By Dr. SN Misra
I was listening to Lal Krishna Advani and RK Dhawan in the recent TV interview Karan Thapar had with them marking the anniversary of Emergency. My thoughts flashed back to the scalding summer of 1975-1976, the time when I joined the Union finance ministry as a callow economist.
Dhawan, true to his reputation, now tries to paint his long-time woman boss, Indira Gandhi, as a real democrat though her son Sanjay Gandhi receives a mild admonishment from him. Lal Krishna Advani, on the other hand, is all guns blazing. My memories of the Emergency days was of reaching North Block invariably five minutes before 9.30am and never leaving the office before 6pm. Usually, the winter months witness woman employees sitting outside of their offices, most of them knitting wool in the lawns straddling South and North Block well beyond 2.30pm. Emergency did them in, and this spectacle became a thing of the past.
The subhji mandi area, which used to be the confluence of narrow lanes and unruly bulls, wore a serene picture of gentle orderliness. I was not married then, and hence things like the fear of the scalpel under the Sanjay Gandhi-inspired family planning programme did not scare me. The most exciting moment, however, was getting a copy of Seminar magazine from the printing press in the basement of Delhi University in the wee hours. I felt proud that such fearless journalism co-existed under the cover of darkness.
I also remember attending the mammoth gathering at Ramlila grounds, addressed by Sarvodya leader Jai Prakash Narayan. Now, I am quite surprised to hear Advani’s ambivalence to Thapar’s question as to whether JP asked the army to mutiny. JP was quite categorical that army and police should defy authority if and when illegal orders were given. Constitutional experts lament that this monumental indiscretion on his part gave the handle, or a logical excuse, to Indira Gandhi to put JP behind bars and turn a gathering adversity to her advantage.
My déjà vu came when Indira Gandhi lost the 1977 election, following which a huge gathering in Delhi school auditorium was addressed by the likes of Dr. Romila Thapar and Dr. Rajni Kothari. It was an interesting confluence between the left ideology of Thapar (JNU) and the liberal values of Dr. Kothari (DU). The end of the Emergency brought the two warring scholars to the same platform.
The summer of 1976 drew the role of Supreme Court to sharp focus when Shivakanta Shukla was picked up illegally in Jabalpur under the cover of Emergency. In a (4:1) judgment, the Supreme Court decreed that there was judicial relief to life and liberty when Emergency was proclaimed under Article 352. The most distressing was the reply of the then attorney general Niren De to a question put forward by Justice Hans Raj Khanna. It went like this: “There is no remedy if a police officer, solely because of a personal enmity, puts an end to the life of a law-abiding citizen during Emergency.” The lone loadstar of the day was Justice HR Khanna, who said, “Sanctity of life is not a gift of the Constitution. Illegal detention will be subject to judicial review.” He quoted Chief Justice Hughes to say, “A dissent in a court of last resort is an appeal to the brooding spirit of law, to the intelligence of the future date, when a later decision may possibly correct the error into which the dissenting judge believes the court to have been betrayed.”
Indeed, the four judges (which included Justice Bhagawati and YV Chandrachud) later admitted to their mistake. It was indeed a howler which Fali Nariman rightly termed “judicial pusillanimity at its worst”. Granville Austin is more metaphorical when he writes, “The judges would have been hung separately if they had hung together.” Justice Khanna was superseded after this judgment. In his book, Neither Roses Nor Thorns, he says he had confided in his sister Santosh, “I have prepared a judgment which is going to cost me the chief-justice-ship of India.”
Indira Gandhi was dictatorial and highhanded. The 44th amendment (1978) has now incorporated a provision in Article 359(1) as per which Right to Life and Liberty (Article 20 & 21) would not be suspended during Emergency. It’s a small tribute to the brooding spirit of a fearless judge who valued ‘good governance’ over ‘genuflection’, that we do not have the scorching summer of 1976 now.