The 25th anniversary of the Emergency is an occasion for celebration for the BJP and many of its allies who championed the cause of democracy but there are also lessons for all of them to learn. For the Congress too it can be an opportunity to exorcise the guilt for glorifying authoritarianism and to re-examine its state of affairs, both ideologically and organisationally.Mrs Gandhi's authoritarianism was a culmination of the evils which infected the Congress soon after Independence. The party increasingly deviated from its traditions and adapted `hero worship' as a creed. The elected party presidents, P.D. Tandon, Acharya Kripalani and U.N. Dhebar, were shown the door to pave the way for a centralised leadership. Inner-party democracy was replaced by the high command culture, which now dominates all the parties without exception. Thus the Jayaprakash movement was a battle between the two cultures. On the one hand, there were people like Justice Jagmohan Lal, who delivered the judgment against Mrs Gandhi for using unfair means in elections and did not present himself for reward from the Janata regime and Jayaprakash Narayan who discarded political offices all his life.There were people on the other side, D.K. Barooah, Om Mehta, V.C. Shukla and others whom George Fernandes called "mentally dehydrated minions", pronouncing with impunity, "Indira is India and India is Indira."The Congress has never repented for its historic blunder. The sporadic and ambiguous statements given by its leadership, including the late Mrs Gandhi, about the excesses committed during the Emergency were merely an attempt to ward off the reality. It is now time for the Congress to discard the past. Sonia Gandhi repented for the Bluestar Operation and now she and her party can repent for the Emergency. Unless the party accepts the democratic creed, instead of dynastic dependence, it cannot restore its democratic credibility. Paradoxically, voicing the need for inner-party democracy is largely considered an anti-party activity. That's why the late Rajesh Pilot or old guards like Vasant Sathe and V.N. Gadgil have been dubbed dissenters.The JP movement, which began at the grassroots level in Bihar in 1974, was intended to transform the system, rather than replace the individuals. It was characterised by JP as a Total Revolution. In a letter to Fernandes during the Emergency, he succinctly expressed his feelings: "My main concern is how to convert our idea of the movement into a reality. How to give a practical shape to the psychological opposition to the present dictatorship. This is the question I am faced with." JP's appeal transcended institutional and ideological boundaries. Various groups, ideologically opposed to one another, like the RSS and the socialists, came together.The RSS cadres formed the nucleus of the movement and thousands of them were arrested along with socialists and cadres of the CPM. In fact, it was A.K. Gopalan of the CPM who defended the Sangh in the Lok Sabha when he said: "Even the RSS, a reactionary organisation, is in no position to challenge the political rulers, nor bring about a coup. it has been our stand that organisations like the RSS have to be fought politically."The Emergency prepared the ground for, besides political, social and cultural understanding, as K.R. Malkani, the first editor to be arrested, wrote, "a positive aspect of jail life was the camaraderie that developed between the RSS and other organisations, particularly Jamaat-i-Islami detenus." A few people know that the RSS had even planned to replace the term `Hindu Rashtra' by `Bharatiya Rashtra'. However, the question thrown up by the JP movement could not be resolved due to the transformation of the movement into an electoral battle and the raising of the "dual membership" issue.The propaganda by the Congress-CPI combine against the JP movement as a fascist one had no impact, within or without the country. The CPI accepted its mistake in its Bhatinda Congress (1978) when it said, "the loose use of `fascist' had its own bad effect." Personalities and organisations all over the democratic world criticised the Emergency. Noam Chomsky, the World Council of Churches and leading parliamentarians of Britain who formed the Free JP Campaign Committee under Nobel-laureate Philip Noel-Baker and many others campaigned against Mrs Gandhi's undemocratic behaviour. What united all of them was their common love for democracy.
