Indira Gandhi, 1975-1977 State of Emergency

I remember seeing a documentary about her on PBS either national or one of those local affiliate station in the United States. My favorite scene where she was talking with her grandchildren, giving the answer that 1 lakh is a 100,000. The film was shown a few months or a year before her death. It felt creepy, they talked about like she was dead when she was still alive. Everything was like past tense. It sort of reminded me when ABC sports did a a bio about "Bear" Bryant, a year and a half before he died.

Going back to Indira, I was pretty attentive with her story except for the Emergency period of 1975. Very confusing but I thought it was me being confused. Yet, that period is still very confusing to this day. That documentary would say that it was her toughest period and showed b&w picture stills with a cloudy background, sitting at her office, looking distressed with the narrator describing her mental or emotional state on the voiceover.

Questions came up of why and what happened. I was in India at the end of the Emergency period  but I was only 5 years old. But, I was aware of things besides no television, hardly no cars, and animal/homeless kids on the street. Everything seemed so quiet and eery. Though, I was in the state of Tamilnadu where nothing much happened. Heck, I was in a village where seeing a car pass by was an event. Buses and bikes, you saw all the time (all the cars were Ambassadors with some jeeps and Fiats).

I say leery because my family would talk about family and some political parties but I didn't know that Indira Gandhi was Prime Minster until I came back to the states and started school. Somebody mentioned her name at party and asked some kid if she or he knew who she was? I don't remember the answer and I was like well, Ronald Regan is the President. The concept of countries was as alien as biryani.

All I remember is going to school with uniforms on and seeing teachers who were white but never lived in America (I did know that I lived in a place of white folks but didn't know what city, country and all). I was trying to learn Tamil and I didn't even know what that word meant. At a doctor's office, this dude show me a picture of an elephant and asked me what that was. I said "elephant" he say "Gnanai" as in Yonnay. I was like, what? You know how long it took me to learn that damn English word and he is saying its wrong? That was true when I went to my grandfather's village in Thanjur, 4 years later, and met some relatives who were cooking up some food. Another family dude asked what he was cooking and I said "spinach." Wrong. "Keerai." Whatever, I quit.

Back to Indira, I really stated to read about her due to a set of encyclopedia books that my parents ordered around 1981. But it was a just a brief bio of her life, niece of Gandhi, mention of her late husband, Feroze, her 1966 election and losing her election in 1977. India is a Parliamentary government! The book didn't get to her re-election in 1980 because the events went up to 1979 but it did say she was barred from politics from a certain number of years. The disturbing part was that of her son Sonjay. How he got to power to run things, I have no clue? He sterilized people including political opponents vasectomy for men and tubular ligation for women, and removal of slum dwellings. A witness said that he saw a pregnant lady get raped, tortured, and killed by Sonjay's guys. If that wasn't enough, he mutilated her fetus and put in her mouth. A political opponent said he was tortured when they would hammer his top nails.

So when I asked my father or relatives about this emergency around 1983 after seeing this documentary. It was just wasn't clear to me like the Kennedy assassination that I was obsessed with at the time. Still isn't. From what I read, she won a election and her opponent (Raj Narain) charged her with corruption. The Indian courts or the court in Allahabad agreed and banned her from politics for 6 years. It was viewed that Indira Gandhi was kicked out for a minor infractions like using the government electricity. But then protests by student, trade, and other unions protested her election in that she was rigging votes, and using elected officials as election agents.

Another guy from charged her with corruption back in 1971 during the general election but was overturned. The Raj Narain one was overturned on Nov. 7, 1975 but with all the protest and opposition of various groups, she declared an emergency on June 26, 1975 banning media, arrest of opposition leaders, and elections postponed. My take, very inconclusive of what went down from June 26, 1975 to March 1, 1977. Amnesty International said that 140,000 were arrested and 40,000 were sikhs. Wikipedia mentions that oppositional groups to Indira Gandhi were shut down in the state of Gujarat and Tamilnadu.

Then there are critics said that this was a slight exaggeration and that only a few would endure this harm and that it was her right to declare an Emergency. This policy of forced sterilization was started back in 1971. The cause that got Indira to declare and emergency was due to inflation and lack of rainfall which created these protests. The 1971 war with Pakistan and the 1973 oil crisis caused financial issues but by 1976, India was improving economically. But Indira, had to release the prisoners and set up an election where she lost to Morarji Desai and his Janata Party (known to drink his own urine, aagh).

But, it didn't mention about the Naxalites from West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh. They were an off-shoot from the Indian Communist group declared as a terrorist group in 1967 by Indira. During the Emergency, they were targeted by police and the Indian army. The Naxalites were killing landlords and feudal folks who exploited the indigenous folks but were killing and torturing regular villagers because they were on feudal and landlord side. Yet, a blogger says it was a slight exaggeration, you had a few villagers who went trigger happy and killed all those people back in 1975. But, now they are non-violent?

I always wondered how these groups still survive when they are declared as terrorist. I guess bad roads was an advantage to them on the country side. Eric Rudolph approach.  Another, you  heard about Sikhs and her (her son, Sanjay married one). You heard about the operation Blue Star and others during the 80's but not this one from 1975. Of course when I was there, I could careless.  I got to re-learn the ABC's that I learned in America. I got them all right with the exception of the letter Z. Ezat (their interpretation, dang). One thing though missing, maybe not significant,  India did test for a nuclear device on  May 18, 1974 which the United States didn't quite like and imposed sanctions on them as well as Japan.