“Most of the BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leaders had betrayed the struggle against the Emergency,” senior leader Subramanian Swamy wrote in his article for The Hindu in the year 2000.
Swamy is now a BJP MP, but back then he was a Janata Party leader who had said it was “ludicrous” for the BJP and the RSS to hold meetings to remember the declaration of Emergency on its 25th Anniversary.
Swamy was against the idea back then for two reasons:
It is on the record in the Maharashtra Assembly proceedings that the then RSS chief, Balasaheb Deoras, wrote several apology letters to Indira Gandhi from inside the Yerawada jail in Pune disassociating the RSS from the JP-led movement and offering to work for the infamous 20-point programme. She did not reply to any of his letters. Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee also wrote apology letters to Indira Gandhi, and she had obliged him.Subramanian Swamy in The Hindu
He recalled that Vajpayee was allowed parole for most of the months during the Emergency because he had given a written assurance that he wouldn’t participate in any anti-government programmes.
Swamy alleged in his article that a book written by the Alkali leader, Surjit Singh Barnala recounts how erstwhile leaders of Jan Sangh had also promised “good behaviour” in return of being let out of the prisons.
Crediting Morarji Desai and Jayaprakash Narayan, popularly known as JP, for profoundly inspiring the anti-Emergency movement, Swamy recalled a personal encounter with the latter.
He said JP who lay in Jaslok Hospital after kidney failure in Chandigarh jail was heartbroken “when he saw an India utterly passive to the death of democracy, while those who had earlier egged him on, eg: the RSS, were now repudiating him and offering to work for the nation's tormentors.”
Swamy writes that JP, unwilling to give up on the struggle, had sent a message to him asking him to escape abroad and run the campaign from there. “But he warned me that the struggle may be lifelong,” Swamy notes.
Describing Morarji Desai as “completely unyielding” and “sanguine”, Swamy recalls how Desai had refused to promise “good behaviour” in return for parole.
His (Morarji Desai’s) daughter-in-law, Padma, had wept copiously and implored him to agree because of his age but he told her that death was a better option.Subramanian Swamy in The Hindu
Swamy notes that RSS members like Madhavrao Muley, Dattopant Thengadi and Mordant Pingle were the exceptions who did not wish to surrender. He recounts how Muley had asked him in 1976 to escape abroad before RSS submits their “document of surrender”.
…a tearful Muley told me in early November 1976 and I had 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.Subramanian Swamy in The Hindu
A few days later, Indira Gandhi had shocked everyone by calling for Lok Sabha election and RSS never had to sign the “document of surrender”, Swamy writes.
In his piece, Swamy credits a “combination of forces” that urged Gandhi to declare the general elections – the pressure from the newly-elected US President Jim Carter who acknowledged the threat of Emergency in India following Swamy’s extensive campaigns abroad, motivations from philosopher-thinker Jiddu Krishnamurti, disapproval of Emergency from Sri Chandrashekhara Saraswati, the Kanchi Math Paramacharya and the undying spirit of Morarji Desai.
In other words, these moral and spiritual personages refused to legitimise the state of Emergency, the infamous 42nd Amendment to the Constitution, and accept a highly- shackled democracy as normal for India. Instead, they all held that the Emergency was subversion of the Constitution and viewed Indira Gandhi as the usurper. It was thus the sustained non-violent and moral approach that won the day, and not a foreign- financed terror.Subramanian Swamy in The Hindu
Swamy notes that many “who had failed in their violent resistance” wanted to boycott the general elections on the grounds that opposition wouldn’t stand a chance because common people do not get affected by the “issue of democracy”. However, Swamy credits India’s plurality and heterogeneity for voting Indira Gandhi out of power in the same year.
Therefore, the lesson to be learnt from the Emergency is that as long as the composite nature of Indian society survives, Indian democracy will survive.Subramanian Swamy in The Hindu
Swamy writes that the second reason for calling BJP’s celebration of struggle against the Emergency “ludicrous” is the saffron party’s repeated attempts to overhaul the Constitution.
Today, we are in a much weaker position than in 1975-77 to defend democracy. One reason is that the tall caste-neutral leaders of the Freedom Struggle are no more. Another reason is that a cadre-based fascist organisation is in control of the levers of power. This organisation has spawned lumpen front organisations, that do not hesitate to kill even defenceless missionaries of religion. Worse, there is every indication that institutions are being undermined by a creeping Emergency.
Concluding his piece, Swamy had written, “The BJP has set into motion the overhaul of the Constitution, not just a mere amendment to it. It has commenced the rewriting of history. Its sister front organisations such as the VHP and the Bajrang Dal are already unleashing eerie and shadowy terror at the micro level of society. How can the BJP then speak of defending democracy?”
Thus, 25 years later we still cannot take democracy for granted nor put the challenge to it behind us. It is today invisibly under siege.
Repeating his opening lines in the article, Swamy ends with, “Thus, those of us who can stand up, must do so now.”
Swamy VS RSS
In another article written for the Frontline magazine in January 2000, Swamy had said:
Today, the creeping fascism of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is coming upon us not as gradually as imperialism did, nor as suddenly as did the Emergency. Its spread is being calibrated adroitly by seven faceless men of the RSS, the RSS “high command”.Subramanian Swamy
Swamy had gone to the extent of saying the RSS has two components to its game plan:
- Discredit the RSS' opponents but protect its converts: Referring to the Bofors scam, he goes on to say that Rajiv Gandhi’s name is in the list of accused but those officers whovetted the deal are prosecution witnesses. According to Swamy, the agenda is, “Join us and be free. Resist us and see you in court.”
- The second agenda as per him, “is to shake public confidence in every institution that can circumscribe or act as a speed-breaker for the RSS juggernaut.”
Foes to Friends?
Swamy’s stance has, however, changed quite a lot over the years. From slamming the BJP and RSS for hypocritically holding meetings on the anniversary of the Emergency, to appreciating both parties for doing so in 2018.
Speaking to Republic TV on 26 June 2018 after the BJP’s ‘Black Day’ events to remember the Emergency, Swamy said:
I congratulate him [PM Modi] for speaking in such clear words instead of seeking mild words so that no one really feels offended. This [Emergency] is something that needs to be bluntly stated. We were close to losing our democracy, during Emergency.
Seemingly repudiating his previous outspokenness on the RSS, Swamy even said that during Emergency, it was the RSS that, by going underground, had ensured that it remained as an organisation to fight the election soon afterward, at a time when India was losing its democracy.
(With inputs from The Hindu and Frontline)
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