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It was only a little more than a year ago, in March 1977, that
Indira Gandhi got her comeuppance from the people of India at
the ballot box. Already the memory of Mrs. Gandhi's excesses during
the 21 months of her dictatorship are fading as a new Prime Minister
(Morarji Desai) strives to return a nation of 600 million people
to an even keel—and restore the democracy this daughter of
the great Pandit Nehru so callously shelved.
Mrs. Gandhi's descent into tyranny was swift, unexpected, tragic.
One moment, it seemed, she was the popular "Mother India"
figure who had led the nation to quick victory in the 13-day war
against Pakistan in December 1971—the war that brought Bangladesh
into being. Earlier that same year she had won an overwhelming
mandate at the polls. Between then and 1975, she was to become
the shrewd politician leaders of her own Congress Party consistently
underestimated until she dominated them all. India was Indira’s.
Then suddenly, incredibly, in 1975 she was in deep trouble—convicted
of violations of election laws during her personal 1971 campaign.
On June 12 her 1971 election win in Rae Bareli, her home constituency
in the state of Uttar Pradesh, was declared null and void by Allaha-bad
High Court, making her technically ineligible to be Prime Minister.
On June 23 one Supreme Court judge (all the others being away
on vacation) granted her a constitutional stay, allowing her to
remain as Prime Minister but not to vote on Parliament or draw
salary—still an untenable position. On June 25 all major
opposition parties except the pro-Soviet wing of the Communist
Party of India announced civil disobedience campaigns to force
her resignation. Indira Gandhi saw all her plans, all her work
for India, as well as her personal future in jeopardy. A deep-seated
dreadfully stubborn Indian insistence on justice had caught up
with her. Her choice was to obey the rules and step down—or
suspend the rules and keep going. Indira chose the latter.
Correspondents ousted
So at dawn on June 26 she struck back. She imposed Emergency
Rule which clamped censorship on the critical domestic press,
ousted most foreign correspondents, suspended civil liberties,
slapped thousands of political opponents into jail without trial,
and changed the face of India for over a year and a half.
Then, in Orwellian fashion, she set out to rehabilitate her
image. On Aug. 5 a thoroughly cowed Parliament retroactively validated
her 1971 election win. On Nov. 7 the Supreme Court unanimously
upheld her appeal against the June 12 ruling. On Dec. 19 a final
appeal against this ruling was dismissed. Mrs. G. had successfully
covered her 1971 tracks.
But the seeds of her 1977 rejection nevertheless had been sown.
Her heritage made her an uneasy, flawed dictator. Moreover, she
yearned for another mandate at the polls, some reassurance that
the people approved her lonely actions. But she miscalculated.
She apparently thought poor Indian villagers in their teeming
millions had not noticed the changes. She thought middle-class
urban Indians rather sanctioned her tightening-up process. She
called the 1977 election hoping for endorsement. But instead the
system turned her and her party out—legally, irrefutably.
Freedoms set aside
Fortunately there are Indians of the perception of Ved Mehta
to penetrate Indira's curtain of silence and chronicle those unusual
days. (Author V. S. Naipaul is another.) Mr. Mehta's latest work
is a series of brief, incisive essays that catch the heartbeat
of India under Indira's emergency. The stupefaction at first.
The slow but intense anger at the realization that this respected
woman actually had dared to set aside freedoms and ideals achieved
as such cost by past leaders under whose shadow she had grown
up. Outrage at the blatant nepotism that pushed son Sanjay and
his schemes to the fore.
Mr. Mehta feels passionately too, as he explains what happened.
His chapters are like letters, full of vignettes, conversations,
headlines, color.
Yet this is not a book for light weekend reading. There are
paragraphs over a page long. No pictures or illustrations enliven
the text. The New India
is aimed at those seriously interested in India, Indira Gandhi,
what went wrong, and how the emergency was terminated. But it
is a powerful, discerning indictment from an Indian born American
resident. Mrs. Gandhi's downfall, says the author with evident
relief, was the most hopeful sign in recent years for the growth
of democracy in a poor country.
Ved Mehta’s “new” India began with the June,
1975, emergency. India again changed course radically in 1977.
Do we now have a new “new” India—or perhaps the
old one before Mrs. G.'s coup? Actually, the terminology matters
little. What matters is that India found the inner resources to
throw off Indira's reign of tyranny. Future leaders, please note.
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