Modi was right when he asked to observe Jayaprakash Narayan's birth anniversary as ‘save democracy day', because threats to our democracy are not over yet. Danger comes from minds that remain irreconcilable to the fact that their monopoly is gradually dissolving
The hand that rose to fend off a devastating lathi blow inflicted on Jayaprakash Narayan by paramilitary forces in Bihar, then controlled like the Centre by Indira Gandhi’s Congress, was a hand that was trained and strengthened over the years in an Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh shakha. The blow that was about to strike Jayaprakash Narayan on November 4, 1974, in the course of a massive demonstration in Patna to protest oppression by Indira’s Congress, had the potential to rip apart his skull.
Though heavy blows landed on Jayaprakash Narayan’s collar bones, elbows and legs and made him senseless, the warding off of that mighty blow not only saved him but also protected free India’s democratic yearnings.
The fact that the blow was attempted to be inflicted in the first place on as revered and as venerated a figure as Jayaprakash Narayan, by law enforcers of free India under instructions from the top leadership of a party, of which he had once been an integral and a most dynamic part, demonstrated how India was being unmade under Indira’s and the Congress’s essentially fascist rule.
The fact that someone trained in the RSS mould and worldview could come forward and ward off that blow at great physical injury and pain symbolised how during that trying and dark period of India’s history, the RSS and the Jana Sangh had plunged itself in trying to preserve the democratic soul of India.
Jayaprakash Narayan recalled later how “if Nanaji Deshmukh had not physically intervened, receiving” the blow “aimed at me, I would have been a dead man.” Most opposition parties then had joined in protest against this dastardly attack on Jayaprakash Narayan, a section among the communists of course kept quiet — they had no sympathy for a leader whom they saw as leading a ‘bourgeois revolution’, whose control lay in the hands of, as they argued and still argue, “big business, the rich, capitalists and the landlords.”
Such diversionary tactics, however, is common to the communists, especially when they wish to ward off any accusations of inaction or collusion in acts that subvert democracy. In fact, if one were to re-check — this period of ‘left’ history — except for a few leaders and workers far apart — the Opposition to Emergency among communists was largely left to then ailing AK Gopalan. Most of Gopalan’s comrades evaporated while another section actively colluded and advised Indira on how to stem reactionaries by crushing bourgeois democratic rights.
HV Seshadri, who later rose to become the General Secretary of the RSS, wrote that so saddened was Gopalan that he repeatedly asked his close associates as to why earlier when he led farmers’ and workers’ agitations, he had a following of “ten thousand people” and “why is it that today even 10 people do not have the courage to follow meIJ”
Gopalan himself offered the right answer, “it is clear that those who participated in the previous agitations had hopes of some financial benefit, while in the struggle against Emergency, no personal benefit is involved. So, in such a struggle, only those people can be of use who are devoted to some high ideal and are prepared to face all adversities for its sake.”
Gopalan’s comrades had badly failed him as they had failed the nation. Such people, as Gopalan had hoped, would be found among those he had nurtured was instead thrown up by thousands from the ranks of the RSS and the Jana Sangh — workers who were devoted to some high ideals and were prepared to face all adversities for the sake of that ideal.
But yet it is ironical, to say the least, that today, lessons of human rights and dignity of living and social cohesion come loudest from these sections, which had ditched idealism and nobility at the first instance. It was this same duplicitous habit that saw some intellectuals who had sided with Jayaprakash Narayan during Emergency, keep silent during the anti-Sikh or anti-Kashmiri Pandit pogroms and gleefully accept literary awards from those very elements who had thrown Jayaprakash Narayan in prison and had clamped Emergency.
This chameleon propensity also saw Indira Gandhi’s Health Minister during the Emergency, one who presided over or colluded in the most violent forced sterilisation drive that India has ever seen and which left hundreds dead especially in the State of Bihar, transmute himself into a great philosopher by dishing out homilies on tolerance and spiritual action from every podium that could accommodate him.
Captive intellectuals are those who only jerk into action, marionette-like, when their political patrons or ideological comrades command them to do so. At all other times, their energies are devoted to either whitewashing or to erasing the abrasive and undemocratic behaviour of their political patrons, or at exonerating themselves from any complicity in the murder of freedom itself.
Those who argue that the RSS gained ‘respectability’, post-Emergency, and only saw mainstreaming after that, obviously obfuscate the fact that it was because of the RSS and the Jana Sangh that Jayaprakash Narayan’s fight for democracy saw such a countrywide response and was eventually successful in unseating a fascist regime that had begun wallowing in sycophancy, nepotism and dynastism.
While the RSS had raised workers and leaders who staked their all to preserve India’s democratic experiment and exerted themselves to protect Jayaprakash Narayan, those leaders nurtured in Indira’s Congress who sang raucous paeans to her vision and leadership abilities displayed no qualms in literally crushing people to death.
The heights of fascism was reached when then Congress president, the fawning DK Barooah’s — who had a child-like fascination and obsession for Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu — car ferrying him from the airport to Patna city on October 28, 1974 “ran over and killed a nine-year old boy.”
Barooah’s motorcade did not stop and “it was left to the police to pick up the body” and dispose it off. Such then was the level of arrogance of the leaders — an arrogance that was rarely ever seen later except again in the same party’s case when popular regional leaders where humiliatingly treated and at times even asked to carry the ‘High Command’s’ footwear.
The arrogance, the disdain for India’s democracy, for basic human dignity, the attitude of riding roughshod over the ordinary citizen that was displayed during this period was rarely ever matched later. So agonised was Kamaraj — who had earlier rued his move of installing Indira Gandhi, “big man’s daughter”, as Prime Minister, as a “little man’s mistake” — over the imposition of Emergency and the suspension of basic democratic rights that he felt as if he was “left in the jungle blindfolded”, while the venerable JB Kripalani gave a call to launch a struggle for democracy and called upon all to pray to god to “give us liberty or death.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was right when he joined a large number of people in observing Jayaprakash Narayan’s birth anniversary on October 11 as ‘save democracy day’ because threats to India’s democracy are certainly not over even if attenuated. The danger comes from those minds that remain irreconcilable to the fact that their monopoly and habit of thought-control is gradually dissolving, the danger comes from those minds whose habits of controlling institutions and points of views for decades now face a severe challenge. The veneer of inclusivity that these minds display is just that — a veneer, scratch it and the most intolerant mindset emerges - a mindset which has only thrived on servility, sycophancy and political-intellectualism.
Mr Modi’s observation that “Emergency should be remembered” in order to “strengthen our resolve to fortify and further strengthen the democratic values and framework in our country”, therefore, must necessarily inspire us to never concede to those false raconteurs who have always excelled in pillorying those who have actually and always unreservedly stood for Indian democracy and freedom.