JP wasn't a saviour of Constitution. He called Mao his guru

The Print

10 hours ago

Second, a look at the events prior to the declaration of the Emergency reveals an opposite scenario, one that can be verified from press records. It was the anti-Indira agitators, led by Jayaprakash (JP) Narayan, who brazenly and repeatedly acted against the Constitution. This involved insulting MLAs, forcing them to resign, instigating police and security forces to disobey, forcibly stopping students from going to schools and colleges, beating up government officials, calling for and forming 'parallel government' and 'parallel Assembly', forbidding people from paying taxes, and burning newspaper offices. What were these actions if not arrogant violations of the law and Constitution?
First, the action was perfectly constitutional. It was quickly proved, too, both legally and politically. Gandhi's opponents, after they came to power in 1977, could not prosecute her on such a count. Instead, they found Article 352 (1) as the 'culprit', hence its amendment in 1978. So, charging Gandhi as the 'murderer' of the Constitution is a deliberate falsehood.
To call the Emergency imposed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on 25 June 1975 a 'murder' of the Constitution is quite misleading.
Therefore, the Emergency imposed to stop it all was quite in order, not only in letter but also in spirit. Article 352 (1) of the Constitution said that in case of 'internal disturbance', the President may declare a state of Emergency. Weren't the JP movement's actions, listed above, a case of internal disturbance?
Of course, many initiatives of the government, especially the forced sterilisation, bred resentment. Otherwise, the people's response was mixed. Rather, many things during the Emergency were appreciated, including punctuality in government offices, full attendance in every office, fear among corrupt employees, reduction in bribery, and trains running on time. Only the pre-censorship of the press and incessant government propaganda were not popular.
So, let's not glorify JP as a democratic icon unthinkingly. Fifty years later, we need to look at the JP movement critically, too.
Who was truly anti-Constitution?
Before the imposition of the Emergency, most anti-Constitution activities were done by anti-Indira agitators. JP gave a public call in Bihar to surround the MLAs and force them to resign. He said that people can even 'slap' the MLAs.
The Bihar MLAs were elected in 1972 for a term of five years. But in 1974, JP was asking students to force them to resign. The students averse to the boycott were beaten up. In such an incident, a student, Brinda Prasad, was killed in Nalanda.
Efforts were also made to forcibly close shops, offices, and traffic. The Patna office of Searchlight, a leading English newspaper of the state, was burned down. Pro-Indira parties such as the CPI were threatened. The Governor was also prevented from going to the Bihar Assembly to deliver his address.
In fact, public anger started brewing over such violence and coercion by the JP movement. The situation changed only after the imposition of the Emergency and the arrest of Opposition leaders. But before this, JP compared his anarchist movement to 'the revolution of 1942'.
It is well-known that in 1942, an attempt was made to end British rule by violence and destruction. So JP himself indicated that he and his supporters were to remove the Congress from office by creating mass disorder with violence. The RSS and the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (the older avatar of the BJP) were with JP in the agitation, thus disrespecting the Constitution.
'When these men are so shameless, what is left for the people to do but to go to their houses and bring them out—without touching any member of their families—and tell them that they have to go,' JP said at a public rally in Patna on 6 October 1974.
What about the constitutional rights of the MLAs? What were their individual crimes? None. JP's calls were similar to what fascists did in Italy a few decades earlier.
The mentality of the JP agitators was hardly more than anti-Indira fanaticism. Opposition leaders just wanted to replace Congress leaders with themselves. And it did happen after the Emergency was lifted and Gandhi voluntarily called for the general elections. But her opponents had little ability to run even a routine government, and fell apart in two years.
The people reinstated Gandhi less than three years after the Emergency. If the Emergency was truly the horror it is made out to be, this would not have happened. Why undermine this vital fact today?
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Guru Mao
The leaders emerging from the JP movement showed nothing more than a lust for office. During 1974-75, JP, the RSS, and the CPM were only trying to use each other to gain power. There was nothing glorious or exemplary in their effort.
And JP's ideals were anything but in accordance with the Constitution. The leader gave the call of 'total revolution', which was ipso facto against the Constitution. The very meaning of revolution is to forcefully end an existing system, destroying that which the current Constitution maintains. All revolutions in the world—the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Khomeini Revolution—destroyed the existing systems in their respective countries.
So, JP's very call for 'revolution' was against the Constitution. If that was not enough, he mentioned Mao as his 'Guru', saying that 'only a revolutionary knows another revolutionary'. (Patriot, 27 October 1974).
JP was calling himself a disciple of Mao, the very leader whose ugly Cultural Revolution caused unprecedented destruction in China. It is difficult, therefore, to find a more anti-Constitution stance than JP's.
The terrible import of his statement can be better understood by the fact that a few years before, JP was 'toying with the idea of military dictatorship in India'. (Indian Express, 8 May 1967).
He was of the view that in case of a situation of political instability in the country (a power vacuum was felt in many states after the defeat of the Congress), the army could take over. This was a sort of provocation by JP to the army. Senior CPM leaders AK Gopalan and Basavapunnaiah had warned JP against the idea, since they thought that it amounted to 'patronising flattery of our armed forces and utter contempt of the people'. (SS Khera, India's Defence Problem, 1968, Orient Longmans, p 81).
That such statements were noted by Khera, a former Secretary of Defence, indicates the gravity of JP's observations.
During his agitation, JP tried to provoke the police and paramilitary forces. A point Gandhi mentioned in her address to the country on 25 June 1975.
In his speech at the Gandhi Maidan, Patna on 5 June 1974, JP attempted to foment discontent in the police, and asked paramilitary forces to refuse 'open fire'.
Despite his impatience to remove the Bihar government, JP had no clear plan after the victory of his movement. And the less said about his directionless followers, the better.
In fact, JP had been thinking about a 'party-less democracy' for a long time. In 1974, too, he opined that his 'Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti' (student struggle committees) could replace political parties and get candidates fielded directly by the public, under the samiti folks' guidance. But when asked, earlier, if there was any example of his party-less democracy, JP responded with an idea of Pakistani dictator Field Marshal Ayub Khan.
Now, what JP meant by his movement being 'a second 1942' and 'moving toward a new revolution' is anybody's guess.
All that JP's words and actions reveal is a contempt for the Constitution. Or, as the present BJP leadership would call it, 'murdering' the Constitution. In the 1970s, it was JP and his allies, including RSS-Jan Sangh, committing this murder, not Gandhi and her Congress.
Take another example, when JP said that 'the student and mass movement in Bihar is ready for a decisive offensive from 2 October 1974'. For what? For the forced removal of the elected state government in Bihar. That was the core of his movement: a complete disregard for constitutional mandates.
In such circumstances, it would have been natural for any ruler to protect the constitutional system from such revolutionaries. Indira Gandhi undertook a perfectly constitutional step by imposing the Emergency; the atrocities during the period are a different matter.
It is wrong to call the proclamation of the Emergency a 'murder of the Constitution' and to make it a state commemoration. It may mislead the new generation and create hate among political activists of different orientations. If anything, the act amounts to partisan indoctrination, quite against the spirit of the Constitution.
Shankar Sharan is a columnist and professor of political science. He tweets @hesivh. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)