Book Review: Prashant Bhushan’s Riveting Inside Look at Emergency

Interested in the Emergency, and how to fight corruption? Prashant Bhushan’s ‘The Case That Shook India’ is a must.

To the average Indian, corruption in politics is about as surprising as the yellowness of dal. Most people have come to accept that power and wealth will govern elections and that politicians will not face any real consequences, no matter what underhanded dealings they engage in. And most people just accept that there is nothing that can be done about this.

“The Case That Shook India” by Prashant Bhushan is the story of how some people decided to not just accept this state of affairs. It is a story about how the Constitution of India was used to hold not just some politician to account, but the Prime Minister herself. It is a story filled with intrigue, plot twists, and courtroom drama. And most remarkably, it is not a story at all, but an account of the real events that led to the Emergency in India.

The Story Behind the Book

Prashant Bhushan is one of India’s most well-known lawyers, and someone who does not shy away from getting involved in political activism, particularly when fighting against corruption – a trait he shares with his father, Shanti Bhushan. Prashant Bhushan has undertaken significant public interest litigation cases, was involved in arguing the 2G and coal scam cases, and has a long history of activism against corruption with Swaraj Abhiyan, India Against Corruption and, for a time, the Aam Aadmi Party.

In the aftermath of the 1971 Lok Sabha elections, Indira Gandhi’s defeated opponent in Rae Bareli, Raj Narain, tried to get her election disqualified for commission of corrupt practices.

The Allahabad High Court found that the Prime Minister had committed such practices and disqualified her. To circumvent this, Mrs Gandhi introduced all sorts of retrospective laws because of which the Supreme Court eventually ruled in her favour.

Shanti Bhushan was the lawyer engaged by Raj Narain to argue his case, which allowed a young Prashant Bhushan to observe the preparations and court proceedings that followed first-hand. The result was a book published first in 1978 with a foreword by former Chief Justice of India, M Hidayatullah. The book has been republished by Penguin Random House India this year with a new preface by Bhushan, but with its description of the proceedings and judgments of the Allahabad High Court and the Supreme Court of India unchanged.

Bhushan’s Coup: An Inside Scoop

Right off the bat, the thing that strikes the reader about this book is Bhushan’s almost unique position of being able to write this book. Court proceedings in India are notoriously opaque – unlike some other countries, there are no records of proceedings apart from the final judgment. As we recently highlighted, live tweeting has provided the public with a means to learn about the happenings inside courtrooms, which is especially useful when one of the parties is the government or connected with it. At the time, however, such measures were not possible, and in light of the limits on reporting especially during the Emergency, public knowledge of the case is minimal.

Prashant Bhushan, on the other hand, was there when the arguments were prepared for Raj Narain, and was present in court when both sides were arguing their cases in the courts. His account shows an in-depth understanding of all the small details of the case, including fascinating references to Alice in Wonderland by the lawyers and the judge in the High Court.

While many lawyers are familiar with the decision of the Supreme Court which eventually went in Mrs Gandhi’s favour, his description of the High Court case that kicked the beehive in the first place will be illuminating even for them, and demonstrates how the smallest miscalculations can have big repercussions.

Bhushan is also aware that this book needs to be read by people without a legal background, and he takes great pains to make the extremely technical Constitutional and election law arguments easy to understand. He uses headings and sub-headings to break down the long arguments and interjects his descriptions of proceedings with helpful asides that explain things for the reader. Interestingly, at the time he wrote the book, Bhushan had not yet studied law, and perhaps this helped him make it more accessible to non-lawyers.

Some Understandable Flaws

Of course, at the end of the day, Bhushan is not a writer, and this does become apparent over the course of the book. The first half of the book, and in particular the description of the High Court proceedings, is, quite frankly, riveting. However, as the book goes on, one realises that Bhushan does have limited turns of phrase, and what initially seemed crisp descriptiveness becomes slightly repetitive.

It is perhaps as a result of this that the description of the Supreme Court proceedings becomes less readable, though as a lawyer, I still found myself engaged thoroughly. It is also a bit unfortunate that the book does not have a larger section on the aftermath of the case, or a more detailed critique of the Supreme Court judgment – though this is understandable as the point of the book is to focus on the case itself, and Bhushan wants to be as unbiased as possible.

Verdict: A Pertinent and Valuable Read

The subject of the book is of extreme relevance even today. Recent changes to the law have in fact made corrupt practices in politics easier, allowing anonymous donations to political parties through electoral bonds and removing the limit on donations to political parties by corporations. For those trying to fight such things, this book is a timely reminder that it is possible to stand up to the mighty, and of how doing so forces even the most powerful person in the country to resort to desperate measures.