The Emergency And The Sangh
By Arvind Rajagopal
The Hindu
13 June, 2003The Emergency rendered the Jana Sangh, the BJP's predecessor, respectable, and paved the way for it to enter the mainstream of Indian politics.
AS THE 28th anniversary of the Emergency arrives, we can expect the BJP and its allies to reminisce about the loss of civil liberties under Indira Gandhi, and compliment themselves on overthrowing her despotic rule. It is ironic that a party with a deplorable record of human rights violations gets this annual opportunity to boast about its involvement in a nationwide struggle for democracy. But it should be remembered that the RSS was marginal at best during the anti-colonial struggle. The main focus of the Sangh was on "organising Hindu society" - against Muslims, Christians and communists, but not against the British Raj. Hence, the Emergency is its better-late-than-never event, and its substitute for the independence movement.
Indeed, the RSS literature describes the Emergency as the "second freedom struggle", with the Sangh at the head of it. The struggle of others in opposing the Emergency, in this account, was a mere indulgence on the part of the Sangh; it was the RSS that saved democracy. The role of peoples' movements is erased here; the Sangh itself is the people, instead. This claim deserves attention.
The Emergency is a frequently-invoked, but little-examined period of Indian history. Most discussions of it centre on Indira Gandhi's
authoritarian personality and the damage to democratic institutions at that time. Of course, the Congress was voted out of office in 1977, and this is rightly taken as proof that voters will not
tolerate prolonged abuse of power. But the RSS now declares that it was responsible for this democratic upsurge. The Emergency, in fact, rendered the Jana Sangh, the BJP's predecessor, respectable, and paved the way for it to enter the mainstream of Indian politics. In L.K. Advani's words, it changed what he called the "untouchable" status of the Jana Sangh in politics.What changed? It is helpful briefly to recollect the immediate events that led to the Emergency. On June 12, 1975, the Allahabad High Court ruled in favour of Raj Narain and against Indira Gandhi, declaring her 1971 parliamentary election in Rae Bareilly null and void because of electoral malpractice. Meanwhile, the ABVP-led Nav Nirman movement
in Gujarat and the Sampoorna Kranti agitation led by Jayaprakash Narayan (J.P.) in Bihar had made an impact in those States. Indira Gandhi appealed to the Supreme Courtfor an absolute stay order against the High Court judgment. On June 24, the Supreme Court granted her a conditional stay, depriving her of voting rights in the Lok Sabha, but allowing her to continue as Prime Minister. On June 25, J.P. and other Opposition leaders, including Morarji Desai, held a public rally at the Ram Lila grounds in Delhi where they declared that Indira Gandhi should resign; they urged the people to join them in a non-cooperation movement. The following morning, Indira Gandhi announced a national Emergency assumed in view of "threats to national security". The Nav Nirman and the J.P. movements were
described as among the threats to national stability, though these
movements might, in fact, have already peaked by April or May 1975. Opposition leaders were arrested, censorship was imposed, and a ban was soon announced on grassroots organisations, including the RSS and 13 of its cover organisations.In the propaganda accompanying the Emergency, secularism and
socialism were the watchwords of Indira Gandhi's Government. It was at this time that India came to be declared as a sovereign,
socialist, secular, democratic republic, with `socialist' and
`secular' being added by her. Campaigns for discipline and
productivity were instituted, including Indira Gandhi's 20-point
programme, but what became most controversial was Sanjay Gandhi's five-point programme. Two of those five points were mainly pursued, namely, sterilisation campaigns, aimed disproportionately at Muslims, and urban "beautification" drives beginning at settlements in the Jama Masjid area in Delhi. The backlash against these campaigns was widespread. Not surprisingly, after the Emergency, both ruling and opposition parties increasingly came to distance themselves from using the word `secularism,' regardless of who was in power. Indira Gandhi herself, when she returned to power in 1980, began to cultivate the Hindu vote. She herself accepted the invitation to launch the VHP's `Ekatmata Yatra', also called the `Ganga jal yatra', in 1983; this was the VHP's first mass contact programme, and confirmed that Hindu ritual and symbolism could be effectively utilised for popular mobilisation. It was following the success of this campaign that the VHP launched the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation.The importance of the Emergency in the growth of the RSS needs to be emphasised because it helps place Hindutva in a wider historical process rather than in a timeless world of fanaticism. With the Opposition leaders in jail (and a section of the parliamentary Left supporting the Emergency), the RSS was, besides the CPI (M), one of the major grassroots organisations with a national reach. Among other things, it played a significant role in the production and distribution of underground literature. An all-India weekly news bulletin, Lok Sangharsh, in English and Hindi, and another local bulletin, Jana Vani, began to be produced in mid-July 1975. It was duplicated in ten centres in Delhi and distributed in the thousands in adjoining States. Opposition members' speeches in the emergency session of Parliament in July 1975 were printed in Hindi and English, as well as pamphlets about the RSS' role in the Opposition. The Delhi
News Bulletin, started by the RSS a few months after the Emergency, was sent to all State capitals, and this process was repeated at the district levels.Complicating this elaborate documentation of the RSS'
counter-propaganda work, however, was the abject attitude of the RSS chief, Balasaheb Deoras, in his letters to Indira Gandhi from
Yeravada Jail. Deoras promised that his organisation would be at the disposal of the Government "for national uplift" if the ban on the RSS were lifted and its members freed from jail. How is it that the leader of the "second freedom struggle" seemed prepared to betray the people for so small a price as his release? Again, the RSS literature makes it clear that it did not even want to ask for lifting of the ban because "it could put off Indira (and) make her refuse all other demands as well, thus closing all avenues to a solution". Is it possible to imagine such an organisation at the head of a democratic struggle?In the RSS' own account of the Emergency, Apatkaleen Mein Sangharsh Gatha (1978), translated into English in 1991, although there are numerous anecdotes about covert encounters between underground activists, and literature circulated, there is a striking paucity of signs of a movement in conventional terms - large gatherings, collective action, clashes with police, specific advances made, etc. As per existing records, RSS activists spent the time of the Emergency networking with each other and with other activists, and publishing counter-propaganda. This is now taken as representing the nation itself, in a "second freedom struggle". We have nothing approaching a comprehensive history of the Emergency, but what the above suggests is that the RSS is trying to fabricate an account of democratic struggle that exists mainly in its own records. But as a matter of its own orientation, the impact on the RSS was considerable. From being a deeply self-absorbed organisation focussed mainly on `shakha' and character-building, the RSS began to realise that popular mobilisation was a short-cut to political power. Among other things, this reflected the reality after independence: with the
taint of the Gandhi assassination, the RSS was truly a political
outcaste. But after the Emergency, acquiring political power came within reach. The rest, as they say, is history.(The writer teaches anthropology at the New York University.)