The era that shaped a nation and its polity

Sandeep Sinha

Indira Gandhi is among the strongest leaders of independent India. A woman in the rough and tumble of electoral politics, she came into her own after her share of struggle, her being Jawaharlal Nehru’s daughter notwithstanding. She had to break free from the stranglehold of the old guard and carve her own path. Her quest to assert herself culminated in the Emergency and its excesses; the democratic functioning of a party based on consensus was relegated to personality cult and reliance on a select group of advisers invited the charge of depending on a clique.

The defeat in the 1977 elections, humility and quiet dignity in wilderness and her comeback in 1980, showed she was made of sterner stuff, a glimpse of which was to be had during the 1971 War to liberate Bangladesh.

The book seeks to examine the proposition that Gandhi subverted constitutional democracy by undermining institutions like Parliament and the Cabinet and established authoritarian control over both the government and the party after its split in 1969, making one recall Deb Kant Barooah’s remark, ‘Indira is India’.

The book concludes that the subversion happened only after the Emergency was imposed, with Indira Gandhi concentrating powers in her hands and that the years preceding it were a period of political change within ‘normal’ contours.

According to the author, the two events that shaped the politics of this period were the 1967 elections and the split in the Congress party in 1969. The 1967 elections signalled the end of what Rajni Kothari said was the ‘Congress system’, a polity preponderantly dominated by one party. The attenuation of Congress dominance at the Centre and in states created conditions of countrywide political instability. Coalitions and defections or floor-crossing became a key mechanism for seating and unseating governments. Bihar suffered the most, witnessing nine governments, three spells of President’s rule and a mid-term election between 1967 and 1972. Consensus, which had provided the framework for the resolution of conflicts, became a casualty in the contest for the organisational machinery of the Congress party. Gandhi, restrained by the growing power of the opposition in Parliament and the organisational men within the party, brought on to the national stage under the Kamaraj Plan, dispensed with the established norms of political behaviour. These new developments ultimately led to the split in the Congress. Gandhi substituted the bossism of the bosses with one by taking control of the party presidency, Congress Working Committee, Congress Parliamentary Board, the Central Election Commission, and through them the Pradesh Congress Committees, Congress Legislature Parties and state election committees.

The author says there is broad consensus regarding two factors in the Indian polity in the late 1960s and early 1970s: destabilisation of party system, and through that the polity; and severe attenuation of the Congress party, before and, especially, after the split.

The book credits Indira Gandhi with some remarkable transformations in the political and economic system. She defended the public sector that redirected the economy at a crucial time towards the goals of growth and self-reliance. The radical populist rhetoric she employed turned attention towards the priorities of social justice. Also, the nationalisation of banks transformed the capabilities of the state in a rather revolutionary way.

In a scholarly manner, the author examines the political and underlying trends. The reign of Indira Gandhi is no doubt remarkable. It marked the high watermark in Indian democracy when the Janata Party came to power and her comeback and her realisation that laissez faire was not possible in the country and a majority of people lived beyond the pale of market forces. It saw the pluralism of polity with the emergence of coalitions and of a transition of the period from a Congress-centric scene to an alternative with a pronounced Hindutva bias with echoes of comparisons with her style of functioning.