State of emergency in India 1975–1977

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On June 25, 1975 was Prime Minister Indira Gandhi the state of emergency in India proclaim (English under the name The Emergency known). The state of emergency existed for 21 months until March 21, 1977. During this time, basic rights such as freedom of the press were abolished or restricted, numerous opposition members were imprisoned and the prime minister largely ruled by decree. The time of the state of emergency is one of the most controversially discussed periods in recent Indian history . In the parliamentary elections held in March 1977 , the Congress party led by Indira Gandhi suffered a heavy defeat, the first major defeat in its history, which marked the end of the state of emergency.

prehistory

Jawaharlal Nehru, first Prime Minister of independent India and father of Indira Gandhi

After India gained independence from British colonial rule in 1947 , the Indian National Congress, which had been the main promoter of the nationwide independence movement, established itself as the leading ruling party. In the all-India parliamentary elections in the first years of independence, the Congress Party won between 50 and 75% of the constituencies and parliamentary seats. The largest opposition parties were the communists, socialist parties, Hindu nationalists and the Swatantra party , all of which, however, only followed the Congress party by a long way. The electoral successes of the Congress party were favored by the current relative majority voting system, which meant that because of the fragmentation of the opposition, Congress Party candidates were usually able to win their constituency even if they only got around 30% of the total vote.

The largely undisputed political leader during this period was Jawaharlal Nehru , the former comrade and companion of Mahatma Gandhi . After the relatively surprising death of Nehru in 1964, there was a power vacuum in the Congress party and it was initially unclear who would take the lead. Gulzarilal Nanda took over the post of prime minister for only a few days and was then replaced by Lal Bahadur Shastri , who essentially continued Nehru's policy (internal state socialism, non-alignment in foreign policy). Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi, was also appointed Minister of Telecommunications and Broadcasting in the Shastri government . After Shastri's death, which was also relatively surprising, at the Tashkent Conference in 1968, at which he signed an agreement to end the Second Indo-Pakistani War , Indira Gandhi was elected as the new leader of the Congress Party. Her main opponent was Morarji Desai from the conservative wing of the Congress party.

In the following years, Indira's politics moved clearly in the direction of the left political spectrum. In 1969, important banks were nationalized and the pension payments to the former Indian princes (privy purse) , which they had received as compensation for the surrender of their lands to the Indian Republic, were suspended. Finally, Indira Gandhi fell out with the other leaders of the Congress party on various political issues, so that she was expelled from the Congress party in 1969 by the party president S. Nijalingappa . The power-conscious Indira then gathered her supporters behind her and the majority of the Congress Party MPs followed her, so that the Congress Party is divided into a smaller Indian National Congress (Organization) ( "Congress (O)" ) and a larger Congress (R) - the latter under the leadership of Indira - split. Both factions claimed to be the legitimate successors of the old Congress party. In the 1971 national elections , Indira's Congress won a landslide victory and won 352 of the 520 parliamentary seats, while the Congress (O) with top candidate Morarji Desai only won 51 seats. It was then clear who had succeeded the old Congress party, and the suffix “(R)” was omitted from now on.

After the 1971 general election

Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister

The new Congress Party under the leadership of Indira could only be compared to a limited extent with the old Congress Party, in which there had been a considerable pluralism of opinions and an intra-party democracy. In Indira's Congress, decisions were often made centrally, often not in the Prime Minister's cabinet but in her office, in which her chief advisor and secretary PN Haksar played a central role, surrounded by a small circle of advisors, often from Kashmiri - Brahmin Origin were the so-called "Kashmiri Mafia" by critics. In the course of her term of office, the Prime Minister repeatedly made lonely decisions with which she surprised or shocked her close advisers. The lower ranks of the party realized that their advancement within the party depended largely on the favor of Indira, and so a pronounced personality cult and obedience to the party leader developed. At the height of her influence, the prime minister was able to appoint hand-picked individuals she trusted as chief ministers in the states, while the Congress party that should have chosen these officials was demoted to "nodding off" the decisions of Indira. The president of the Congress Party Dev Kant Barooah reached a peak of personalization and centering on a single person in 1974 with his slogan Indira is India and India is Indira (“Indira is India and India is Indira”) and his declaration that “India can do without opposition can, the opposition is irrelevant to the history of India ”( India can do without an opposition; the opposition is irrelevant to the history of India ).

The charismatic prime minister enjoyed considerable veneration among the common strata of the population. She was partly seen as Indira Amma , the personification of Mother India and partly even portrayed as a Hindu deity or Empress of India. With their populist election slogan Garibi Hatao! ("Eradicate Poverty!") By 1971 she had promised the underprivileged a better life. From December 3 to 16, 1971, the war with Pakistan broke out under her government , which ended with the independence of East Pakistan under the name of Bangladesh . On May 18, 1974, the first Indian atomic bomb exploded at the Pokhran test site in the Thar desert in Rajasthan . These demonstrations of Indian strength increased Indira Gandhi's popularity.

Permanent conflicts with the courts and resistance to the politics of Indira

However, the socialist policy of Indira also met with resistance. In particular, there was an ongoing conflict between the Prime Minister and the higher courts of India. In a fundamental judgment in the Golaknath v. State Of Punjab (plaintiff Golaknath against the state of Punjab ), which involved the expropriation of the landowners family Golaknath, ruled in 1967 the Indian Supreme Court (Supreme Court of India) in favor of the plaintiff that the Indian Constitution enshrined fundamental rights (including property rights) are inviolable and cannot be repealed by laws or constitutional amendments passed by parliament. As a result, Indira's Congress Party passed the 24th amendment to the Indian constitution with its two-thirds majority in parliament in 1971, according to which parliament should also have the right to amend all parts of the constitution by law (constitutional amendment). After the Supreme Court ruled that the privy purse had been repealed, Indira's Congress passed the 26th Amendment to the Constitution, which practically repealed this decision of the court. With a narrow majority of 7: 6 votes, the Supreme Court raised the case of Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala revived the 24th Amendment to the Constitution 1973, which had been passed shortly before, and emphasized the inviolability of fundamental rights in the constitution.

From 1973 to 1975 riots against the government broke out in various parts of the country, including Gujarat , where as a result the opposition Janata Front , an electoral alliance of various parties, won the 1975 regional parliament elections. From 1974 onwards there was socialist-revolutionary-inspired riots in Bihar led by Jayaprakash Narayan ( JP movement or Bihar movement ), who called for the overthrow of the government and daily nationwide demonstrations, and in May 1974 there was a nationwide rail strike over the infrastructure threatened to paralyze the country and against which the government proceeded with severity and extensive arrests of strikers.

However, the decisive trigger for the declaration of a state of emergency was again a court judgment. In the 1971 parliamentary elections, Raj Narain ran against the Prime Minister in the Rae Bareli constituency in Uttar Pradesh and lost the election. Narain then sued for the election results to be annulled because his opponent, the Prime Minister, had used illicit means by using state institutions in the election campaign. This included, for example, the use of police officers and the use of electricity from a state source at election campaign events. In the State of Uttar Pradesh v. Raj Narain was awarded the right by the Allahabad High Court on June 12, 1975, with the court expressly dismissing the more serious allegations, such as corruption and vote manipulation. The comparatively minor misconduct resulted in the High Court invalidating the election of Indira in the Rae Bareli constituency, stripping her parliamentary seat and forbidding her to vote in elections for the next six years. The Prime Minister had previously been cross-examined by the High Court in an unprecedented manner . Her office as Prime Minister was not affected by the judgment. Nonetheless, the opposition used the verdict for massive agitation against Indira and there were mass trade union strikes and student unrest.

The Prime Minister appealed against the verdict and went to revision before the Supreme Court. On June 24, 1975, the Supreme Court ruled that the judgment was valid. The following day there were massive protests organized by the opposition in Delhi , some of which openly called for the overthrow of the government.

Front page of the Indian Herald dated June 26, 1975 with the news of the arrests of prominent politicians ( Jayaprakash Narayan , Morarji Desai - Congress (R) , AB Vajpayee and LK Advani (both Jan Sangh ), Ashoka Mehta ( Socialist Party ))

On the same day, June 25, 1975 obtained the Prime Minister to have consulted their ministers without first, in which her devoted President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed , the state of emergency (state of emergency) . The President's proclamation stated:

"In exercise of the powers conferred by clause (1) of Article 352 of the Constitution, I, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, President of India, by this Proclamation declare that a grave emergency exists whereby the security of India is threatened by internal disturbance."

"In exercising the powers assigned to me by paragraph 1 of Article 352 of the Constitution, I, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, President of India, declare that there is a serious emergency which is threatening the security of India through civil unrest."

- President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed : Proclamation of June 25, 1975

The state of emergency was initially constitutionally limited to six months. However, the Prime Minister had the President renew it several times for a further six months shortly before the expiry of the six-month period.

Events at the time of the state of emergency

The state of emergency was justified with the threat to public security and the threat to the country's economic stability from the unrest. The first measure taken was a wave of arrests across the country. Numerous demonstrators, strike leaders and representatives of the political opposition were arrested. Those imprisoned at the time included u. a. Raj Narain, Morarji Desai, Charan Singh , Ashoka Mehta , Jivatram Kripalani , George Fernandes , Atal Bihari Vajpayee , Lal Krishna Advani and many Communist Party officials. Few politicians from Indira's Congress Party opposed the state of emergency, including Chandra Shekhar , Ram Dhan , Krishna Kant and Mohan Dharia . They were also arrested. In total, more than 100,000 people were detained without trial for an indefinite period during the state of emergency. Opposition organizations such as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Jamaat-e-Islami Hind have been banned. Several state governments that were in opposition to Indira's Congress were ousted by the central government and the states placed under president's rule . In Tamil Nadu , the DMK government in opposition to Indira's Congress was ousted and leading politicians from Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam were imprisoned. The Janata Front government in Gujarat was also ousted. Several high courts across the state said the arrests were open to legal challenge, but the high courts' judgments were overturned by the Supreme Court , chaired by Indira AN Ray . Many opposition members went underground to avoid arrest. Occasionally there was also mistreatment or torture of those arrested in police custody. Some homicides have become known in this context. Remarkably, there was no substantial, major and violent resistance to government measures. Indira and her advisors feared greater resistance from opposition parties, trade unions and the press. But none of this happened, almost the whole country submitted to the decreed quasi-dictatorship of the Prime Minister. As Indira later put it: "Not a dog barked" - "Not even a dog barked".

There were also supporters of the government measures. The social reformer Vinoba Bhave welcomed the measures as necessary to restore orderly conditions, as did the industrialist Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata and the Chief Minister of Orissa Nandini Satpathy . Others argued that the state of emergency suddenly brought discipline into public life. The trains were suddenly proverbial time, there prevailed peace and order, crime rates and violence between Hindus and Muslims had decreased significantly and the economy has flourished.

During the time of the state of emergency, all scheduled election dates were suspended. Indira Gandhi was able to rely on the large majority of her party in parliament and otherwise ruled directly over parliament by decree. The Prime Minister also saw the state of emergency as an opportunity to take measures that would have been difficult or slow to implement in a normal legislative process. For example, she initiated a 20-point program to stimulate economic growth and agricultural productivity. At the same time, poverty and illiteracy should be combated.

Sanjay Gandhi, the youngest son of Indira Gandhi

One area of ​​government action has been population growth initiatives . For Indira's son Sanjay Gandhi in particular , who - without a parliamentary mandate or an official post in the government - was increasingly gaining influence, the uncontrolled rapid population growth in India was a major problem. Sanjay Gandhi had risen to become the leader of the Youth Congress , the youth and youth organization of the Congress Party, and used this organization to achieve his goals and those of his mother. A birth control program was started that relied primarily on voluntary sterilization . Material benefits were offered as an incentive for sterilization (land, housing, etc.). The number of sterilizations tripled between 1976 and 1977 compared to the previous period to 8.3 million. The responsible authorities on site were put under considerable pressure by setting targets for how many people should be sterilized in a certain period of time. Above all, the poor and members of the lower castes were sterilized. Critics claimed that forced sterilization and sterilization had taken place without the affected person being fully informed . The entire program fell into disrepute and was viewed as a failure overall, as it had cast a bad light on all of family planning, so that later Indian governments were reluctant to return to the sensitive and negatively charged topic.

The forcible evacuation of the slum settlement at Turkman Gate in Delhi, which was mainly inhabited by Muslims, in April 1976 by bulldozers was also negatively associated with the name Sanjay Gandhi . The trigger was a remark by Sanjay that he wanted to have an unobstructed view of the India Gate from the Jama Masjid , Delhi's main mosque . As a result, thousands of slum dwellers have been displaced and more than 800 homes demolished as part of a slum removal and urban beautification program. Many people died in clashes with the police. Some of the brutally displaced slum dwellers had to struggle for new accommodation for years or in vain.

In a confidential conversation on October 21, 1975 between the then American ambassador William B. Saxbe and PN Dhar , Indira's private secretary, which was published decades later by WikiLeaks , the latter stated that one of the aims of the declared state of emergency was the introduction of an American presidential system The model was instead of the previous parliamentary system based on the British model ( Westminster-style democracy ) , as that had proven to be inefficient. However, no serious efforts were made to amend the constitution during the state of emergency.

Suspension of the state of emergency and new elections

Morarji Desai as Prime Minister 1978

After the domestic political situation had calmed down, Indira Gandhi announced on January 18, 1977, relatively surprisingly, the suspension of the state of emergency and the holding of free elections. All political prisoners detained under the state of emergency have been released and press censorship lifted. The reasons that prompted Indira to lift the state of emergency at that time are unknown. From 16. – 20. March 1977 elections to the Indian parliament were held, in which Indira appeared as the top candidate of the Congress party. The opposition parties had come together to form the Janata Party , a heterogeneous party whose only common denominator was the opposition to the state of emergency. The opposition presented the election as a final decision between democracy and impending dictatorship. In the election, Indira's Congress Party suffered a devastating election defeat and the number of Congress Party MPs was more than halved from 352 to 153 (from 544). The Janata Party won 298 seats and its allied parties 47. Morarji Desai was subsequently elected Prime Minister of a government not led by the Congress Party for the first time. On March 21, 1977, after the defeat of Indira became apparent, the state of emergency officially ended.

However, the government led by the Janata Party soon fell hopelessly due to diverging individual interests, so that new elections had to take place in 1980 , which Indira Gandhi won again with her congress party.

Assessment of the events

In today's Indian perception, the time of the state of emergency is almost unanimously viewed negatively and viewed as the “darkest time of Indian democracy”. During this time India was in danger of sliding from a democracy into a dictatorship or an authoritarian form of government. Ultimately, however, it must be emphasized that Indira Gandhi, despite her instinct for power, was not a ruthless dictator who was only concerned with her own advantage, as she tried to portray her opponents in part. As the daughter of Nehru, Indira had got to know the Indian liberation movement up close and was convinced throughout her life that pluralistic democracy, albeit in a more personalized presidential form, was the only possible form of government for heterogeneous India. In a later reappraisal of the events during the time of the state of emergency, the congress party partly blamed Sanjay Gandhi for the "excesses" during the time of the state of emergency. The Janata Party government tried to deal with the state of emergency legally, but there were only a few convictions of people in low political positions.

literature

  • Arvind Rajagopal: The emergency as prehistory of the new Indian middle class . Modern Asian Studies, 45.5 (2011): 1003-1049 ( pdf )
  • PN Dhar: Indira Gandhi, the Emergency, and Indian Democracy . Oxford University Press, New York 2001. ISBN 0195656458 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Emergency papers found. The Times of India, June 30, 2013, accessed July 3, 2014 .
  2. ^ A b Emergency: The Darkest Period in Indian Democracy. theviewspaper.net, accessed July 3, 2014 .
  3. ^ Raj Singh: Post-mortem: 1975 Emergency, a blot that still haunts Indian democracy. indiatvnews.com, July 14, 2014, accessed October 14, 2014 .
  4. ^ Rukun Advani: A little outside the ring. telegraphindia.com, accessed February 6, 2015 .
  5. ↑ How far is Aksai Chin from Ho Chi Min? tribuneindia.com, September 12, 1998, accessed February 6, 2015 .
  6. ^ Rajeshwar Dayal: A Life of Our Times. Orient Longman Limited (New Delhi), 1998. p. 511 (Google digitized version ) , ISBN 8125015469 .
  7. ↑ Shashi Tharoor: Experiment with autocracy. The Hindu, April 14, 2002, accessed November 21, 2014 .
  8. ^ Project of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation: 1974. NuclearFiles.org, accessed November 1, 2014 .
  9. ^ Arvind P. Datar: The case that saved Indian democracy. The Hindu, April 24, 2013, accessed July 4, 2014 .
  10. ^ Lalan Tiwari: Democracy and Dissent: A Case Study of the Bihar Movement, 1974-75. South Asia Books (December 1987). ISBN 978-81-7099-008-6
  11. ↑ Stephen Sherlock: Railway Workers and Their Unions: Origins of 1974 Indian Railways Strike. Economic and Political Weekly, 24 (41), October 1989, pp. 2311-2315, JSTOR 4395459
  12. ↑ Looking back at anger. The Hindu, January 6, 2002, accessed July 9, 2014 .
  13. ↑ 1975: Gandhi found guilty of corruption. BBC News, June 12, 1976, accessed July 4, 2014 .
  14. ^ Ex-Congress leader Mohan Dharia, who opposed 1975 Emergency, dead. (No longer available online.) Hindustantimes.com, October 14, 2013, archived from the original on July 14, 2014 ; accessed on July 4, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hindustantimes.com
  15. ^ A b Inder Malhotra: What Indira Gandhi's Emergency proved for India. Rediff.com, June 23, 2010, accessed July 4, 2014 .
  16. ↑ Rajinder Sachar: The shameful role of the Indian Supreme Court in the Emergency of 1975. kafila.org, July 14th, 2013, accessed on July 3, 2014 (English).
  17. ^ LK Advani: Supreme Court disappointed us during 1975 Emergency: Advani. June 28, 2013, accessed July 3, 2014 .
  18. ↑ George IYPE: Emergency: 'Rajan's mother died asking for him'. Rediff.com, June 26, 2000, accessed July 5, 2014 (on the death of student P. Rajan in Kerala police custody in 1976).
  19. ^ KR Sundar Rajan: Indira Gandhi and her advisers were surprised by the ease with which they could silence democracy. In: www.rediff.com. Retrieved December 6, 2015 .
  20. ↑ Anand Sarup: Defying Sanjay Gandhi: A Civil Servant Remembers the Emergency by Anand Sarup. Dadi Nani Foundation, 2009, accessed February 5, 2015 .
  21. ↑ Swapna Khanna: Turkman Gate can't forget the bulldozers. rediff.com, June 26, 2000, accessed July 5, 2014 .
  22. ↑ STABILITY IN SOUTH ASIA; JUSTIFICATION FOR THE EMERGENCY. WikiLeaks , October 25, 1975, accessed July 3, 2014 (secret telegram from the American Embassy in Delhi to the United States Secretary of State in Washington, DC).
  23. ↑ Hari Narayan: Emergency was a move to shift towards US-style democracy, Indira's principal secretary told envo. The Hindu, April 12, 2013, accessed July 3, 2014 .
  24. ↑ Subodh Ghildiyal: Cong blames Sanjay Gandhi for Emergency 'excesses'. December 29, 2010, accessed July 4, 2014 .