Arun Jaitley tells SHWETA BANSAl that the Emergency was the best political education of his life and taught him that some compromises were just not possible. Edited excerpt:
On June 25, 19751, the Dark Age of Indian democracy was set in motion. Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency and the whole country was silent in fear. Raian Karanjawala, a leading lawyer and a friend of Arun Jaitley’s, recalls that he was in Bombay for the summer vacations and called up Jaitley’s house on the morning the Emergency was declared. Jaitley’s father picked up the phone and told Raian that Arun was at the university. Raian was unaware that the Emergency had been declared and expecting to hear back from his friend, he hung up casually. By afternoon, leaders like Morarji Desai, Jayaprakash Narayan, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and lK Advani had been arrested. It’s then that Raian realised that Jaitley was in jail.
The night before Raian’s call, the police had reached Jaitley’s house in Naraina Vihar, West Delhi, where he lived with his parents, with a clear view of arresting him, even though they had neither a First Information Report (FIR), nor any detention order. Jaitley’s guile came handy and he managed to escape to a friend s place while his father held fort. By sunrise, most senior Opposition leaders had been arrested, but few knew of these developments because there were no newspapers in print that day: The electricity supply to Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, Delhi’s Fleet Street, from where most newspapers were published, had been cut off. While on the run, Jaitley managed to organise a crowd of 200 strong ABVP members the following day, who collected students from other colleges and arrived at the Coffee House behind the vice-chancellor’s office. Here, he delivered a speech and became the chief architect of the only agitation against the Emergency, which included burning an effigy of Indira Gandhi. That Jaitley managed to gather such a crowd on a day when the country was reeling under indiscriminate arrests is evidence not only of his courage, but also of his charisma, popularity and instant connect with the youth. Reminiscing that fateful day, Jaitley recalls, “It was dangerous but it was our satyagraha. It was the only protest that took place against the Emergency that day. Since I was leading it, I was giving a speech. By this time hundreds of policemen led by the Deputy Inspector General of Delhi Police, PS Bhinder, had surrounded us. So, I advised the friends helping me to leave. There was no way I could escape; I was arrested, but I wanted them to continue to organise the protests.”
Jaitley was taken to the Civil lines police station where he heard the news broadcast about the Emergency. Jaitley was detained under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act, 1971, order, which was blank-signed by an additional district magistrate. Seven false cases were registered against him and he was left languishing in Delhi’s infamous Tihar jail. The detainees in jail included local politicians of the Jana Sangh, the Congress (O), the Swatantra Party, some socialists, ultra-left Naxalite activists, teachers from the University of Delhi, and members of Jamaat-e-Islami. Jaitley’s political baptism was taking place in the prison cell.
After a few days, he was transported to a jail in Ambala and after spending three months there, was brought back to Tihar jail. Due to the false cases slapped on him, Jaitley was dragged to the Patiala House or Tis Hazari every day. This was his first experience of courts. For Jaitley, jail was both a sobering and an enlightening experience and earned him respect from the Jana Sangh leadership. Many years later, Jaitley would post on his Facebook page: “For many like me who underwent Emergency experience in Delhi and successfully fought against it, this became a turning point in our lives and the Emergency was perhaps the best political education of my life. It taught me that some compromises were just not possible.”
KK lahiri, Jaitley’s school friend, remembers how Jaitley used his time in jail to read voraciously and even learnt Urdu by reading newspapers. Jaitley for his part says, “Jail is a state of mind, so I spent time reading. When the detenues used to sit in the evening, most of them senior to me, mostly political workers, I used to address them on the political situation prevalent in the country. I would break down and re-analyse whatever information we could get from the censored newspapers and this went on for my 19-month stay in jail. I spent the remaining 1975 and the whole of 1976 in jail missing out on one year of college. I had completed two years of law. But despite my political activities, my results came out and I had done well. I was fairly okay in academics.”
In the third week of January 1977, Indira Gandhi announced fresh elections. Censorship was partly relaxed, and detainees such as Jaitley were released. He was hailed as the hero of the masses, a leader who was liked by all from JP to Atal Bihari Vajpayee, from Jagjivan Ram to lK Advani. With less than 45 days to prepare for elections, Jaitley jumped into the fray and campaigned all over the country for the Jana Sangh. The atmosphere was charged and Jaitley drew inspiration from a poem penned by Vajpayee during the 1977 election: “Toot sakte hain magar hum jhuk nahi sakte.”
Vajpayee called Jaitley and asked him to contest elections, but Jaitley was only 24 at the time and hence ineligible to contest. These elections created space for the Janata Party into which the Jana Sangh had merged. However, the disparate student youth wings of Jana Sangh, Congress (O), the Socialist Party and Swatantra Party did not come together under one umbrella and hence Jaitley and a few others formed a joint committee of all such student wings and called it loktantrik Yuva Morcha with Jaitley as its national convenor.
The first rally of the hurriedly formed Janata Party addressed by Morarji Desai and Vajpayee was a grand success. Immediately thereafter, a massive rally was organised to be addressed by Jayaprakash Narayan at the Ramlila Maidan, which drew record crowds. Jaitley was one of the speakers at the rally and this was the first time he addressed such a mammoth gathering.
The results of the 1977 general elections announced a landslide victory for the Janata Party and a humiliating defeat to Indira Gandhi. Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi lost even their constituency and in the words of Jaitley, “Democracy had been restored.”
Excerpted from Shweta Bansal’s book Courting Politics edited by Smita Khanna; Eastern Book Company, Rs 695
