EMERGENCY IN INDIA: RECOLLECTING CHRISTIAN RESPONSES

Emergency in India was a 21-month period from 1975-1977 when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had a state of emergency declared across the country at the midnight of 25-26 June 1975.  It was officially issued by President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed under Article 352 of the constitution because of the prevailing “internal disturbances.”  The emergency was in effect from 25 June 1975 until its withdrawal on 21 March 1977.  The order bestowed upon the Prime Minister to rule by decree, allowing elections to be cancelled, and civil liberties to be suspended.   In this period, the law of the state was suspended, the judiciary, legislator, and the administrative systems were controlled, and the voices of dissents were restricted.  Most of Indira Gandhi’s political opponents were imprisoned and the press was censored. It was a crucial violation of the power of the state and the rights of the people. Several other human rights violations were reported from the time, including a mass forced sterilization campaign spearheaded by Sanjay Gandhi, Prime Minister’s son.  The Emergency was a fatal blow to the democratic setup of our country.  This was well-expressed in the ‘obituary’ published by the daily newspaper Times of India in a few days after the Emergency: “Democracy, beloved husband of Truth, loving father of Liberty, brother of Faith, Hope, and Justice, expired on June 26.”

However, Indira Gandhi had her own clarifications for implementing the Emergency. According to Mrs. Gandhi, it was part of the social and economic disciplining; secondly, it was to abate the political demands of the opposition especially Jayaprakash Narayan’s socialist movement; finally, it was to combat the emergence of the fundamentalist groups such as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Sangh Parivar. Ajit Roy the Marxist ideologue, in his analysis on the factors that led to the declaration of emergency poses two things: (1) the urge for an authoritarian transformation of the socio-economic system in the interest of monopoly capital, and (2) the drive for ensuring the security of Indira Gandhi’s personal political power (Roy, 1978). It is true that Indira Gandhi was facing a political inconsistency immediately after the Allahabad High Court’s verdict on Raj Narain’s case. On 12 June 1975, the Allahabad High Court had found Indira Gandhi guilty on the charge of misuse of government machinery for her election campaign, and the court had declared her election null and void and unseated her from her seat in the Lok Sabha. The court was also banned her from contesting any election for an additional six years. This political unrest might have forced her to declare the Emergency. However, the people like Ajit Roy focus more on the socio-economic reason forced by the monopoly capitalist which in turn invoked the severe criticisms from the trade unions and the socialist movements in India Roy, 1978).  

Christian Response to the Emergency

The Christian response to this state of emergency was not uniform. According to Saral Chatterji, the Christian responses to the Emergency were mainly of three kinds: first, approval of Emergency so as to show the Christian allegiance to Congress and Indira Gandhi and to express their dissatisfaction with the freedom offered by the state which becomes a hindrance to the sociopolitical and the economic freedom of the country; second, accepting the need of Emergency as a disciplinary process for economic growth and at the same time restless at the severity of the measures of press censorship and detention without trial; third, opposing the Emergency on the basis of the conviction that the freedom is a gift from God and the denial of freedom is the denial of the people’s right to participate in the process of their own development (Chatterji, 1977). The progressive Christian response to the Emergency is reflected in the third approach which is clearly stated by the journal of CISRS, Religion and Society: “We take our stand with those who believe that bread and freedom go together especially in a poor country like India. For, poverty here is not purely an economic phenomenon, it is intertwined with traditions of social authoritarianism and cultural fatalism which can be resisted and overcome only through the political awakening and awareness of dignity and power of the poor and the oppressed” (Religion and Society, Vol. XXIV, Nos 2 & 3, June & September 1977).                    

When most of the established churches in India were endorsing Mrs. Gandhi’s declaration of Emergency in 1975, the progressive Indian Christian thinkers expounded it as the end of democracy in India. WCC General Secretary Dr. Philip Potter’s letter to Indira Gandhi immediately after the declaration of Emergency explains clearly the response of the global ecumenical movement:

We understand that a very large number of political prisoners have been held under Emergency laws. There is widespread distress over the detention without trial of people arrested on political grounds and the total denial to them of any judicial remedies. We feel strongly that the powers now assumed by the executive, under the amended Maintenance of Internal Security Act which provides that no grounds be given for the detention of any person and that no person detained shall have any rights to personal liberty by virtue of natural law, constitutes a very serious abridgment of human rights. More than three months have elapsed since the declaration of the Emergency and the continuance of these measures against those who have dissenting political views is very disquieting.

...We, therefore appeal to you to take steps to release those who have been detained on account of political dissent and to restore the democratic right of the people for political expression, discussion and dissent. We equally appeal to you for the release of Mr. Jayaprakash Narayan and others of proved moral and political integrity. We are confident that such steps will contribute to the maximizing of the participation of the people and will strengthen your attempts for the revitalization of the economy and for ensuring justice especially to the weaker sections of society (Religion and Society, Vol. XXIV, Nos 2 & 3, June & September 1977).

Taking a strong stand against the Emergency in India the General Secretary of the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA), Yap Kim Hao wrote to the National Council of Churches in India (NCCI) to make a representation to the Government of India to appeal to release all the prisoners who had been detained on political agenda:

The question of political prisoners in several countries in Asia came up for discussion at the meeting. Special concern was expressed about the large number of political prisoners in India. While no accurate figures are available, there is evidence that the number of detainees is very high. The working group particularly noted that all these are detained without any trial, most of them for more than one year now. Again, the laws regarding detention in India appear to be the most rigorous in Asia. The working group has asked me to urge the NCC of India to make representations to the Government of India appealing to the Government to release all prisoners who have been detained on political agenda (Religion and Society, Vol. XXIV, Nos 2 & 3, June & September 1977). 

Christian Institute for the Study of Religion and Society (CISRS) took a strong stand against the Emergency for weakening the democratic values of the country and denying the rights of the common people to express their views and perspectives on their own future.  M.M. Thomas, the director of CISRS termed it as the end of democracy in India and said: “the Emergency is nothing but the onslaught on democracy and a betrayal of the nation” (Thomas, 1979). Rejecting Indira Gandhi’s claims for the declaration of the Emergency, Thomas argued that unless we supported the revolts resulting from people’s effort to throw off age-old socio-cultural and economic structures, the issues of poverty, economic backwardness, and political instability would remain with us forever. For Thomas, the economic progress of the nation was integrally connected to the issues of caste, patriarchy, and slavery. He contended that the effort to quell people’s revolts for the sake of internal peace, economic progress and self-reliance through a state of emergency was nothing but the repudiation of all human rights envisaged by a welfare state and its democracy.  Thomas upheld that the essence of democracy is to affirm people’s right to enter into the political, economic and social process of building the nation. Political freedom is the basis of all other freedoms. Affirming people as the subjects of history determines the democratic status of a country. He explains this:

The essence of democracy is that people are subjects of history and not objects of exploitation, or even of welfare, that their right to participation in the policy-making processes where power is exercised, is sacrosanct and that if one form of democracy narrows the expression of this right to the political sphere, the answer lies, not in denying it in that sphere but in extending it increasingly also to the economic and social spheres which influence politics (Thomas, 1976:16).     

Critiquing the conformist stand of the majority Indian Christians, M.M. Thomas wrote in the journal of CISRS, Religions and Society which offered a staunch critique of the state-authoritarianism: “The Church in India is called upon to witness to the power of the human future in Christ to overcome them. Instead, the churches are pursuing a policy of conformism” (Religion and Society, Vol. XXIV, Nos 2 & 3, June & September 1977. Thomas contended that the church is more than a minority community concerned with its own communal interests. “In Jesus Christ, the church represents the humanity of all the people of India” (Thomas, 1976). Under the leadership of M.M. Thomas CISRS launched a sharp critique of the Emergency and circulated a statement entitled “Why the Ruling Congress Should be Voted Out” during the time of campaigning for the general elections (Religion & Society, Vol. XXIV, Nos 2 & 3, June & September 1977. Saral K. Chatterji who was a strong proponent of the anti-emergency programmes of CISRS commented on the political solidarity of Indian Christian thinkers with the secular progressive politicians as “the formation of new community beyond the traditional so-called Christian community” (Religion & Society, Vol. 38, No.19, June 26, 1978, p. 166). 

Apart from CISRS, Christian movements in India like Student Christian Movement of India (SCM), Christian Union of India, Christian Association of India for Peace with Justice, and the Fellowship of the Clergy Concerned with Human Rights formed in Kerala recorded their dissent to the state totalitarianism and at the same time offered their solidarity to the efforts to retain peace and justice in the land. The Synod of the Church of South India (CSI), despite their support to the 20–point programme of Mrs. Gandhi, demanded the immediate withdrawal of the restriction on the freedom of the press and the fundamental rights of the people due to the state of emergency (Religion and Society, Vol. XXIV No. 2&3, 1977: 44-45).  The metropolitan of the Mar Thoma Church, Dr. Yuhanon Mar Thoma wrote a letter to Mrs. Gandhi and expressed his voice of dissent: “A vast number of people, and that a growing number, feel the price we have to pay is costly, with people like Morarji and others in jail, and a Press which has its freedom to write news and views we feel a kind of depression. On behalf of thousands, I request withdrawal of emergency by gradual stages” (Religion and Society, Vol. XXIV No. 2&3, 1977: 65). Critiquing the churches’ endorsement to the state of Emergency, Anand Chandu Lal, a pastor of the Church of North India (Later he became the moderator of CNI) interrogated the nationalist attitude of the church for being alienated from the struggles of the common people in the country who were deeply affected by the Emergency (Chandu Lal, 1978).

Notes

Ajit Roy, ‘The Indian Events from the Indian Perspective,’ in The Meaning of the Indian Experience: The Emergency, edited by Saral K. Chatterji (Madras: CLS, 1978), 5-17 at 10. 

M.M. Thomas, Response to Tyranny (Bangalore: CISRS & CLS, 1979)66

Anand Chandu Lal, ‘Some Observations and Reflections on the Church in India Before, During and After the Emergency,’ in The Meaning of the Indian Experience: The Emergency, 83.

CISRS, Bangalore