Savera

On the 50th anniversary of the Emergency, BJP and RSS are full of righteous fervour, recalling those dark days. They are marking the day as Samvidhan Hatya Divas (Murder of Constitution Day), with home minister Amit Shah releasing a book recording reminiscences of how Prime Minister Modi, then a pracharak of RSS, went underground and carried out various organizational tasks. The RSS mouthpiece Organiser has a slew of articles on various aspects of Emergency, including one on the role of RSS in resisting it.

In all this, it is not surprising that the compromise and surrender by RSS leaders during that period finds no place. This sordid chapter has been buried under the barrage of chest thumping declarations. This duplicity needs to be recalled on this occasion.

Balasaheb Deoras’ Letters to Indira Gandhi

Balasaheb Deoras was the Sarsanghchalak (supremo) of RSS at the time. He was arrested along with many other leaders of Opposition parties and activists, in the initial days of the Emergency. From Yeravada Jail, in Pune, he later sent a series of letters to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and others pleading to be released from prison and assuring that the RSS cadre would then work for nation building. Have a look at the following excerpts from “India’s First Dictatorship: The Emergency, 1975-1977” by Christophe Jaffrelot and Pratinav Anil. The original letters can be found as appendices in “Hindu Sangathan aur Sattavadi Rajneeti” by Balasaheb Deoras.

In the first letter written on 22 August 1975, he starts by writing:

“From the jail I listened with rapt attention to your broadcast message relayed from AIR and addressed to the nation on August 15, 1975. Your speech was suitable for the occasion and well balanced.”

Note that he is referring to Indira Gandhi’s speech which attempted a comprehensive justification of the Emergency which meant a justification of imprisoning Opposition leaders, imposing censorship on the Press, suspending Fundamental Rights, shackling the judiciary, and snatching away all the rights of workers. He finds all this “well balanced”.

He continues further to build a case for revoking the ban on RSS which was effected through an ordinance on 4 August 1975:

“The RSS has never done anything as might hamper the smooth running of the government, the internal security and peace of the country. The aim of the Sangh is to unite the All-India Hindu community, to organise and emulate the same. The organisation tries to discipline our society … the organisation has never advocated the cause of violence, neither it has initiated anyone to such acts….Though the field of the Sangh is limited only to the Hindu community, yet nothing is taught here against any non-Hindu society.” …

“This is my humble prayer to you that you shall kindly keep the above in view and shall lift the ban on RSS. If you think it proper, my meeting with you will be a source of pleasure to me.”

There is no protest or objection to the betrayal of Constitution, the suppression of democracy, or any other injustices – nothing. The Supremo is simply arguing to let only the RSS off the hook because it never would hamper the smooth running of the government!

He ends the letter by unctuously saying:

“This is my humble prayer to you that you shall kindly keep the above in view and shall lift the ban on RSS. If you think it proper, my meeting with you will be a source of pleasure to me.”

Indira Gandhi did not respond to this appeal. So, Balasaheb had to write another letter, dated 10 November 1975. By then, changes in the law had led to the Supreme Court overturning the Allahabad High Court verdict unseating Indira Gandhi from her Lok Sabha constituency. This was emblematic of the Emergency. But for Balasaheb it was an opportunity to gush:

“Let me congratulate you as five judges of the Supreme Court have declared the validity of your election.”

Then he spells out his thinking:

“Set free thousands of RSS workers and remove the restrictions on the Sangh. If done so, power of selfless work on the part of lakhs of RSS volunteers will be utilized for the national upliftment (government as well as non-government) and as we all wish, our country will be prosperous.”

Balasaheb, the Sarsanghchalak is offering the RSS, as a whole, for the service of Indira Gandhi and her drive to ‘national upliftment’ and ‘prosperity’. There couldn’t be any clearer statement of abject surrender than this.

This appeal too was ignored by the Prime Minister. Subsequently, Balasaheb turned to Vinoba Bhave, the ascetic saint and bhoodan andolan leader who had become a flag bearer of Indira Gandhi. On 24 February 1976, after learning that Indira Gandhi was going to visit Bhave at his Ashram in Paunar, Balasaheb wrote to Bhave asking him to intercede on his behalf. Here is what he has to say:

“It is my prayer to you that you kindly try to remove the wrong notion of the prime minister about the Sangh, and as a result of which the RSS volunteers will be set free, the ban on the Sangh will be lifted and such a condition will prevail as to enable the volunteers of the Sangh to participate in the planned programme of action relating to country’s progress and prosperity under the leadership of the prime minister.”

These and other letters from Balasaheb Deoras to S.B.Chavan, then Chief Minister of Maharashtra, were placed by him in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly on 18 October 1977. In his letter to Chavan, Balasaheb had urged him to convince Indira Gandhi to get the RSS ban lifted. Many people who were in jail during Emergency have described how RSS members were eager to sign apologies or undertakings (pro forma circulated by Maharashtra Government), which assured that the signatory would not oppose Emergency. These include D.R.Goyal (in Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, 2000), Baba Adhav, the socialist activist, in Janata Weekly (1979) and Secular Democracy (1977), and Brahm Dutt, Bhartiya Lok Dal leader in Five Headed Monster (1978).

Vajpayee’s Parole and RSS Surrender Plan

Atal Bihari Vajpayee, according to various sources, remained on parole for 20 out of 21 months of the Emergency. According to Subramanian Swamy (The Hindu, 2000), former MP and BJP leader, he had signed an undertaking right after his arrest at the beginning of Emergency not to undertake any anti-Government activities. He remained at his home throughout while other leaders like Morarji Desai, Jai Prakash Narain etc. were languishing in jails.

Swamy also revealed that a plan of surrender by the RSS had been worked out and it was to be declared by end of January 1977. Swamy writes that Madhavrao Muley, an RSS leader in charge of protest activities during Emergency, told him in early November 1976 that Swamy should “better escape abroad again since the RSS had finalised the document of surrender to be signed in end January of 1977, and that on Mr. Vajpayee’s insistence I would be sacrificed to appease an irate Indira and a fulminating Sanjay whose names I had successfully blackened abroad by my campaign. I asked him about the struggle, and he said that in the country everyone had become reconciled to the 42nd Amendment, and democracy as we had known it was over.”

The surrender plan has also been written about by then head of the Intelligence Bureau TV Rajeswar in his book “India – The Crucial Years”. Ravi Visveswaraya Sharada Prasad, the son of Indira Gandhi’s then information adviser HY Sharada Prasad, has also written about this surrender plan. (The Print, June 2020):

“In November 1976, over 30 leaders of the RSS, led by Madhavrao Muley, Dattopant Thengdi, and Moropant Pingle, wrote to Indira Gandhi, promising support to the Emergency if all RSS workers were released from prison. Their ‘Document of Surrender’, to take effect from January 1977, was processed by my father H.Y. Sharada Prasad.”

However, the need for this ignominious surrender didn’t arise since Indira Gandhi moved towards holding an election – which she badly lost in March 1977.

Satyagraha and Sahyog

The fact is that the RSS adopted a double-faced approach towards the Emergency. While it had associated itself with the Opposition led Lok Sangharsh Samiti (LSS) made up of Socialists and others, it also kept channels open with the Indira Gandhi government, as seen in the above brief description. According to estimates like those given by Christophe Jaffrelot and Pratinav Anil in their book, the RSS and all its affiliated organisations had a membership of something like 20 to 30 lakh at the time. However, the strength of this was not visible in the protests against the Emergency, and as time passed, despondency and surrenderist feelings appeared to grow. This expressed itself as the two-faced approach.

The result was that on the ground, many RSS cadres surrendered. In Uttar Pradesh, the Jana Sangh unit promised to extend support to the Government in June 1976. 34 members of legislative assemblies (MLAs) from UP and Madhya Pradesh joined the Congress. These are states with strong Jana Sangh and RSS presence. The Government’s initial crackdown had rounded up thousands of ABVP and RSS activists. Jail life may not have been particularly attractive to many, as evidenced in the surge of detenus trying to get out after signing undertakings, as mentioned earlier. According to the government 4 percent of the detenus were from RSS although the RSS itself claims that 33 percent is the correct figure.

Whatever be the case, the fact that one influential section of the top RSS leadership was inclined to compromise and surrender, is well documented. The huffing and puffing today by the BJP/RSS should be seen with this background in mind.