Chemistry: Indian Communists and Indian National Congress – III

This is continuation to Chemistry: Indian Communists and IndianNational Congress – I and Chemistry: Indian Communists and Indian NationalCongress – II published earlier.

History exposes evidence to the fact that great nations face grave crises. Here is the list of grave crisis which great nations have faced in Twentieth Century:

a. In 1933, the United States was struck by the great depression, which exposed the fallacies of the market economy.

b. Military might of Japan was crushed by the United States during the Second World War.

c. At the start of the last decade of the Twentieth Century, the fragility of Socialism were exposed and it led to the eventual demise of the Soviet Union.

India always happened to be a vibrant democratic country where people from contrastingly different castes, creed, religion and race live together in peace and harmony. In Twentieth Century India also faced various grave crisis – The Partition, The Indo-China War and The Emergency of 21 months form 25 June 1975 to 21 March 1977.

The Emergency

In many ways the foundation for the emergency was laid when the Allahabad High Court set aside Indira Gandhi’s re-election to the Lok Sabha in 1971 on the grounds of electoral malpractices. This verdict, which came on 12th June 1975, was later challenged in the Supreme Court, which on 24th June 1975, granted a conditional stay to Mrs Gandhi, thereby allowing her to remain a member of parliament but disallowed her to take part in parliamentary proceedings. However, this was just the first step. The other, more significant reason for the imposition of emergency was the “JP movement”. Many regard Jayaprakash Narayan as “the Gandhi of Independent India”. In his entire political career he never contested an election. After the Allahabad High Court verdict, “JP”, as he was better known, gave the call for a “Total Revolution” and also demanded the resignation of Mrs

Jai Prakash Narayan

Gandhi. In fact on June 25, 1975, he announced a plan of daily demonstrations, not merely in Delhi, but also in every State capital and district headquarters until Indira Gandhi threw in the towel. He also appealed to the Army, the police and the bureaucracy “to refuse to obey Indira” and “abide by the Constitution instead”. His associate Morarji Desai went a step further. In an interview to an Italian journalist he said, “We intend to overthrow her, to force her to resign. For good…Thousands of us will surround her house and prevent her from going out…night and day.” Incidentally, Desai was once Deputy Prime Minister in her government.

On 25th June 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed an emergency in the country. Fundamental Rights stood suspended, censorship was imposed on the press and prominent political leaders were arrested. The media was also not spared. Censorship was imposed on newspapers and barring a few, like The Indian Express, no other newspaper had the courage to defy the censorship orders. When the Delhi edition appeared on June 28, The Indian Express carried a blank first editorial and the Financial Express reproduced in large type Rabindranth Tagore’s poem “Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high” concluding with the prayer “Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.”

It is said Jayaprakash Narayan’s famous address at the rally in Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan on June 25, 1975, was one of the main justifications forwarded by the Indira Gandhi administration to invoke Article 352(1). A recent article written by Santwana Bhattacharya published by The New Indian Express on 21^st Jun 2015 cites -

But actually the decision was taken, tacit support from political and a certain international quarters were obtained the preceding evening.

According to an eyewitness account given to The Sunday Standard, Indira Gandhi came to visit CPI veteran Bhupesh Gupta at his 5 Feroze Shah Road residence late in the evening. Gupta was her close associate and a Rajya Sabha member for an uninterrupted 29 years.

Gupta later shared with the Roys (Kalyan Roy, sitting CPI MP and his wife, Purabi Roy) one more reason for Indira’s visit—primarily to give certain instructions to Kalyan. This was at their MP quarters in North Avenue. “It began with my telling him, I knew why it took them so much time and why he had to shut the door so firmly. (Russian President Leonid) Brezhnev had to be taken on board. He looked up sharply and could not deny it,” Purabi adds, and apart from the “internal disturbances’’, the fleet build-up in the Bay of Bengal was also cited to secure the tacit support of the Soviet leadership.

After reading this recent article it will be unwise to term that Communist Party of India supported the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi, rather we need to rephrase it to ‘Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency in collusion with the Communist Party of India.’

CPI leaders believed they could turn Emergency into a communist revolution. Almost a decade of close cooperation with Indira Gandhi and the Congress seemed to be on the verge of bringing about a massive revolutionary breakthrough for the CPI. But the backlash was severe. Indira Gandhi went for general elections and CPI was still supporting her. The Congress lost the elections and emergency was lifted. The CPI suffered its worst ever losses in general elections. CPI(M) was able to hold on to its base in West Bengal, but, electoral support for the CPI took a nosedive.

Comparative Performance of the Communist Parties in Lok Sabha Elections of 1971 and 1977.

Party	Seats(1971)	Seats (1977)	% of Votes(1971)	% of Votes(1977)
CPI	23	07	4.73%	2.82%
CPM	25	22	5.12%	4.29%
Total	48	29	9.85%	7.11%

The result was a lot of soul searching for both the parties. Eventually both the parties regrouped and formed an alliance.

We started this series to take a look at the relationship between Indian Communists and Indian National Congress after Mr Gautam Deb, a Communist leader from West Bengal, said that party has lost its ground in West Bengal and hinted coalition with Congress to combat Trinamool Congress politically. Preceding to Deb’s statement Mr Sitaram Yechury, CPI(M) General Secretary said that inclusion of expelled party member Mr Somnath Chatterjee, ex-Speaker Lok Sabha, will increase the strength of CPI(M) in West Bengal. Even Mr Somnath Chatterjee seconded the opinion of Mr Deb.

On 22^nd June 2015, Sitaram Yechury has said that the party will not go against decision made at its party Congress of not forming alliance or front with the Congress. He however mentioned that the CPI(M) will continue to have issue-based political understandings with the Congress in the Parliament. If is it so, why are you not expelling your party member Mr Gautam Deb for giving a statement against party line? Or Mr Yechury, is it a statement keeping in mind that Kerala is also going for assembly election in 2016 where the fight is directly between Left Democratic Front (LDF) – the coalition of mainly the leftist parties led by Communist Party of India (Marxist) and United Democratic Front (UDF) – the coalition of parties led by the Indian National Congress. In 2011, LDF lost to UDF by 4 seats, thus the probability of winning in Kerala is more compared to West Bengal. So West Bengal Comrades have to sacrifice their desire for coalition with Congress for their Kerala Comrades!