The 1975 Emergency: 21 months of Nightmare in Delhi

By Joseph Maliakan

Three terrible things that were inflicted especially on the poor and marginalized people of Delhi by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s younger son Sanjay Gandhi during the internal emergency from 25 June 1975 to 21 March 1977 can never be forgotten or forgiven when independent India’s history is written: forceful and indiscriminate sterilization; large-scale illegal demolition of slums as well as decades-old residences of the walled city without any warning or notice in the name of ‘beautification’; and brutal massacre of Muslim residents of Turkuman Gate protesting forceful sterilization and illegal demolitions of their more than five-decade-old dwellings.

Following the declaration of the emergency on 25 June 1975, Sanjay Gandhi became the unquestioned Emperor of Delhi and like Nadir Shah decided to change both the map and demography of Delhi. For the beautification program, the slums in different parts of Delhi and the old walled city with a predominantly Muslim population were targeted.

Seven months into the emergency, by when most opposition leaders, including Jayprakash Narain, Morarji Desai, Charan Singh, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani, Biju Patnaik, Chandrashekhar, Ram Dhan, and Raj Narain, were in prison under various stringent emergency laws, in February 1976, Emperor Sanjay visited the walled city. He became very unhappy with the reception. He was also very upset that from where he stood at Turkuman Gate, the view of the Jama Masjid was blocked. Standing there, he decided, come what may, all the buildings along the way had to be brought down.
And on 15 April 1976 the Dujana House family planning camp was inaugurated by Sanjay Gandhi and the Lt. Governor of Delhi, Kishan Chand. Soon, scores of rickshaw pullers, beggars, and even quite a few passersby were picked up at random and forcibly sterilized under terribly unsanitary conditions.
In the following months, Rukhsana Sultana, a Muslim worker who was very close to Sanjay Gandhi, started putting pressure on Muslim men and women to get sterilized in return for cash and other incentives. With the people resisting compulsory sterilization, the police were deployed to round up a certain number every day and compulsorily sterilize. Simultaneously bulldozers were deployed in the area, and demolition of decades-old buildings obstructing a clear view of the Jam Majid from Turkuman Gate started.

Anger swelled among the people of Jama Masjid, Chandni Chowk, and Turman Gate against the forcible sterilizations and the illegal demolitions. A general strike was called on the 19th of April, 1976.
Unmindful of the general strike, bulldozers started moving forward, accompanied by heavy police deployment. Hundreds of protesters, including women and children, came out of their homes to the streets and, defying the presence of bulldozers and the police, started attacking Dujona House. The police resorted to lathicharge and teargassing.

In spite of this, by 1.30 in the afternoon, a large number of women and children gathered on the main road at Turkuman Gate. The police attacked the women and children and teargassed and lathicharged them. Scores of women and children were very badly injured.
That did not deter the protesters. The crowd swelled and moved to the open area in front of the Faiz-e-Ilahi mosque and sat on the rubble of the illegally demolished structures. However, the bulldozers moved on and on with police escort, leading to more stone throwing by the crowd.
The armed police then opened fire, and scores of protesters, including women and children, were hit and fell dead. The police continued firing until not a soul was left on the protest site. The entire area was full of bodies scattered like cow dung. They included the dead and the injured. Reinforcements came, firing continued, and an army of bulldozers was brought in, and demolitions were carried out under floodlight.
The bulldozers crushed and collected both the dead and injured bodies along with the rubble, loaded them into trucks, and disposed of them far away at hitherto undisclosed places. The screams of the injured or trapped in the rubble could not be heard over the clanking sound of the heavy-duty bulldozers. The demolitions continued for another 10 days.

The emergency dispensation counted two dozen dead and less than 50 injured in the ruthless and brutal ‘operation beautification’ at Turkuman Gate. However, according to independent investigators like John Dayal, Arun Bose and B.M Sinha, at least 400 people were massacred and more than 1000 injured at the Turkuman Gate. Sinha, in his book on the emergency, lamented, “Never was such a human tragedy caused in any part of the world.”
The Shaw Commission, which inquired into the various excesses during the emergency, indicted Sanjay Gandhi; then Lt. Governor Kishan Chand; DDA Vice-Chairman Jagmohan Malhotra; B.R. Tamta (Municipal Commissioner); and Deputy Inspector General of Police P.S. Bhinder for excesses committed at Turkuman Gate. However, no action whatsoever was taken against any of them because soon after the Shaw Commission submitted its report, Mrs. Indira Gandhi returned as Prime Minister, and Shaw Commission report was shelved.

The Turkuman Gate massacre of 19 April 1976 to all accounts before the Shaw Commission, was executed with the express orders of Sanjay Gandhi by offical including the Delhi police and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi believed her younger son could do no wrong. This massacre will go down in history as more shameful than the Jallianwala Bagh massacre because the former was executed by a colonial power while the Turkuman Gate massacre was carried out by independent India’s government against its own citizens.

As for demolitions in Delhi during the emergency, the Shaw Commission observed the following: “The manner in which demolitions were carried out in Delhi during the emergency is an unrelieved story of illegality and sickening sycophancy by the senior officers to play the whim of Sanjay Gandhi.”
And an estimated 700000 ( Seven Lakh ) specially the poor and marginalised were displaced from slums and even legal residences over a period of 19 months of terror unleashed by Sanjay Gandhi with full knowledge and approval of his mother , Prime Minister India Gandhi.
Navin Chawla, who served as secretary to Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor Kishan Chand and worked closely with Sanjay Gandhi and who was indicted by the Shaw Commission for his ‘authoritarian and callous role,’ went on to become the Chief Election Commissioner of India. In fact, the Shaw Commission had categorically commented that “he is unfit to hold any public office that demands an attitude of fair play and consideration for others.”
In Delhi following the declaration of emergency at the instance of Sanjay Gandhi the Home Ministry ordered to lock up the high courts and cut off electricity to all newspapers. All political leaders and workers who Sanjay Gandhi thought will oppose the emergency were arrested. Delhi’s Tihar Central Jail had a capacity to accommodate 1273 prisoners. But there were 2669 prisoners in the jail by the evening of 26 June 1975. By March 1976 their number rose to 4250.Water and sewage services were extremely poor in the jail.

Kuldeep Nayar, the editor of Express News Service who was arrested on 24 July 1975 and imprisoned in Tihar Jail during the emergency, wrote in his book “In Jail”: “The dal was watery and the chappatis half-made,” and files would float on the surface. And over a period of time he also, like other prisoners, learned to fish out the flies and eat the dal without any qualm. Several detainees died in jail because medical treatment was not provided.
For two days after the emergency was declared, electricity to newspaper offices in Delhi was cut off. The offices of the Motherland were sealed. The office of Everyman’s Jayaprakash Narain’s paper, brought out by the Indian Express owner Ramnath Goenka, was raided, and its last edition was shredded. Censorship was imposed under Rule 48 of the Defence of India Rules (DIR).

Even the names of the people arrested under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) or the Defense of India Rules (DIR) were not to be published. In a letter to Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi, Communist leader E.M.S. Namboodiripad said that her regime had even outdone British colonial rulers in censorship, because even in the crucial years of 1920-21, 1930-31, and 1942, the newspapers were free to publish the names of those arrested.
The censors warned the editors against using quotations from great works of literature or by national leaders like Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru, and others. The National Herald, founded by Jawaharlal Nehru, supported his daughter’s and grandson’s emergency through and through and removed the quote ‘Freedom is in peril, defend it with all your might’ from its masthead.

Even though K. Shankar Pillai, the editor of Shankar’s Weekly, the satirical journal famous for its cartoons, ideologically supported Mrs. Gandhi, he wound up his publication a few months after the declaration of the emergency. In his farewell editorial Shankar observed: ‘Dictatorships cannot afford laughter because people may laugh at the dictator, and that would not do. In all the years of Hitler, there never was a good comedy, not a good cartoon, not a parody, not a spoof.’
In the 1980 general elections Sanjay was elected from Amethi and entered parliament along with 150 of his nominees. Mrs. Gandhi did not give Sanjay any official position but continued to rely on his advice on important issues both in the party and the government. He was the undeclared heir apparent.

On the morning of 23 June 1980, Sanjay, along with his flying instructor Captain Subash Saxena, took off from Safdarjung Airport in a two-seater Pitts S-2A sports plane. During aerobatic exercise while taking a loop, the plane hit the ground, and both Sanjay and Saxena were killed. Mrs. Gandhi rushed to the accident site to retrieve Sanjay’s wristwatch, which, according to popular belief, contained secret data. Though this reporter covered the accident for the Indian Express with all details including a photograph of the instructor, still wonder if anything could have been retrieved after the terrible tragedy.
Lt. Governor Kishan Chand acknowledged before the Shah Commission many of the illegal orders he issued had come directly from Sanjay Gandhi through his secretary Navin Chawla. The Commission charged him with ‘ abdicating his legitimate functions in favour of an overambitious group of officers …he betrayed his trust and committed a serious breach of faith with the citizens of Delhi.’

Soon after the Shaw Commission’s report came out in 1978, Kishan Chand killed himself by jumping into a well at the Siri Fort grounds in South Delhi. Death was better than a life of humiliation, a note left by him said.