- 6/25/2025
This report covers the political journey of Indira Gandhi from the 1971 Bangladesh war victory to the declaration of Emergency in 1975 and her subsequent electoral defeat in 1977.
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00:00In 1971, Bangladesh war and the decisive victory by the Indian army transformed Prime Minister
00:18Indira Gandhi into a deity. She was compared to the goddess Durga.
00:23In the euphoria of victory, the Congress swept the polls in the 1972 assembly elections.
00:31Both in the centre and the states, it was preeminent.
00:35The Congress by now had been shaped to reflect her personality and preferences.
00:40Yet, just two years later, Indira Gandhi was to face her most serious political challenge.
00:46One that would force the daughter of India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru,
00:50to jeopardise the very fate and future of Indian democracy itself.
01:09In 1974, Sanjay Gandhi was at the centre of a controversy which had the ingredients of a major scandal.
01:17The youngest son of the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, was obsessed with a dream to manufacture a people's car.
01:24His critics found Sanjay inexperienced and unsuitable to implement such an ambitious project.
01:30Among the few who gave Sanjay the benefit of the doubt, and actually visited his makeshift factory,
01:36was Kushwan Singh, then editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India.
01:40There were two cars there, and Sanjay asked me to drive one, which I did.
01:46And he found my driving too slow.
01:48He said, .
01:50I said, all right, I'll drive fast.
01:52But he dissatisfied, and he said, .
01:54And he took over the wheel.
01:56And he really travelled at great speed over dirt tracks and ploughed fields and everything to show me how good it was.
02:05In 1975, Sanjay Gandhi would find himself sucked into the hurly-burly of politics,
02:13thanks to an innocuous court case involving his mother.
02:17Raj Narayan, the socialist candidate who stood against Indira from Raibareli in the 1971 elections,
02:26launched a case against her over election irregularities.
02:30Four years later, at the Allahabad High Court,
02:34Justice Jagamohan Sinha was ready to deliver his judgment on the 12th of June 1975.
02:40I treat every judgment and every case alike.
02:49I never thought that it was a historic judgment.
02:52Because if a judge thinks that there is a very important case, then it can sway his judgment.
02:59It was a historic judgment nonetheless.
03:02One that found Indira Gandhi guilty on two counts of electoral malpractice.
03:07It invalidated Indira's election and disbarred her from office for six years.
03:13Raj Narayan stood triumph in front of the world press.
03:17The people rejoice and reaffirm their faith in the democratic institutions of India.
03:24I accept the judgment with humility.
03:27This judgment came at a time when the opposition had launched a major campaign against Indira Gandhi,
03:37accusing her government of rampant corruption.
03:40It was led by the aging patriarch, Jay Prakash Narayan.
03:46The student-based Sampoorn Kranti movement had been gathering strength from others.
04:00Every day, in cities across the country, opposition parties had been staging protest rallies against Mrs. Gandhi's rule.
04:07The country was coming to a standstill.
04:10Sensing the movement was right, the opposition went in for the kill.
04:17At the time of her supreme political crisis, Mrs. Gandhi turned to her younger son, Sanjay, for support and advice.
04:28Mr. Sinna had granted a stay order for 20 days to give the government time to appoint a new prime minister.
04:34Sanjay Gandhi and his supporters used this time to arrange demonstrations of support and loyalty.
04:40They convinced Indira to fight back.
04:45By one judge in a high court pronouncing a judgment and the opposition of that time,
04:53saying that that is the end of the matter and we won't wait and Mrs. Gandhi must go,
04:59was what we were agitating against.
05:04On the 20th of June 1975, Indira Gandhi's lawyers filed an appeal in the Supreme Court,
05:10while Mrs. Gandhi defiantly addressed a massive gathering at the Boat Club in Delhi.
05:16It is my duty to see that nothing is done anywhere in any corner of the world
05:21which can cast any reflection on this character of the Indian people.
05:29On the evening of 25th June, the opposition parties announced country-wide protests
05:34to force Mrs. Gandhi's resignation.
05:36The call was given to commence an agitation in every part of India.
05:42Which government could possibly tolerate a situation of this kind?
05:49When not only the people have been asked for revolt,
05:53but it is said that the army and the police should treat this as their own struggle.
06:00Siddharth Chankaray helped Indira draft the proclamation.
06:03He declared that a grave emergency exists whereby the security of India is threatened by internal disturbances.
06:15Then she said, then we should go to the president.
06:19I said, yes. Then she said, you come.
06:22We were with the president maybe about two hours, one and a half hours.
06:27She explained the facts to the president, showed him the reports and everything as to what the position was,
06:34and what the latest appeal was to the people.
06:38What do we do about it?
06:40And then I took over, I explained the law, that emergency for internal disturbance can be declared if the danger was imminent.
06:52The president, Fahruddin Ali Ahmad, signed it just before midnight.
06:57And for the first time since independence, the state of emergency was declared.
07:02Fundamental rights of the citizen were suspended.
07:05And Mrs. Gandhi, in effect, became a dictator.
07:21Leading opposition figures had been rounded up in the dead of night.
07:25JP was arrested.
07:27600 other opposition leaders, including Muradji Desai and L.K. Advani, were also arrested.
07:33Yeah, Prakashji has been arrested. Muradji bhai has been arrested.
07:37And then we consulted Vajpeji and myself.
07:40And we decided to await the police arrival and to leave.
07:45So they came at about 7.30 or so and picked us up.
07:50Back in Delhi, just after midnight, members of Indira Gandhi's cabinet were woken up by a phone call.
08:00They were told to attend a meeting at 6 o'clock in the morning.
08:03The state of emergency declared in the country was to be retrospectively endorsed by the cabinet.
08:09She called her cabinet and informed her about this.
08:12And the cabinet approved wholly, without any objection. Nobody objected.
08:15She pointed out everything, threadbare, as to why this was next.
08:22So this is how it happened.
08:26That night, power was cut off from Bahadur Shah's Aframag, the Fleet Street of India,
08:31where the offices of almost all the major national dailies are located.
08:36Censorship was imposed on the press.
08:39The emergency was declared.
08:41And there was complete pandemonium in the Times of India office.
08:45People didn't know what to do.
08:46We were not used to censorship of the press.
08:50And this has been...
08:51We were given notices that nothing was to publish unless it had been cleared by the censor.
08:57When I discussed it with great length, and she wouldn't agree with me at all,
09:02she said, there can be no emergency, no press freedom with emergency.
09:09They have to toe the line.
09:11But the emergency placed extraordinary power in the hands of an extra constitutional authority.
09:17A man largely seen as reckless and arrogant.
09:20Sanjay Gandhi had gathered around him a bunch of aggressive cohorts
09:24who to many people were nothing more than unruly, undisciplined muscle men.
09:30It was obvious that Mrs. Gandhi's youngest son was being groomed for higher things.
09:41He was the star attraction in the mammoth youth congress rally held in New Delhi's Pravati Maidan in 1976.
09:48In the Garhati All India Congress Committee meeting, Mrs. Gandhi went a step further.
10:07She declared, the Youth Congress has stolen our thunder.
10:11At that time, the Youth Congress was playing a very active role.
10:14We had a very concrete program.
10:16And it was a new generation of youth coming in.
10:19So it was a new resurgence in the polity of the country.
10:23In Guwahati, it was Youth Congress.
10:26For the first time, you saw so many Youth Congress banners.
10:29You saw so many Youth Congress workers from all over the country.
10:31And many of the very older leaders looked alien there.
10:36They started looking that, what is this happening?
10:39Her official blessings on Sanjay as an alternative power center was the signal for the Youth Congress Brigade to unleash what turned out to be a reign of terror.
10:52Inevitable stories of excesses began to surface.
10:55In the name of beautification, the capital's Turkmangate area was bulldozed.
11:02Its occupants relocated.
11:06But it was the forced sterilization campaign in the name of family planning, which gave the emergency its overriding stigma.
11:14Sanjay's meteoric rise was helped by the fact that the opposition was silenced, its leaders under arrest, and strict censorship in force.
11:27The ruthlessness of the regime came out when George Fernandes, who had gone underground, was finally arrested and produced in court in handcuffs.
11:36It was not just a handcuff.
11:38It was handcuffs and chains.
11:40Used to be every day when I used to be brought to the court.
11:44I and my colleagues used to be brought to the court.
11:47We were 22 of us.
11:49As we were, every morning we had to be brought to the court when the trial began, or earlier when dates were taken.
11:57At that time, plus a chain with which two policemen chained themselves to me, and similarly to other colleagues.
12:07That was Mrs. Gandhi's way of telling you that, you know how I can crush you.
12:12On the 18th of January, 1977, Mrs. Gandhi, with her instinct for the dramatic, surprised the world by making an unscheduled broadcast to the nation.
12:26Announcing an end to the 19-month-long emergency.
12:31Fresh elections were announced.
12:33Insulated from the public mood, Indira Gandhi had underestimated hatred of the emergency and the opposition's strategy.
12:45Jagjivan Ram, the powerful Dalit leader in Indira's cabinet, was the first to revolt.
12:51He was joined by H.N. Bahuguna, former U.P. Chief Minister, who had fallen out with Sanjay Gandhi.
12:57His resignation from the Congress party electrified the political atmosphere.
13:02Four non-communist parties merged with the Janatha party under the ascetic Muraji Desai, though J.P. remained its lodestar.
13:12Two months later, in a stunning election outcome, Mrs. Gandhi was swept out of power.
13:19Well, she got a terrible drubbing from no one less than a buffoon, I think Raj Narayan.
13:29And Sanjay lost two.
13:32And I came to see them, and she was now in a different house, and very woe-begone, looked very sad.
13:41And I asked her, Mrs. Gandhi, ye kya hua?
13:44She said, no feedback nahi tha.
13:48Of course, she'd been told the feedback she got was that she was very popular and would sweep the polls.
13:55This is her own government information agencies.
14:00That's why I said to her, Mrs. Gandhi, how did you get feedback?
14:03How did you get to the press?
14:04You closed the press.
14:05Muraji Desai, heading a motley collection of opposition parties, was sworn in as Prime Minister.
14:14The Janta Party, already riven by dissension, took yet another vow at Rajkharth, the Samadhi of Mahatma Gandhi.
14:23Mrs. Gandhi's humiliating defeat was clearly more to do with the excesses of the emergency than popular support for the Janta Party.
14:32The flood of exposures in the media had laid the blame for those excesses on the so-called Gang of Four.
14:39Sanjay, architect and the chief enforcer of the mass sterilization program.
14:44Pansilal, defence minister, and Sanjay's hatchet man.
14:48Minister of State for Home, Om Mehta, who, on Sanjay's orders, orchestrated the mass arrests of politicians and journalists.
14:57And V.C. Shukla, the arrogant minister for information and broadcasting, who enforced censorship rules with an iron hand.
15:07Everything was done according to law. Even pre-censorship was done according to law.
15:13The law may be bad. Emergency was promulgated that much of bad.
15:16But there were under certain provisions of the constitution, which were later on deleted.
15:21But they were under law of the land at that particular moment, at that time.
15:25They were not illegal acts or they were not high-handed acts against the law.
15:30Within months, however, the Janta Party was in crisis.
15:36Indira Gandhi began to attract supporters again.
15:39In July 1977, in Belchi, a remote village in Bihar, local landlords had massacred whole families of landless Harijans.
15:55While the government dithered, Indira Gandhi decided to visit the village.
16:00All parts to Belchi had been washed away by the monsoon rains.
16:04And hardly had she covered any distance when her jeep got stuck.
16:08Mrs. Gandhi then started her march on foot.
16:11She had walked a few kilometres when Moti the elephant came to her rescue.
16:16After three and a half hours, with the sun setting behind her, Indira Gandhi reached Belchi.
16:23The survivors of the massacre came running out of the village to greet her.
16:28She was with them for a short while.
16:31But by the time her cavalcade started the march back,
16:34the enthusiastic response from the crowds could mean only one thing.
16:38Mrs. Gandhi was on the comeback trail.
16:45Indira's return to strength infuriated the government.
16:48This provoked Chandri Charan Singh, the home minister,
16:51who ordered the arrest of Mrs. Gandhi on the 3rd of October 1977.
16:57When the CBI and the police arrived at 12 Willingdon Crescent,
17:01she made them wait for several hours, then insisted on being handcuffed.
17:07Our first reaction, even Sanjay's reaction, was that they come to arrest him.
17:12But the police was in the hundreds, and there was, I think, Mrs. Kiranvedi there also,
17:17at the gate they had a net, as if they would fly off or something.
17:22And then we realised, I mean, Sanjay went and talked to the officers concerned,
17:28and they said they have come to arrest Mrs. Gandhi.
17:30Now, they didn't have a warrant of arrest, so Sanjay ji, I mean, he said that you can't arrest unless you have a warrant.
17:36A arrest for her.
17:38And then in the meantime, he gave me a list of MPs and journalists to contact.
17:44God, because they cut the phones in the house.
17:47Her supporters soon mobbed the house.
17:56Mrs. Gandhi's histrionics showed that her legendary political instincts were still intact.
18:02It also gave Sanjay Gandhi and his activists another opportunity to flex their muscles.
18:08When she eventually left the house at 7.30 in the evening, she was showered with rose petals by the cheering crowd.
18:21The police car headed towards Haryana, followed by Sanjay Gandhi and her supporters.
18:26As luck would have it, before the Haryana was crossed, there was a level crossing that was closed and the railway train was going to go.
18:38The whole thing had to stop there.
18:42Realising that she was being taken outside the jurisdiction for Delhi Warren,
18:46Mrs. Gandhi got out of the car and sat on the ground surrounded by her lawyers and supporters.
18:52After the level crossing was opened, they were requesting her to come and sit in the jeep,
19:01which she refused.
19:02She wouldn't sit in the jeep unless the jeep was turned and she was taken back to Delhi.
19:07So this one Mr. N.K. Singh, he tried to grab her wrist and her arm to take her forcibly
19:15and she scolded him very, very strongly.
19:19And everybody said that we'll kill you if you touch her like this and not that.
19:26The motorcade turned back to Delhi.
19:29The Jantha government had committed its first major political blunder
19:33and its greatest administrative bump.
19:36The next day, Indira Gandhi was produced in court.
19:39Outside the court, Sanjay and his gangs battled with the police and Jantha party supporters.
19:49The case against Mrs. Gandhi was that she had entered into a criminal conspiracy
19:54with industrial houses to provide her and her son Sanjay with jeeps for their election campaign.
20:00Inside the court, the judge dismissed the case.
20:05Mrs. Gandhi was free.
20:11Meanwhile, in another court, witnesses and depositions were piling up
20:15as the Shah Commission began its inquiry into the excesses of the emergency.
20:20Sanjay was made to appear to hear the allegations against him.
20:24I accompanied him and Menaka to the Shah Commission.
20:29As Sanjay entered, there was free fall.
20:33It broke loose.
20:35Chairs, tables, everything.
20:36We hurled at each other.
20:38I took shelter behind Kiran Bedi.
20:41She asked me,
20:43I saw this fight go on.
20:47And Sanjay fought back.
20:49I couldn't believe.
20:50And they tore his shirt.
20:52And he hit back.
20:53He was a very powerful man.
20:54He was short, but he was very powerful.
20:56And within ten minutes, Sanjay, of course, had carried his goons with him too.
21:02They got the better of the others and threw them out of the court.
21:07And the charming incident was that while all this was going on and Justice Shah hadn't come from his chambers to the room,
21:15Menaka leapt over the railing which separated the courtroom from the judge's chair and table.
21:23And she picked up two of his pens, you know, from the holder and gave them to me as mementos.
21:30I had them for many years with me.
21:32It was the Supreme Court, however, which decided that Sanjay Gandhi deserved to be in the same place he had put hundreds of his opponents, in Tihar jail.
21:43The case, notoriously called the Kissa Kurthika case, one in which a satirical film had been banned and its negatives destroyed,
21:51was, ironically, one that had aroused the least public and media interest.
21:56Sanjay was eventually released amid high drama and familiar disruptions by his supporters.
22:0834 months after her worst ever electoral defeat,
22:11Mrs. Gandhi stormed back as Prime Minister in the 1980 elections.
22:16But this was a new Congress party, one where Sanjay and his cronies called the shots.
22:26What effect Sanjay's power would have on Indian politics would never be known.
22:31The weather forecast for that day predicted clear skies, scattered clouds.
22:41Maximum temperature, 40 degrees Celsius.
22:44A perfect day for flying.
22:46At 7.30 a.m., the man, widely acknowledged to be the power behind the throne and the political heir to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi,
22:54arrived at the Savdhajang airport and walked straight to the new plane acquired by the Delhi Flying Club.
23:02It was still moderately cool at 7.58 that morning when Sanjay Gandhi took off.
23:10At a few minutes past eight, Sanjay began to perform loops with his plane at a dangerously low height of a thousand feet.
23:19Suddenly the plane went into a dive from which he could not pull out.
23:22The plane crashed just 500 metres away from his home.
23:30Sanjay and his co-pilot died instantly.
23:39More than 300,000 people crowded the streets of Delhi for one of the grandest, even if unofficial, state funerals ever organised.
23:47No one would now ask where the son would be without his mother.
23:52They would ask rather where the mother will be without her son.
23:57As Mrs. Gandhi watched the funeral pyre, Sanjay's elder brother Rajiv, who was then an Indian Airlines pilot, rose to perform the last rites.
24:06Sanjay's death altered his life irrevocably.
24:09Sanjay's death altered his life irrevocably.
24:12Mrs. Gandhi and her dynastic obsession had ensured that Rajiv was dragged into the arena he hated most, politics.
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