Lesser-known facts about the 1975 Emergency

Indira Gandhi

It was 42 years ago on this day that then prime minister Indira Gandhi had declared a state of national Emergency in India. The order was imposed for 21-month period where constitutional rights and freedom of the masses were suspended.

While much of the time period has been covered extensively by journalists, academics and writers over the past years, here are few interesting facts that are worth looking at in modern India's most turbulent moment political history.

Many familiar faces in today’s political arena first spring boarded their career on the Emergency. Before becoming the Chief Minister of Bihar, Lalu Prasad Yadav was a 26-year-old student leader. It was Lalu Prasad who persuaded the Gandhian leader Jay Prakash Narayan to come out of retirement and lead the country to bring about “total revolution” against the government of the time.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee also had a key role to play at the end of the Emergency. He was instrumental in the formation of the Jana Sangh — A united opposition against the ruling Congress that clinched the 1977 elections after the Emergency was lifted. Vajpayee became the country’s Minister of External Affairs at the time, before becoming the country’s Prime Minister decades later.

The military was apolitical during the Emergency. According to a Quint article, the Chief of Army Staff, General TN Raina, shared a good equation with Gandhi. Among other instances, the army refused to help with water requirements of the Congress party for a massive rally at India Gate.

The report mentions a book “Militarism in India”, which stated that General Raina made the army’s stance very clear that it will do nothing to uphold the Emergency.

The report noted that in hindsight, while the world press might have labelled Gandhi a “dictator”, the military was independent in its operations, which bode well for the nation’s armed forces.

The ice cream buddy: An interesting character that received scant attention during the Emergency was Sanjay Gandhi’s aide Rukhsana Sultana. According to a Print report, she called herself his “ice-cream buddy” and was his point of contact to Delhi’s Muslim localities. A bejeweled socialite, and an exhibitionist, Sultana’s image did not blend with the rest of the Congress. She was also allegedly paid a significant sum of Rs 84,000 for convincing 8,000 people to carry out vasectomies as part of the “family planning” initiative of the government at the time.

The art of disguise: A report suggests that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was 25 at the time, disguised himself as a Sikh to ferry key leaders like George Fernandes to safe houses.

Fernandes himself was constantly in disguise during the Emergency. He first initiated a railway strike in 1974 which catapulted him to the spotlight. The report said that he dressed as a sadhu to escape unwanted attention and rarely stopped for more than a few days at any single place.

The maverick statistician Subramanian Swamy himself became a master of disguise to escape an arrest warrant during the Emergency. He fled to the US where he became a spokesperson of the Jana Sangh.

But the cherry on top of the cake was when he returned to attend parliament as he risked losing his seat. Swamy said that democracy also deserved a mention in the obituaries, which reportedly stunned those in attendance. He quickly left the parliament, disguised himself as a Sikh man and fled to Nepal.