5 lessons I learnt in jail during Emergency

Forty-one years before, in 1975, I was a young college student in Pune's Sir Parshurambhau (SP) College. Just about a week after our classes had started, we learnt about the imposition of the Emergency.

Many like me who were active in students' movement - part of the ABVP to be specific - were duly warned by our parents asking us to stop activism. However, although on a fairly low key, the ABVP continued its functioning and we too engaged ourselves in membership campaigns and training programmes.

From October onwards that year, a nationwide non-violent protest started and many participated in satyagraha. Many of our senior activists were already put behind the bars. Those who were not jailed were actively preparing for satyagraha.

Also read: How Indira Gandhi gagged the media during Emergency

Senior ABVP workers in Pune appealed to all of us to prepare ourselves for offering satyagraha and facing imprisonment. Although our spirits were really high, we had to prepare ourselves to offer satyagraha. I was staying with my uncle and he already had issued a very stern warning to me. But ultimately, the determination built in our minds by our seniors prevailed and on December 31, I participated in a satyagraha in our college campus.

In many ways it proved to be a thrilling experience. We were emboldened by the realisation that we are working for a cause. But there was also an element of drama in it as we actually started sloganeering and demonstration.

Ours was the fifth batch of young satyagrahi students demonstrating in the campus of SP college. All previous batches had at least three-to-four female students, and in the absence of woman constables at that time, demonstrators could get a neat half-an-hour to deliver fiery speeches, shout slogans and sing songs of democracy and patriotism.

Also read: Kuldip Nayar on why he thought Emergency could never happen

Incidentally, when we demonstrated, there were only about half-a-dozen woman constables present in the campus. But they were helpless as ours was an all-men batch of satyagrahis and they refrained from touching us.

They had to wait for arrival of their male colleagues and that gave us enough time to shout slogans condemning prime minister Indira Gandhi and her tyrannical regime. Immediately after arrest, we were taken to court and after about three appearances in court in a span of two weeks, we were sentenced to imprisonment for six weeks.

In the Yerwada jail, some 200 satyagrahis who were already awarded jail terms of varying durations were waiting to receive us. We all enjoyed those 45 days. This brief imprisonment taught us many lessons, five of them were most important.

Firstly, we learnt that whenever one is required to take a personal risk for a lofty ideal, collective resolve helps mitigate apprehensions. We were all college students coming from middle class families. We could gather whatever little or great courage that was required, thanks mainly to our collective resolve.

Courage and conviction is important, but if the conviction is collective, courage converts itself into a natural resoluteness. That helps one to get into a catch-the-bull-by-the-horns mode. The first lesson that we learnt was about the criticality of togetherness.

The second lesson was about assessing individuals. While in jail, although for a very brief period of 45 days, many of us read several books. But more educative was reading personalities. We realised that while behind bars, one gets to know a fellow inmate completely, in and out.

Many who had a very respectable image in the society betrayed their mean-mindedness while facing adverse conditions in jail whereas apparently very ordinary karyakartas showed exceptional large-heartedness.

Jail helps you acquire a distinct insight to understand personalities. Whatever that glitters may not always be gold was lesson number two that the brief jail term taught us. However, the reverse of it - many ordinary-sounding activists could prove to be great in many ways - was obviously a more important realisation.

The third thing that we learnt was about the importance of limited wants in one's personal life. Facing a jail term teaches you the art of living with extremely limited resources. Those in our barrack from a wealthy family were accustomed to a particular set of environments and could not live without them.

Naturally for them, it was much harder to spend time behind bars. Of course they braved all adverse conditions with smiles on their faces, but then it was not difficult to make out how and why things were so harsh for them.

In comparison, many of us from the lower middle classes could easily adjust and limit their requirements and enjoy the fruits of sharing. Simplicity, about which hardly anything is discussed these days, is a great value. It was a significant lesson we learnt in jail.

Two other lessons that we learnt were important in the context of public administration. A mere 45 days in jail made us acutely aware of how inhuman our prison system was. Prisons in India have in fact become factories of criminals.

Prison management requires a thorough overhaul and successive governments have unfortunately ignored this urgent need. Unless we introduce fundamental reforms in prison management, success in reducing the number of grave crimes is difficult, if not impossible.

But the most precious and inspiring lesson was the last, taught to us by the tyranny of Emergency. And that was about the great popular commitment to democracy.

Hundreds of those who were singing paeans to the Emergency either out of conviction or for convenience, openly congratulated and complimented us for our courage after we came out of prison even while the Emergency was still on.

Indians have an unflinching faith in democracy not just because the Constitution gave it to us but because democracy is truly in our blood. It is true that our political democracy is important but not enough as we are yet to achieve social and economic democracy, as rightly emphasised by Babasaheb Ambedkar.

But it is equally true that our political democracy and more importantly, our commitment to the philosophy of democracy emanates from the spiritual democracy that we as civilisation have enjoyed for centuries together. It is this innate strength that ultimately helped the people of India reject authoritarian rule lock, stock and barrel.