In 1962, a senior bureaucrat was informed that the country had been invaded. Thanks to India's Gandhian defense strategy coupled with Nehru's internationalist foreign policy, the Chinese would be forming a Government quite soon. Should the bureaucrat quit his job? After due reflection, the bureaucrat decided that, as a true patriot and upholder of Ambedkar Sahib's Constitution, it was his duty to serve the Chinese to the best of his ability. If he did not do so, some less than true patriot might take his job. That would be utterly catastrophic for Secular, Socialist, Indian Constitutional patriotism.
For this reason the bureaucrat decided to keep his job and to learn Chinese. Fortunately, his nephew happened to have a magic potion which could give any person the ability to speak Chinese. Out of love for his uncle, the boy was ready to sell him this magic potion for a low low price. Uncle readily agreed. He drank the potion- which tasted a bit like urine- and, on instructions from his nephew, he turned his eyes into slits and said things like Xi hua poo! Soo kai koo?' Sadly, when he turned up at the office jabbering away in this manner, his superiors thought he had gone mad. They packed him off to the Planning Commission where lunacy or imbecility was no barrier to career progression.
Sharada Prasad, Indira & Rajiv's Media advisor, was a true patriot who, sadly, lacked a nephew who could sell him a magic potion. Instead he had a son, Ravi Visvesvaraya Sharada Prasad, who is an alumnus of Carnegie Mellon and the Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur. He works as a technology consultant and defence analyst.
This lad has an article in Open Magazine titled 'How Morarji Desai Became Prime Minister in 1977'. My memory is that there was no great mystery about the event. There were three contenders- Morarji, the least popular, Jagjivan, the most popular, and Charan Singh who could block Jagjivan only by transferring support to Morarji. Had there been an open election, Jagjivan would have won. But, in that case, JP and Kriplanai would have beome irrelevant. The narrative would have been 'High Castes took over from the Brits but they became factionalized and fell out with each other. Thus a capable Dalit had to rise to the occasion so as to rebuild Indian democracy and grow the economy and improve its defence capacity'.
Did JP know that his decision to make Morarji PM (for which he could blame Charan) would result in the formation of the worst possible government? Perhaps. But he had no alternative. Afterall, old men like Kripalani and JP had grown up at a time when most Indians, let alone 'Harijans', were considered little better than cows. Thus they may have yielded to a prejudice which the young no longer shared.
Though it is obvious that Charan Singh and Charan Singh alone permitted Morarji's ascent to the Premiership, lots of 'true patriots' have come forward to claim credit for that disaster. Thus Shanti Bhushan says he convinced Chandra Shekhar- who was supposed to be JP's successor- that Jagjivan was compromised by having been part of the Cabinet during the Emergency. This was foolish. Jagjivan represented the Scheduled Castes. He couldn't be compromised by holding office precisely because the high castes were virulent in insisting (as the Mahatma had) that 'Harijans have no more sense than cows' Jagjivan's influence amongst Dalits had played a big part in Janata's victory. Moreover, Dalits exist in almost all States and thus local politicians gain by being seen to support Jagjivan. Internationally, too, the optics of a Dalit PM were unmatchable.
From the game-theoretic point of view, the solution would have been to pick a PM who could win an election if parliament were dissolved- as it very nearly was when the acting President refused to dismiss Congress State governments. Morarji would lose badly. Jagjivan might win since Dalits exist in every State and, moreover, he was viewed as 'lucky'. Charan was bound to lose precisely because of his 'kulak' caste status. As things played out, Morarji got a chance to demonstrate that he was stupid and useless. Jagjivan got a chance to demonstrate that he was corrupt and useless if employed by a stupid and useless PM. Charan was simply a joke. He would have been better off staking a claim to the Chief Ministership of UP- which went to a nonentity. Had Charan focused on UP, his energy and undoubted intellectual ability, qualities his son Ajith shared, may have well have turned it into a bastion for his party. This would have meant Charan's break with the Sangh would have come a little sooner but such a break was inevitable. Charan would have gained by making the first move while the Sangh had its eyes on Delhi. Had Charan first built himself up as a CM, he may have abandoned his rather 'Gandhian' ideas and understood that what the wealthier peasants wanted was to participate in the windfall profits of urbanization. The tax revenue generated by this could have pulled up poorer agriculturists thus creating a virtuous circle. With Charan dominating U.P his brilliant son Ajith could have risen to the top in Delhi.
It must be said that his own ideas were so utterly shit a book of his was on the reading list for Dev. Econ at Harvard! Consider the following-
Marxism, like capitalism, has every where asked: How could one obtain from the existing surface a maximum return with a minimum of labour?
Thus maximizing earnings and standard of living.
The question for us is different. It is: How could we on the existing surface secure a living to a maximum number of people through the use of their labour in the villages?
Get them to keep having babies even under 'standing room only' conditions.
Land being the limiting factor in our conditions, our aim must be, obviously, not the highest possible production per man or agricultural worker, but highest possible production per acre.
Manhattan has very high production per acre but it is urban and city folk are evil. Instead we must have agricultural involution. Let every grain of wheat receive personal grooming and choice deposits of urine and feces.
That is what will give us the largest total for India as a whole and thus eradicate poverty or want of wealth.
Agricultural involution would be accompanied by dwarfism and lower cognitive ability. Charan Singh's solution would have involved the Indians diverging from the rest of the human race to become a gracile race of pygmies with about the same I.Q as a hen of moderate talents. Still, it must be said, this would represent a very high level of cognitive competence- but only when compared to Indian mathematical economists.
It may be that Charan Singh had to go into hospital at this time and it was his weakened health which caused him to compromise. So, all told here were only 2 days between Indira's resignation and Morarji's accession. This was followed by another 2 days of drama when 5 people nominated to Cabinet or Ministerial rank- Jagjivan Ram, H.N. Bahuguna, Raj Narain, George Fernandes and Nanaji Deshmukh- didn't take the oath. Then Charan Singh got the Home Ministry and Jagjivan got Defense. In 1979 both became joint deputy Prime Ministers for about six months.
All of this had nothing to do with 'true patriotism'. It was just careerism or ambition. However, Sharada Prasad's son has an axe to grind. What precisely? Is it to show his Daddy and his pals were 'true patriots' of a particularly idiotic sort? That, certainly, is the outcome. However, along the way we get a glimpse into this 'defence analysts' extraordinary ignorance of game theory.
In an earlier article titled “Why Did Indira Gandhi Call for Elections in January 1977?”, I had examined the possible reasons why prime minister Indira Gandhi suddenly announced elections on 18 January 1977.
There was only one reason. After the Guwahati session, Indira realized her son's cronies would bump her off so as to rule the country in a corrupt and criminal manner- i.e. the only way Socialist Secularism can run anything. However, she didn't want her blood on her son's hands. Thus she pulled the rug from under the Youth Congress and thus brought her Sanjay- and his crazy wife- to heel.
The popular notion is that she called for elections because intelligence agencies told her that she would win easily, since the opposition leaders had been in jail and were not united.
She thought- quite reasonably- that she would lose in the North but not be wholly wiped out there. The fact is that the Janata wave in rural parts of UP took some time to become visible. Janata politicians thought they'd lose till about a week or two before the polls.
But that is not the full picture. In the last week of November 1976, after she returned from the Congress party session in Guwahati, she told her principal secretary Professor Prithvi Nath Dhar and my father HY Sharada Prasad, who was her information advisor: “I am going to end the Emergency and call for elections. I know that I will lose, but this is something which is absolutely necessary for me to do”.
Otherwise she'd have had an 'accident' and then Sanjay would discover there was a 'foreign hand' behind that accident. Incidentally, RSS is a German organization set up by Herr Hitler- a notorious Jew who works for CIA.
On the other hand, Indira may have wanted these two guys to get the rumor mills going for some tactical purpose. But, equally, these two guys may have made up the story to show they weren't the henchmen of a Dictator.
In mid-December 1976, PN Dhar, who had been strongly against the Emergency from the outset,
which is why, as a true patriot, he didn't resign
went to her with the Intelligence Bureau report which forecasted that she would win 340 seats, and remarked: “Surely you are not going to believe this, are you?”
If S.N Mathur didn't even know that people were being arrested because Emergency had been imposed- i.e. if Indira had a low opinion of the I.B and kept it out of the loop- why would she believe anything it produced?
She replied: “Of course not. The IB will tell me what they think I want to hear. But I know that I will lose”.
What was her real meaning? The answer is 'Youth Congress is a paper tiger. It has zero grass roots support. Sanju doesn't realize this. You and I know better.'
The problem was that nobody of that generation could be sure that the Youth Congress was utterly useless. Suppose they had suddenly flexed their muscles and shot a number of candidates and had attacked Janata meetings a couple of weeks before the elections. They could easily have created a climate of fear conducive to booth capturing. Nobody could be certain that the degenerates in the Party didn't have good relations with their pimps who in turn had good relations with dreaded dacoits and so forth. Clearly there was money to be made by siding with the dynasty.
In the event, Indira proved right. Youth Congress was useless.
A few weeks earlier, PN Dhar had given her a detailed report of how the excesses of Sanjay Gandhi and his cabal were causing anger among the populace.
The question was whether the populace feared that cabal or whether what cowed them was the Police. It turned out they were afraid of the Police. Sanju was merely loathed.
Her close advisor and former principal secretary, Parameshwar Narayan Haksar, who had been vociferously opposed to the Emergency from the very beginning
like he mattered! The fellow was a 'useful idiot'. Incidentally, Bhutto had his own Haksar. A Commie Pakistani Diplomat who, however, had to keep his Commie proclivities under his hat- or Jinnah cap. But Bhutto had the fellow beaten up for some 'gustaqi'. Indira was more of a gentleman.
and had been pressing her to hold elections, too told my father in the second week of January 1977, a few days before she made her announcement on All India Radio, that she was very well aware that she would lose the elections.
If she didn't, Youth Congress would have won. She'd be best off resigning rather than waiting to be bumped off.
Even then, Indira Gandhi was taken by surprise by how quickly disparate opposition groups came together.
To be fair, there definitely were some surprises which- as the author explains in this article- oughtn't really to have surprised anybody.
By 23 January 1977, various parties ranging from the left to the extreme right
there was no 'extreme right' in India. India was in fact a Hindu nation. Saying so wasn't polite but it was scarcely an extreme position to take.
agreed to dissolve their existing party structures and merge themselves into the new Janata party, with Morarji Desai as its chairman and Charan Singh as vice chairman.
In British terms this would be 'Jeremy Corbyn as chairman and Nigel Farage as vice chairman'. In American terms it would be 'Biden as chairman and Kamala-I-iz-actually-African-American Harris as vice-chairman'.
These included:
– The various Socialist groups of George Fernandes and Raj Narain, and other socialist leaders such as Madhu Limaye, Madhu Dandavate, Surendra Mohan, and Babu Bindheshwari Prasad Mandal.
Raj Narain was a wrestler with bizarre views. He played a big role in the collapse of the Janata coalition. The two Madhus were respected at the time but turned out to be stupid and useless. Mandal was a Yadav from a princely landowning family. He too was respected as representing the rise of OBCs in Bihar.
– The Young Turks of her own Congress whom she had jailed – Chandra Shekhar, Krishna Kant, Mohan Dharia, Ram Dhan, Chandrajit Yadav, and Lakshmi Kanthamma.
Again, these were respectable figures. The question was whether factionalism could be avoided in which case there would be a genuine Socialist alternative at the National level. Sadly, caste and region trumped ideology in the Socialist camp whereas the two Communist parties had to struggle against their own idiotic politburos.
– The Bharatiya Lok Dal, led by Chaudhary Charan Singh, Biju Patnaik, Hiralalbhai Mulljibhai Patel, Chaudhary Devi Lal, Karpoori Thakur, and Ram Naresh Yadav.
Patnaik's son has ruled Odisha for 22 years. Charan Singh's very able son ought to have achieved more. His grandson may play a big role going forward as a Jat leader. Devi Lal and Karpoori Thakur have a secure place in the history of their own states. My point is that Janata had a lot of able men and one or two jokers- like Raj Narain. But the able men could accomplish nothing for the country whereas the joker was able to pull the rug from under the coalition.
– The Organisation Congress (O) of Morarji Desai, Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy, Chandra Bhanu Gupta, and Asoka Mehta.
Everybody hated Desai. Come to think of it Reddy might have been a better Premier.
– The Bharatiya Jan Sangh, led by Nanaji Deshmukh, Atal Behari Vajpayee, Lal Krishna Advani, and Bhairon Singh Shekhawat.
None of whom had held any portfolio before. To be frank, they were considered light-weights though Shekhawat was considered a possible CM of Rajasthan which he indeed became.
– The Swatantra party of right wing capitalists and zamindars, led by Piloo Mody.
A nonentity. The biggest zamindar was the Raja of Ramgarh. His 'Janata party', after pretending to be Socialist, merged with Swatantra which merged with various Socialist parties of a wholly casteist type.
The general secretaries included Lal Krishna Advani, Madhu Limaye, Surendra Mohan, Rama Krishna Hegde, Nanaji Deshmukh, and Ram Dhan.
Hegde became CM of Karnataka and appeared quite capable at one time. Then it turned out he was tapping everybody's phone because Secularism demands nothing less if it is in service to Socialism and Constitutional values.
It is noteworthy that the true 'Socialists' had no achievements or legacy. This suggests that they were not 'true patriots'. Ram Dhan should be viewed more as a Dalit than a Socialist leader. He was willing to work within Congress so long as they helped- or didn't hurt- his people. He backed VP Singh which turned out to be a mistake. Congress had a greater interest in propping up Dalits against OBC oppression. The failure of good politicians like Ram Dhan opened the door to Kanshi Ram though, of course, it was only Mayawati who could get a 'Dalit Raj' which most people remember as better than Yadav thuggery.
A 27-member coordination committee was established that included Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy, Chandra Bhanu Gupta, Asoka Mehta, HM Patel, and Karpoori Thakur.
Is the author saying a coordination committee should have consisted only of those named? You would need a coordination coordination committee to manage a much larger group.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM, Akali Dal, and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) said they would not merge themselves into the new Janata party, but would be part of the anti-Indira alliance.
Obviously. D'uh!
Lok Nayak Jaya Prakash Narayan, who by then had begun to have misgivings about his tying up with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh RSS,
who had no misgivings re. tying up with a senile fool because, to be honest, they had been thoroughly marginalized. It wasn't till Vajpayee showed he could be a very effective Foreign Minister- keeping the Soviets sweet- that people began to think the Sangh could be a party of Government.
took a pledge from the Jan Sangh members that they would not campaign on communal issues. The newly formed Janata party campaigned on the election symbols allotted to the Bharatiya Lok Dal.
led by Charan Singh. It is difficult to see any common thread to their respective ideologies.
MY FATHER WAS always puzzled as to how someone as wily as Indira Gandhi made the elementary blunder of jailing the various opposition leaders together, in Tihar, Ambala, and Rohtak jails. This allowed them to interact with each other daily, and unite against her.
But they had been uniting before the Emergency! The BLD had been formed in 1974 through the amalgamation of 7 parties- some 'Socialist' others less so. But the Swatantra party and Biju Patnaik's outfit (Patnaik was a wealthy business man) were part of this strange coalition.
The fact is Indira knew that Congress had developed esprit de corps in prison but also a healthy contempt for the stupider amongst themselves. That is why, after Independence, Nehru relied on non-Congress technocrats like TTK or Deshmukh. Indeed, the Kamraj plan was premised on the notion that a Congress politician is as stupid as a cow. Let him moo for a while in a Ministerial office but rotate him back to rustic environs where the local people will prize him for his ability to produce copious amounts of dung.
Lal Krishna Advani of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh was jailed together with the socialist Madhu Dandavate, and both of them for some time with Biju Patnaik of the Bharatiya Lok Dal and Piloo Mody of the Swatantra party.
The author does not know that Swatosser party had dissolved itself in 1974. He also does not understand that at least some of those jailed together were supplying information to Indira because they had other interests- economic, family etc- at stake. There's a good reason you put criminals together. They start boasting and you discover their plans and gain information about their networks.
Bhairon Singh Shekhawat of the RSS was imprisoned together with Asoka Mehta, who had joined the Congress (O) after being expelled from the Praja Socialist Party.
Indira knew that the RSS liked her. But they wanted her to fuck over India's external and internal enemies rather than waste her time on intrigue while laying the foundations of dynastic rule. Still, if a dynasty raises India up, then why not support it?
Charan Singh of the Bharatiya Lok Dal was jailed together with Prakash Singh Badal of the Shiromani Akali Dal in Tihar, and they bonded over playing cards.
Both were Jats and not directly competing so they already had a bond. The difference is that Punjabi Police officers were keen to show their usefulness to Indira who believed that the Sikhs liked her because she gave them their own State.
However, Charan Singh cut a deal with Indira Gandhi, and was released in March 1976, together with his followers.
Everybody- except Fernandes- would have done a deal sooner or later. The trouble was that Sanjay's cronies would have bumped Indira off by then. The opposition needed to unite to throw a scare into the Youth Congress thugs. They needed Mummyji. They must not kill Mummyji. If they do they will be slaughtered in their beds.
Indira Gandhi had long regarded Nanaji Deshmukh
because, though not a Chitpavan, he represented the bogey of revived Peshwa power
of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) as the most formidable of her opponents;
thought it was Sanju who really scared her
his vision for India was diametrically opposite hers,
he didn't want it run by an incompetent dynasty
and she referred to him as ‘Chanakya of Our Time’.
Her daddy wrote an article about himself which he signed 'Chanakya'. But Chanakya hadn't wanted power for himself. He had wanted India to become stronger.
Most of those arrested on the night of 25-26 June 1975 were his followers.
Why were they arrested? The answer is simple. The RSS had helped the anti-Congress Nav-Nirman movement in Gujarat and then, a little later, JP's movement in Bihar. What was at issue was 'States' Rights'. Indira, whose ancestors had served the Mughals in Delhi, wanted to centralize power and to turn Chief Ministers into puppets. Thus she targeted the RSS which, in any case, could be called 'Right Wing' or 'Fascist'.
As described by this author in that article titled, “Was Emergency Inevitable?”, it was Jaya Prakash Narayan’s tying up with Nanaji Deshmukh in 1974 which made her first think that a crackdown was necessary.
I think Indira realized that Gujarat was a net contributor to the exchequer and thus it had to be subject to divide and rule. But she was confident that a caste based formula, together with personal ambition among Gujarati politicians, would neutralize that potentially prosperous state which could provide alternative leadership to India.
She was even more antagonistic to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) than she was to the parent RSS.
She realized that Youth Congress was thuggish. The ABVP had a better reputation.
With her personal knowledge of European politics, she was well aware that revolutions were begun by students, and that the Fascist and Nazi movements were spearheaded by youth stormtroopers.
This is nonsense. Ex-soldiers provided the muscle to Black and Brown Shirts. Students don't matter. Police men enjoy beating them and making them squeal. In 1973 some students in Lucknow got the provincial armed constabulary to rebel. The army turned up and slaughtered a whole bunch of the constables. Meanwhile, the students had run crying to their Mummies. Mrs. Gandhi had personal knowledge of the tremendous cowardice of the Indian student or senile agitator who continued to think like a student.
Arun Jaitley of the ABVP made a stirring speech the day after the Emergency was declared. He made his getaway on a two-wheeler scooter, but crashed into a police barrier at Timarpur.
He had a good personality. The police may not have thrust their bumboos up his bumhole.
On the night of 25-26 June 1975, Lok Nayak Jaya Prakash Narayan was arrested from the residence of my maternal uncle KS Radhakrishna, head of the Gandhi Peace Foundation.
Ravindra Varma (a scion of an illustrious Princely family) was the head. Radhakrishna was the head of the Gandhi Peace Center which started in 1979.
My cousin KR Chandrahas went into an adjoining building and telephoned several of JPs associates and RSS leaders. Tipped off by Chandrahas, Nanaji Deshmukh and Madan Lal Khurana, who were at the RSS headquarters at Jhandewalan, managed to escape minutes before the police arrived.
This was a courageous act. Sadly, Delhites welcomed the news that these agitators had been locked up. Had the Emergency been well managed- no forcible sterilization and other such stupidity- India would have happily gone down the South Korean path.
The Punjab police were on the trail of a Bharatiya Jan Sangh leader of Punjab, Krishna Lal Sharma, and followed him to a house in Delhi’s Safdarjung Development Area. They saw a prosperous looking middle-aged man, dressed in a natty western suit, alighting from a car and entering the building. They swooped in to capture KL Sharma. His visitor had the identity documents of an NRI businessman but a police officer recognised his voice and pronunciation as that of Nanaji Deshmukh. This Punjab police officer informed Indira Gandhi’s office of his capture of Deshmukh with a verse in classical Persian: we spread our nets to catch shrimp, but a crocodile swam by himself into our nets.
As I said, the Punjabi police was anxious to show themselves useful to Delhi. It must be said that Nanaji was as stupid as shit. The wealth of India is not in its villages- unless you think cow-dung is more valuable than silicon chips. There's a good reason voters preferred a dynasty which thought speaking English and having nice things was better than doing Social Work for educational upliftment of cows such that India could grow rich off all the dung they produced.
The police rushed down to trace the car from which Deshmukh had alighted. After dropping off Nanaji, Subramanian Swamy went to find a parking spot. Seeing the police, Swamy managed to drive away in a high-speed chase.
Swamy may be a mischievous crack-pot but, say what you like, he has a healthy survival instinct.
Amazingly, Arun Jaitley and Nanaji Deshmukh were imprisoned together in the very same cell in Tihar Jail, next to Charan Singh and Prakash Singh Badal, and the socialist Surendra Mohan on the other side, and a few cells away from KS Radhakrishna.
Amazingly? No. Cleverly. One or other was bound to do a deal in which case the remainder would lose bargaining power. This is classic 'Prisoner's dilemma' under 'common knowledge'.
Both Jaitley and Nanaji were outstanding organisers and had the ability to make friends across political parties.
Jaitley was young. He was bright. He could rise by his own efforts. He'd have become an Attorney General and then a Law Minister and then a Governor in the normal course of things.
They were instrumental in uniting disparate political parties to oppose Indira and Sanjay Gandhi.
But those parties had already come together in 1974. It was Sanju who was forcing the 'Young Turks'- but then also Jagjivan Ram and Bahaguna- out. This was smart. India as a whole thought UP only slightly less stupid and useless than Bihar. The cow-belt had to be shown that its political and ideological influence over the nation should be restricted to collecting the dung so copiously produced by its own shitheads. Such anal slurry has thermal insulating properties and can be applied over the body in lieu of warm clothes. Gramscian 'organic intellectuals' championing Bahishkrith communities can provide this renewable resource in an environmentally sustainable and respectful manner.
While hearing the habeas corpus plea of KS Radhakrishna, argued by retired justice VM Tarkunde, Justice Sesha Iyengar Rangarajan of Delhi High Court ordered that all political prisoners be allowed weekly visits from their families, and also given regular medical check-ups.
This should have been done anyway. It is demoralizing to be told about your diabetes or asthma or whatever. Also, not everybody hates their wife and kiddies.
These weekly medical check-ups were conducted by Ram Nath Goenka’s physician, Dr JK Jain of the RSS, who also brought them the latest political news. This greatly increased the acceptability of the RSS among socialist and secular politicians.
The author assumes that RSS people smelt bad and that good people fainted at the sight of their cloven hooves. Such was never the case.
Ever since he led the violent nationwide strike by railwaymen in May 1974, Indira Gandhi thought that George Fernandes would assassinate her, most probably in a bomb explosion in Varanasi.
The author's bizarre views in this context have been refuted by Fernandes's own political secretary. Why is he repeating the same stupid lies in this article?
The fact is Mrs. Gandhi feared the Ananda Marg which was going around killing Indian diplomats and doing all sorts of crazy shit. Fernandes himself was an inept conspirator. The Baroda Dynamite Case was farcical.
Her idee fixe got cemented when her money bags man, Lalit Narayan Mishra, was killed in a bomb explosion in a railway station in January 1975.
I don't know if the convictions of Ananda Margis in this context are safe. They may not be. But nobody at that time in Delhi believed Fernandes could pull off anything like this. The giveaway is the term 'moneybags'. The fact is 'bagmen' get killed because money went missing. You paid to get your brother out of jail. Bagman says he delivered the money but that the Minister is not playing ball because the girl your bro cut up was of his caste and, one way or another, somebody has to die even if this means your brother stays in jail- which may be a good thing because you have a daughter and bhaiyya does like carving up little girls.
She kept remarking to her aides that Fernandes would soon kill her while she was on one of her frequent train journeys.
She may well have done. But Indira kept her cards close to her chest. She knew that if she was killed it would be Sanju and his cronies who would benefit. Mentioning Fernandes suggested she was senile, not suspicious.
Morarji Desai was universally disliked because of his overweening ambition, his superiority complex, his know-it-all attitude, his obstinacy, and his puritanical moralistic sermonising.
Also he was shit at his job. Sadly, being shit at your job was considered a sign of 'administrative ability' back then because all the various political parties of India considered fucking up Britain's legacy in the sub-continent to be part and parcel of the proper, constitutionally mandated, worship of bullshit through which alone the great wealth of the villages of India could be realized such that America would spontaneously double PL 480 shipments.
This is why the Syndicate had worked to ensure Morarji’s defeat after the deaths of both Jawaharlal Nehru in May 1964 and Lal Bahadur Shastri in January 1966; the Syndicate’s motto was: ‘Anyone but Morarji’
Then, like Indira, the Indian voters said 'anything but this crooked, incompetent, Syndicate'. Let those nutters go back to their villages and shit all over the place to the great delight of local agriculturists.
On the night of 25-26 June 1975, Chandra Shekhar was arrested from Rivoli theatre in Connaught Place, where he was watching a late-night movie together with BP Koirala of Nepal.
Indira forced Koirala out of the country for this.
Even though he was a prominent Congress MP, who had helped Indira Gandhi to defeat Morarji Desai and the Syndicate in 1969,
He was a Rajya Sabha member. He needed Indira. She didn't need him.
Chandra Shekhar had publicly called on her to resign after the Allahabad High Court verdict. He had hosted a dinner in honour of JP, his political mentor, a few days earlier.
As a result of which he had the honor of eating Jail food.
The sympathetic police officer took Chandra Shekhar to a nearby phone booth, and told him: “I am delaying recording your time of arrest by half an hour in the case diary. During these thirty minutes, phone whomever you can, warning them to escape”.
There were few phones in Delhi back then. Nobody in their right mind would have done as the 'sympathetic' policemen suggested.
Chandra Shekhar was jailed, first in Chandigarh, and then in Patiala, in solitary confinement.
This raised his prestige. Otherwise he'd have been thought a stool-pigeon.
Chandra Shekhar’s conversations were overheard by a telephone operator, and she phoned George Fernandes, who was holidaying with his wife Leila Kabir and infant son in Gopalpur on Sea in Odisha.
This is a nice story but isn't true. The tip came from a lady Trade Unionist in Odisha.
Fernandes had earned the gratitude of female telephone operators across the country by fighting to improve their working conditions.
Trade Unions were much more respected then.
Clad in just his lungi, Fernandes managed to escape seconds before the police arrived to arrest him. Masquerading as a fisherman, he travelled to Gujarat and Tamil Nadu and Kerala, organising resistance to the Emergency.
Fernandes was a great linguist and tremendous orator in a dozen languages.
The Palace Guards had issued verbal orders that he was to be killed as soon as he was captured.
No. The arrest was made by Ashok Patel of the MP branch of CBI. A contact of Fernandes had revealed his location under torture. The question was whether Indira would put Fernandes on trial for his life and use the excuse to nab all sorts of innocent, or not so innocent people, on the basis of testimony elicited by third degree methods. It seems odd that the person who tipped off the 'Socialists' in Europe was also the informant. Perhaps, Indira wanted to use Fernandes as a bargaining chip. She'd just jail him rather than have a treason trial.
Even while on the run, Fernandes kept up his keen interest in Kannada culture and literature, keeping in touch with my father’s intellectual mentor, the polymath Kota Shivarama Karanth, who was vehemently opposed to the Emergency, as well as my father’s close friend, the eminent novelist UR Anantha Murthy.
I recall reading a novel by Karanth. It was about a grandmother and grandson who couldn't possibly exist because the grandmother was widowed before puberty. This wasn't 'magical realism'. It was pure senility. As for UR Anantha Murthy, not many people know that the head of the Nobel Literature Prize committee- a Swedish lady- went to meet him. 'Are you Anantha Murthy?' she asked him. 'No.' He replied 'U.R'. The Swedish lady felt insulted and returned home. That is the only reason that shithead did not get Nobel for writing stupid shit and being bleck.
UR Anantha Murthy and the noted actress Snehalatha Reddy planned to bomb the Vidhana Sowdha legislature building in Bengaluru.
Reddy was arrested in the Baroda Case. U.R was a harmless English professor at the University of Mysore. He wrote in his autobiography that he had met Fernandes who suggested he help Snehalatha blow up a disused toilet. But was it a stink-bomb or one of the kaboom variety? History remains silent
In order to capture George Fernandes, his brothers Lawrence and Michael, as well as his close associate Snehalatha Reddy were jailed in Bengaluru, and tortured brutally. But they refused to divulge his whereabouts.
Clearly someone did.
The talented actress Snehalatha Reddy died as a result of her brutal imprisonment.
She had asthma. Also UR may have stink-bombed her to death.
George Fernandes grew a beard, and disguised himself as a Sikh, taking the alias Khushwant Singh.
not Gandu Singh Khabardar? Sad.
In Delhi, he first stayed with CGK Reddy, who had been a hero of Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army, was a member of parliament, and was business manager of the Hindu newspaper. Then Fernandes moved to the residence of a Kannadiga defence officer Captain Huilgol and his daughter Dr Girija Huilgol.
South Indians stick together. Good to know.
From there George Fernandes shifted to the Jor Bagh residence of a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi, R Chandrachudan, who was then a senior manager with the Hindu newspaper.
The Hindu, under G.Kasturi, crawled when asked to bend.
My parents used to visit Chandrachudan, whom they had known since the 1940s when he was the host and aide to Mahatma Gandhi, two to three times a month. During his long stint with Associated Press and Reuters in the 1930s and 1940s, Chandrachudan was instrumental in publicising Gandhiji to the western world on a daily basis. I do not know if my parents realised that his Sardarji guest Khushwant Singh was indeed George Fernandes.
His daddy played a big part in peddling Congress lies during that dark period. He obviously knew the real Khushwant Singh but decided that as a simple Southie he could plausibly claim to have been fooled.
A senior officer of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, KG Ramakrishna, who was our neighbour and close family friend – he was a close associate of Ram Manohar Lohia and had joined Nehru’s government from the Indian Express together with my father – drove Fernandes around Delhi.
The son is trying to show that his daddy and his fellow Southie pals were on the right side during the Emergency.
Some mining businessmen in Baroda, from whom Fernandes was trying to procure dynamite, were being investigated by the tax authorities. In return for immunity for tax evasion, they provided information about Fernandes’ whereabouts.
The approver in the case was Bharat Patel. He had actually demonstrated the explosive power of the dynamite. Thus he faced the hangman's noose. By contrast Viren J Shah, who had been an M.P and was a senior industrialist who went on to serve as Governor of West Bengal, had only provided contacts to Fernandes. However, Fernandes's location was not known to these people. It is likely that the person who broke under torture was closely connected to him.
Just as the Delhi police were about to capture him, Fernandes jumped on a flight to Kolkata on 10 March 1976.
Assisted by the journalist and writer Vijay Narain, Fernandes brought out a cyclostyled newsletter from Saint Paul’s Cathedral. Vijay Narain had disguised himself as a Muslim weaver of Varanasi, and he used to distribute this newsletter.
An informer in Fernandes’ taxi drivers’ union in Mumbai revealed that Fernandes had been in contact with Father Rudolph of St Paul’s Cathedral.
A senior police officer became suspicious of why a bearded Sikh and a Muslim weaver were staying on the premises of St Paul’s Cathedral, working as odd jobs men. He had the Muslim weaver tailed.
Pretending to be a parishioner, this senior police officer patiently built up a friendship with the bearded Khushwant Singh. He casually engaged him in conversation, and after a while, broke into colloquial Marathi.
An unthinking Khushwant Singh spontaneously replied in colloquial Marathi, and the officer said: “We got you, George”.
Why did George Fernandes pretend to be a Sikh when he couldn't speak Punjabi? He revealed to the real Khushwant Singh that he told people he was born in Canada and thus hadn't learnt his mother tongue- probably because his Mummy was a Moose and his daddy was a Mountie. The trouble is, Canadians speak English with a Canadian accent. Furthermore, a Canadian Sikh who keeps turban speaks at least a few words of Punjabi- that too with a heavy regional accent. He does not speak Hindi at all.
I think that once Fernandes succumbed to amnesia, all sorts of people started making up stories about him. I myself recall helping Fernandes- who had disguised himself as a Siamese cat named Billi- by telling him to stop being so naughty. He purred a little but then left when I didn't give him any food
The Palace Guards had issued verbal orders that Fernandes should be killed as soon as he was captured.
But they issued those orders to Billi the Cat who was actually Fernandes in disguise. Then he let off a stink-bomb and ran away.
But this police officer insisted on getting written orders on file signed by Indira Gandhi herself that George Fernandes was to be killed.
Then it turned out that police file had disguised itself as the real Billi the Cat who meanwhile had disguised itself as the real Khushwant Singh who, I need hardly say, had disguised himself as the real UR Ananthamurthy. Sadly he was not able to have his wicked way with the Swedish Noble Prize lady.
On that date, 10 June 1976, Indira Gandhi was on a visit to the Soviet Union. She was accompanied by Rajiv and Sonia, as well as Sanjay and Maneka.
Who was actually George Fernandes in disguise!
Normally, this police officer’s encrypted “For Your Eyes Only” cable to Indira Gandhi would have been decrypted by RK Dhawan.
How? The guy was not a cypher clerk. Thankfully, Billi the Cat had disguised himself as RK Dhawan and Billi is very good at cryptography.
However, on that date Sanjay and Maneka were visiting a Soviet space facility a few hours away, and RK Dhawan had accompanied them.
Dhawan was not South Indian. Thus we should say nasty things about him.
Therefore, this top-secret cable was decrypted by NK Seshan,
who is a South Indian
who had been the trusted aide of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi since 1944; Nehru affectionately referred to Seshan as the son he never had.
He may have had sons. The guy wasn't a eunuch.
At that instant, Indira Gandhi and my father were addressing a press conference, where reporters from numerous countries were present
An aghast NK Seshan slipped a note in Tamil to my father, who was sitting next to Indira Gandhi.
In those days South Indians could read and write in each other's languages.
Under the guise of getting a friendly journalist to ask a question, my father scribbled a note in Telugu to Gunupati Keshava Reddy of the Hindu newspaper. NK Seshan too wrote out a note in Malayalam to VK Madhavan Kutty of the Mathrubhumi.
These two veteran political editors immediately realised what needed to be done. Although they could not use this scoop themselves,
because their editors had 'crawled when asked to bend'
they quietly tipped off the BBC correspondent,
by writing him a note in Punjabi
and also got a prominent foreign journalist to stand up and ask: “Madam prime minister, what do you have to say about the appeal by various international statesmen to spare George Fernandes?”
This was the first that she was hearing about the capture of Fernandes. But always in control of herself and thinking quickly on her feet, she furnished details of the numerous acts of violence planned by him, and of the foreign sources funding him, and emphatically declared that he would have to stand trial for terrorism.
So, Indira was better at handling the Press than the author's father. That is the only point to this story. South Indians scribbling notes to each other are utterly useless. Seshan and Sharada were derelict in their duty. They should have sent notes to the PM. Instead they, albeit indirectly, communicated information to foreigners with the purpose of holding up their own Head of Government to hatred, ridicule and contempt. Thankfully, the woman wasn't as stupid as these South Indian pen-pushers.
Within hours Willy Brandt, Bruno Kreisky, Olof Palme, and Michael Foot, at the urging of CGK Reddy, publicly appealed to her to spare Fernandes.
Michael Foot says he had been instructed by his PM not to bring up elections or Fernandes with Indira. He says she brought up the subject. Foot was disliked by Indians in the UK because of his support for Indira. Kreisky and Palme too were close to Indira and Palme was very close to Rajiv and seems to have been part of the crooked Bofors deal which brought Rajiv down. There was no 'public appeal' regarding Fernandes. Sweden was concerned with doing business with India. Palme and Kreisky sent a telegram to Mrs G, who responded angrily, but they did it through the Socialist International which, of course, was neither Socialist not International which was why they had to pretend to be pals with people like Fernandes who genuinely came from a shithole country. I believe, Palme did arrange for one Hoda to meet some Swedish guy in London after Fernandes asked for money for his underground network. Did they hand over any money? Who knows? Who cares?
Astonishingly, Fernandes, who was immediately flown by a special plane to Delhi, was lodged in the same ward in Tihar Jail as other top political leaders. And his fellow accused in the Baroda Dynamite Conspiracy were jailed together with him.
So that they could all inform on each other as part of their deal to get out of jail.
Prior to being sent to Tihar, George Fernandes was brutally tortured in Red Fort for a night.
He should have disguised himself as a Swedish masochist and should have mentioned how many kroner he would willingly have paid for a similar service back in Stockholm. Instead he chose to disguise himself as an Indian man who howled when bumboo was stuck up his bumhole. Sad.
Vijay Narain was tortured in Kolkata before he was sent to Delhi, where he was jailed together with Fernandes in Tihar.
Still, at least he'd got to pretend to be a Muslim weaver from Varanasi. Did he say his name was Kabir? A more sensible course is to claim to be a carpenter from Bethlehem. That's what I do when arrested for urinating on the side-walk.
The hatred between Jagjivan Ram and Morarji Desai dated back to the early 1960s, when, after the demise of Govind Ballabh Pant in March 1961, they had been involved in a bitter power struggle to be declared as the number two to Jawaharlal Nehru
Shastri was number two. He succeeded Pant as Home Minister. He was a Kayastha from the cow-belt. Desai did not command a lot of seats. Jagjivan was important in that respect but caste was much more of a factor in those benighted days.
JP and Morarji had strongly disapproved of Fernandes’ espousal of violence for years.
If you can call letting of bombs in disused toilets violence.
But with his heroic image and his natural charisma, Fernandes got numerous leaders across the political spectrum to join together with him while in Tihar.
Then they left Tihar while Fernandes remained there. He wanted Janata to boycott the elections so his pals would come back and play with him.
Fernandes had frequently declared that non-violent struggle against Indira Gandhi would not succeed, and he viewed JP’s and Nanaji’s and Morarji’s opposition to the use of violence as naive and futile.
Though it was he who was most naive and futile.
While in Tihar, Fernandes harshly criticised JP and my maternal uncle KS Radhakrishna for continuing to try to seek a peaceful rapprochement with Indira Gandhi. Nevertheless, JP agreed to give George Fernandes the ticket from Muzaffarpur.
Otherwise, he'd have bombed JP's toilet.
Even as he tried hard to unite the various opposition leaders,
by harshly criticizing them and hinting he might disguise himself as Khushwant Singh and let off a stink-bomb in their toilet
Fernandes harshly accused Biju Patnaik, HM Patel, and Asoka Mehta of trying to reach a secret deal with Om Mehta and Sanjay Gandhi. Biju Patnaik’s huge business empire was suffering, and his wife was trying to persuade him to drop his opposition to Indira Gandhi and concentrate on running his numerous business enterprises.
HM Patel was an ex ICS man who saw there could be something positive in Sanju's politics- if the fellow weren't so thuggish. Ashok Mehta on the other hand was some sort of Socialist who hankered for the Congress big tent. Still, at least he didn't disguise himself as a Sikh and go around letting off stink-bombs.
Fernandes was released only after the Janata government came to power; he went directly from Tihar jail to Rashtrapati Bhavan to be sworn in as a cabinet minister. Sushma Swaraj led his campaign from Muzaffarpur while he remained in prison.
Why? Fernandes's mother could not speak Hindi. So his 'sister' campaigned for him and he won by a landslide.
The police officers in Tihar jail sent complete details to Indira Gandhi of how Nanaji Deshmukh, George Fernandes, Arun Jaitley, etc were meeting other imprisoned leaders and urging them to unite to overthrow her. But I do not know if she took any action in response.
We know what action she took in response. She held elections. It was better for her to go down to a 'grand coalition' because then all her enemies would be tarred by the same brush because their administration would be utterly shitty because they had shit for brains and would fuck up the administration because of their own rivalries. Suppose a whole bunch of parties had contested the elections. You'd have had a hung parliament and then some horse-trading followed by a second election. Sooner or later one cohesive party would emerge as a National alternative to the Dynasty. This is in fact what happened when Janata split on the 'dual membership' issue. The RSS wing has prevailed because it is cohesive. But it isn't dictatorial- unlike Kejriwal's outfit.
It is indeed puzzling that when she had clamped Morarji Desai (in a guest house in Sohna), Chandra Shekhar (first in Chandigarh and then in Patiala), Raj Narain, KR Malkani of the RSS, and Jyotirmoy Bosu of the CPI(M) in solitary confinement, she did not take the elementary precaution of isolating Deshmukh, Fernandes, Jaitley and others. This is even after the police officers in Tihar, Rohtak and Ambala jails had provided complete details of their conversations and negotiations.
The answer is obvious. Indira wanted these guys to get cozy with the RSS and then recoil from them at leisure.
According to my father, the Janata alliance would never have been formed if they had been jailed separately.
In which case there would have been a cohesive alternative to Congress with a strong P.M candidate.
Lal Krishna Advani wrote in his prison diary: “As a result of this the cordiality, closeness and mutual trust generated during this last one year among parties and persons committed to democracy could not have been ordinarily created even in one decade.”
He and Vajpayee gained by getting portfolios which they discharged well enough. But it took another 15 years before the BJP came to be seen as the legitimate heir of the Janata party.
One of George Fernandes’ co-accused in the Baroda Dynamite Conspiracy, Dr GG Parikh, a physician, freedom fighter, and stalwart of the Praja Socialist Party, stated: “I always felt that she did not have the genes, nor the mental makeup, to be a dictator”. Dr Parikh had first been jailed in Yerawada together with RSS workers. Then he was transferred to Tihar, where he was jailed together with Fernandes and other co-accused in the dynamite conspiracy. PN Dhar too described her as a ‘half-hearted dictator’.
Because she could not kill her son so as to send a message to his cronies. In any case, a dictator needs to be in control of a murderous cadre. Congress was a collection of bovine bullshitters.
On the other hand, many prominent Opposition leaders were not arrested at all, especially those from the Congress (O) who had opposed her in 1969. K Kamaraj, S Nijalingappa, Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy, SK Patil, Atulya Ghosh, and Shanti Bhushan were left alone.
Fernandes had some crazy idea that Kamaraj would unite with Karunanidhi. What subsequently happened convinced Tamil politicians not to bother too much with New Delhi.
Socialists such as SM Joshi and NG Goray were not arrested either. According to Dr GG Parikh, this was because she wanted to keep a channel open for discussions.
This is foolish. Guys have a lot of time to sit around waiting for a call when they are in prison.
Astonishingly CGK Reddy was not arrested either.
He was arrested, like Parikh, in the Baroda Case.
He travelled abroad frequently, meeting socialist statesmen such as Michael Foot, Harold Wilson, Willy Brandt, Bruno Kreisky, and Olof Palme, and addressing meetings castigating the Emergency. Nor were the Huilgol father and daughter arrested.
That may be. But surely they had not publicized their actions?
Several opposition politicians took their not being arrested as a blow to their ego, that they were not important enough to be considered a threat to Indira Gandhi – let alone not being jailed, they were not even placed under surveillance. Acharya JB Kripalani went to extraordinary lengths to get himself arrested. At Rajghat on 2nd October, he threw an emotional tantrum, insisting that he be arrested. Much to his discomfiture, he was released quickly.
The fellow was useless. That's true enough. Apparently his elder brother had converted to Islam so his own people weren't enthused by him. Then he didn't get to sleep with his wife who became C.M of U.P. Sad.
Even though it does not square with her statements that she would lose the elections, it could be possible that Indira Gandhi was over confident that the various parties would not be able to unite.
Parties can always unite. Indeed, they can get very gay with each other. Then they wake up with a hangover and start talking about 'dual membership' or bisexuality or whatever.
In March 1976, Charan Singh and several of his supporters came to a deal with her, and were released from jail. She knew that she could play on Charan Singh’s ambitions and hatreds to sow dissension in their ranks.
No. Jagjivan was Jatav. Charan was Jat. Caste matters a lot in U.P. Indira couldn't afford to depend on a 'Brahmin-Muslim-Harijan' formula. She needed some Jats, some Rajputs etc otherwise Yadavs would rise up by offering better terms to Muslims.
By September 1976, even those RSS activists who had been staunchly opposing the Emergency till then were ready to throw in the towel. The families of the forty thousand RSS members who had been jailed were in dire straits financially, and over eighty RSS members had died in custody.
Also the RSS is happy if India gets stronger.
Dr GG Parikh wrote in his memoirs about how the RSS cadres in Yerawada jail “wrote letters of apology to Indira Gandhi, pledging that they would not indulge in political activities
The RSS is supposed to be non-political. That is its attraction.
In November 1976, over thirty leaders of the RSS, led by Madhavrao Muley, Dattopant Thengadi, and Moropant Pingle, wrote to Indira Gandhi, promising that if all RSS workers were first released from prison, then the RSS would support the Emergency. Their ‘Document of Surrender’, to take effect from January 1977, was processed by my father.
Who did not need to write any 'document of surrender' because he was owned, body and soul, by the Dynasty. The strange thing is that the son is proud of his Daddy while hinting that people who had been beaten and imprisoned were lacking in manly spirit.
On 16 December 1976, two key members of Sanjay Gandhi’s cabal, Om Mehta, the minister of state for home, and Mohammed Yunus, an old Nehru family loyalist,
both of whom needed to strengthen their own hand against newer people whom Sanju had brought in
invited some non-Hindutva secular opposition leaders – Biju Patnaik, Asoka Mehta, HM Patel, NG Goray, Samar Guha, Piloo Mody, and Krishna Kant – for talks.
Mehta was from J&K and was sensitive to changes in the political atmosphere. Yunus too was in a vulnerable position.
These secular opposition leaders mooted that if some of the more stringent provisions of the Emergency were first relaxed, then they would be willing to work together with Indira Gandhi on certain policies in the national interest, and not oppose her in other spheres.
They were true patriots. Does Sanju want us to drink his urine? No? Such a sweet boy.
The DMK Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, whose government in Tamil Nadu had been dismissed by Indira Gandhi, too agreed that they would not oppose her.
Torture does tend to have that effect. Karunanidhi became Indira's supporter while MGR had been Morarji's.
Atal Behari Vajpayee, who was not invited for these talks, found out about them, and he visited Om Mehta. It was strongly rumoured that Vajpayee had offered to sever his connections with the RSS, and reveal the whereabouts of Subramanian Swamy, Madhavrao Muley, and other RSS activists who were still underground.
It was also strongly rumored that he had put on a blonde wig and had sucked off all and sundry. Well, maybe that isn't very strongly rumored. But it could be just as much as any other nonsense.
On his return from his meeting with Om Mehta, Vajpayee ordered the cadres of the ABVP to apologise unconditionally to Indira Gandhi.
for arson and violence
The ABVP students indignantly refused to obey Vajpayee, saying that they would rather be in jail.
than admit they spent their spare time setting fire to things or beating people. There can be no question that Vajpayee was right. In India, 'student leader' means the same as 'dreaded dacoit'. My Mum, in her innocence, described me as a 'student leader' on the blurb of a book of my poetry she got published. My relatives eagerly bought it and displayed it prominently. Why? They would say casually- my nephew is 'student leader'. See for yourself. He has even published poetry book!' The meaning is 'don't fuck with us. We are related to a complete psychopath. He will recite poetry while carving you up. You will end up begging for death.'
Indira Gandhi reckoned that she could play on Charan Singh’s ego and ambitions to divide her opponents.
This is crazy shit. A Premier's opponents are always divided because each and every one of them wants her job just as badly as they want to fuck over everyone else who wants it. What Indira understood is that beating and jailing people reduces their ego and ambition. That's not a good thing. You need these nutters to roam around talking bollocks and maligning each other so as to keep your hold on the country.
He detested many other opposition leaders much more than he hated Indira Gandhi.
But only Indira could really fuck him up. That's why doing a deal with the dynasty kept you honest which in turn kept you relatively safe.
On 08 January 1977, he mooted to her that if she treated him as the principal opposition leader, and sidelined others, then he would cooperate with her in certain areas, and not oppose her in other spheres.
Also, Sanju's urine is tasting so nice. Morarji's urine would be bitter in comparison.
Finding her non-committal, he pointedly reminded her that he had protected her from Raj Narain and thereby lost his chief ministership in 1968.
Right! That's who Indira was afraid off! A crazy ex-wrestler.
In 1967, Charan Singh was heading the Samyukta Vidhayak Dal coalition government in Uttar Pradesh. The fragile SVD coalition had constituents from both the extreme right and the extreme left – Swatantra, Jan Sangh, various socialist groups, and the Communist Party of India CPI.
The Samyukta Socialist Party, headed by Raj Narain,
he headed a faction within it which brought down 'Chair Singh'. History was to repeat itself a decade later. The master of defection politics was brought down by his own tactics.
wielded power far greater than its strength of 45 members, in this SVD coalition.
In which, it turned out, nobody had any power. The thing was too evanescent.
Indira Gandhi was due to visit Varanasi in January 1968 for the Indian Science Congress. Charan Singh received information that Raj Narain and other legislators of his Samyukta Socialist Party planned to attack her.
They would have been slaughtered by soldiers with sub-machine guns.
Charan Singh immediately arrested Raj Narain and other members of his own ruling coalition.
Raj Narain was in the upper house in Delhi. He was not a member of Charan Singh's administration. Anyway, all such charges were later withdrawn. It is foolish to suggest that the Prime Minister- whose guards were well armed- stood in any danger from a fat slob and his greasy sidekicks. 'Chair Singh' should have stuck with Congress and worked his way up. By defecting he made himself vulnerable to the same tactics. Some say he had real ability. His son, Ajith, certainly did.
The irate Samyukta Socialist Party legislators withdrew support from Charan Singh,
The thing was inevitable. The SSP itself was deeply divided. On the one hand there were those who endorsed the old Ashok Mehta line that Socialists could work with Congress. On the other hand there were purists who believed that first 'party discipline' was needed so as to create a coherent and disciplined cadre who could rise up without opportunistic alliances. Sadly, this hand became hopelessly addicted to masturbation, whereas the other hand was always itching to toss off the RSS or PCC or KKK or anybody else in the vicinity.
and Indira Gandhi imposed President’s Rule in February 1968 for one year. Then the Congress engineered defections away from Charan Singh’s SVD, and Chandra Bhanu Gupta formed a Congress government in February 1969.
But Gupta was Old Congress. Charan Singh lasted for about 8 months before President's rule was re-imposed.
SANJAY GANDHI HAD long disliked the ambitious Babu Jagjivan Ram, who had wanted to become prime minister after Nehru.
This is crazy shit. Jagjivan knew a thing or two about caste discrimination. That's why his ambition was to succeed the Queen upon the throne of Engyland.
While drawing up the lists of Congress party candidates, Sanjay drastically cut down on the tickets allocated to supporters of Jagjivan Ram.
Which was perfectly sensible. But Sanju didn't have a 'maha-Dalit' strategy. He just liked thugs and yes-men.
Indira Gandhi had long been wary of the wily Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna’s grassroots popularity.
Why? A Garwhal Brahmin can't have much reach though Bahaguna was part of the Trade Union movement. But the organized sector is miniscule. This is scarcely 'grass roots' popularity. The plain fact is Bahaguna could not deliver in UP because he didn't have a caste network. He had come into the Lok Sabha as part of the '71 Indira Wave having previously been a general secretary. But, as CM, he didn't have the muscle to promote Sanju who, after all, would class as mainstream UP Brahmin with Muslim appeal. N.D Tiwari too was an 'outsider' (from Kumaon). Clearly, the dynasty didn't want a UP leader to get too big for his boots because their own ancestral constituencies are located there.
During an election campaign in Uttar Pradesh in 1973, the front runners for chief minister were Krishna Chandra Pant
son of Govind Vallabh. He and his wife were aristocratic and nice to have around in Delhi.
and Bahuguna. She told my father: “Carefully observe both of them. Pant will hover around me, trying to impress me. But Bahuguna will be out campaigning together with the party workers”.
Because if he hovered around her, she would notice he was a rustic.
Indeed Bahuguna declined a lunch invitation from the prime minister to instead have lunch with the rank and file Congress party workers. Indira Gandhi then remarked to my father: “Bahuguna can become the chief minister even if I oppose him. The party workers owe their loyalty to him, not to me or to the Congress ideology”.
In other words, either accommodate the rascal or he will cross over.
After leading the Congress party to a massive victory in March 1974 ( 215 out of 425 seats )
That's not a massive victory at all. What mattered was whether there would be defectors.
and driving a wedge between the Bharatiya Kranti Dal and the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, Bahuguna moved quickly to undermine the prime minister’s power base in Uttar Pradesh. He pointedly told her: “In order to move ahead, Sanjay has to walk on his own feet, not ride on your shoulders or mine”.
He didn't realize that Sanju would use his feet to put the boot in. But then his Mummy suddenly realized she too was at risk of 'an accident'. Strangely it was Sanju who died in one.
Indira Gandhi retaliated by sending Yashpal Kapoor to foment dissension among Bahuguna’s cabinet ministers.
UP cabinet ministers are incapable of 'dissension'. You have to send a Punjabi steno-typist to stir them up a bit. Incidentally Yashpal's nephew was R.K Dhawan.
Sycophants had convinced her that Bahuguna would make a bid for the prime ministership himself ( Russi Karanjia’s Blitz projected him as a future PM ); Sanjay’s succession would not be smooth as long as Bahuguna was in power in UP.
Yes, yes. The woman was very naive and innocent. She looked upon Bahaguna as her own son and would often take him in her lap and suckle him. Then some sycophants said 'beware! Bahaguna is not really a sweet little baby. Did you know he is C.M of UP? He is planning to kill and eat your son!'
She did not take Bahuguna into confidence about any of the Emergency measures; he learnt about it well after her radio broadcast.
Why? Bahaguna was in fact a sweet and innocent baby. Indira announced Emergency on a radio broadcast. All the adults knew about it immediately because...urm... that's how Radio's work. But not Bahaguna. He was playing happily with his toys till, some days later, his ayah said 'chee! chee! playing with toys is it? Don't you know now is E-merge-ancy! Go to office and do work! You are C.M after all!'
Sanjay Gandhi was suspicious of the ambitious and shrewd Bahuguna, and had him replaced as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh by a pliant Narayan Dutt Tiwari on 29 November 1975.
The usual story is that Bahuguna had engaged 4 Tantriks to put a curse on Indu & Sanju. Apparently some such people were actually arrested.
My father then quipped to the cartoonist Abu Abraham of the Indian Express: “Bahuguna had to go because he was interfering in the internal affairs of UP”,
whereas daddy dearest wasn't interfering at all in Sanju's affairs. He was a 'true patriot'.
and Abraham drew a hard hitting cartoon which managed to pass the censors.
because it was so utterly lame.
Indira Gandhi ought to have realised that Jagjivan Ram and Bahuguna would retaliate for being cut to size by Sanjay.
Jagjivan mattered a lot because of reserved seats. Bahuguna was a lightweight. He got to be Minister of Finance for two or three months under Charan Singh. Still, no one can deny he has smart kids.
But she had no clue at all when on 02 February 1977, Jagjivan Ram, Bahuguna, and Nandini Satpathy defected from her Congress party, and set up their own party called CFD Congress for Democracy. Even the intelligence agencies were in the dark.
Satpathy was more deeply compromised by the Emergency because she was CM Odisha. The impression, in New Delhi, was that she chewed your bollocks off. Apparently, this wasn't true at all. She was a nice lady of a Lefty type. Again, very bright kids and grandkids.
She then told my father: “It is all over now. I am sure to lose the elections.” But she added mysteriously: “It will be a relief if I lose, an absolute relief.”
Sanju and his goons wouldn't arrange a nice accident for Mummy.
Before announcing his resignation to the media, Jagjivan Ram had telephoned Jaya Prakash Narayan. JP then issued a statement to the press: “I congratulate Jagjivan Babu on his resignation from the central cabinet and the Congress party. I am sure the Janata Party will welcome him with open arms. I would also congratulate Bahuguna and Nandini Satpathy who too are reported to have resigned from the Congress. This is a historic moment and I think the coming elections will change the course of history and give a new lease of life to democracy and our democratic institutions and strengthen the power of the people”.
How sweet! JP thought stupid shitheads like himself could change the course of a history which was bound to go from bad to fucking horrible. Bihar in the Seventies was yet to attain the sobriquet 'Jungle Raj'. First Bihari democratic institutions had to strengthen the power of people to turn into utter beasts.
The intelligence agencies came to know about their defection only when Jagjivan Ram, Bahuguna, and Satpathy began to address a press conference, where they read out JP’s statement. Bahuguna derisively referred to the Emergency as “One and a Half Person Rule”.
While Charan Singh's administration, which he joined, was not even one third of a person's rule. I recall telling my Daddy that Charan Singh, out of habit, had defected to both the DMK and the Anna DMK. Since he was obliged to speak only Tamil in both roles, his persona as a member of whatever shitty North Indian party he belonged to remained unaware that two thirds of him was now Tamil. This is the reason his administration was so utterly shit. Daddy advised me to go easy on the Johnny Walker. Also, don't talk about Indian politics. People will think you are queer for cow rectums.
Indira Gandhi was at that moment chairing a meeting of her Congress party. Noting that Jagjivan Ram had not arrived even half an hour after the meeting began, she asked RK Dhawan to locate him. Dhawan returned after a while and whispered to her that at that very moment, Jagjivan Ram, Bahuguna, and Satpathy were addressing a press conference. Always in total control of herself, she calmly announced: “Jagjivan Ram is no longer in the Congress”. Most of those present surmised that she had expelled him.
So, the lady had poise. It occurs to me that however stupid she and Sanju were, they were less stupid than those who served the dynasty.
But Indira Gandhi’s response to Jagjivan Ram was quite lame, uncharacteristic of her hard hitting style: “I fail to understand why you have resigned when elections have been announced, most of the restrictions under the Emergency have been relaxed, press censorship has been withdrawn, and political prisoners released…It is strange that you should have remained silent all these months and made baseless charges now…Even at the AICC meeting in Guwahati, you fully supported our policies and never expressed any reservation or doubt, whether directly or indirectly…”
All this was perfectly true. Jagjivan was a turncoat. But, obviously, he could blame Sanju. That suited Mummy. Perhaps if Maneka hadn't gone after Jagjivan's son, there could have been a rapprochement.
But even then, Indira Gandhi did not lose her sense of humour. The day Jagjivan Ram and Bahuguna defected was also the day when the Indian cricket team won a test match against Tony Greig’s visiting MCC team, having already lost the test series. She joked to my father: “As usual, the Indian press has no news sense. The correct priority of the headlines should be – India wins Test, Jagjivan Ram defects”.
She was saying 'I've lost this match, but I've already won the series'.
Indira Gandhi had a grudging admiration for the wily Bahuguna’s uncanny ability to predict changing political trends months in advance, and always place himself on the winning side.
This is crazy shit. Bahuguna was Charan Singh's Finance Minister. He was supposed to be backing Jagjivan to extort better Cabinet posts for them both from Morarji. But he got nothing- the Dalit pumped and dumped the Brahmin- though he was a former Union Minister and CM of the largest state.
Bahuguna’s instincts and intuition were the stuff of legend.
His own legend- sure. By contrast, it really is true that my erection can knock the moon out of its orbit.
During the freedom movement, he had been an underground resistor, and the British had placed a huge price on his head.
Sadly, nobody got that 'huge price' because it turned out he was easy to catch.
Whenever danger was imminent, Bahuguna’s nose would start itching. On at least twenty occasions, Bahuguna managed to escape seconds before the police closed in on him.
He was caught at the Jama Masjid in Delhi. The police were on the look out for a guy who kept scratching his nose while exposing his private parts. Actually, they just arrest anybody who has his dick out. Sad.
She told my father: “Now that Bahuguna has abandoned me, I will be wiped out in Uttar Pradesh.”
'Hai! I used to suckle that boy as if he were my own little baby! How sharper than a serpent's tooth &c.' Am I the only one who thinks Indira was manipulating Sharada because she knew he was disloyal? A good reason to have an utterly crap media adviser is so you can get him to feed any old shit to his Southie pals who will then pass it onto some credulous foreigners who will then ask questions and thus get the North Indian journalists to fall for the story.
All the Congress party workers in UP did indeed immediately desert Indira Gandhi to join Bahuguna in the Congress for Democracy. He had built a solid support base among Muslims and Brahmins, and these two groups, across the Hindi belt, went entirely with him in the elections.
Bahuguna had built good relations with the Shahi Imam. It is not the case that Muslims were annoyed about forcible sterilization. Bahuguna had to stir them up to get them to vote out Madam testicle crusher.
To further refute the popular notion that she called for elections because she was confident of winning easily, she confided in her friend US Senator Charles Percy on 13-14 February 1977 that she would lose badly and that she was very worried about what would happen to her son Sanjay.
Thus sending a message to any CIA spooks who had been playing footsie with Sanju's chums. If Mommy dearest suddenly had an accident then Sanju and his chums would be slaughtered in their beds. Reagan was thinking of sending Percy to tell Rajiv that America wasn't behind his Mum's assassination. At least, not Reagan personally. Jesse Helms- maybe.
She also confided in another friend, the prominent US editor Norman Cousins, that one of the many reasons why she was compelled to declare the Emergency was because what subsequently happened to Sheikh Mujib ur Rehman on 15 August 1975 would have first happened to her, adding that sometimes she felt that it might have been better if she had met the same fate as Mujib.
Americans understand that time moves backwards. Effects precede causes. Perhaps, Indira simply had a low opinion of journalists and media advisers.
Elections to the Lok Sabha were held from 16 to 20 March 1977. The hastily cobbled together Janata Party obtained 298 seats, and together with its allies, won 345 seats.
The ruling Congress party and its allies (Communist Party of India 23 seats, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam 19 seats) obtained 189 seats.
One of the last acts of the defeated Indira Gandhi government, as it submitted its resignation to acting president Basappa Danappa Jatti, was to end the Emergency. Home Minister Kasu Brahmananda Reddy went over to Jatti with the cabinet resolution ending the Emergency.
Jatti detained Brahmananda Reddy until the notification was printed in the government gazette, which happened at 4 am. The acting president wanted to ensure that Sanjay Gandhi did not try any last-minute tricks, and so he held the outgoing home minister as a hostage.
This is foolish. It was in the victor's interest for Emergency to be retained so they could first arrest Indira and Co and have some fun with them before lifting Emergency themselves.
The rifts and contradictions in the hastily cobbled together Janata coalition became apparent even before it took office. The defeated Indira Gandhi dubbed the Janata coalition as a khichdi, and she told numerous international economists that the economic policies described in the Janata’s election manifesto were nonsensical.
That was true enough.
Morarji Desai, Babu Jagjivan Ram, Chaudhary Charan Singh, and Chandra Shekhar all claimed that they should become prime minister.
Chandra Shekhar was the joker in the pack. He never held any portfolio till becoming P.M for a few months.
Although the erstwhile Bharatiya Jan Sangh faction had obtained 102 MPs out of 345 in the Janata coalition, it did not stake a claim for the prime ministership.
Its leaders had never held any previous portfolio.
The RSS preferred a low key wait and watch strategy, knowing that it was not yet acceptable to large parts of the nation, and that many of the other partners of the Janata coalition were suspicious of them.
It had no alternative. The first priority was to reassure the Soviets that the alliance was in place. India may have been independent for decades but it still looked to a White hand to protect it while it bit any other White hand it might require to feed it.
91 of these 102 Jan Sangh MPs belonged to Vajpayee’s faction, even though he had worked out a deal with Indira Gandhi in September 1975 that he would not oppose the Emergency in exchange for being released on parole.
Which was still better than this guys daddy or his big hero Bahaguna.
Getting wind of the moves by the Sarvodaya Quartet against Jagjivan Ram, Charan Singh called on Kripalani, and claimed that the Janata coalition’s election strategy was entirely his brainchild (because Morarji and Chandra Shekhar were in solitary confinement right up till elections were announced and Jagjivan Ram was in Indira’s cabinet), and therefore he should be nominated as the prime minister.
Charan Singh was Jat. Jagjivan was Jatav. They cancelled each other out. In any case, if Mayawati couldn't become an All-India Dalit leader, Jagjivan could scarcely have done so.
Ramnath Goenka, the owner of the Indian Express, who was close to the RSS and especially Nanaji Deshmukh, as well as to JP, threw the weight of his media empire behind Jagjivan Ram.
But he had no weight. Nobody gave a toss for the press then or now. Cinema, in the South, was a different story.
Vajpayee and Jagjivan Ram quickly worked out a deal. In return for Vajpayee’s support, Jagjivan Ram would make him the deputy prime minister.
I will make you Vice President if you make me President of the USA.
With a long-term vision, Vajpayee hoped to access Jagjivan’s electoral support base of Harijans / Dalits and Bahuguna’s support among Muslims, and thereby emerge as a powerful undisputed prime ministerial candidate with nationwide acceptability in the next elections.
Very true! If you want the Muslim vote you need the help of a Garwalhi Brahmin and a Dalit. Similarly to become Queenji of Engyland you must first get endorsement from the Patagonians and the Cambodians.
The Jat leader Chaudhary Charan Singh, head of the Bharatiya Lok Dal faction, with his strong support base among farmers of north India, too could count on over a hundred MPs supporting him, especially those who disliked Jagjivan Ram. The erstwhile Swatantra party members supported him.
The problem was that no UP politician could count on even his own dog supporting him. What is remarkable about the Janata period is that it could identify no constituency of any type- economic, caste based, ideological- which it could better service than Indira Gandhi. Even the Sangh wasn't really more Hindu or more Nationalist than Indira. She had stronger Socialist credentials than nutters named Madhu this or Madhu that. The only problem she had was a thuggish and gormless son. Then, even that stone was removed from her shoe. Rajiv, it turned out, looked like Lord Rama while Sonia- the pativrata widow- proved herself the best President Congress ever had. Her son may not be smart but he is not a thug. Indeed, he may end up as a sort of Gandhian brahmacharee who gets time off for good behavior to go abroad every few weeks.
My maternal uncle, KS Radhakrishna, who was head of the Gandhi Peace Foundation,
That was R.R Diwakar. KS Radhakrishan founded the Gandhi Peace Center in 1979. But there is no question he was a shithead.
and the closest advisor of JP for decades, together with his fellow Sarvodaya associates of Mahatma Gandhi – Narayanbhai Desai,
Mahadev Desai's son.
Siddharaj Dhaddha,
who was jailed during the Emergency.
and Govind Rao Deshpande
a nonentity
– thought that either Jagjivan Ram or Charan Singh as prime minister would be disastrous for the nation.
Though Charan Singh did actually become PM without anything particularly bad happening. On the other hand Jagjivan might have actually done some good. Obviously, Sarvodaya is against that. If Indians don't quietly starve to death while muttering 'Ahimsa!' the ghost of the Mahatma will give you an enema.
Jagjivan Ram was widely perceived to be corrupt ( Morarji Desai as finance minister announced that Jagjivan Ram had not paid income taxes for ten years; Ram’s lame response was that he was so busy that he forgot ),
while Desai's sonny boy was as crooked as shit.
and there were numerous questions over Charan Singh’s acceptability, especially outside the Hindi belt.
Actually, if you couldn't understand either Hindi or his English, he was perfectly acceptable. Only if you listened to him did you begin to hate him. Indians have good reason to be suspicious of 'intellectuals'.
Piloo Mody had quipped: “For Charan Singh, India stretches from Baghpat to Jhansi”, and Radhakrishna thought the southern states, which had voted overwhelmingly for Indira Gandhi, would be driven to secessionist rebellion if Charan Singh became prime minister.
So, daddyji was a 'true patriot' who fought the Emergency by supporting it wholeheartedly while Uncleji was simply stupid. The South has dominant agriculturist castes similar to the Jats. Charan Singh was perfectly acceptable to everybody except non-Jats in UP.
Jagjivan Ram too was not acceptable to large sections of the southern populace.
Fuck is wrong with this cretin? Why not just say 'My daddies and uncles were Brahmins. So they didn't want a Dalit because they were evil casteist cunts?' The fact is Jagjivan was considered 'lucky'. Whichever Ministry he got did well. That's why Tambrams wanted him to be PM. Also, as a bona fide Dalit he could tell the virtue signalling Sarvodaya shitheads to go fuck themselves.
Moreover, Charan Singh and Jagjivan Ram had detested each other for decades, and if either was made prime minister, the other would immediately try to pull him down.
Actually it was Raj Narain and Charan Singh who had the deeper enmity. Basically, this is a story where everybody wanted to pull everybody down except Vajpayee and Advani who were excited to play with the grownups.
Charan Singh obnoxiously proclaimed that his Jat followers would never accept a Chamar (cobbler) as prime minister.
Actually, they would if they could get credit for putting the country first.
The four Sarvodaya Gandhians determined that the best person to be prime minister was Morarji Desai.
And JP and Kripalani determined that these shitheads get a voice- that is the story here, right? Could JP have chosen anyone else? This raises the question- who chose them? In a democracy, votes count. The Mahatma's shtick was that votes don't count. Pretending not to need money or votes made you equal to God who is totes a Dictator. Thus everybody should stop doing anything useful and just hold out a begging bowl while telling everybody else they were evil bastards because they worked for a living- which is like greed, dude- and had kids- which involves having sex which is totes gross- and did sensible stuff- which would be wrong coz Indians must never do anything sensible otherwise they would end up becoming like British people which was Lord Macaulay's cunning plan all along.
Not only was Morarji an outstanding administrator,
a bad thing if the administration is designed to fuck up the country
having been deputy prime minister and finance minister, he had the strongest moral claim, because it was his fast unto death which forced Indira Gandhi to dismiss her own Congress government (which was led by Chimanbhai Patel) in Gujarat in February 1974. ( See “Was Emergency Inevitable?”)
But Congress (O) lost seats. It hadn't put up a fight during the Emergency. That was done by the RSS.
Further, Morarji had been in solitary confinement throughout the Emergency, firmly resisting all offers from Indira Gandhi of a rapprochement, unlike Vajpayee and Charan Singh.
He was in solitary because he was isolated. To be fair, it was house arrest. It would amount to cruel and unusual punishment to be confined in close quarters to a nutter who drank his own piss.
The problem was that Morarji Desai was universally disliked because of his overweening ambition, his superiority complex, his know-it-all attitude, his obstinacy, and his puritanical moralistic sermonising.
These are the characteristics the Anavil Brahmins pride themselves on. They own land and don't discharge a priestly function. Apparently, they are now dying out because they hate each other too much to reproduce.
My father HY Sharada Prasad had written then: “Morarji Desai is like a peace-time general who thinks the top job should be his by virtue of seniority and duty diligently performed, rather than by any daring feats on the battlefield”. According to my father, it was Morarji’s utter predictability which enabled the Syndicate to easily outwit him in May 1964 and January 1966, and Indira Gandhi’s guerrilla warfare to demolish him in 1969.
This is foolish. The fact is Desai was acceptable because his son was very very corrupt. Thus business could get done while the old fool literally got high on his own supply of 'pissky'. America and Pakistan loved Desai.
The hatred between Jagjivan Ram and Morarji Desai dated back to the early 1960s, when, after the demise of Govind Ballabh Pant in March 1961, they had been involved in a bitter power struggle to be declared as the number two to Jawaharlal Nehru.
Desai had made an enemy of Jagjivan- that is true enough- but the Home Ministry was a poisoned chalice because of linguistic reorganization of States. Shastri was inoffensive and accommodating so he could quaff that cup. The Kamraj plan helped him because he got on with the 'grass-roots'. As a Kayastha, he always had interlocutors of similar 'writer' castes who could pull together. Shastri's Premiership was peak-Kayasthism. Sadly, those capable people had hitched their wagon to the Gandhian loin-cloth and thus Shastri- a tiny man- presided over 'nanga-bhooka' Hindustan. Clearly 'dominant' agricultural castes needed to kick these guys in the goolies and take over before everybody died of starvation while muttering 'Ahimsa, Ahimsa'.
Jagjivan Ram had even asked Indira Gandhi for her support. Even though she was no longer involved in day to day Congress party affairs after stepping down as party president, Indira Gandhi utilised Jagjivan Ram to cut Morarji’s influence.
But Indira Gandhi was being utilized by Billi the Cat who had cunningly disguised itself as a Canadian Sikh who had cunningly disguised itself as a Muslim weaver with a very itchy nose.
Ever since then Indira Gandhi was wary of the ambitious Jagjivan Ram.
Just as Kennedy was wary of the ambitious Dr. King.
Morarji retaliated by maintaining a dossier on Jagjivan Ram’s financial misdemeanours. But both Jagjivan Ram and Morarji were eased out by Nehru under the Kamaraj Plan in October 1963.
Kamraj, bless him, got Congress out of Tamil Nadu politics. That was a good thing. Congress is a turd which not even Prashant Kishore can polish.
Most importantly, there had been personality clashes between Morarji and JP for decades. Morarji was six years older than JP – Morarji was born in 1896 and JP in 1902. ( Charan Singh was also born in 1902 and Jagjivan Ram in 1908. )
JP won personality clashes. The problem was that he had multiple personalities and he lost whenever those personalities clashed. Thus he neither became a successful politician nor a Gandhian saint. He couldn't even be called an ideologue because his head was full of shit. He too represented peak Kayasthism but its opposite pole. 'Writer castes' are okay when they push organizational pens. If they try to be Marx and Tolstoy's spawn of unholy buggery, they fuck up.
The strictly disciplined, methodical, decisive Morarji thought that JP was a destructive anarchist, who vacillated all the time. Indira Gandhi too had dubbed JP as ‘Woolly-Headed Theoretician of Chaos’.
Sadly, the Naxals didn't kill him precisely for that reason.
However, from February 1974 onwards, Morarji and JP set aside their personal dislikes for the higher cause of defeating first Chimanbhai Patel, and then Indira Gandhi.
Indira pulled the rug from under Chimanbhai's feet. He went over to Janata but got a second spell in office with Congress support. He was a capable man.
The southern states, especially Tamil Nadu, had reservations about Morarji, because of his past policies when a cabinet minister. But given Morarji’s sense of fair play, and insistence on good governance, Radhakrishna felt that the southern misgivings about Morarji could be overcome; most of them originated in Kamaraj’s dislike for Morarji.
This is foolish. It was clear that Kamaraj had woken up to the disastrous consequences of his plan in his own Tamil Nadu. The rest of India thought the guy was a cretin. He'd lost his own State while laying the foundations for the split in the Congress party. Who cared what he liked or didn't like? Only a senile fool like JP might vapor on about an alliance between Karunanidhi and Kamaraj. Why not also include Rajesh Khanna and the Ku Klux Klan?
Another major drawback of Morarji was his controversial businessman son, Kanti Desai. But Jagjivan Ram’s son, Suresh Ram, too was notorious, and Charan Singh’s wife was involved in controversial real estate deals.
Also, Charan Singh had had sex with his own wife. Kripalani and JP were above such bestial actions.
The Sarvodaya Gandhian Quartet also determined that Nanaji Deshmukh of the RSS should be made the Deputy Prime Minister.
They truly had shit for brains.
KS Radhakrishna had known Deshmukh from 1953 when Nanaji had participated in the Bhoodan movement of Acharya Vinobha Bhave, alongside JP; Radhakrishna was Vinobha’s and JPs principal aide in the Wardha Ashram.
JP returned to politics when the Naxals convinced him that Bhoodan had been a scam from start to finish. People who stay in Ashrams become stupider than cows. Sadly agriculturists don't understand the thermal insulation properties of anal slurry produced copiously by Bahishkrith 'organic intellectuals' who populate such places.
Deshmukh had a high moral stature due to his decades of selfless social work. He also had a modern technocratic outlook, being a graduate from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science at Pilani. Most importantly, the conciliatory and unifying Nanaji would be ideal to offset the drawbacks of the arrogant, aloof, rigid Morarji.
No. The idea was to turn the RSS into a bunch of Bhoodan type nutters wandering around the countryside producing copious amount of dung. Vajpayee and Advani wanted nothing to do with that sort of stupidity. They were suspected of eating meat, drinking wine, and, in Advani's case, being so utterly un-Gandhian as to have sex with his own wife! This is the type of shameless behavior British Sahibs used to indulge in!
Chandra Shekhar, who was very close to JP ( JP considered Chandra Shekhar to be his political heir ), too disliked Morarji. In 1969 the strong support of Chandra Shekhar and his Young Turks had enabled Indira Gandhi to demolish Morarji Desai and the Syndicate.
No. Indira Gandhi's 'garibi hatao' enabled that shithead to stay in the Upper House. It was only in 1977 that he won a proper election.
Jagjivan Ram shrewdly played upon Chandra Shekhar’s aversion to Morarji, and convinced him that supporting a Dalit would be in line with the progressive image which the socialists wanted to project.
Sadly Jagjivan turned out not to be shrewd at all. He was just a token Dalit who demonstrated that
a) Dalits were smart
b) smart Dalits like money same as smart Britishers do
Ergo, Dalits are Britishers who like the English language. They may as well wear suits like Dr. Ambedkar and tell the virtue signaling loin-cloth wearers to go fuck themselves. They aint fooling nobody.
After persuading Chandra Shekhar to withdraw from the contest, and support him instead, Jagjivan Ram also convinced George Fernandes and Madhu Limaye and NG Goray to support him too.
Goray was a good High Commissioner in London. The rest shat the bed.
According to the eminent lawyer Shanti Bhushan, Treasurer of the Congress (O): “The Socialists had transformed their ideological opposition to Morarji Desai into support for Jagjivan Ram”.
Which is why that 'support' was useless.
Confident that they had the support of at least 165 MPs out of 345, Jagjivan Ram and HN Bahuguna and George Fernandes pressed for an open election.
Had JP agreed to this, he would not have been blamed for the inevitable outcome. However, his 'Mahatma complex' meant that he would turn into the Kamaraj of Kayastha politics- i.e. he would destroy the hegemonic role of his own caste and his own party.
Jagjivan Ram told the media on 22 March 1977 that he was ‘ready to assume the responsibilities which the nation had entrusted him with’, and that ‘he would strive with all his energies to serve the people and fulfil the trust they had reposed in him’.
He hadn't merged his party with Janata- unlike the Jan Sangh. The smart move would have been to offer him more Ministerial portfolios if he could bring over Congress (R) MPs. That should have been the priority. Both Indira and Sanju were out of parliament. The iron was hot. This was the moment to strike. If Indira could be denied access to the South, then the dynasty could be uprooted.
The four Sarvodaya Gandhians persuaded Jagjivan Ram and Bahuguna that an open election would be divisive for the newly formed Janata coalition.
This was foolish. Jagjivan needed to be undermining Congress (R) by trying to poach their legislators rather than sowing division within the Janata ranks. Obviously, it was in his own interest to increase the size of his Congress for Democracy. Had Bahaguna been a smart dude, this is what he would have gotten busy doing.
They reminded the two that the Congress party election of January 1966, in which Indira Gandhi had defeated Morarji by 355 votes to 169, had actually set into motion the fissures which culminated in the Congress party splitting in 1969.
This is silly. Both came from U.P. They knew that Congress losing that state in 1967 forced Indira to the Left which then precipitated the split. But it was also obvious that Kamaraj had fucked up. He'd lost his own State both for himself and the Party.
KS Radhakrishna, Narayanbhai Desai, Siddharaj Dhaddha, and Govind Rao Deshpande impressed upon JP to endorse Morarji. A magnanimous JP readily rose above his personal dislike of Morarji, because he too felt that Morarji had the highest moral claim.
This is reasonable. Morarji was ambitious. As Premier he might become conciliatory. The trouble was his age- Eighty aint a time of life when an old dog learns new tricks.
The hurdle was that JP had publicly praised Jagjivan Ram for several years as an able administrator, turning a blind eye to his alleged corruption.
This wasn't a hurdle because the guy would be in the Cabinet one way or another.
In fact, JPs approbation of Jagjivan Ram’s administrative acumen was one of the main reasons why Indira Gandhi began to distrust JP, and why she did not step down after the Allahabad High Court verdict which had declared her election invalid.
Indira didn't trust anyone- including Sanju. That's why she called elections. Like her Dad, she was an all-India 'vote catcher'. The others- apart from JP- weren't. But JP needed to hold office to be a credible alternative to Indira. That's what the old fool balked at.
She had dictated her resignation to RK Dhawan who typed it out. But before she could sign it, Jagjivan Ram began canvassing that he should succeed her. Sanjay Gandhi, who knew that the JP and Jagjivan Ram duo would never permit her to reassume the prime ministership, vetoed her resignation.
But Indira could break Jagjivan easily enough. In fact, even Maneka could.
According to PN Dhar, if Jagjivan Ram had not pressed so aggressively then, and had permitted her to install Dev Kant Barooah as a temporary figurehead prime minister, then she would not have declared the Emergency.
Dhar was a Professor of Economics- i.e. a cretin. When politician's write resignation letters they don't actually intend to resign. The truth is Indira had been warned by the I.B about Swaran Singh and Jagjivan playing footsie with JP's crew. But Jagjivan quickly saw he'd get no promotion if he joined hands with the opposition. He only deserted Indira to keep his position though, because JP was a ditherer, he let Bahaguna push him in a confrontational direction. Thus he kept his Cabinet berth while Bahaguna had to wait till Charan Singh's brief reign.
It should be remembered that, back in those days, declaring Emergency was the fashion. The British had one. The Canadians had one. Mujib in Bangladesh declared one as part of a lurch to the Left. Sri Lanka had had one. Pakistan, of course, was inured to Army rule. It must be said, Indira's Emergency succeeded. India was not what Myrdal called a 'soft state'. It was well hard.
Because JP had not praised Morarji Desai or Charan Singh in public, the Janata party MPs took it for granted that JP’s preferred choice was Jagjivan Ram.
JP had mentioned all 3 as possible PMs. Had JP not praised Jagjivan there would have been no reason to retain him because he'd been in the Cabinet during the Emergency.
Time was running out because the new government had to be in place by 24 March 1977. So, on the evening of 23 March, KS Radhakrishna carried out a fait accompli by announcing to the press that Acharya JB Kripalani and JP would announce the name of the prime minister and the composition of the cabinet at noon the next day.
Each of the 345 newly elected MPs would give a note to Kripalani and JP indicating whom they supported for the prime ministership, as well as for the other cabinet portfolios. There would be no open election, and the final decision would be solely that of JP and Kripalani.
Charan Singh gave a letter to JP ruling himself out and throwing his weight behind Morarji. Thus Charan was 'decisive' over this social choice process. What explains his decision? The answer is that in an open election, Jagjivan would have won a plurality and would have won a majority in a second round. Thus Charan kept Jagjivan out in the hope that his own position would improve. By doing so, he destroyed his own career. He couldn't win in UP because it was obvious that he was dreaming of Delhi. But he couldn't win in Delhi because he was a UP bhaiyya or a particularly stupid sort.
The four Sarvodaya Gandhians worked throughout the night to ensure a unanimous consensus in favour of Morarji Desai. They had excellent credibility because of their high moral stature as Gandhiji’s associates, and that they would not benefit at all no matter whom they made the prime minister. All the Janata MPs were well aware that both JP and Kripalani would act exactly according to their recommendations.
The Sarvodaya Quartet met the MPs in small groups and informed them that JP now favoured Morarji. They emphasised that Jagjivan Ram had held a comfortable cabinet post all through the Emergency, while the rest of them had been jailed in harsh conditions. The alleged corruption of Jagjivan Ram was heavily underlined, as well as the fact that it was he who had sponsored the Emergency legislation in parliament.
Jagjivan had few MPs and hadn't yet merged with Janata. He could have been kept out of the Government. The question is why Charan Singh supported Morarji
Shanti Bhushan, who was the lawyer for Raj Narain in his election petition against Indira Gandhi, and also the Treasurer of the Congress (O), too was strongly opposed to Jagjivan Ram. After the Janata coalition was formed, Shanti Bhushan was made its treasurer. He went to JP and strongly argued against JP’s perceived support for Jagjivan Ram, emphasising that the new government could not be perceived to be corrupt.
Why would Bhushan think JP wanted Jagjivan? The truth is Jagjivan hadn't merged his party with Janata yet. Obviously, the treasurer of a party wants that party to get lots of money from businessmen. Thus Bhushan would want a Janata PM not one from a different party.
Getting wind of the moves by the Sarvodaya Quartet against Jagjivan Ram, Charan Singh called on Kripalani, and claimed that the Janata coalition’s election strategy was entirely his brainchild (because Morarji and Chandra Shekhar were in solitary confinement right up till elections were announced and Jagjivan Ram was in Indira’s cabinet), and therefore he should be nominated as the prime minister.
But this could only be done after an election which Charan was bound to lose because all MPs need to be able to tell the Dalits in their constituency that they supported Jagjivan. By contrast the 'AJGAR' vote (Ahir Jat Gujjar Rajput) was not cohesive.
Kripalani was horrified by Charan Singh’s crude attempts to influence him. Meanwhile, Morarji refrained from trying to garner support for himself, retreating early to his residence and refusing to meet anyone.
Because he had been down this road before. His party had done least well out of all the constituents of the Janata Party. Moreover, there was still the feeling that the PM must be a Hindi speaker from the cowbelt.
Morarji had learnt his lesson in May 1964, when he had canvassed vigorously to succeed Nehru within hours of the latter’s demise. Kuldip Nayar’s report in the United News of India that it was ‘sacrilegious on the part of Morarji to attempt to capture the premiership even before Nehru’s ashes were cold’ had filled the Congress cadres with revulsion, and they chose the humble Shastri instead.
Kamraj supported Shastri. However Indira would have won if she had run in an open election. Shastri only got Indira into the Cabinet by saying otherwise the post would go to her Aunty- whom she loathed.
Kripalani reprimanded Charan Singh sharply, saying that it was like a player trying to unduly influence an umpire. A rattled Charan Singh remarked that if Jagjivan Ram was made prime minister, then he and his hundred plus supporters would immediately leave the Janata coalition.
But he would not have a hundred supporters. Even Kripalani understood this. Everybody knew what had happened when Charan was CM in UP.
Several MPs taunted Charan Singh that he had tendered a cringing apology to Indira Gandhi in order to be among the first to be released from jail, in March 1976, and reminded him of the offer he had made to Indira Gandhi on 08 January 1977.
Everybody was vulnerable to 'taunting'. Politicians have thick skins. They are 'true patriots'.
The ninety-year-old Kripalani had disliked Morarji for decades, but he too came to the opinion that Morarji was the most deserving of all the candidates, and with the highest moral claim, for having firmly resisted all overtures from Indira Gandhi, in stark contrast to Jagjivan Ram, Charan Singh, and Vajpayee.
The problem was that both JP and Kriplani would go down in the history books as worthless cretins if Morarji fucked up- as he was bound to do. The truth is JP had a soft spot, in his head, for Indira. In the end, it was he who established her Dynasty.
Because of the taunts, Charan Singh developed chest pains, and had to be admitted to Willingdon hospital; an old urinary tract infection also flared up causing high fever. While he was in hospital, the Sarvodaya Quartet emphasised to all the MPs that Charan Singh had been released from prison as early as March 1976, after tendering an abject apology to Indira Gandhi. The controversial real estate deals of Charan Singh’s wife and sons in law were prominently highlighted.
The Quartet needn't have bothered. Charan had to accept Morarji or else return to UP. A Jat can't be subservient to a Jatav. Still, it is good to know that the 'Sarvodaya' crew had no fucking 'daya' for anybody. Even before the Government was formed they had been running around like headless chickens tarnishing the good name of one of its chief constituents.
The four Sarvodaya Gandhians first tried to persuade JP’s political heir Chandra Shekhar to drop his recent switch of allegiance to Jagjivan Ram, and to instead support Morarji. But Chandra Shekhar, who disliked Morarji, flatly refused to do so.
The man was ambitious but not a complete cretin. It was obvious that a Morarji Government would soon collapse.
The Sarvodaya Quartet then met Lal Krishna Advani of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh. Advani told them that the Jan Sangh group was supporting Jagjivan Ram only because they were under the impression that he was the choice of JP, and also because he had the support of Harijans across the country.
They should have stuck with Jagjivan. Their ambition hurt the RSS outreach to Dalits- which is where it can do most good and renew itself as a non-political voluntary organization. Inevitably, 'dual membership' would destroy Janata and push the Sangh back into the wilderness.
The Quartet informed LK Advani that the large-hearted JP had switched his support to Morarji, rising above their mutual antipathy. The four of them then offered three senior cabinet positions to the Jan Sangh faction, plus the deputy prime ministership for Nanaji Deshmukh of the RSS.
There you have it. 'Gandhians' wanted an RSS Deputy Prime Minister! Remember, these are guys who believed or said they believed that the RSS had killed the Mahatma.
The four Sarvodaya Gandhians then met Nanaji, who too told them that the RSS was supporting Jagjivan Ram only because they were under the impression that he was the choice of JP, and had the backing of Dalits all across the nation.
The truth is the Jan Sangh was an upper caste affair. They should have stuck to their guns. Jagjivan would have been a good or 'lucky' PM. Dalits would have flocked to the RSS. The Soviets would have been appeased because they were horrified by 'untouchability' and could understand why India needed to get rid of it before it could proceed to build Socialism.
The four of them informed Nanaji that JP had magnanimously risen above his dislike of Morarji to endorse him as the best choice. They offered Nanaji the deputy prime ministership, plus three senior cabinet positions to the Jan Sangh faction.
Still, if Charan hadn't dropped out and endorsed Morarji there would have had to be an election.
Simultaneously, Shanti Bhushan too tried to persuade all the Jan Sangh MPs to drop their support for Jagjivan Ram, arguing that he had moved the Emergency resolution in parliament.
Which was fine precisely because he was Dalit. His people had been living under something much worse for a thousand years.
Seeing that Vajpayee in his lust for power was willing to abandon Jagjivan Ram, and even his senior long-term colleague Nanaji Deshmukh, the Sarvodaya Quartet then threatened Vajpayee that if he did not ensure that his 91/102 MPs supported Morarji, then they would publicly reveal his ignominious role during the Emergency
But so would Subramaniyan Swamy. This didn't really hurt Vajpayee or the RSS because they look good if they support a strong central Government. Vajpayee's one achievement was to rush to Moscow and drink lots of Vodka with the Soviets till they decided to trust him.
The Sarvodaya Quartet then met Biju Patnaik, who told them outright that if Jagjivan Ram was made the prime minister, then both he and Charan Singh would immediately walk out of the Janata coalition. About a hundred MPs would go with them.
It was obvious that Patnaik was bluffing. Because of his business interests, he had to keep New Delhi on side. The fact is Patnaik was considered the true author of the Kamraj plan of which, because Nehru died before he could be brought in from the cold, he became its biggest victim. One story was that Patnaik was the CIA's man. They believed they could control an ageing and feeble Nehru and thus they put the Kamraj plan in motion to increase Nehru's power. On the other hand, Patnaik did not need the Dalit vote in Odisha and so had no reason to suck up to Jagjivan. This was short-sighted. Jagjivan would have been a good PM. He'd have given the States more power for purely fiscal reasons.
The four Sarvodaya Gandhians then met Atal Behari Vajpayee of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh. He had reached a deal with Jagjivan Ram that in exchange for the support of Vajpayee’s 91/102 MPs, Jagjivan Ram would make Vajpayee his deputy prime minister.
This was a good offer. The RSS needed to be anti-caste though in the short run there would be a political price.
Vajpayee emphasised that with his 91/102 MPs, he had a stronger claim for the prime ministership than Jagjivan Ram (28 seats) and Morarji Desai (20 seats), commanding numbers equal to Charan Singh, who too had about a hundred.
Charan represented caste politics which was fatal to the Sangh's 'Hindutva' ideology. Vajpayee and Advani made a mistake. Nanaji's reputation was helped by the fact that he stayed out of this dog's breakfast of a Cabinet.
Sonny boy now tries to make out that his father was against the RSS
PN Dhar and my father, as well as JP’s own above mentioned advisors, reminded JP of his past statements castigating the RSS: “…Although almost every religious community has its own brand of communalism, Hindu communalism is more pernicious than the others, because Hindu communalism can easily masquerade as Indian nationalism and denounce all opposition to it as being anti-national…”
JP was a Kayastha. He feared that 'Hindu communalism' would lead to Brahmin domination. Shastri was a Kayastha who played his cards cleverly and became PM. Suppose he had lived to build a strong economy and military. Then this 'Shastri' (the man had a Sanskrit education and thus sported that title) would have represented both Hinduism and Indian nationalism. JP's actions made India weaker and poorer. He represented the true patriotism of the stupid gobshite.
He had also said, “Some like the RSS might do it openly by identifying the Indian nation with Hindu Rashtra, others might do it more subtly…But in every case, such identification is pregnant with national disintegration, because members of other communities can never accept the position of second-class citizens…Such a situation, therefore, has in it the seeds of perpetual conflict and ultimate disruption.”
Unless the majority kicks ass and establishes the Rule of Law. The problem was that JP liked breaking the Law. But the law could break him easily enough. This was the lesson Indira had learned as a kid. Gobshites get worked up and go around doing 'civil disobedience'. The masses cheer for them but are secretly pleased when the gobshites are locked up. What they want is Government jobs, not 'andolanjivis'.
This as well: “Those who attempt to equate India with Hindus and Indian history with Hindu history are only detracting from the greatness of India
which kept biting the American hand which fed it.
and the glory of Indian history and civilisation.
which was so fucking glorious that small numbers of Turks or Europeans could easily take over the country and advance their own culture, religion and civilization as the Hindus degenerated into rustic retards.
Such persons, paradoxical though this may seem, are in reality the enemies of Hinduism itself and the Hindus.
No paradox was involved in the fact that JP hurt India. Stupid shitheads hurt anything they are associated with.
Not only do they degrade the noble religion and destroy its catholicity and spirit of tolerance and harmony,
and love of getting ass raped by any bunch of foreigners who reckon they can turn a profit doing so
but they also weaken and sunder the fabric of the nation, of which Hindus form such a vast majority…”
Very true. Hindus should convert so as not to be a minority. Only thus can Hindus be saved from incessant ass-rape by any mercenary foreigner who fancies the job.
The final straw for Indira Gandhi was when JP addressed RSS workers declaring: “If the RSS is Fascist, then so am I”. One of her principal aims in declaring the Emergency was to destroy the RSS and the ABVP.
Why then did she so signally fail? The answer is that the principal aim of the Emergency was the same as the principal aim of the Kamraj plan. It was to increase the power of the PMO.
My father HY Sharada Prasad reproached JP in sorrow: “If Prabhavati Deviji were alive, she would never have allowed you to ally with the RSS, let alone grow so far apart from your closest friend’s daughter”.
Sharada Prasad was a sensible fellow- in so far as 'Media advisers' can ever be sensible.
JPs recently deceased wife Prabhavati Devi was the daughter of a prominent Congress leader, lawyer, and a guide of Mahatma Gandhi, Braj Kishore Prasad.
He became an acolyte after Champaran. Prahbavati refused to have sex with JP. Sad.
She had grown up in Mahatma Gandhi’s ashrams, was the closest friend of Indira Gandhi’s mother, and had nursed Motilal Nehru in his dying days. It was she who had converted the Marxist JP to Sarvodaya and Gandhian thoughts.
And not having sex but talking incessant bollocks instead.
AFTER A HURRIED CONSULTATION with JP, Nanaji Deshmukh and Shanti Bhushan went to meet Vajpayee, and ordered him to drop his support for Jagjivan Ram. Vajpayee realised that his hopes of becoming deputy prime minister were dashed, and burst into tears.
This may well be. Drink will make you maudlin. At least he didn't come across like a pussy in his speeches.
The three of them, together with several of Vajpayee’s followers, then called on Jagjivan Ram, and informed him that the Jan Sangh was reneging on its pledge to support him.
The Sangh deserved to go into the wilderness. But then, the truth is that Vajpayee & Co thought Indira was the best candidate for the top job. I suppose the same could be said of Modi today.
According to Shanti Bhushan, “When Jagjivan Ram realised how matters stood, he flew into a temper and shouted at the Jan Sanghis. Vajpayee wept and put his head on Jagjivan Ram’s lap, seeking forgiveness, but Jagjivan Ram would not be pacified. All his life he had felt that high caste leaders were not prepared to have a prime minister who came from the scheduled castes. He had seen the prime minister’s office within his grasp, and he felt, perhaps rightly, that those who had promised him their support were abandoning him at the crucial moment”.
Jagjivan knew he could do a better job than Morarji or Charan. A patriot should resent being passed over for the top job so a cretin gets to fuck up the country.
AT THE SAME TIME as Nanaji Deshmukh and Shanti Bhushan were setting off to meet first Vajpayee and then Jagjivan Ram, the flabbergasted Sarvodaya Gandhian Quartet were wondering what JP might suddenly do under the maverick Swamy’s baleful influence.
Swamy would not endorse Jagjivan because he was a Harvard educated casteist cunt. Brahmins had already been marginalized in his native Tamil Nadu- a good thing because they were stupid gobshites like Rajaji. If Jagjivan became PM the nation would realize that 'hard work is better than Harvard education'. Brahmins would be told to fuck off to their agraharams where they were welcome to chant mantras. Otherwise, just get a fucking job and try to do it properly. Don't be a bigger asshole than nature intended.
In spite of their threatening to reveal in public that Vajpayee was willing to jettison the RSS during the Emergency to stay out of jail, there was still no certainty that Vajpayee would actually switch his support from Jagjivan Ram to Morarji at the moment of reckoning.
In other words, if elections went ahead all claims to having x number of votes would prove hollow.
Reeling from the sudden shock of JP asking Swamy to sit between him and Kripalani, the stunned Sarvodaya Gandhian Quartet in desperation decided to turn to the wily manipulators Chandra Bhanu Gupta and Raj Narain.
Raj Narain had some clout. Gupta had one foot in the grave
But first, they had to work on CB Gupta.
Gupta, who had been chief minister of Uttar Pradesh four times in the 1960s, had strongly supported Morarji in January 1966 when the latter had contested against Indira for the prime ministership. Gupta stood by Morarji when the latter had been sacked by Indira in 1969; they had been fellow victims of the Kamaraj Plan in October 1963.
But this time, even though he was a leader of the Congress (O) faction, CB Gupta was canvassing for Jagjivan Ram. Gupta’s main objective was to prevent his nemesis Charan Singh from coming to power. Gupta thought that Morarji had no chance, since the Congress (O) had only about twenty MPs. The Sarvodaya quartet informed Gupta of the efforts they were making for Morarji.
Again, this was just useless meddling. In an open election, a lot of Congress (O) people would still vote for Jagjivan. The same was true of Sanghis.
Nanaji told me that being JPs political heir, and not having powerful enemies (even though Indira Gandhi had jailed Chandra Shekhar, they remained on good terms personally), Chandra Shekhar had initially been a strong contender, but that Vajpayee had sabotaged Chandra Shekhar’s candidature at the very outset
This is foolish. Chandra Shekhar had been in the Rajya Sabha. Nobody knew whether he could get elected on his own.
The four Gandhians dispatched CB Gupta and Raj Narain to work on Charan Singh, who had been admitted to Willingdon Hospital with chest pains and urinary tract infection.
The writing was on the wall for Charan. In an open election a lot of his MPs might vote for Jagjivan just to get a lock on the Dalit vote. Why vote for a Jat if you were a Rajput? More importantly, why vote for a Jat if you yourself are equally Jat?
Charan Singh, Chandra Bhanu Gupta, and Raj Narain, as well as Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna, had convoluted relationships, marked by opportunistic alliances of convenience, exploitation, and treacherous backstabbing.
The cow belt was shit. It could not provide leadership to the country. Indeed, it couldn't govern itself properly.
The author explains the circumstances in which Charan backed out. However, he had no alternative. It was obvious that in an open election Charan's own claims re. the loyalty of his party members would have rung hollow. This had become obvious from 1967 onward. It was the reason that CM's would take their legislators and put them up in some remote Hotel or guest house so as to prevent them from defecting before a vote of confidence. Suppose MPs did not vote rationally- i.e. for Jagjivan- money would have determined the outcome of the election. It must be said that Jagjivan's party had not fared well in three cornered contests against Janata candidates. However too much could not be read into this. The fact is Goencka favored Jagjivan. At the last moment, lots of money might suddenly have materialized to buy votes for Jagjivan. Indeed, some believed Jagjivan was the CIA's mole in the cabinet. American money could certainly buy the votes of India's true patriots.
WHILE CB GUPTA WAITED in an ante room, Raj Narain went inside and told Charan Singh that he had been outnumbered by his enemy Jagjivan Ram, because the Jan Sangh had, in the end, stuck to its original decision of supporting Jagjivan. ( Charan Singh had no means of verifying whether or not this was true ).
Charan Singh was a beautiful 17 year old virgin from a small village Norway and thus believed anything some greasy Indian nutter told him.
As instructed by Gupta, Raj Narain added that the deputy prime minister would be his nemesis, HN Bahuguna.
Which Charan understood as 'Atal is supporting fellow Brahmin Moraji. Bahaguna will get your Cabinet seat'.
This was not true. It was a trick. There was no way that both the prime minister and the deputy prime minister could come from the same small party, the 28 member CFD.
Obviously, Raj Narain was lying and knew Charan knew he was lying. Thus, the underlying suggestio falsi is actually more complicated. Jagjivan is supporting Morarji because he prefers to serve under a Brahmin rather than a Jat.
Still, this was just lying for the sake of lying. Charan's choice was
1) let elections go forward in which case it might turn out that he has no 'loyalists'
2) do a deal. It couldn't be with Jagjivan because a Jat leader couldn't then serve under a Jatav. Thus it had to be Morarji.
But in his highly fevered condition, Charan Singh, who detested Bahuguna even more than he hated Jagjivan Ram, fell for this false cunning ruse.
Had he been in better health he might have been able to poison Raj Narain's mind against some other equally worthless nutter.
As instructed by Gupta from the ante room, Raj Narain told Charan Singh that since he himself did not have the numbers, the only way he could block his enemies Jagjivan Ram and Bahuguna from being sworn in that very evening by BD Jatti was by withdrawing from the contest and transferring his support to Morarji.
This was obvious nonsense. Charan knew that once a cabinet is sworn in, you come out of hospital and topple it by leading the malcontents. Furthermore Jatti would never swear in a cabinet without checking with the leader of the Party under whose election symbol Janata had won the election.
CB Gupta and Raj Narain drafted a letter purporting to be from Charan Singh, and forced him to sign it.
They also sodomized him and pissed in his mouth. If you are going to write bollocks at least write sexed up bollocks.
This letter addressed to JP said that Charan Singh would prefer to go back to being jailed by Indira Gandhi rather than work under Jagjivan Ram,
how very casteist!
and that he was therefore withdrawing from the contest and transferring his support to Morarji
CB Gupta and Raj Narain included several sentences praising Morarji, emphasising that Morarji was the most senior among all of them, and castigating Jagjivan Ram for being a cabinet minister during the Emergency and moving the Emergency resolution in parliament (in July 1979 when Charan Singh rebelled against Morarji with the help of Sanjay Gandhi, this letter was pulled out to show that Charan Singh was a backstabbing turncoat).
Everybody had previously thought Charan was an innocent young virgin from Norway.
CB Gupta and Raj Narain rushed back and interrupted the MPs filing past JP and Kripalani. They dramatically read out the letter which they had forced the ailing Charan Singh to sign, transferring his support to Morarji.
Charan could have waited till the Cabinet was declared and then headed the malcontents. I suppose, at that stage, JP was simply to powerful to be played with in this manner. Soon, thanks to Moraji, JPs influence would dwindle. Ludicrously, Morarji announced his death while he still had 6 months left of life. Meanwhile, Charan Singh became PM with Indira's help. His own supporters greeted his apotheosis by chanting ' Charan Singh laya aisi aandhi, desh ki neta Indira Gandhi'- Charan Singh has brought such a hurricane, The Nation's leader is Indira yet again.' Charan's achievement was to bring back not just Indira but to firmly establish the principle of dynastic succession in national politics. It seems the House of Windsor, which supplanted that of Tamberlane, had only been toppled so as to establish a dynasty which had got its start as 'kotwals' (Police inspectors) to the Mughals and then 'vakils' (solicitors) to the East India Company. It is important to remember it was a Jat from the villages who brought about this outcome. Still, so long as Jats get to look down on Jatavs, who gives a fuck what happens to the country as a whole?
What happened to the 'true patriots' who had stood by Indira during the Emergency? Sonny boy gleefully tells us-
The senior RSS member who was to take over from my father (the RSS intended to have him as their spy in Morarji’s prime ministerial office) was so excited, that just seconds before he took the oath of secrecy and signed the official register, he had a massive heart attack. As his staff members rushed to lift him up, Morarji turned to my father, and in his matter-of-fact business-like manner, said: ” I don’t think he will survive. I have known you for so many decades. You continue with me till I find someone suitable “.
Morarji decided to do without a media advisor. To be fair, there is little point putting lipstick on a pig.
Morarji rehabilitated NK Seshan for his heroically stymieing many of Sanjay Gandhi’s excesses from within Indira Gandhi’s residence. Seshan had loyally served Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi since 1944; Nehru affectionately referred to Seshan as the son he never had. Sanjay greatly harassed the man who had dangled him on his knee, having NK Seshan thrown out of his government accommodation. Morarji gave NK Seshan a posting in the embassy in Washington DC, on a promotion. Summoned by the Shah Commission, Seshan loyally refused to provide any information which could damage Indira Gandhi.
The bigger problem was that the Commission was demanding testimony under oath without any framing of charges or clarity regarding in which case that testimony would be used. This meant your testimony could be used against you or some ally or friend of yours.
NK Seshan, MS Menon, and my father took Morarji Desai to a room in South Block and told him: “All the contents of this room are the personal family papers of Indira Gandhi and her father. There are no government documents here. She was keeping them here only because she did not have enough space in her residence”.
Without hesitation, Morarji Desai immediately ordered all the cupboards to be loaded onto trucks and delivered to Mohammed Yunus, personally supervising the loading.
'True patriots' are capable of loyalty- not to the country but to a Dictator. Who brought down pissky drinker Morarji? I like to think it was the patriotic Indian alcoholic.
The Prohibitionist Morarji tried to shut down the Mohan Meakin liquor group, but they ousted him from the premiership instead. In 1979, they brought Sanjay Gandhi and his mother’s nemesis Raj Narain together over a series of lavish meals. Playing on Charan Singh’s ambition to become prime minister, Raj Narain got Charan Singh to raise the matter of the erstwhile Jan Sangh members continuing to maintain their links with the RSS.
Under Morarji Desai, the Janata government managed to limp on for two years. Under either Jagjivan Ram or Charan Singh, it would not have lasted even two months.
No. Under Jagjivan it would have completed its term. Why? The guy understood that Governments have to govern. They can't spend all their time getting the voter to forego whiskey for pissky while stabbing each other in the back. How would Jagjivan have pulled it off? The answer is that he alone knew how to use the PMO and the Planning Commission. Moreover, he could get in lots of American money without antagonizing the Soviets. Jagjivan's success, however, would have come at a price for Dalits in cow-belt. As things were, it was an anti-Dalit atrocity in Bihar which put Indira, riding an elephant, on the path back to power. This was in August 1977. Had Jagjivan been PM, she would have been confined to the South.
Ultimately, we have to accept that the dominant castes of the cow belt are casteist. They prevented Jagjivan getting the Premiership by open election. They got their comeuppance. Governance worsened in the cow belt. Now not even Hindi speakers want a Premier from the cow-belt. There is a Hindi expression 'Jis ka lathi uski bhains'- the buffalo belongs to the one who wields the stick. This turned into 'jis ka Party uski bhains' and then 'jis ka Party woh khud bhains hai' and finally, 'bhains ke gand mein lathi ya Party gussao kyounki us guys be rustic retards, how else can we pass the time?'
Meanwhile, 'true patriots' may be quietly learning Chinese while spitting bile at Narendra Modi. I own a magic potion which can help you become fluent in Chinese which I will sell you for a low low price.
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