George Fernandes: The man who stopped the Railways, powered an underground network

Indian Express

4 hours ago

He was the most wanted man in India in 1975-76, and there was no one Prime Minister Indira Gandhi wanted to nab more than George Fernandes. Yet, for a whole year, he managed to defy arrest, giving the slip to the special cell that Mrs Gandhi had set up in Delhi to catch him, and along with it the seven intelligence agencies of the Centre and state governments that were coordinating the effort.
When Mrs Gandhi declared Emergency, and started rounding up Opposition leaders, Fernandes was not in Delhi. He was in the coastal town of Gopalpur in Odisha with his wife Leila and 17-month-old son Sushanto. He had been tipped off about the arrest of the Opposition leaders, among them Jayaprakash Narayan, who had been woken up at 3 am and whisked away from the Gandhi Peace Foundation in Delhi.
When Fernandes went underground, little did he realise that the next time he would see his wife and son would be 22 months later. But he managed to have someone deliver a note to Leila three days later, knowing that she would be passing through Howrah station in West Bengal. 'I don't know where this will end. Our son will give you company,' he wrote, as cited in Michael Henderson's book Experiment with Untruth: India Under Emergency.
In the weeks that followed, Fernandes moved from place to place, changing his guise. In the beginning, he grew a beard and often presented himself as a Sikh. Whenever travelling by air, he would be a 'sardar' and in villages, he would claim to be a 'bhikshuk (mendicant)'. He gave up his thick-framed glasses for thin-rimmed ones and sometimes stayed in the homes of friends, and sometimes rented a place.
The 'giant killer'
There was no love lost between Mrs Gandhi and Fernandes. A firebrand socialist baptised under Ram Manohar Lohia and a militant trade unionist in his early years — the taxi drivers in Mumbai and railway workers loved him — Fernandes earned the sobriquet of 'giant killer' in 1967 when he defeated Congress heavyweight S K Patil from one of the Lok Sabha seats in Mumbai. With this, he emerged as one of the figures of non-Congressism that he was to espouse all his life.
It was around that time, sometime in the late 1960s, when I met Fernandes for the first time. Rajmohan Gandhi had invited him to meet a group of us fresh out of college when we were in Mumbai for a programme. He exuded charisma and energy, and there was a readiness to take on the powerful. Fernandes spoke about the India he wanted to create, his work with the trade unions, and his early shot at priesthood.
After the event, several of us squeezed into the backseat of his car — I remember it was black but not its make — and he drove us around Mumbai before taking us to his office near Charni Road, telling us how he had slept many a night on a bench there.
In 1974, as head of the powerful All India Railwaymen's Federation, Fernandes brought the entire railway network in the country to a grinding halt as he mobilised 1.7 million workers to strike for three weeks for better conditions. Mrs Gandhi, already grappling with the JP-led Bihar movement against corruption, saw it as an attempt to overthrow her government. It was a seminal moment in the decline of the Congress that had ruled the country since Independence.
Even when underground, Fernandes kept writing newsletters to the railwaymen, urging them to be part of 'this great and exciting crusade for freedom'. His effort was to create an underground network of people who would resist Mrs Gandhi's authoritarian rule. Later, when the government came out with a white paper, 'Why Emergency', it said the railway strike had 'necessitated' the declaration of Emergency.
Betrayal and prison
Almost a year after he went on the run, Fernandes was betrayed. The Intelligence Bureau had managed to infiltrate his ranks as sympathisers of the cause, and on June 10, 1976, he was detained at a church compound in Kolkata (then Calcutta).
He was immediately flown to Delhi in a transport plane and taken straight to Red Fort, before being moved to Hisar Jail in Haryana. There, the firebrand leader was kept in what amounted to a cage exposed to the hot winds of June, he later said. In the weeks that followed, we heard stories that a bright light was shone on him in his cell to prevent him from sleeping.
Many believed that the intervention of the Socialist International and European leaders helped keep Fernandes safe. Austrian writer Hans Janitschek, the Secretary General of the Socialist International, warned that his life may be in danger. Willy Brandt, then the chairman of the German Social Democratic Party, Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, Swedish PM Olof Palme, French Socialist leader Francois Mitterand (later the President of France) all urged Mrs Gandhi to reconsider her action in the interest of India's 'reputation in the democratic world'.
On October 4, Fernandes was charged with trying to overawe the government with the use of explosives in what came to be known as the Baroda Dynamite case. He was brought to court in chains, and the photograph of a chained George Fernandes is one of those never-to-be-forgotten moments in the country's democratic story. He raised his hands and declared that his shackles only symbolised a nation that had been chained.
Fiery Fernandes to 'George sahab'
When Mrs Gandhi suddenly announced elections in January 1977 — Emergency was officially withdrawn on March 21, a day after the polling was over — Fernandes initially advocated that they be boycotted. But he was soon brought around by the Opposition and contested the 1977 general elections from inside prison. He was fielded from Muzaffarpur in Bihar on a Janata Party ticket and defeated his Congress rival by around 3 lakh votes. The Congress was routed all over north India, with Indira Gandhi losing her pocket borough of Rae Bareli.
Soon afterwards, Fernandes was released from prison, the Baroda Dynamite case was withdrawn, and he joined the first non-Congress government led by Morarji Desai. Slowly, the fiery Fernandes gave way to a more pragmatic 'George sahab' who understood the nature of power and navigated the political system that he had earlier opposed. He went on to occupy top ministerial positions: as Minister of Communications, Industry, Railways, and Defence under non-Congress PMs Morarji Desai, V P Singh, and Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Given his antipathy to the Congress, in later years (1998 to 2004), he preferred to join hands with the BJP-led NDA. From Indira Gandhi to Sonia Gandhi, the Congress too loved to dislike him.
George Fernandes's contribution to the Indian story can be summed up by his efforts to deepen the roots of democracy in the country. He did it by espousing the cause of those on the margins, by fighting for the restoration of fundamental rights during Emergency, and by helping create an alternative to the dominance of the Congress.
Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Express, has covered the last 11 Lok Sabha elections. She is the author of How Prime Ministers Decide