The Bangladesh war raised Prime Minister Indra Gandhi to virtual “Mother Goddess” stature at home. She was viewed as a brilliant military strategist and diplomat, and her popularity was never greater than in the years immediately after that brief December war.
By late 1974, however, Prime Minister Gandhi's golden image had tarnished, for despite her campaign rhetoric, poverty was hardly abolished in India. Quite the contrary, with skyrocketing oil prices and consumer-goods inflation, India's unemployed and landless, as well as its large fixed-income labouring population, found itself sinking deeper into starvation's grip and impossible debt. Student strikes and mass-protest marches rocked Bihar and Gujarat, as Narayan and Desai joined forces in leading a new Janata Morcha movement against government corruption and Mrs. Gandhi's allegedly inept leadership.
The mass movement gathered momentum throughout the first half of 1975 and reached its climax that June, when the Congress lost a crucial by-election in Gujarat and Prime Minister Gandhi herself was found guilty by Allahabad's High Court of several counts of election malpractice during the last campaign for her Lok Sabha seat. The mandatory penalty for that crime was exclusion from holding any elective office for six years from conviction.
Opposition leaders threatened a civil-disobedience campaign to force the prime minister to resign, and many of her oldest Cabinet colleagues and Congress Party advisers urged her to step down pending an appeal to India's Supreme Court. Following instead the advice of her ambitious and energetic younger son, Sanjay, on June 26, 1975, Mrs. Gandhi persuaded President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed to declare a national emergency, which empowered her to do whatever she considered “best” for the country for at least six months.
Desai and the ailing and aged Narayan were arrested, as well as hundreds of others who had worked with her father and Mahatma Gandhi in helping India to win its freedom from British rule. She then blacked out the entire region of Delhi in which the press was published and appointed Sanjay as her trusted personal “censor” of all future news leaders and editorials. Her minister of information and broadcasting, Inder K. Gujral, immediately resigned rather than accept orders from Sanjay, who held no elective office at the time but who clearly was becoming one of the most powerful persons in India. “India is Indira, and Indira is India,” was the call of Congress Party sycophants, and soon the nation was plastered with her poster image, under which was printed in all 14 major languages of India, “She saved India!” or “She stood between chaos and order!” Practically every leader of India's political opposition was jailed or kept under house arrest for almost two years, and some of India's most prominent journalists, lawyers, educators, and political activists were muzzled or imprisoned.
Mrs. Gandhi announced her Twenty-Point Program soon after the emergency was proclaimed, and most points were aimed at reducing inflation and energizing the economy by punishing tax evaders, black marketers, smugglers, and other real criminals. Prices did come down, production indexes rose dramatically, and even the monsoon proved cooperative by bringing abundant rains on time twice in a row. At the same time, however, popular discontent was fostered by some of the emergency acts, such as a freeze on wage increases, pressure for increased worker discipline, and a birth-control program initiated by Sanjay that required sterilization for families with more than two children.
It was perhaps because of the economic gains that the prime minister decided early in 1977 to call general elections, but she may also have believed what she read about herself in her controlled press or feared a military coup had she simply refused to seek a civil mandate for her policies. Most political prisoners were released, and Narayan immediately joined Desai in quickly revitalizing the Janata movement, whose campaign warned Indians that the elections might be their last chance to choose between “democracy and dictatorship.” In the elections, held in February, Indira and Sanjay both lost their Lok Sabha seats, as did most of their loyal followers.
At the age of 80, Desai took the post of prime minister.
"Memories of a father, by Professor T V Eachara Varier. The story recounts Professor Varier's desperate and endless attempts to get to the bottom of his son's arrest, torture, murder and disappearance at the hands of the police force in Kerala, India, during the period of emergency rule."
This book is freely available online. (around 70 pages)
http://www.ahrchk.net/pub/mainfile.php/mof/
By late 1974, however, Prime Minister Gandhi's golden image had tarnished, for despite her campaign rhetoric, poverty was hardly abolished in India. Quite the contrary, with skyrocketing oil prices and consumer-goods inflation, India's unemployed and landless, as well as its large fixed-income labouring population, found itself sinking deeper into starvation's grip and impossible debt. Student strikes and mass-protest marches rocked Bihar and Gujarat, as Narayan and Desai joined forces in leading a new Janata Morcha movement against government corruption and Mrs. Gandhi's allegedly inept leadership.
The mass movement gathered momentum throughout the first half of 1975 and reached its climax that June, when the Congress lost a crucial by-election in Gujarat and Prime Minister Gandhi herself was found guilty by Allahabad's High Court of several counts of election malpractice during the last campaign for her Lok Sabha seat. The mandatory penalty for that crime was exclusion from holding any elective office for six years from conviction.
Opposition leaders threatened a civil-disobedience campaign to force the prime minister to resign, and many of her oldest Cabinet colleagues and Congress Party advisers urged her to step down pending an appeal to India's Supreme Court. Following instead the advice of her ambitious and energetic younger son, Sanjay, on June 26, 1975, Mrs. Gandhi persuaded President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed to declare a national emergency, which empowered her to do whatever she considered “best” for the country for at least six months.
Desai and the ailing and aged Narayan were arrested, as well as hundreds of others who had worked with her father and Mahatma Gandhi in helping India to win its freedom from British rule. She then blacked out the entire region of Delhi in which the press was published and appointed Sanjay as her trusted personal “censor” of all future news leaders and editorials. Her minister of information and broadcasting, Inder K. Gujral, immediately resigned rather than accept orders from Sanjay, who held no elective office at the time but who clearly was becoming one of the most powerful persons in India. “India is Indira, and Indira is India,” was the call of Congress Party sycophants, and soon the nation was plastered with her poster image, under which was printed in all 14 major languages of India, “She saved India!” or “She stood between chaos and order!” Practically every leader of India's political opposition was jailed or kept under house arrest for almost two years, and some of India's most prominent journalists, lawyers, educators, and political activists were muzzled or imprisoned.
Mrs. Gandhi announced her Twenty-Point Program soon after the emergency was proclaimed, and most points were aimed at reducing inflation and energizing the economy by punishing tax evaders, black marketers, smugglers, and other real criminals. Prices did come down, production indexes rose dramatically, and even the monsoon proved cooperative by bringing abundant rains on time twice in a row. At the same time, however, popular discontent was fostered by some of the emergency acts, such as a freeze on wage increases, pressure for increased worker discipline, and a birth-control program initiated by Sanjay that required sterilization for families with more than two children.
It was perhaps because of the economic gains that the prime minister decided early in 1977 to call general elections, but she may also have believed what she read about herself in her controlled press or feared a military coup had she simply refused to seek a civil mandate for her policies. Most political prisoners were released, and Narayan immediately joined Desai in quickly revitalizing the Janata movement, whose campaign warned Indians that the elections might be their last chance to choose between “democracy and dictatorship.” In the elections, held in February, Indira and Sanjay both lost their Lok Sabha seats, as did most of their loyal followers.
At the age of 80, Desai took the post of prime minister.
"Memories of a father, by Professor T V Eachara Varier. The story recounts Professor Varier's desperate and endless attempts to get to the bottom of his son's arrest, torture, murder and disappearance at the hands of the police force in Kerala, India, during the period of emergency rule."
This book is freely available online. (around 70 pages)
http://www.ahrchk.net/pub/mainfile.php/mof/
