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JNU during Emergency: When Maneka Gandhi was left fuming and a case of mistaken identity
Three months after the Indira Gandhi government imposed Emergency, on September 25, 1975, a black Ambassador drove into the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus and stopped near its School of Social Sciences. In the car were policemen led by DIG P S Bhinder, who was close to Congress leader Sanjay Gandhi, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's younger son. They were looking for JNU Students' Union president D P Tripathi but ended up detaining the wrong man.
'Bhinder virtually kidnapped me. They were looking for D P Tripathi, who looks quite different, but arrested me instead,' recalls journalist Prabir Purkayastha. At the time, he was a PhD scholar at the School of Computer Sciences and, like Tripathi, a member of the CPI(M)'s student wing SFI.
The incident took place while the students were on strike following the expulsion of student leader Ashoka Lata Jain, Purkayastha's fiancée. 'We had stopped Maneka Gandhi, the then PM's daughter-in-law, from going to her class,' he says, remembering what triggered the police response.
In Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and Democracy's Turning Point, historian Gyan Prakash writes, 'On the day Prabir was abducted, Maneka arrived on campus just before 9:00 a.m. for her class in the School of Languages. She got out of her black Ambassador and walked to the elevator to go up to her classroom. As she waited, Tripathi, accompanied by other students including Prabir, asked her to heed the strike call and boycott classes. 'You are one of us, Mrs. Gandhi Junior!' Maneka exploded in anger. 'Just you wait and see. Your heads will roll on the ground!' Then she stomped off. An hour later, another Ambassador entered JNU, and Prabir was whisked off.'
In his statement to the Shah Commission, which the Janata Party government set up in 1977 to investigate the excesses of Emergency, Additional District Magistrate (South) P Ghosh said South Delhi SP Rajendra Mohan had told him that Bhinder had gone to JNU to arrest Tripathi because Maneka Gandhi complained to her husband about the 'anti-government activities in JNU and Sanjay Gandhi had summoned Shri Bhinder and had asked him to take drastic action'.
Tripathi, meanwhile, went into hiding, holed up in a washerman's house behind the Statesman Building on Barakhamba Road in the Capital for a few days. Two months later, he was arrested and sent to Tihar Jail, where he remained till the end of Emergency with other political detainees, including Arun Jaitley.
'Frankly, the imposition of Emergency was a surprise to all of us,' says Purkayastha. 'The Supreme Court had partially stayed her (Indira Gandhi's) disqualification as an MP and allowed her to continue as Prime Minister. But these developments happened against the backdrop of various protests, by students, youth, and workers.'
The news of Emergency broke not in print, but on the radio on June 26. 'It is difficult for people today to imagine a life without cellphones and social media. So, we discovered Emergency only the next morning, without newspapers. All newspaper publications had been halted by cutting off electricity to their printing presses. We learned the news on All India Radio when Mrs Gandhi announced it,' recalls the 75-year-old.
At JNU, student organisers regrouped immediately. 'The immediate response of the SFI was to create new structures that would operate during the Emergency. We began to function as smaller, more decentralised groups while coordinating our resistance,' says Purkayastha.
As Opposition leaders and activists were rounded up, a politically active campus such as JNU — the irony was that it is named after the PM's father — was also targeted. On July 8, Prakash writes, the police raided the campus around 3 am and arrested around 25 students, most of them randomly.
'We had one major crackdown when a large number of policemen surrounded the campus and hostels, conducting room-to-room searches. By then, none of the student leaders were sleeping in their rooms. The few taken away were released shortly, as police had failed to net the big fish they were hoping to get,' says Purkayastha.
Political life on campus was as much about discourse as it was about mobilisation. 'One thing that demarcated student politics in JNU was a vibrant culture of debate and discussion combined with mass actions. Prakash Karat, D P Tripathi, and Sitaram Yechuri were all active in student politics,' he says.
The faculty also played a crucial role in campus life. 'We had Professor Bipan Chandra, who often disagreed with us but would debate as an equal; Professor Sudipto Kaviraj; Professor Romila Thapar, Professors Prabhat and Utsa Patnaik, whose writings helped us understand history and the political economy of the country,' says Purkayastha.
He was detained under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA), a preventive detention law widely used during Emergency, and taken to Tihar. 'The difference in jail then was that we were treated as political prisoners … At present, there is no distinction between political prisoners charged under criminal laws and other undertrials.'
Purkayastha's detention triggered protests at JNU. 'There was widespread protest against my arrest from students and teachers. Tripathi was arrested a couple of months later. For some time, both of us shared a ward with Professor M M P Singh, the President of the Delhi University Teachers Association; Nanaji Deshmukh; and Arun Jaitley.'
After six months, he was shifted to Agra Jail, 'a jail which was supposed to have been closed and demolished, but continued for the period of Emergency'. 'Even though there is no distinction between those who are targeted for political reasons and others, there was camaraderie in prison. It cut across politics, class and even the kind of offences people were charged with. The isolation was worse in Agra, where we also faced solitary confinement. For families, it became harder to visit, though Ashoka, my fiancée, still came every fortnight.'
Looking back, Purkayastha says the experience strengthened his political views. It ended up not being his last brush with the law. He went on to establish the NewsClick website and was arrested under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA in 2023, accused of receiving foreign funds for pro-China propaganda. In May 2024, days after the Supreme Court invalidated his arrest, a Delhi court granted him bail.
'I was already a student activist of the SFI from my pre-JNU days. My jail period (during Emergency) confirmed my views of the nature of the State and the importance of various freedoms guaranteed under the Constitution. There is no question that the freedom of the press is intimately linked to our right to speak as citizens, to our freedom of speech and expression,' he says.
