Decades after being eased out as the Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Minister by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi for his “softness” on media censorship soon after the imposition of the Emergency, I K Gujral said in an interview, “Democracy and democratic institutions are a package… You cannot be partly democratic and partly non-democratic.”
He added, “Therefore, once you start compromising with institutions of democracy, you cannot be democratic. And that applies even today, and that will apply for all times to come.”
Gujral, who later became PM, was moved to the Planning Ministry, with the I&B Minister portfolio going to V C Shukla, who was seen as more pliant by Mrs Gandhi when it came to carrying out her orders.
In an early 2000s interview to the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) – now known as Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library (PMML) – Gujral recounted an incident that led up to his removal. In the interview, part of the NMML’s oral history project, he said Mrs Gandhi was so disappointed with his handling of the Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) Movement, leading up to the Emergency, that at a public rally in Gujarat, giving him her raincoat, she said: “Please hold it. You could not do any other work.”
On the JP Movement, Gujral said, “Indira Gandhi was at a loss to know how to handle this rising tide… She was not adequately responding to the allegations of corruption in Gujarat. Jayaprakash Narayan emerged… later. Therefore, the more politically she felt out of breath, the more she blamed the media.”
Once when she sent him a chit in this regard, he said he replied, “Indira ji, the media in the last analysis is a marginal activity; under no circumstances a substitute for political action. Political battles have to be fought politically.”
Gujral remembered another instance when someone close to the PM called him to say that JP’s rally at Delhi’s Boat Club had fizzled out, even though he had from his own office overlooking the venue observed that it was one of the largest rallies seen in the national capital.
Also, when AIR announced that a Mrs Gandhi rally, held before JP’s, was “gigantic”, Gujral recalled, the PM called him to argue whether “gigantic” was the right word instead of “very large” or “unprecedented”, finally agreeing that the word used in the news bulletin was fine.
On June 12, 1975, when the Allahabad High Court declared Mrs Gandhi’s election from Rae Bareli in the 1971 Lok Sabha polls null and void, the PM expected that Gujral as I&B Minister would handle its fallout. “She was completely convinced that I could do anything,” Gujral said, adding that then Congress president D K Barooah alleged that all the “damage” was being done by AIR.
Gujral also remembered the night of June 25, 1975, when power supply at Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg was cut off so that newspapers could not come out the day the country heard about the imposition of the Emergency in the country. He said he was not aware that the Emergency had been clamped, and came to know about it only at the Cabinet meeting held on June 26 at 6 am. He had been informed about power cuts and arrests by the Principal Information Officer at night, but did not sense the seriousness of things immediately, Gujral said.
At the Cabinet meeting, Mrs Gandhi asked the then newly-appointed Home Secretary, S L Khurana, to brief the ministers. “Everyone kept quiet except Swaran Singh who asked… ‘But there is already an Emergency!’. (He was referring to the Emergency declared at the time of the 1971 Bangladesh War, which had not been formally withdrawn.) So, to that the Home Secretary said: ‘That is an external Emergency, this is an internal Emergency’.,, She (Mrs Gandhi ) was composed, but concerned. Whatever I can recall… I would not say she was happy.”
Gujral also recalled Sanjay Gandhi telling Education Minister Nurul Hasan just after the Cabinet meeting, “I understand that there is a lot of activity of the Jana Sanghis in the University.” Hasan, Gujral recalled, replied, “Yes, I have also heard and we have already made a list and sent it to your office.”
Sanjay then told Gujral that he wanted to see the news bulletin, to which Gujral replied that he could only see it when it was broadcast. Mrs Gandhi intervened and assured Gujral that the matter would be resolved.
Gujral did not pass any order for press censorship on June 26, he said in the interview. His father told Gujral that he had not taken part in the freedom struggle to see this day. His Information Secretary A Jamal Kidwai told him, “Sir, you are in politics, you get out of it. I am a bureaucrat, I will fade out.”
Gujral was called to the PM’s residence by her P A RK Dhawan that morning (June 26) at around 11 am, he said. The PM was not there, but Sanjay told him, “Look, it won’t work like this.” Gujral recalled having shot back, “Till I am here in the ministry, it would be as I wish it to be… I am accountable to the Prime Minister.”
Once he returned home, he got a phone call from Union minister Om Mehta to send the list of (press) censors to Sanjay. He refused to send office papers to him, adding he was not imposing censorship.
Gujral said that when he met Mrs Gandhi next, she did not seem happy about his handling of the censorship. When he said, “Indira ji, this is not my cup of tea,” Mrs Gandhi said: “Yes, that is what I wanted to inform you. It needs firmer handling and you are very soft.”
He readily agreed, saying: “Indira ji, thank you very much. You have been very kind to me all the time and I owe you a lot. But now I am talking to you, not as your minister, but as your friend… When I came home. I switched on the radio at about 9 o’clock or so. It was announced that V C Shukla has been appointed as Information Minister.”
She made a very interesting observation in the Cabinet soon after, Gujral said. “The Cabinet did not know that I had been relieved of the charge. She said the last minister… of information (referring to Gujral) was credibility-crazy. I thought it was a compliment, but she thought it was damnation.”
Gujral remembered how Mrs Gandhi went on to send him to Moscow as India’s Ambassador in 1976, perhaps because she still respected him personally. Gujral said he even asked her why she did not send a Communist like Nurul Hasan, to which she replied that she wanted an Ambassador of India in Moscow, and not an Ambassador of Russia in Moscow.
Gujral added: “The Emergency was a bad blot on our national life, but the nation learnt a lot. Nobody now talks in terms of harsh days, nobody talks in terms of compromising institutions and nobody talks in terms of ‘committed judiciary’ because we know that we have passed through that experience.”
Gujral quit the Congress in the 1980s, joined the Janata Dal and went on to helm the United Front government as the PM from April 21, 1997 to March 19, 1998.
