Sunday Snippets
By Venkatesh Raghavan
I have a hazy recollection of the post-Emergency period immediately after the Indian Express hit the stands with their front-page news penned by Kuldip Nayar that the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had decided to conduct polls very soon. I had just reached my high-school years. Though political awareness in our school batch was somewhat low, I used to hang on to every story that got published in the Indian Express. Shortly before the poll dates, there was a story about Sanjay Gandhi escaping unhurt in his jeep while traveling through Amethi despite five bullets being fired at the vehicle from close quarters.
On the day of declaration of results, there was a stream of mass hysteria, with people crowding around radios at street-side business houses on hearing about the massive rout of the Indian National Congress in the various northern states. In fact, I remember the next day’s morning papers carrying the photos of both Indira Gandhi and Raj Narayan. It was captioned ‘Raj Carter Narayan defeated Indira Ford Gandhi’. It was obviously a reference to what happened in the then US presidential elections, in which Jimmy Carter had defeated Gerard Ford.
1977 Indian general election
The euphoria did not halt even after the government formation. In the financial hub, Bombay, all the six seats had gone in favour of the opposition candidates fielded by the Janata Party in alliance with the Communists including Ahilya Ranganekar and Miinal Gore. Subramanium Swamy got elected from Bombay and there was a lot of talk about how he escaped from Parliament and found shelter in a Western democracy till the announcement of polls.
The new prime minister, Morarji Desai, who was just past his seventies addressed the nation over All India Radio in his inaugural speech. I recall his repartee about his being aged. He said, “I was born on February 29. My birthday comes only once in four years. Judging by that, I am still in my late teens.” There was loud bursting of crackers across the city and also people chanting ribald slogans against the losing Congress candidate, veteran HR Gokhale from Bombay.
However, the in-depth narrative struck me only during my school summer vacation that year. I got to read Kuldip Nayar’s book, Judgment. The narrative began with how the Allahabad High Court had pronounced Mrs. Gandhi’s election void from Rae Bareli. This had led to an urgent SOS call to her staunch supporters in the party and with scant notice Emergency was clamped on the entire nation. This had happened in the last week of June, 1975. Further, Nayar provided an in-depth account of how inhuman tortures had taken place in jail custody. This included the cases of Snehalata Reddy and Rajan Nair. The graphic details that included their being forced to drink their own urine sent shudders down my spine. There was also detailed mention of forcible demolitions that took place in Delhi’s slum areas besides many males from the northern belt including those from Muslim families getting forcibly sterilized.
However, owing to the inexperience of handling power and also multiple persons aspiring for the Prime Minister’s post, the Janata government could not last beyond a mere two-and-a-half years. When mid-term polls were announced for the Lok Sabha, I recall a political speech delivered by South-based master satirist, Cho Ramaswamy, at Central Bombay’s Matunga area. Cho spoke bi-lingual, both in Tamil and English. His brief witty comment was, “Tamilians say what difference does it make if Ram rules or Ravan rules? However, Mrs. Gandhi’s stint as Prime Minister made it look as if Hanuman was ruling.”
