Tavleen Singh is a senior journalist, author and a well-known commentator. As a correspondent she covered political events in the subcontinent and strife torn states like Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir for various newspapers and magazines including the Telegraph, Sunday, India Today and the Sunday Times, London. She writes a popular weekly column for Indian Express besides other syndicated columns. Her recent book Durbar was very well received for its incisive commentary on Modern India. Singh was barely 25 and a young reporter at The Statesman when Indira Gandhi declared Emergency and suspended fundamental rights and imposed press censorship. In an email interview with MyIndMakers she relived that dark and shameful era of Modern India.

Ms. Singh, Do recreate the morning of June 26, 1975 for us.  How did you find out that The Emergency had been imposed? As a young reporter who had started her career just then in journalism, what was your first reaction?

There is a detailed account in my latest book Durbar. My mother told me and I rushed to the Statesman office to find my colleagues both excited and apprehensive. The editor was determined to defy press censorship and since Mrs. Indira Gandhi had forgotten that The Hindustan Times and The Statesman were not in Bahadurshah Zafar Marg she had forgotten to cut power to our offices and we were able to bring out a newspaper with blank spaces where stories had been censored.  At a personal level, I was very nervous about my future as a journalist since it had taken me a whole year to get a job after coming back from England. I had only been a reporter at the Statesman for a few weeks when the Emergency began.

Do you think The Emergency was Indira Gandhi’s unilateral decision or was she talked into it by Sanjay Gandhi and his coterie since she was at her weakest after Allahabad Court verdict?

Mrs. Gandhi was solely and wholly responsible for the decision. Sanjay Gandhi was nobody then and had no coterie. She was helped with the legal side of it by Siddhartha Shankar Ray. 

There are conflicting reports that ordinary people were actually happy with the Emergency initially. We did hear the oft repeated claims that the trains started running on time and the bureaucracy was functioning efficiently.  How long did that initial euphoria last? Or did the euphoria really exist?

Ordinary people were unaffected by the Emergency until Sanjay's family planning and slum clearance drive began. Middle class and upper middle class Indians were pleased by such things as trains running on time and government offices functioning more efficiently. There was no euphoria. There was fear. There were policemen in the streets of Delhi everywhere and a heavy, heavy sense of uncertainty and fear because nobody knew how long Mrs. Gandhi planned to suspend our fundamental rights.

The Emergency saw a bitterly divided opposition unite against Mrs Indira Gandhi. That unity did not last long but as long as they were together during the emergency, were they effective?

The opposition came together before the Emergency under Jayaprakash Narayan. But, the Janata Party was only formed after she threw opposition leaders in jail for the period of the Emergency. It was JP's anti-corruption movement that united the opposition and the failure of Mrs. Gandhi's economic policies to 'ghareebi hatao'.

 What got people finally disillusioned about the Emergency? Were there any major debates about curtailment of freedom of expression and suspension of fundamental rights? Or was the disillusionment more about consolidation of power in one individual?

There were no public debates. Journalists went to jail if they tried writing against Mrs. Gandhi and a bandarwallah was arrested in Connaught Place for saying to his monkey 'kya tu bhi indira gandhi ki tarah kursi nahin chhodegi.'

How did the Press react to Emergency at that time? Who according to you were some stalwarts who stood up against Mrs. Gandhi? Were there any prominent editors who did not stand up for freedom of press and went with the establishment?

Kuldip Nayar went to jail as did other journalists. The Statesman and the Indian Express tried to defy press censorship but the rest of the press kowtowed.

With Tavleen Singh’s permission we reproduce an excerpt of her book Durbar here. In this chapter she describes the famous Ram Lila Maidaan rally which she covered as a reporter. It is this rally where Atal Bihari Vajpayee made his famous speech after being released from the prison and it is this rally where Tavleen Singh got her first inkling that Indira Gandhi might lose the elections.

Why then had Mrs Gandhi decided that elections were necessary? The consensus in Delhi’s newsrooms was that she was deeply hurt that the Western media had taken to calling her a dictator. Mrs Gandhi rarely gave interviews to Indian journalists and treated the Indian Press with disdain but was sensitive to what the Western media said about her.

It became clear that Mrs Gandhi wanted to restore her image as a democratic leader and this could only happen if the coming elections were seen to be fair. Within days of the elections being announced most of the opposition leaders who were still in jail were released. They were no longer worth keeping in jail since nobody, not even the opposition leaders themselves, thought in January 1977 that Mrs Gandhi had the slightest chance of losing this election. Every report, even from her own intelligence agencies, indicated that she might lose a few seats but that there was no chance of a total defeat.

When the first posters appeared on Delhi’s walls announcing that a rally was to be held at the Ram Lila Maidan that would be addressed by the major Opposition leaders all of us thought it was a joke. How could they possibly hope to fill the city’s largest public park when the organisational capacities of their disparate political parties had not been tested in months? There were still six weeks to go before the election but the Opposition leaders had come out of jail demoralised and defeated. Some were recovering from the ordeal of long months of solitary confinement. Others from ailments caused by age and prison life…

In the Statesman reporters’ room the feeling was that even if the posters were genuine the rally would be a flop because people would be too scared to attend it. The Emergency was still in effect and the atmosphere of fear that the past eighteen months had created had not dissipated.

On the day of the rally even the elements seemed to be on Mrs Gandhi’s side. A thick pall of clouds hung over the city and by late afternoon it started to rain. In the reporters’ room we sat huddled gloomily around heaters debating whether there was any chance of the opposition parties being able to hold a successful political rally with so much going against them. Those of us who felt we needed to do our bit to help the Opposition parties rang everyone we knew and urged them to go to the Ram Lila grounds to show our solidarity…

On the short drive from the Statesmanoffice to Ram Lila Maidan the only thing that brought some cheer was that the thin drizzle stopped and a weak sun appeared in the sky. Neither my colleagues nor I thought that this would encourage more people to come to the Opposition rally. So when we saw large crowds of people walking towards the Ram Lila grounds we were taken aback. Someone said that it could be because there were committed Jana Sangh supporters in Delhi who would have been mobilised.

When we got to the grounds we noticed that people were streaming in from all sides and, beyond Turkman Gate, people were even sitting on rooftops. But not even this prepared us for what we saw when we got inside. There were more people than I had ever seen at a political rally. The crowd stretched all the way to the end of the Ram Lila grounds and beyond. But, unlike at public meetings in normal times, when there is always a carnival atmosphere, there was a seriousness about this rally. People talked to each other softly and sat under umbrellas or in flimsy raincoats in orderly lines on black plastic sheets that covered the wet ground. They looked like they had been waiting a long time…

It was past 9 pm and the night had got colder although the rain had stopped. I said to a colleague from the Hindustan Times that I thought people might start to leave unless somebody said something more inspirational. “Don’t worry,” he replied with a smile, “nobody will leave until Atalji speaks. Everyone here has come just to hear him.” He pointed to a small man with steel-grey hair, the last speaker that evening.
“Why?”

“Because he is the best orator in India. Have you never heard him speak?”

“No. I’ve only been in journalism since he went to jail.”

“Well, you’re in for a treat. And to hear him for the first time today will really be something.”

It was well past 9.30 pm when Atalji’s turn finally came and as he rose to speak the huge crowd stood up and started to clap. Softly, hesitantly at first, then more excitedly, they shouted, “Indira Gandhi murdabad! Atal Bihari zindabad!” He acknowledged the slogans with hands joined in a namaste and a faint smile. Then, raising both arms to silence the crowd and closing his eyes in the manner of a practiced actor, he said, “Baad muddat ke mile hain deewane.” (It has been an age since we whom they call mad have had the courage to meet.) He paused. The crowd went wild.

When the applause died he closed his eyes again and allowed himself another long pause before saying, “Kehne sunne ko bahut hain afsane.” (There are tales to tell and tales to hear.) The cheering was more prolonged, and when it stopped he paused again with his eyes closed before delivering the last line of a verse that he told me later he had composed on the spur of the moment. “Khuli hawa mein zara saans to le lein, kab tak rahegi aazadi kaun jaane?” (But first let us breathe deeply of the free air for we know not how long our freedom will last.)

The crowd was now hysterical. The clapping and shouting went on for many minutes. Atalji smiled with one hand resting on the podium, the other raised above his head and perfectly still. When he thought the applause had gone on long enough he raised both arms in the air and silence fell over the vast gathering. Yellow bulbs on long, drooping wires provided some light in the front but most of the ground was in darkness. Despite the night being so chilly, and a thin drizzle starting again, nobody left. They listened to Atalji in complete silence.

Eloquently, in simple Hindi, Atalji told them why they must not vote for Indira Gandhi. I no longer have a copy of the speech he made that night, and he spoke extempore, but I paraphrase here what I remember of it.

Freedom, he began, democratic rights, the fundamental right to disagree with those who rule us, these things mean nothing until they are taken away. In the past two years they were not just taken away but those who dared to protest were punished… The India that her citizens loved no longer existed, he said, it became a vast prison camp, a prison camp in which human beings were no longer treated as human. They were treated with such contempt that they could be forced against their will to do things that should never be done against a human being’s free will.

The Opposition leaders (he said “we”) knew that something needed to be done about India’s expanding population; they did not oppose family planning, but they did not believe that human beings could be bundled into trucks like animals, sterilised against their will and sent back. The clapping this remark evoked went on and on and on and it would be only on election day that I would understand why.

Long after Atalji finished speaking and the Opposition leaders got back into their white Ambassadors and drove off the crowds stayed as if they had collectively decided that they needed to do more than applaud a stirring speech. So when party workers appeared carrying soggy sheets in which they collected donations everyone gave something.

On that cold January night as I watched rickshaw-wallas and those who lived on a pittance from manual labour on Delhi’s streets donate what they could I got my first inkling that there was a chance Indira Gandhi could lose the election.

Image Credits: www.tavleensingh.com, Prime Minister’s Office, Government of India