Nail driven deeper in coffin of Indian democracy: JP's 'Prison Diary' poignant account of Emergency

New Delhi: "Every nail driven deeper into the coffin of Indian democracy is like a nail driven into my heart," wrote firebrand socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan in his diary while being interned as a political prisoner during the height of the Emergency imposed on this very day 50 years ago.

Close to midnight of June 25, 1975, President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed proclaimed the Emergency citing "internal disturbance".

On that fateful day, Narayan, popularly known as JP and a fierce critic of the then Indira Gandhi government, addressed a massive gathering at the Ramlila Maidan in Delhi.

There, he had famously thundered 'Sinhasan Khali Karo ki Janta Aati Hai', (Vacate the throne as the public comes)' quoting an epic line from Ramdhari Singh Dinkar's poem 'Jantantra ka Janm'.

Narayan, then 72-years-old, Morarji Desai, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L K Advani, and other opposition leaders were soon arrested under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA).

A few days later, JP was taken to PGI-Chandigarh and lodged there for a few months starting July 1 as a political prisoner replete with police security and away from public gaze.

Narayan's 'Prison Diary', whose first edition came out during the course of the Emergency itself, opens with a poignant July 21, 1975, account written during his internment.

"My world lies in a shambles all around me. I am afraid I shall not see it put together in my lifetime," he wrote.

The introduction to the first edition of JP's 'Prison Diary' reads that it is "more than the musings of a Prometheus in chains".

In his July 25 account of 1975, he wrote in the diary about his feelings about a country under Emergency. "Did not feel like writing the last two days. Every nail driven deeper into the coffin of Indian democracy is like a nail driven into my heart. I have searched my heart and I can say truly that even if I were to die now, I would not mind it."

S K Jindal in his 2015 book 'Medical Encounters: True Stories of Patients – Memoirs of a Physician', also wrote about the internment of this "VIP guest" at PGI-Chandigarh.

"I had the honour of looking after JP as a medical officer during the days of his political internment and subsequent hospitalisation at our Institute at Chandigarh," he writes in the chapter 'JP - The Quintessential Leader of 1975'.

JP's speech at Ramlila Maidan on June 25 that year, is now part of the annals of political history, delivered hours before the Emergency was clamped.

"The President has proclaimed Emergency. There is nothing to panic about". These words of Prime Minister Gandhi in an All India Radio broadcast in the early hours of June 26 are also now frozen in history.

However, this unforgettable event, considered one of the darkest chapters in Indian history, was precipitated by a series of tumultuous events in the early 1970s that spanned from Gujarat to Bihar.

According to official archival documents of the period, the student uprising against the Chimanbhai Patel government in Gujarat had inspired Narayan's 'Bihar Movement' during the turbulent 70s that eventually led to the Emergency.

In the youth of Gujarat, JP saw the energy and the sparks for igniting a revolution in the eastern state that ultimately swept most of the nation.

A speech by the then Home Minister Brahmananda Reddi in Rajya Sabha on July 21, 1975, on the resolution for approval of the Proclamation of Emergency, establishes the chronological link between the two states and shows how JP found an impetus from the "student movement" in the western state.

Reddi quotes JP by invoking his statement in 'Everyman's Weekly' of August 3, 1974, in which the socialist leader had said, "For years I was groping to find a way out. In fact, while my objectives have never changed, I have all along been searching for the right way to achieve them. I wasted two years trying to bring about a politics of consensus. It came to nothing."

"Then I saw students in Gujarat bring about a political change with the backing of the people...And knew that this was the way out." The speech, among other reports, is part of the Emergency-era documents housed at the National Archives of India here.

One of the documents, a seven-chapter report dated July 11, 1975, that bears the Intelligence Bureau label on the top cover, points to the Gujarat agitation, its implication on the 'Bihar Movement' and how the latter became a precursor to the Emergency.

Under the firebrand JP, the agitation in Bihar took the shape of a 'Total Revolution' (Sampoorna Kranti) and the initial demand for resignation of the then Ghafoor ministry in Bihar ultimately turned into a larger demand for dismissal of the Indira Gandhi government.

Statues of JP, whose legacy is celebrated by his proteges and socialist followers, today dot public places and roundabouts in Patna and elsewhere in Bihar, and his name was affixed to multiple institutions and landmarks from Patna to Delhi, after the 21-month emergency was lifted on March 21, 1977.