Question

What was the immediate impact of this Emergency on the common people?

Answer 1

Initially, the Emergency, which followed a strife-filled decade was welcomed by the middle class. The crime rate came down, the trains ran on time, there was a sense of alertness and discipline. There was a good monsoon in 1975 ensuring that prices were low. The average Indians did not care for the freedom of the press and expression. They wanted economic progress and above all peace even at the cost of personal rights. The 20- Point Programme brought stabilization and growth of the economy.

The business community were specially elected. Even small hotel owners had been hounded by unions. Even J.R.D. Tata felt that things had gone too far with strikes, boycotts, and demonstrations. Hardly anyone resigned or left their jobs in protest against the Emergency. Then Gandhi had called for non-cooperation, thousands of teachers, lawyers, judges, even ICS officers had resigned. But now only a handful resigned in protest. These include Fali Nariman who resigned as Additional Solicitor General, M.L. Dantewala, who refused to continue as an advisor to the Reserve Bank and Bagaram Tulpule, who resigned from his office in the Public Sector.

In the Parliament the Opposition MPs who had been jailed but allowed to attend the session to ratify the Emergency protested and walked out and later boycotted the session. Mrs. Gandhi was accused of betraying India for the sake of personal ends and reducing Parliament to a farce and an object of contempt.

The resistance on the streets took a serious turn. On 14th November 1975, the Lok Sangharsh Samiti began a Satyagraha in Bombay. The protesters shouted slogans such as “down with dictatorship” and “JP Zindabad”. Within a month over a thousand protestors – were arrested including 146 women. The protest soon spread to other states where people stood at the bus stands, railway stations, and government offices and shouted slogans and courted arrest. Within the first three months, as many as 80,000 people were arrested.

On 15th August 1976, Manibehn Patel, daughter of Vallabhai Patel started a march to the Dandi beach along Gandhi’s route shouting slogans such as ‘Remove Emergency’ and ‘Release Political Prisoners’. The Marathi writer Durga Bhagawat was arrested. A group of Kannada writers circulated poems satirizing the Emergency. Other writers refused to put pen on paper such as Annada Shankar Ray. Cartoonist K. Shankar Pillai closed his magazine. Hindi writer Phanishwar Nath Renu returned his Padma Shree and Kannada writer Shivarama Karanth returned his Padma Bhushan.

An underground movement was carried out by George Fernandez who disguised himself and traveled from town to town organizing resistance against the Emergency. Acharya J.B. Kripalini was one of its fiercest opponents. Once the emergency was lifted, Congress faced the consequences of the same combined with the wrath of the general public. Writers wrote books and films were made about Emergency Salman Rushdie’s ‘Midnight Children’, V.S. Naipaul’s ‘ India: A wounded Country’ are some of the many books. Films like ‘Kissa Kursi Ka’ was a bold mockery of the dark phase. ‘Nasbandi’ and ‘Aandhi’ were some other films that played out the condition of the nation.