From a spiteful election to a ‘total revolution’: How 1974 set the stage for the Emergency | Research News

The Congress leader’s increasing appeal was soon followed by widespread discontent about the economic situation in the country. In 1971, economists V M Dandekar and Nilkantha Rath came out with a major study titled ‘Poverty in India- Dimensions and Trends’, which concluded that 40 per cent of the rural population and 50 per cent of the urban population “lived below the poverty line, that is with diets inadequate even in terms of calories.”

In his book India After Gandhi (2017), historian Ramachandra Guha notes that other economists came out with other estimates: some put the percentage of the really poor even higher than Dandekar and Rath; others said it was slightly lower. “The economists disputed exactly how many poor people there were in India, but all agreed that there were too many – close to 200 million by even the most conservative reckoning,” writes Guha. The food situation in the country had also deteriorated with fair-price shops often running out of stocks.

The situation was even worse when it came to social reform, particularly in the education sector. Despite enormous growth in the number of colleges and expansion of professional courses such as engineering and medicine, basic education was not even close to being at desirable levels. As Guha notes, “There were more illiterates in 1972 than there were in 1947.”

The fourth Arab-Israeli war of October 1973 added a further layer of economic constraints. The Organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) doubled the price of crude oil in a punitive measure against the West, but this affected India as well. Consequently, the government passed an ordinance doubling the price of fuels.

Then there were the allegations of corruption and nepotism that started mounting soon after Indira Gandhi’s spectacular win in the 1971 elections. Her younger son, Sanjay Gandhi, would suddenly be more visible in public life. Soon after graduating from school, he started a car project in Gurgaon, the proposal for which was cleared with undue haste. In December 1972, the Opposition, pointing out the irregularities in Sanjay’s venture, demanded a debate in Parliament. The Bharatiya Jana Sangh’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee alleged that Sanjay had been allotted land, raw materials and even telephone connections at dirt-cheap rates and that Maruti Limited was in fact “Corruption Unlimited”.

From Left to right, Rajiv Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi (Wikimedia Commons)

While Indira Gandhi dismissed these allegations, there were other nepotism charges too. After the 1971 elections, Indira Gandhi sacked the chief ministers of Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh and replaced them with her favourites. Matters came to a boil in March 1973 when the government appointed Justice A N Ray as the new Supreme Court Chief Justice, overlooking three seniors. The Opposition was vociferous in its condemnation of the move. Among the many critics was Jayaprakash Narayan, a veteran leader of the Sarvodaya movement popularly known as JP. He wrote to Indira Gandhi asking if these out-of-turn promotions were intended to make the Supreme Court a “creature of the government of the day”.

Throughout the winter of 1972 and all of 1973, the Opposition staged multiple rounds of protests against rising prices, low food production and rampant corruption. Choudhary in his book notes that 1973 was widely judged to be the “worst year in India since Independence”.

It ended with yet another public spectacle, when to commemorate India’s 25th year of Independence, the government engraved a time capsule to be buried in the foreground of the Red Fort. Opposition leaders demanded to be shown the contents of the capsule, certain that it would have ignored the historical contributions of their ideological predecessors. When the government refused, Vajpayee and S N Mishra of Congress (O) showed up at the Red Fort on the morning of December 23 with pickaxes and started digging the earth. They were unsuccessful in revealing the capsule since the police arrived soon after with an arrest warrant against them on the grounds of “breach of peace”.

A students’ ‘andolan’ spreads in Gujarat

The troubles of 1974 began in Gujarat, where a severe drought and the failure of two crops in succession had caused a more than 100 per cent rise in the prices of foodgrains and cooking oil. At the same time, essential commodities started disappearing from the market. People in general, and students in particular, whose hotel bills had risen by more than 40 per cent, blamed the Congress government for the crisis.

In January 1974, the students of L D College of Engineering in Ahmedabad went on a strike and went about destroying college and hostel furniture. When the police responded with a lathi charge and made arrests, it further enraged the students. Protests spread to colleges and schools in the city. On January 10, a call for an Ahmedabad bandh saw Opposition parties, Sarvodaya workers, corporate employees and the middle class participating. Soon the agitation spread to Baroda, Surat and other towns and cities of the state. The large-scale protests were accompanied by rioting, looting and burning of shops. And the authorities responded with excessive use of force.

On January 11, the students formed the Navnirman Yuvak Samiti (Youth Organisation for Regeneration) and escalated their demands. They now wanted the resignation of the state government and a dissolution of the Assembly. With the movement spreading rapidly and finding support from several sections of civil society, the Centre was forced to ask the state government to resign and suspend, but not dissolve, the Assembly. The agitation, however, continued.

On February 11, JP visited Ahmedabad and applauded the students for the vast and successful movement. “It should be an example for the youth in other parts of the country,” he said, as cited by historian Bipan Chandra in his book In the Name of Democracy: JP Movement and the Emergency (2017). A few months later, Narayan, in his writings, noted the Gujarat andolan’s influence on him: “For years I was groping to find a way out. In fact, while my objectives have not changed I have all along been searching for the right way to achieve it….Then I saw students in Gujarat bring about a big political change with the backing of the people and the moral support of Ravishankar Maharaj (Sarvodaya leader) and I knew this was the way out.”

The final act of the agitation in Gujarat took place in March, and again in April, when Morarji Desai went on an indefinite hunger strike. Indira Gandhi was forced to dissolve the Assembly and call for fresh elections in the state in June.

Soon after, the Navnirman movement disintegrated. But it was a political watershed and was to become a model for similar movements in other parts of the country, especially the one in Bihar.

A spiteful election: Vajpayee under attack

While Gujarat simmered in revolutionary spirit, a different kind of political drama was being played out in Uttar Pradesh. The successive sweeping electoral victories by Indira Gandhi had left the Opposition feeling rather helpless. The UP elections to be held in early 1974 almost looked like a last ray of hope for the desperate Opposition. Even though the Jana Sangh had for a while toyed with the idea of collaborating with other Opposition parties, they decided to go alone and form post-electoral coalitions, if necessary.

The Jana Sangh wanted Vajpayee, who was the party’s national president at the time, to be their chief ministerial candidate. Vajpayee, however, had declined the candidature as it would have been a demotion for someone who was leading the party in Parliament at the time. Consequently, a mid-way solution was found, wherein Vajpayee would lead the campaign and the CM would be decided later.

The campaign turned unusually dramatic with mud-slinging from both ends. Vajpayee’s loyalty to the country came to be questioned, for instance, when Bombay tabloid Blitz published a story accusing him of having betrayed the 1942 Quit India Movement. As noted by Choudhary in his book, the insinuation was factually incorrect. Then there were the personal attacks. Then Uttar Pradesh chief minister Hemvati Bahuguna made aspersions on Vajpayee’s moral character by taking a dig at his personal life.

The elections drew to a close with the Congress once again emerging victorious. “By then the Opposition had concluded that there is no way they can defeat Indira through elections,” says Choudhary. A different strategy had to be devised to overpower Indira Gandhi, and a new leader as well, a role that was taken up by Jayaprakash Narayan, he adds.

‘Total revolution’: JP as a unifying force

The conditions in Bihar were ripe for a mass movement. In his book, Chandra notes that “Bihar was economically more backward and politically far worse governed as compared to Gujarat”. Apart from rising prices, shortage of essential commodities, unemployment and corruption, there also existed intense factionalism and internal feuds within the ruling Congress. Between March 1967 and March 1974, Bihar had 11 Congress and Opposition governments and witnessed three spells of President’s Rule.

By the end of 1973, Left-wing groups led by the Communist Party of India launched a series of mass demonstrations. Inspired, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Jana Sangh, along with other non-Communist student groups came together to form a united front of their own called the Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti (CSS). The group expanded rapidly, establishing branches in almost every town of the state.

Jayaprakash Narayan’s movement ended the free run of the Congress. (Source: Express photo by R K Sharma)

On March 18, 1974, the CSS marched to the Assembly in Patna. When the police responded by pushing them back, they erupted, setting fire to government buildings and newspaper offices. The clash soon spread throughout the city, and then the state, leaving several students injured and at least three dead.

Following the incident, the CSS approached JP for leadership. A veteran socialist leader and freedom fighter, Narayan had more or less resigned from politics then and for the last several years had been more involved in social agitations such as the Bhoodan and Sarvodaya movements in Bihar. He had also fought for reconciliation in Nagaland and Kashmir and discussed possible resolutions with the Naxals and the dacoits of Chambal Valley.

In March 1974 when the CSS reached out to him, JP was 71 and disappointed with the lack of outcome of the social movements he had been spearheading. “In the early seventies, he became obsessed with corruption, “public enemy number one” as he put it. The “total revolution” he had in mind was meant to sweep away corruption, and indeed politics itself, through the abolition of parties,” says history lecturer Pratinav Anil, who has authored two books on post-colonial Indian history, in an interview to indianexpress.com.

When the students reached out to him, JP was initially reluctant. He was a close friend of Jawaharlal Nehru and a well-wisher of his daughter, whom he endearingly addressed as ‘Indu’. But apart from the CSS, his old friends such as the celebrated Hindi poet Ramdhari Singh Dinkar and owner of The Indian Express, Ramnath Goenka, also persuaded him to give up his neutral stance.

Eventually, JP agreed and emerged as a unifying factor in the Bihar movement, which subsequently came to be referred to as the ‘JP movement’. Choudhary explains that Opposition parties at this point were a hodgepodge of diverse ideologies and agendas, with very little to unify them apart from the desire to overthrow the ruling Congress. “JP exerted his moral influence to bring them together,” he says.

Among the opposition, the Jana Sangh was most convinced about JP’s potential. “For it, joining forces with the other parties was a way of getting rid of the political ‘untouchability’ that had plagued Hindu nationalism since the fifties,” says Anil.

When JP agreed to lead the movement, he put forward two conditions – the first being that the movement had to be thoroughly non-violent, and secondly, that it should not be restricted to Bihar. Soon after taking over, he asked students to boycott classes, leave studies for a year, and work towards raising the consciousness of the people. Throughout the next two months, clashes and riots broke out in Bihar.

On June 5, JP led a large procession in Patna to Gandhi Maidan where for the first time he gave the call for Sampoorna Kranti or a “total revolution”. Addressing the students, he called them to action to redeem the unfulfilled promises of the Independence movement. Despite being free for 27 years, he pointed out that “hunger, soaring prices and corruption stalk everywhere”. “People are being crushed under all sorts of injustice,” he stated, as cited by Guha.

JP warned the students of the rocky road ahead but said he was convinced it would be worth it. “Gandhiji spoke of Swaraj (freedom) in one year. I speak today of a real people’s government in one year. In one year, the right form of education will emerge. Give one year to build a new country, a new Bihar,” he announced.

The JP movement was a moment of great historical significance. Its “biggest success was in bringing together a rather bizarre and incongruous set of actors into a single tent: Left and Right, socialists and princes, landlords and students,” says Anil.

Yet, scholars have also alluded to the movement’s glaring problems. “There was a lot of grand talk but with very little idea about how it was to be implemented,” says Choudhary. Anil shares the sentiment, saying, “Without a real political programme, it had no positive vision of society.”

In October 1974, R K Patil, a former Indian Civil Service officer and social worker in rural Maharashtra, wrote that there was no doubt about the popular enthusiasm generated by the movement. However, he observed, that left on their own, the crowds were less disciplined, as seen in the attack on the Assembly or the forcible removal of the Bihar governor. Guha in his book cites Patil’s observation: “By demanding the dismissal of a duly elected assembly…The Bihar agitation is both unconstitutional and undemocratic.”

Throughout the second half of 1974, JP toured the Bihar countryside, delivering fiery speeches. The movement turned personal too with Indira Gandhi and JP accusing each other through acrimonious letters. On November 1, Indira Gandhi had a long meeting with JP in New Delhi where she agreed to dissolve the Bihar Assembly on the condition that he drop the demand for the dissolution of all other state assemblies. JP refused to budge and the meeting ended on a bitter note with him handing back a stack of letters that Indira Gandhi’s deceased mother Kamala Nehru had written to his wife Prabhavati who had passed away a few days ago.

Three days later, JP was involved in a police manhandling incident in Patna. Photographs of the aged man were splashed all over the newspapers, sparking outrage across Bihar. The state’s condition was compared to the repression under the colonial authorities.

As 1974 neared its end, India’s political spectrum seemed completely polarised. As Guha observed, there were many Indians who were not part of the right wing but were critical of Indira Gandhi’s corruption and high-handedness. There were others, who were not necessarily supportive of the Congress but were not happy about JP making common cause with the Jana Sangh. “The first kind of Indian criticised Indira Gandhi with much force; the second kind criticised JP albeit with less enthusiasm,” suggested Guha.

The following year began with an assassination, that of Lalit Narayan Mishra, a key aide of Gandhi in JP’s home state Bihar. It was the beginning of a series of scathing political rhetoric, accusations, and misfortunes that would soon lead to the Emergency.

Further reading:

Abhishek Choudhary; Vajpayee: The Ascent of the Hindu Right (1924-1977); Pan Macmillan, 2023

Bipan Chandra; In the Name of Democracy: JP Movement and the Emergency; Random House, 2017

Ramachandra Guha; India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy; Pan Macmillan, 2017