50 Years of Emergency: JP's Total Revolution Brewed in Bihar and Wobbled Throne in Delhi

Sinhasan Khali Karo Ki Janata Aati Hai! When Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan roared with these lines of legendary Hindi poet Ramdhari Singh 'Dinkar' from the stage of Delhi's iconic Ram Leela Maidan, the janata (public) of the country rose in fervour of the verse.

- Arun Kumar

PATNA: Its power unnerved Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who was already facing salvos of public anger. Out of despair, she imposed what historians now recall as the "dark chapter" in Indian history - the Emergency, declared on June 25, 1975.

It was a paradox that Dinkar, who was revered and exalted to Rashtrakavi (national poet) status by Indira's father, Pt Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, for his poetry of rebellion, turned out to be a weapon in the hands of Indira's bete noire.

JP was a political honcho who was moulded in the grind of Bihar. Dinkar was a bard of Bihar. So, the embers of political pirouette in the leadership of JP had to be most glowing in Bihar. The state in fact soon turned into the epicentre of anti-Congress and anti-Indira temblor. JP evolved into a principal of all those clamouring "Total Revolution" - total change of system. Patna university would be its seminary, its students its knights and Bihar its hothouse. And Dinkar's poetry will be its song. Till it was lifted in 1977, many acts of the Emergency unfolded in the state.

Early build-up in Bihar

It was on June 5, 1974 that JP gave a call for "Total Revolution" against the "corrupt Congress regime, price rise and other forms of misgovernance from Patna's historic Gandhi Maidan, and gradually his movement became pan-India, seeking resignation of Indira Gandhi. Indira was enduring but as the Allahabad high Court annulled her election from Rae Bareli, she went draconian. And the country was introduced to the Emergency.

Actually it was an incident in Bihar that is believed to have seeded the idea of Emergency in Indira's mind. It was the assassination of then Union minister Lalit Narayan Mishra that took place in a blast in Samastipur in January 1974.