Truth & Emergency

A new book on Jayaprakash Narayan's days as a prisoner in Chandigarh fills a major void in the literature on the Emergency.

THE Emergency which Indira Gandhi imposed on the country on June 26, 1975, was much more than an assault on the Constitution, on democracy and on the rule of law. It was, in truth, a war on her own people. She refused to face their mounting resentment at the corruption and arbitrary governance she promoted actively. Her opponents, bar one, were small men who detested one another more than they did the Prime Minister. Small wonder that they fell apart once they came to power in 1977 under the flag of the Janata Party. Credit for that accomplishment in unity belongs to the solitary exception, Jayaprakash Narayan.

It was an important phase in our recent history. Not surprisingly, not one definitive and objective account has yet been written. What we have, instead are denunciations by opponents and, after a period of recovery of nerve, apologias by supporters. JP himself has been either lauded or denounced. This truly great man can well do with a careful scrutiny of his record since 1971, to go no further. He did not understand Indira Gandhi. She had little respect for him or, for that matter, for any one else. Her insecurities made her reckless and callous. But, JP's mistakes, ideological and tactical, were enormous. He did not understand the political situation or the forces that were at play. Some people exploited him. He drifted and could not direct, let alone control, the forces he had let loose. A sensitive man, JP was stricken with remorse. He acted as his conscience dictated, but did not reckon with the realities.

Devasahayam's book fills a major void in the literature on the Emergency. He was District Magistrate and Inspector-General, Prisons, in Chandigarh. JP was lodged in the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) there after his arrest in New Delhi. Like Gandhi and the Congress leaders in 1942, no one anticipated the arrests. A warm relationship developed between the prisoner in PGIMER and his custodian. JP confided freely to the author. Texts of JP's letters to the Prime Minister and to Sheikh Abdullah are appended. We have a record of the olive branches JP held out. More, we have an authoritative account of the deterioration in JP's health from which he never recovered. He died in 1979. Indira Gandhi showed less concern for JP's health than Amery and Linlithgow did for Gandhi's.

There are useful nuggets of information, such as this: "When I told him that many RSS/Jan Sangh activists detained under MISA [Maintenance of Internal Security Act] were tendering unconditional apology and were resigning from their party in order to get released, he said that they must be gutless and dishonest persons and whatever party they may join, they would only end up as traitors." Baba Adhav witnessed the same betrayal by the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh men in Maharashtra. Its supremo, Balasahab Deoras, wrote cringing letters to the Prime Minister and to the Sarkari saint Vinoba Bhave.

B.N. Tandon, then Joint Secretary in the Prime Minister's Secretariat, battered his credibility by what he wrote in the first volume (vide the writer's review, "The betrayal of India"; Frontline, January 17, 2003). R.K. Dhawan's publication on November 22, 2002, of Tandon's letter to him on June 8, 1982, seeking re-employment by a Prime Minister he detested, destroyed what little was left of it. There were some useful disclosures that were true - P.N. Haksar's improper effort to suborn Judges of the Supreme Court in the election case. His evidence was disbelieved by Justice J.M.L. Sinha. This volume has its own bits of information to impart. They must be assessed with care.

Professor Amalendu Guha, a historian, published the first edition of this work in 1977. Before long it went out of print. The publishers deserve thanks for bringing out a revised edition. In his Introduction to the revised edition, the author replies to critics of the first edition but makes it evident, as he did in large parts of the first edition, that he finds emotional polemics irresistible. Sample this: "Rather than the Congress, it is the Socialists and Communists who are to blame for their inability, so far, to head a coalition of the toiling classes to usher in a people's democracy in India." This is politics, not history. The volume is useful for the material it contains.