The inside story of why Indira Gandhi called the 1977 elections | Latest News India - Hindustan Times
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The inside story of why Indira Gandhi called the 1977 elections

ByRavi Visvesvaraya Sharada Prasad
Mar 19, 2021 12:01 PM IST

Till she made her announcement on All India Radio on January 18, 1977, she took great care to ensure that no one in the Congress had the slightest inkling at all

During his video interaction with Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi on March 2, 2021, Kaushik Basu, former chief economist of the World Bank and currently professor of International Studies and Economics at Cornell University, described his conversation with former President Pranab Mukherjee about Prime Minister Indira Gandhi calling for elections in January 1977.

Indira Gandhi. (Getty Images)
Indira Gandhi. (Getty Images)

Basu recounted: “I asked Pranab Mukherjee whether it was hubris, the arrogance of an authoritarian leader that she would win? Or was it that she was beginning to have self doubts?” Basu added that Mukherjee told him: “Actually I have direct conversational evidence. She began to think she would lose. But she wanted to put it to the test and have a fair election, even if she would lose. Having made a huge mistake, she wanted to rectify that and bring back democracy”.

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Almost all the popularly believed notions about why Indira Gandhi unexpectedly called for elections are incorrect.

In the second week of November 1976 itself, she told her principal secretary Professor PN Dhar and my father, HY Sharada Prasad, who was her information advisor: “I am going to end the Emergency and call for elections. I know that I will lose, but this is something which I absolutely need to do”.

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But till she made her announcement on All India Radio on January 18, 1977, she took great care to ensure that no one in the Congress had the slightest inkling at all. She was especially careful that her son Sanjay Gandhi was kept in the dark; he came to know only from her radio broadcast, and he had an angry showdown with her.

It is commonly believed that Indira Gandhi called for elections because the Intelligence Bureau told her that she would win 330 seats. However, she had told PN Dhar and my father in mid-November 1976: “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 telling me that I will win 330 seats. However, it is absolutely necessary for me to call for elections.”

A couple of weeks earlier, Michael MacKintosh Foot, who was then United Kingdom’s Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons, obliquely hintedto my father that Indira Gandhi would call for elections even though she knew she would lose. Foot, who regarded himself as being Indira Gandhi’s elder brother, and who had the courage to speak frankly with her, spent several days in India in October 1976. He told her to release political prisoners, end press censorship, and he told her several harsh truths about Sanjay Gandhi’s sterilisation programs.

She heard Foot patiently, but made no commitments about ending the Emergency. Instead she elaborated on the reasons why she was compelled to declare the Emergency, strongly defended the family planning programme, and firmly told Foot that his good friend, George Fernandes, would have to stand trial on terrorism and treason charges. Foot then spent several hours emphasising Jawaharlal Nehru’s ideals.

In spite of being rebuffed by someone with whom he shared a close sibling-like relationship, Foot wrote to my father soon after he returned to UK: “...Crosland (CAR Crosland was UK’s Foreign Secretary) told me that Indira would never call another democratic election, when I was certain that she would do exactly that even if her own hopes of winning were to be confounded…”

On February 2, 1977, when Jagjivan Ram and Hemavati Nandan Bahuguna defected, she told my father: “It is all over now. I am sure to lose the elections”. She had a grudging admiration for the wily Bahuguna’s uncanny ability to anticipate changing political trends and always place himself on the winning side. She told my father, “Now that Bahuguna has abandoned me, I will be wiped out in Uttar Pradesh”. And she cryptically added: “It will be a relief if I lose, an absolute relief”.

But even then, she did not lose her sense of humour. The day Jagjivan Ram defected was also the day that the Indian cricket team won a consolation test match against Tony Greig’s visiting MCC team, having already lost the test series. She remarked: “As usual, the Indian press has no news sense. The correct priority of the headlines should be—India wins test, Jagjivan Ram defects.”

Further, on February 13-14 1977, Indira Gandhi told her good friend, US Senator Charles Percy, that she would lose the elections badly, and that she was worried about her son Sanjay Gandhi.

After March 1977, several people tried to take credit for Indira Gandhi’s ending the Emergency. But their claims are not credible.

Her friend, the cultural czarina Pupul Jayakar, claimed that her guru, the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurthi, was responsible, because Indira Gandhi had told Krishnamurthi on October 28, 1976 : “I am riding on the back of a tiger. I do not mind the tiger killing me. But I do not know how to get off its back”. Jiddu Krishnamurthi replied to Indira Gandhi that if she thought deeply enough about her situation, she herself would obtain the answer. Jayakar claims that it was this exchange with Jiddu Krishnamurthi which persuaded Indira Gandhi to “end the Emergency, no matter what the consequences would be for her.” Attributing a cause-and-effect to this vague generalised response of Krishnamurthi seems far fetched.

The followers of the Shankaracharya of Kanchi, especially Subramanian Swamy, too claimed after March 1977 that his refusal to speak to her was instrumental in Indira Gandhi’s ending the Emergency. This is inaccurate. She had very high regard for the Kanchi Shankaracharya. The day she called on him, he was observing a vow of silence. My father had accompanied her. She and the Shankaracharya sat opposite each other, communing in total silence for three hours. As they departed from Kanchi, Indira Gandhi told my father: “I am at peace now. I put all my questions to him, and received the answers I wanted. I am now clear about what I should do”. Indira Gandhi added to my father: “Does one need mere words to communicate?” There was no question at all of the Kanchi Shankaracharya snubbing her; rather they had a deep telepathic communication in total silence.

Neither PN Dhar nor my father disclosed the reasons why Indira Gandhi called for elections, and it is not clear if they came to know of her reasons at all. PN Dhar stated later: “Was her decision to hold elections a calculated risk—or was it something else? There may never be a conclusive answer. I believe she was not comfortable with the Emergency, and wanted desperately to get out of it, somehow, anyhow”.

To me, it could be that Indira Gandhi lifted the Emergency because she was more the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru than she was the mother of Sanjay Gandhi.

Ravi Visvesvaraya Sharada Prasad, an alumnus of Carnegie Mellon and Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, is a technology consultant and defence analyst.

The views expressed are personal

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