How Indira Gandhi unwittingly helped enrich India's democracy

In this week of the 40th anniversary of the imposition of Emergency by Indira Gandhi, nobody will dispute that she greatly subverted Indian democracy and pushed us towards terminal totalitarianism. So, what if I argued that she also, if unwittingly, enriched our democracy, helped create a truly bipolar polity - although ideological bipolarity is still a work in progress - and created a new generation of Indian leaders?

This is not contrarian for the sake of being so. Examine some evidence. What are the two facts common to this exhaustive but far from definitive pantheon of contemporary Indian politics - Atal Bihari Vajpayee, LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, George Fernandes, Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh, Lalu and Mulayam Singh Yadav, Nitish Kumar, Ram Vilas Paswan, Sushil Modi, HD Deve Gowda, Charan Singh, Parkash Singh Badal, and even Sitaram Yechuri and Prakash Karat? One, that all of them rose to the top in the anti-Congress parties, and, 1977 onwards, most held high positions in the non-Congress governments. Two, that they were all jailed by Indira Gandhi during Emergency, most for a full 19 months and some, like Karat, very briefly because they managed to continue their activity underground.

Unintentionally for sure, but Gandhi gave Indian democracy a whole new generation of political talent which has ultimately reduced her all-conquering party to 44 in Lok Sabha and in control of just three full and two half-major states (Karnataka, Kerala, Assam, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand), besides tiny Mizoram, Manipur, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh. It may sound perverse but you cannot dispute it.

In trying to destroy all opposition, she actually created a credible, pan-national, pan-ideological cadre of new leaders whose talent and charm her legatees increasingly failed to counter. I can safely say that had there been no Emergency, there probably would not have been a BJP government in power at the Centre with a full majority, the RSS would not be such a preeminent ideological force, and Lohiaites, of some kind or the other, not masters of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. It's a larger argument for another day, but this was the first mass struggle in which the RSS, having mostly missed the freedom movement, participated and earned national respectability.

You can go to the next level of search. Naveen Patnaik's late father Biju was in jail, now he is in his fourth term as chief minister in his home state, Odisha, and still looks invincible. In Karnataka, BS Yeddyurappa is also from the incarcerated class of 1975-77.

In Rajasthan, the most notable entry on Vasundhara Raje's CV is that her mother Vijaya Raje Scindia was jailed. Sushma Swaraj didn't go to jail but made her fame as a young lawyer, with husband Swaraj Kaushal, defending George Fernandes. Ram Jethmalani finally had a warrant against him after an army of some 200 lawyers, led by Nani Palkhiwala, failed. But he escaped to Canada where he remained in exile, as did Subramanian Swamy.

Go deeper down in Modi's cabinet and almost anybody who was an adult in the mid '70s, from Ananth Kumar to Kalraj Mishra, is of the same class. And as you probe further, it starts getting ridiculous as well. Siddaramaiah, who now leads the biggest state for the Congress as chief minister, Karnataka, was jailed too, as was Shankersinh Vaghela in Gujarat, and even if both are "Congi-come-latelies", the fact remains they are Emergency's children. It is neither fallacious, nor facetious, therefore, to call Emergency a university of democratisation.

In new, evolving democracies, leaderships arise from mass movements. The first, most durable cast of our leaders obviously grew from the freedom movement, although the Congress became the umbrella that made diverse minds, from left to right, bury - or at least suspend-ideological disagreements to unite under Gandhiji.

There was some fragmentation post-Independence, but a vast majority remained in the Congress and those that broke away to build other opposition parties were no match to it, in spite of some efforts at unity, notably the Samyukta Vidhayak Dal, which shook the Congress in 1967 without really defeating it. That had to wait until the Emergency, opposition to which became the platform for the first national political struggle in independent India.

Unity attempts had failed the opposition so far, giving the Congress the permanent gift of what latter-day psephologists described as the TINA (There is No Alternative) edge, given low IOU (Index of Opposition Unity). Unity on ideology wasn't possible because the largest cadre-based party was the Jan Sangh, with wide differences with various socialists and Lohiaites; the liberal, if elite, right was represented by the Swatantra Party, and of course in Bengal, Kerala and to a lesser extent in Andhra, Punjab and Maharashtra by the Communists. With a common ideological thread missing, they tried unity variously against "dynastic" rule, "personality cult" and "authoritarian politics".

But nothing convinced either their leaders or the electorate to be together. These alliances were seen as opportunistically targeted at "poor" Gandhi, and she exploited this sentiment devastatingly with her slogan of "Woh kehte hain Indira hatao, Indira kehti hain garibi hatao, ab aap faisla keejiye" (They say remove Indira, Indira says eradicate poverty, so you decide which is better). The Emergency changed this in three ways.

First, all the great negatives that Gandhi was charged with, authoritarianism, personality cult and dynastic rule (Sanjay was anointed her successor in December 1976), now looked so convincing. Second, it gave thousands of political leaders and activists the halo of struggle, sacrifice, courage by ticking that all-important box on their political score-sheets: a term in jail as political prisoners which was so far exclusive to freedom fighters.

As a result, many student activists, including Lalu, Mulayam, Nitish, Sharad Yadav, even Yechuri and Karat, came of age. And third, these followers of diverse ideologies were forced to bond in jails, exchanging thoughts, sharing lives, understanding each other better, whether talking or playing badminton or volleyball, and striking personal friendships.

If we called Emergency a university of democratisation, Gandhi's jail was a very effective boot camp for her adversaries. It isn't for us journalists to imagine how Indian politics would have evolved but for this agnipariksha.

It will, however, be a great plot for a political fiction writer. Post-Emergency, we did have some significant mass movements, notably Mandir and Mandal. The first produced some notables of varying importance, from Uma Bharati to Vinay Katiyar. I am not listing Kalyan Singh because he was an Emergency detainee. Mandal produced more, starting with VP Singh and created space at the top for the three Yadavs: Mulayam, Lalu and Sharad. We had to wait two decades for the next wave, Anna Hazare's anti-corruption movement, but it seems to have left us with just one new significant leader, some talking-head supplicants and two respected dissidents.

This puts Gandhi's contribution to our democracy in perspective. Almost everybody she jailed, including her own party's "Young Turk" dissidents, Chandra Shekhar (PM), Krishan Kant (VP), Mohan Dharia and Ram Dhan (cabinet ministers), rose to high positions.

Every non-Congress prime minister 1977 onwards besides VP Singh was from the class of Emergency: Morarji, Charan Singh, Chandra Shekhar, Vajpayee, Gowda were in jail, even Gujral was fired as I&B minister for disagreeing with press curbs and therefore a victim, or beneficiary, of the Emergency, depending on how you see it. That leaves out Narendra Modi. But wait a moment. Read my friend and former colleague Coomi Kapoor's racy new book The Emergency: A Personal History. 

While Subramanian Swamy was floating by ducking arrest, disguised as a Sikh, and wanted to secretly meet Makarand Desai, a Gujarat minister, a committed young swayamsewak was sent to receive him at the railway station and escort him safely. Here was a young Narendra Modi, thereby another prime minister politically baptised in the fire of Gandhi's Emergency.

PS: My personal history of the Emergency is thin because I was just a journalism student in Chandigarh. But I do have one story to tell.

On Independence Day, 1975, then Haryana chief minister Bansi Lal was addressing a parade in Rohtak, where my parents then lived. He made three memorable points. One, that newspapers had so much poison in them, nobody should even use them to wrap pakoras. Two, he said, looking at rain-laden clouds, that India had such a wonderful monsoon in 1947 when all sinners ("paapis") were packed off to Pakistan, or now, when the rest were locked up in jail. And third was his insight into why Indiraji had signed the Simla Agreement with Bhutto. At Simla, he said, Bhutto fell at her feet and begged for mercy. As he finally got up, Indiraji noticed his trousers were wet, so she took pity, signed the Simla Agreement and returned 93,000 prisoners.

Now, the first comment was fine, he could as well have called the press vermin or cockroaches. Second was objectionable, but passable in those times. But the third, given its diplomatic fallout, was unacceptable even to dictator Indira. Instructions were accordingly sent to all newspapers to delete his comments on Simla and Bhutto. In a way, it was the ultimate absurdity of censorship as the government ended up censoring its own chief minister, no less.