The Emergency: Early Notes From The Underground

One of the first pamphlets on the Emergency, smuggled out of India and published in the US, was written by George Fernandes. His chronicling of dictatorial deportment is instructive

- SUGATA SRINIVASARAJU

Next week, it will be 50 years since the Emergency was proclaimed by Indira Gandhi. Like last year, when the new parliament was constituted, it is bound to generate a lot of rhetoric, blame, counter-blame and also false moral equivalences with the present.

When it comes to documenting the brutalities of the Emergency, a good majority of the literature falls under the genre of memoir, which captures emotion, heroics and suffering. These came much after the Emergency was lifted, and after many cubic feet of water had passed under the arches of Indian politics. But equally or more fascinating was the vigorous real-time pamphleteering that happened during the Emergency.

It is pamphlets, both anonymous and signed, that characterized the Emergency and scarred the Congress and the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty permanently. They constructed an enduring perception of the time.

It may be instructive to revisit the very first underground pamphlet that was smuggled out of India via London during this time, and published in faraway United States by a diaspora group called Indians for Democracy (IFD). The pamphlet was provocative, polemical and plainly angry, with colorful phrases of personal attack on Indira Gandhi.

The pamphlet's ideological position was clear and the international references it made not just automatically created a wider appeal, but looked like a deliberate effort to seek a bigger audience. It invoked the historical context of Nazi Germany to drive home the emerging situation in India rather effectively. In parts, it was also an instruction manual on how to build resistance while underground.

The words 'fascist' and 'dictator' were liberally sprinkled for Indira Gandhi in almost every paragraph of the long document, which was roughly over 5,000 words long. Indira Gandhi was all through referred to with 'Nehru' as her middle name—Indira Nehru Gandhi.