But it is an irony and also shocking that many of them who were trained in JP's stables and those who climbed the political ladder through the Janata movement are now either Congress' direct allies or externally supporting the utterly corrupt and incompetent Congress led UPA-2. These leaders by their actions actually despise the very ideas JP once stood for. I only wish these leaders stand together again and call for a second 'Total Revolution' in 2014.