The writer is a New Delhi-based defence and security analyst
Multiple narratives exist for why Indira Gandhi lifted the Emergency
N K Seshan, Dhar, and my father got the impression that, from about September 1976 onwards, Indira Gandhi was beginning to get disillusioned with the Emergency, and was implementing measures to re-take power away from her younger son, Sanjay Gandhi.
In his article titled ‘Why did Indira Gandhi call off the Emergency?’ (IE, February 08), Fali S Nariman speculated that the then US president, Jimmy Carter, had put pressure on Indira Gandhi to call off the Emergency and hold elections in March 1977. However, Nariman went on to say that he could not find any documents to substantiate his “recollections”.
Carter was sworn in as US president on January 20, 1977. And, it was two days earlier, on January 18, that Indira Gandhi addressed the nation on All India Radio, calling for elections. As president-elect, Carter would not have written on such a sensitive topic to a world leader, before he was sworn in.
As far back as early November, in 1976, Indira Gandhi had told her principal secretary, P N Dhar, and my late father H Y Sharada Prasad, who was her information advisor, in strict confidence: “I am going to call off the Emergency and hold elections. I know that I will lose, but this is something which I absolutely have to do. The intelligence agencies will tell me what they think I want to hear. But I know that I am going to lose, even though the IB is saying that I will win 330 seats.” Neither of them ever got to know the reasons behind her decision.
Although, N K Seshan, Dhar, and my father got the impression that, from about September 1976 onwards, Indira Gandhi was beginning to get disillusioned with the Emergency, and was implementing measures to re-take power away from her younger son, Sanjay Gandhi. She was particularly perturbed by a rash interview which Sanjay Gandhi gave to a newspaper, in which he had harshly criticised the Soviet Union and the Indian communist parties. She had also received inputs from intelligence agencies that the CIA had penetrated Sanjay’s inner circle.
In the March 2006 issue of the magazine Realpolitik, my father wrote: “The Emergency can be described as Indira Gandhi’s coup against her own prime ministership. Her Secretariat, the Home Ministry, the Cabinet, and indeed her government as a whole, were deprived of their effective power, and the prime minister herself was made a prisoner of the Palace Guards…”
Indira Gandhi did not let Sanjay Gandhi get even the slightest inkling of her intention to hold elections. In fact, Sanjay Gandhi first got to know about the elections from her radio broadcast on January 18, 1977, and he had an angry showdown with her. On February 2, 1977, when Jagjivan Ram and Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna defected, she told my father, “I am sure to lose the elections. Now that Bahuguna has abandoned me, I will be wiped out in Uttar Pradesh.” But in a cryptic remark, she also said that, “It will be a relief if I lose, an absolute relief”.
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