50 years on, Emergency lingers as memory and metaphor in Mumbai

Bombay woke up to an announcement on All India Radio that Emergency had been clamped across India in view of "internal disturbances." Heavy rains darkened the city's bleak mood.

- Ambarish Mishra

June 25, 1975. Bombay woke up to an announcement on All India Radio that Emergency had been clamped across India in view of "internal disturbances." Heavy rains darkened the city's bleak mood. "There was a blanket of fear over Bombay in the first few weeks. No authentic information was available thanks to press censorship. I was 23 and scared as the future suddenly seemed grim and uncertain," said music critic and writer Amarendra Nandu Dhaneshwar, who would go on to spend two years in prison as a class 'A' detainee as political prisoners were then termed.

But initially, there were also some people, especially among the city's middle class, who were happy to see government officials with their noses to the desk and suburban trains arriving on time, said Gujarati writer Ramesh Oza. But very soon the reality of the Emergency started to bite and the protest movement began, he added.

Oza recalls sneaking into the ward at Jaslok Hospital where Jayaprakash Narayan, helmsman of the anti-Emergency stir, was undergoing treatment for a kidney ailment. "I was 21 and hugely nervous. I told JP-ji that I was keen on doing my bit to restore democracy. From his hospital bed he put me on to a senior Sarvodaya functionary, and got me inducted into the Bombay Sarvoday Mandal, a hub of civil rights activists."