The Emergency, the first few days – A personal recollection

That day we spent only finding out who all had been arrested and who had escaped the police dragnet. The next day, I had wanted to walk down to the Delhi State Socialist Party office and our trade union office. I was cautioned not to go anywhere near it. It was feared that Gobind, the office caretaker, was a police informer.

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ON the morning of June 25, 1975, Than Singh Josh, the leader of the socialist trade unions in Delhi, and I had just reached Bangalore, as Bengaluru was then known. From the train station, we took an auto rickshaw to Subedar Chatram Road. We were going to the office of the Karnataka state Socialist Party. It was actually the office of  K.G. Mahewarappa, a lawyer, who was a long time socialist. We were going to sleep there for the week.

The office consisted of two small rooms on the first floor over a row of nondescript shops on the ground floor. The road itself had not become such a busy area as it did in the late 1970s. The first room, with a table and a chair, and a few wooden benches, was the grand state office of the Socialist Party. The other room was the legal office of Mahewarappa. The room had the same kind of furniture that had served the test of time. A book shelf containing law books was the distinguishing difference between the two rooms.

Apart from a party worker who acted as caretaker, who let us in, no one was in the office. We had a wash, went downstairs, and had a dosa and some good coffee at a small eatery. Our instruction from  Surendra Mohan, the then General Secretary of the All India Socialist Party, was to link up with Bapu Heddur Shetty, a Socialist student leader. We were to seek him out in the University Law College of Bangalore University. We took an auto rickshaw to the law college, and after some asking around and waiting, we were able to link up with him. He told us to come the next day, and he would get a group of students together for us to interact with. Our instructions were to get students on the streets in favour of the JP movement, as in other universities in central and northern India.

Also read: 'Singhasan Khali Karo ki janata aati hai'- Dinkar and JP's call for 'Total Revolution'

The ruling Indian National Congress, for a change, had an efficient Chief Minister. He was the first Chief Minister in Karnataka to implement land reforms. He acknowledged publicly on more than one occasion that he had been greatly influenced by the land to the tiller agitation of the socialists in Shimoga district in the 1950s, popularly known as the Kagoddu Satyagraha. Shantaveri Gopala Gowda and H. Ganapatiyappa were its leaders. 'Kolaga', a Kannada novel inspired by the farmers' movement, states that before the satyagraha, a deevara (landless peasant) was even not allowed to wear footwear or new clothes while walking in front of his zamindar's house, and  that food was served to the tenant farmer only at the naayi katte [place where dogs are fed] in the zamindar's backyard.

The socialists had some influence amongst the peasant proprietors. It had influence amongst the members of the Kannada literary movement and the workers in the large public sector enterprises in Bangalore. Amongst other sections of society, it had marginal presence.

The Congress (O), which was the dominant opposition in the state, was averse to any agitational politics. The Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the ideological predecessor of the present Bharatiya Janata Party, was also then a marginal force in the state.

It was early evening when we got back to the party office. We had a meal at one of the many eateries that dotted Subedar Chatram Street then. As we were tired from the second class sleeper journey from Delhi, we changed into our lungis and were soon fast asleep on the wooden benches in the office. The berths in the train had also been of hard wood. Cushioned berths in second class were introduced only in 1978, by Madhu Dandavate, as Union Railway Minister in the Morarji Desai government.

At about 5 a.m., we heard commotion on the streets below. As the windows were open, we saw a large group of policemen below. Some of them were pointing at our windows. They could not see us as it was still dark, and we mercifully had not switched on the lights. Having been raided many times in our Delhi State party and trade union office, we were no strangers to the drill to be followed when there was a police raid. We hastily pulled on our pants, grabbed our shirts and cloth bags, and jumped on the adjoining roof. Clambering over a few roofs, we stealthily walked down the stairs to the street level.

Asking a newspaper boy on his delivery rounds for directions, we got to the Majestic Bus Stand. There, at a tea shop, we saw the English newspaper headlines scream at us, "Emergency declared: JP, Morarji, Asoka Mehta & Vajpayee arrested."

Also read: Revisiting the Emergency: A Primer

Both of us were befuddled. As far as we were aware, there was already an Emergency in the country. The arrests of Morarji Desai, Mehta and Vajpayee did not exercise us too much. But how dare the lady and her minions lay their dirty paws on the person of JP!

We had multiple cups of tea until first light and then went to the state guest house. We had been told by Surendra Mohan that Dandavate was going to be in Bangalore for a meeting of a Parliamentary Committee. We got to the guest house where we saw Dandavate packing his bags. He told us that he hoped to take a flight to Bombay, as Mumbai was then known. On our asking, he explained to us the difference between the external Emergency which had been in force since 1962 and the present internal Emergency. He asked us to get back to Delhi and organise public protests.

It was a little after 9 a.m. that we took an auto rickshaw to the law college. We found a small group of 50 students milling around, discussing the imposition of the Emergency and the arrests of the leaders of the opposition parties. Suddenly, one of the students shouted, "Ekaaddikaara. Dhikkara Dhikkara" (condemn authoritarianism). We joined them in a round of slogan shouting around the college campus and decided to leave. We decided to get to the bus stand and get back to Delhi using a circuitous route. We took a bus to Hosur. From there, we took another bus to Madras, as Chennai was then known as.

The English language newspapers in Madras had some information on the co

We then took a Delhi-bound train in the unreserved compartment. It was as crowded and uncomfortable then as they are now.

After reaching Delhi, we took an auto rickshaw to the intersection of Deshbandhu Gupta Road and Ajmal Khan Road.

A few hundred yards toward the Kishenganj Railway colony was the house of Sardar Teja Singh, the vice President of the Delhi Auto Rickshawmens' Union. A stone's throw away was a small room in which we used to eat and sleep.

Also read: Emergency: Who Benefited from it?

That day we spent only finding out who all had been arrested and who had escaped the police dragnet. The next day, I had wanted to walk down to Siddiqui Building, the Delhi State Socialist Party office and our trade union office. I was cautioned not to go anywhere near the office. It was feared that Gobind, the office caretaker, was a police informer. In the normal course, it did not matter as we had nothing to hide but now in the Emergency, being a stool pigeon took on a whole new meaning.

I took a bus instead to the university campus. I found the Law Faculty coffee house eerily quiet. It was normally bustling with activity. I walked on to the coffee house of the Delhi School of Economics, the 'D School coffee house', as it was popularly known. No sooner had I pulled a chair at a table to sit down, I saw one of the regular coffee house waiters from the other end of the room signalling with his eyes that I should leave. I was just collecting my wits around me when I felt a tap on my right shoulder. I turned around and lo and behold, it was the local intelligence unit who always hung around Maurice Nagar Chowk. As we stepped out of the coffee house and I was contemplating making a run for it, he held me firmly by my left forearm and told me that I should leave the campus immediately. "Aaj central intelligence walle hain, campus mein" (The central intelligence folks are in the campus today.) I quickly exited the campus using the Malka Ganj route.

The next few months were fraught with danger. I had written about one such incident; it can be read here.