BBC news: Prime Minister Indira Gandhi defeated in Raebareli

BBC news: Prime Minister Indira Gandhi defeated in Raebareli

BBC news: Prime Minister Indira Gandhi defeated in Raebareli

A few weeks after the Emergency was imposed, the situation was back to normal in the country. I, like most people in the country, was very Indignant that most political leaders opposed to the Congress and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi were imprisoned. The situation in the country had been very volatile for more than a year as a result of the students’ agitation in Gujarat and Bihar, the George Fernandes-led nationwide railway strike and the agitation led by Socialist leader Jaiprakash Narayan. The Allahabad High Court’s ruling disqualifying Prime Minister Indira Gandhi as Raibereli MP had come as the last straw on the camel’s back.

Although I was then only a 10th standard student, I shared the people’s anger towards the Congress and Indira Gandhi. The atmosphere in the country at that time was surcharged. Indira Gandhi who realised that the situation was getting out of her control had imposed the Emergency on June 25, 1975, put all her political opponents into prisons. Soon peace was established in the country with no murmur of protests anywhere.

As people turned to pay attention to the issues of their daily livelihood, I too had turned to my SSC board examination studies. And there was hardly anything interesting or sensational matter in newspapers those days. After passing the SSC examination, I moved to Karad in Satara district for following my religious vocation as a priest and further studies. Incidentally Tilak High School in Karad where I took admission for standard 11th was the alma matter of then Union Minister Yashwantrao or Y. B. Chavan. A bust of this great son of the soil minister was erected at the school campus.

The political atmosphere in Karad was as peaceful as in the rest parts of the country. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi concluded that the political situation was most conducive for her party to hold the already delayed general elections. Eighteen months after the promulgation of the Emergency, Gandhi in January 1977 relaxed restrictions of the Emergency. General elections were announced, followed by release of almost all opposition leaders except George Fernandes who was implicated in the Baroda dynamite case.

And at once, all hell broke loose. Newspapers who had last one and half years were totally submissive to the government administration and the censor officials immediately found their lost voice. The government administration and especially the Congress party was treated as a villain and all those who were being released from prisons including the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh functionaries overnight turned heroes. The released politicians who travelled to their home towns were garlanded on arrival at railway stations. Such was the euphoria created all over the country and I too was affected by it.

The country was gripped by an election fever it had never experienced before. Karad was the Lok Sabha constituency of Premalakaki Chavan, mother of former Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, She had been representing Karad since 1973 bypoll, following death of her husband and Union minister of state Anandrao Chavan. Satara was the parliamentary constituency of Union Minister Yashwantrao Chavan. Although both Chavans, not related to each other, were strong contenders for the two parliamentary seats, the left-oriented Peasants and Farmers Party (PWP) or the Shetkari Kamgar Paksha unexpectedly found popular support of youths and others. I too had actively participated in the PWP’s many election rallies.

At the fag end of the high pitch election campaign, I heard Yashwantrao Chavan addressing a few corner meetings in Karad, his home town. There was no stage or even a pandal erected for the election meeting. The dhoti-clad and Gandhi cap wearing Foreign Affairs Minister had absolutely no body guards around him as he addressed the poll meeting in one of the Peths in Karad. (Karad town located on the confluence of Krishna and Koyna rivers has, like Pune, residential areas named as Guruwar Peth, Shukrawar Peth etc. ) There were hardly 200 people at each poll meeting.

The elections in the country took place peacefully from March 16 to 19. Being a minor, I was not a voter. Those days, 21 years was the qualifying age to be a voter. ( Some years later, Rajiv Gandhi lowered the qualifying age for voters to 18).

The counting of votes was to be held on March 20, 1977. On March 19 night, along with other other PWP supporters, I travelled in a truck from Karad to Satara district headquarters to be the Peasants and Farmers Party’s polling agents at the votes counting process. As we entered the especially erected pandal in Satara at 7 am, no one sought our credentials. It did not matter that as a minor, I was not even a voter. The ballots boxes were first opened, ballots of each candidates were segregated and the actual counting of votes began only around 11 am and continued till late night.

We the Peasants and Workers Party supporters had never expected miracles , that is, poll victories either in Karad or Satara seats. The voting trends favouring the Congress nominees in Karad and Satara therefore did not surprise or demoralise us.

At around past midnight, perhaps at 2 pm, the bomb shell came and it suddenly changed the atmosphere in the pandal.

Someone had broken the news that the British Broadcasting Corporation or the BBC had just announced that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was defeated in her Raibereli constituency ! Her son, Sanjay Gandhi, too had met the same fate in the neighbouring Amethi constituency.

One can just imagine the excitement this news must have generated among us Janata Party supporters at the site !

There were shouts, screaming and dancing at the open space in the pandal. And no government officials objected to it. The news of poll defeat of the prime minister, the first in the country’s history, was too stunning !

A pall of gloom had descended on the large number of Congress supporters present at the pandal although the party’s both candidates in Satara district, Y. B. Chavan and Premalakaki Chavan were elected with huge margins of votes. Premalakaki in fact polled the highest number of votes among the Congress nominees in Maharashtra, next followed by Yashwantrao Chavan.

We heard bursting of fire crackers outside the pandal, the celebrations of course were not of the Congress but of the Janata Party supporters. The news of the prime minister’s defeat and victory of the Janata Party in most parts of the country had obviously spread like wildfire.

Before dawn, we travelled back from Satara to Karad in the same truck with the celebrations and excitement continuing during the hour-long travel.

The next day, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi tendered her resignation to the President but not before she had fully lifted the Emergency. She would not give the credit of lifting the Emergency to her successor.

The country had successfully emerged out of its darkest political era, so we thought. It had taken quite a long time for me to bring my feet on the ground.

The political drama, nautaki or tamasha and infightings that followed among Janata Party leaders during the next few days to be the next prime minister was too unnerving for me and all the people who had believed that the poll verdict had ushered in a new era of freedom and democracy.

There was a tough contest among Morarji Desai, Charan Singh and Jagjivan Ram to don the prime minister’s mantle. This forced Jaiprakash Narayan and Acharya J.B. Kriplani to huddle up all the warring contenders to swear before the statue of Father of the Nation that they will behave properly.

They did not.

Not long after, an evening in December 1979, I saw former prime minister Indira Gandhi getting out of a car parked outside Hotel Mandovi in Panjim. She was on a hectic parliamentary poll campaign. I, then studying in final year of my BA degree course in Dhempe College, was among 50 odd people standing there.

During those days, there was no trolling – paid or unpaid – of the present social media era. Nonetheless, in the history of independent India, post- Emergency, Indira Gandhi was the most hated and disgraced politician who was shunned by one and all. Out of power and hounded by the vindictive Janata Party government, almost her all party lieutenants including by Y. B. Chavan, S. B. Chavan and also Balasaheb Vikhe Patil had deserted her. Premalakaki Chavan, the MP from Karad, had however firmly stood by her Gandhi had no funds to travel by planes or chartered helicopters and was forced to travel by road for many hours during the election campaign. Now in Panjim, she had just arrived from Karnataka by road.

For a few seconds, I observed her from a very close distance. A frail old woman with a printed saree, Indira Gandhi did not seem to have given up. Only a decade back, then Bharatiya Jan Sangh leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee had described her as Durga. I noticed this time, Indira Gandhi did not have her trademark of the white streak in her hair. Although she covered her head with the saree, the fully grey hair locks were visible. Obviously she had little time for make up during the hectic poll campaign.

As she got out the car, Gandhi turned to us assembled people, smilingly did a quick Namaste with raised folded hands and made an about turn to climb the few steps of the hotel entrance in her usual brisk walking style. That impression of Indira Gandhi is still afresh in my mind. Half an hour later, I was at the Campal ground near Miramar to hear her speech.

In her half an hour long speech delivered in her shrill voice, Indira Gandhi tore her political opponents into pieces. As was her wont, Gandhi never took name of her political opponent in her speech. She would refer to them as `Vipaksha Ke Lok’, `some people’, or as `some politicians’ She was not a great orator but was convincing about she said. Now 40 years later, I can still recall how she assailed the government’s mismanagement and infightings. Her answer to the present crisis was very loud and clear : Only I can save nation !

For me, it was a long and memorable sojourn for me from Shrirampur when on June 27, 1975, I heard that Emergency was imposed in the country. Then that day, March 20 midnight 1977 in Satara when we Janata Party supporters celebrated Indira Gandhi’s defeat in the Lok Sabha poll. And here now in Panjim in December 1979, I was lapping up every word of her poll speech !

My political transition was astonishing even to myself. Thanks to the mismanagement of the Janata Party governments, first led by Morarji Desai and then by Charan Singh, the people in the country too had undergone such a political transition.

No wonder, a weeks later, in early January 1980, Indira Gandhi romped back to power, winning much more Lok Sabha seats than she had ever won before.

A post script

A few years later, in 1983, I had another encounter with Indira Gandhi. Now she was India’s Prime Minister and also the hostess of the Commonwealth conference and a retreat first held in New Delhi and later at Fort Aquada resort in Goa. Now I was a reporter of The Navhind Times in Goa, covering some aspects of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) retreat. I had accompanied Kiran Bedi, then deputy superintendent of police (traffic),many times in her Gypsy jeep from Daboli airport to Fort Aquada resort, as she with a heavy walkie talkie machine set, conducted reccee of the VVVIP travel arrangements.

As Gandhi played the role of hostess to 39 heads of Commonwealth states including British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke, and Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, for security reasons, we reporters had absolutely no chance even to have a glimpses of theese VVIPs, let alone interact with any of them. All of us journalists, the international press included, were dependent on the daily press briefings by the then Commonwealth general Secretary and spokesperson Shridatt Ramphal.

But it was a most memorable event in my journalistic career. The fact that only recently I had watched Indira Gandhi from a close distance was always at the back of my mind when I covered this high profile international event.