prefer Purabi Mukherjee, a General Secretary (former) of the AICC. The new
PCC President will be elected by the end of this month.
Barkat and I took the lead in consolidating pro-Indira elements. As I have already mentioned, the grouping was along the old lines of ‘pro-changers’ and ‘no-changers’, with the difference being that the pro-change group had been reduced in strength. I had the support of Nurul Islam, Ananda Mohan Biswas, Gobinda Naskar, Somen Mitra, Debaprasad Roy (Mithu) and Birendra Mohanty, besides Barkat. In fact, this was the nucleus which formed the Congress (I) in the days to come.
We took up the challenge with all seriousness and, on 8 July, met to work out a strategy to ensure that Abdus Sattar got the support of the majority of PCC members. I knew there was no way out except to resort to a show of strength. We decided to travel to the districts and contact PCC members personally. Each person in our group was allocated specific districts, and it was decided that Barkat, Sattar and I should visit as many districts as possible. There was no other way to deal with the opposing group which was determined to eliminate us politically.
The election was fixed for 12 August 1977, at Laha House in central Calcutta, with K.C. Pant, AICC General Secretary, as the observer. Somen Mitra had put up a huge banner on Amherst Street (‘No Indira, No Congress’) and garnered media attention. However, our efforts did not yield the desired result. Abdus Sattar was defeated by Purabi Mukherjee by a margin of 60 votes.
I was dejected. Some of the district leaders we had counted heavily on had let us down. All the heavyweights of the West Bengal Congress—Siddhartha Shankar Ray, D.P. Chattopadhyaya, Dasmunsi, Subrata Mukherjee—had worked hard for Purabi Mukherjee. And Subrata Mukherjee’s switchover to the Purabi Mukherjee camp tilted the balance in her favour. Barkat and the others came to my room at Nizam Palace that night, entirely downcast. I told them that we needed to prepare ourselves for the worst in the coming months. I knew that a long and tortuous winter was awaiting us with hardly any ray of light in the all-encompassing darkness.
The general body of the West Bengal Congress met the following day, and I put in a brief appearance to formally congratulate Purabi Mukherjee. I left Calcutta for Delhi the same day, en route attending two Independence day celebrations at Asansol organized by some trade unions. The evening radio bulletin broadcast the news of the arrest of R.K. Dhawan, Yashpal Kapoor and others. I smiled. The famous words of Mr Micawber from Dickens’s David Copperfield echoed in my mind: ‘The die is cast—all is over.’ No occasion for tears or trepidation; I needed all my strength to fight back.
On 3 October 1977, the CBI arrested Indira Gandhi from her residence at 12 Willingdon Crescent. I was at home when I got the news from a United News of India correspondent that Indira Gandhi, along with K.D. Malaviya, H.R. Gokhale, P.C. Sethi and D.P. Chattopadhyaya, had been arrested. The correspondent told me that I, too, was likely to be arrested. I requested a friend (who was visiting) to go fetch my wife, Geeta, who had gone out to watch a movie. And then I waited on the lawn with my pipe, tobacco, matchbox and a small suitcase. I decided I would not apply for bail, and prepared myself for an indefinite stay in jail. Geeta came back and together, we waited for the police, but nobody came. After about 11 p.m., I told Geeta that instead of waiting for the police, we could go to Indira Gandhi’s residence and find out what was happening there. We left a note with our servant
in case the police came looking for us—that we would be at 12 Willingdon Crescent.
At Indira Gandhi’s residence, we found several people, but not Sanjay and Rajiv Gandhi. Sanjay Gandhi came in later, and was surprised to see me. He had been told that the police had already picked me up. I heard from him the details of Indira Gandhi’s arrest, and then we talked about making arrangements for the next day. I returned home at 2 a.m., only to go back to 12 Willingdon Crescent a few hours later. The area had now been cordoned off, and it required a fair amount of coaxing for me to be allowed in. Having met the others inside, Vasant Sathe and I left for Police Lines, where we were told that Indira Gandhi had been taken to court. We headed there, making our way past numerous groups of pro- and anti-Indira demonstrators. The anti-Indira rallies were mostly Janata Party demonstrations against her. ‘Hang her!’ they shouted. Some of their slogans were in very bad taste. The pro-Indira demonstrators, on the other hand, were shouting slogans against the high-handedness of the Janata government and the politically motivated arrest of Indira Gandhi.
The courtroom was crowded and we would not have made it inside without police help. Indira Gandhi stood in the dock, a Shantiniketan bag hanging from her shoulder. She saw me and asked, ‘How come you are here?’ I told her what had happened.
A few minutes later, the judge, R. Dayal, delivered his judgement and she was honourably acquitted. We returned to her residence, which was now surrounded by Seva Dal volunteers distributing sweets. Inside, too, there was a crowd: Kamalapati Tripathi and Brahmananda Reddy were among the senior Congress leaders present; foreign and Indian correspondents waited to chat with Indira Gandhi. After spending some time with them, she climbed up a ladder to the terrace, where a microphone had been fixed for her to address the rapidly increasing crowd outside. The crowd chased away author and journalist Uma Vasudev (who had written Two Faces of Indira
Gandhi just after the Emergency). Purabi Mukherjee came but nobody paid much attention to her.
Officially, the Congress organization reacted strongly to Indira Gandhi’s arrest. When the news broke, Brahmananda Reddy hastened to her residence and waited there till she was taken away by the police. Y.B. Chavan, who was out of town, rushed back to Delhi to strongly condemn the Janata Party’s action as vindictive. The same night, an urgent meeting of the CWC was convened and a resolution (see Appendix 11) was passed condemning her arrest and that of four other Congress leaders.
The following day (4 October) the CWC met again. At the outset, K.C. Pant, General Secretary, reported the spontaneous but peaceful demonstrations being held throughout the country, despite the unprovoked and ruthless attacks by the police and hirelings of the Janata Party, and the subsequent arrest of scores of Congress workers. Another resolution was passed condemning these arrests, urging Congressmen to build up a resistance movement peacefully throughout the nation (see Appendix 12). The reaction of common Congress workers was spontaneous and angry, but determined.
Notably, however, a section of the leadership kept absolutely quiet regarding the arrest. The media and most opposition parties gave full support to the Janata government’s decision, the only exception being S.A. Dange, a veteran leader of India’s communist movement, who spoke against the Janata Party’s vindictive attitude towards Indira Gandhi and reminded the people of her anti- imperialist role in the past.
one only when this was pointed out to them. In the meantime, uniformed as well as plainclothes policemen surrounded the house. Maneka Gandhi contacted as many people as she could (her phone had been spared from being disconnected), and a large number of Congressmen and leaders assembled at 12 Willingdon Crescent. The lawyers—who had a previously scheduled appointment with Indira Gandhi for 3 p.m. that day—got into an argument with the CBI’s N.K. Singh. The drama notwithstanding, Indira Gandhi was taken away late that evening, but not before she made a brief statement to the press that the arrest was politically motivated. While Sanjay Gandhi did not react, Rajiv Gandhi’s reaction was sharp. He pointed out that the Janata Party government was unlikely to have anything against Indira Gandhi, aside from some flimsy charges of ‘illegal connivance’ to secure some jeeps for the party.
Indira Gandhi was followed by her lawyers, a group of loyalists and family members—Rajiv, Sonia, Sanjay and Maneka Gandhi. It was decided that Nirmala Deshpande would accompany her into custody. The police wanted to take her to the Badkhal Lake guest house in Haryana. When the convoy stopped at a level crossing near Faridabad, Sector II, Indira Gandhi stepped out and sat on a culvert. Her lawyers argued with the police personnel that taking the ‘prisoner’ outside the city’s territorial jurisdiction was not legally tenable. The police had to concede to this legal obligation, and took her back to Police Lines in Old Delhi.
The wayside drama was reported by some newspapers in Delhi the following day. A correspondent of The Patriot who followed her convoy got to interview Indira Gandhi as she sat on the culvert. On 4 October 1977, The Patriot reported: