Emergnecy Retold

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It was midnight on 25 June 1975, when the telephone woke me up. The caller said that he was speaking from Bhopal. Streets there were teeming with police. Could I find out why? He asked. I said sleepily I would, and he hung up. But as soon as I put the telephone down, it rang again. It was from a paper in Jullundur and the caller said that the police had seized the press and all copies of the day's paper. This was followed by a call from my office, The Indian Express, reporting that the electricity to all newspaper offices in Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, New Delhi's Fleet Street, had been cut off, and unofficial sources said that it was not likely to be restored "in the near future". Frankly I saw no connection between these events. I thought that the bureaucrats were up to their tricks once more. Many months earlier, the supply of electricity to newspaper offices in Delhi had been cut off at the time of the bus drivers' strike; it was restored only after ten hours. Perhaps the authorities did not want newspapers to report Janta Party's rally on 25 June at which Narayan had given a call for a Satyagraha.

But then came a call from Irfan Khan, then working at Everyman's, a weekly started by JP. He said that he had received reports of wholesale arrests of leaders, including JP, Morarji and Chandra Shekhar. The announcement of the emergency and censorship followed within a few hours; a nation had been trussed and gagged.

For a newsman, nothing can be more frustrating than to gather news that he knows cannot be printed. It was soon evident that the emergency operation was a "success" and it appeared that for democracy, it would be a night without end. But, however faint the hope of a dawn, the idea of keeping notes and writing a book one day came to me as I went about researching reasons for the emergency. It was hard to collect information. Such was the atmosphere of terror and intimidation, that few would talk. I did get some facts but I was arrested on 26 July. It was only after my release, seven weeks later, that I could pick up the thread again.

Even after the relaxation of the emergency on 18 January, when the elections were announced, there were few who would talk to me. But things changed after the elections and I have been able to talk to Sanjay Gandhi, R.K. Dhavan, H.R. Gokhale, Chandrajit Yadav, Ruksana Sultana, Mrs Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed and top officials in the police and other departments. All these people did not want anything attributed to them, and I have kept my promise. But they have been frank in their talks and most of the story of the emergency that I have reconstructed is based on what they told me. I approached Mrs Gandhi for an interview at least six times but she did not accede to my request.

I also travelled through most of the country twice during the emergency, once in October-November 1975 and again in the middle of 1976. On these trips I met a large number of people and collected a lot of material. I also got some "underground" publications that appeared during the 19 months of terror.

I do not claim that everything about the emergency is in this book. For one thing, it is too long a story to be told in a hundred thousand words. For another, I have not been able to check the many charges and rumours that followed the lifting of the emergency or to break through all the veils of secrecy covering the misdeeds during the emergency. But whatever is contained in the book has been checked and rechecked for veracity.

I know that certain things which I have gleaned may not be to the liking of some, and these people are likely to contradict them. I do not want to join issue with them. I have only done my job of reporting events truthfully, with malice towards none. To the best of my ability, I have remained objective.

One thing that I have observed during my tours and interviews is that, however submissive almost everyone was, very few people had accepted authoritarian rule. There was fear and obedience, but not acceptance. Who were the people who instilled that fear and why did practically no one in the government or elsewhere try to fight it? There should be an open debate on these questions.

I am thankful to S. Prakasa Rao and V. Achutha Menon, once my colleagues in The Statesman, for making useful suggestions, to Kedar Nath Pandita of The Indian Express for having read the proofs and to Amarjit Sood, my secretary, for having patiently typed and retyped the several drafts of the manuscript.