New Delhi: With Bihar heading for Assembly polls, the Union Cabinet Wednesday approved a proposal for a national memorial for socialist icon Jayaprakash Narayan, better known as "JP", in the state. This comes as the nation marks the 40th anniversary of the 1975-77 Emergency imposed by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Bihar CM Nitish Kumar and his new ally, RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav, claim to be JP's true political heirs, but the BJP has of late been trying to lay claim to his legacy. JP was incidentally conferred the Bharat Ratna by the earlier NDA government led by Atal Behari Vajpayee.
With the BJP-led NDA facing a formidable opponent with the alliance of the JD(U), RJD and Congress, Bihar faces a gripping electoral campaign. The BJP now hopes to seize the anti- Congress plank by embracing JP.
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Emergency was a turning point in my life as an actor. I was a student of the National School of Drama (NSD) and used to come to Bengaluru during my holidays. I was a member of Sneha's (theatre group 'Abhinaya,' which was founded in 1971/'72. (Sneha Reddy, well known actor, incarcerated during the Emergency for her association with George Fernandes, had gone underground and was part of the Socialist movement.) When I finished with NSD and came to Bengaluru, the Emergency had been clamped and Sneha was already in jail. I felt a vacuum and I didn't know what to do. I didn't have anyone to work with and was lost for a while till I ventured on staging a one-man play 'The Importance of Being Oscar'. I toured the country with my play and in between distributed the anti-government leaflets that were given to me by the Socialists. I was clueless about what I was doing. In 1976 after I finished performing the play in Delhi, an ambassador car picked me up from outside the auditorium and took me to a house. Before I knew where I had been taken, I saw George Fernandes. He had grown a long beard and was sitting in front of a printing press. I was astonished to find George in the Capital in the midst of the Emergency. Looking back I feel I may not have done 'Oscar' if Sneha was not in jail and wouldn't have toured the country. It was a very unpleasant period but a creative one for me.
Ashok Mandanna, theatre personality
I had sent an eight page memorandum on June 22, 1975 to Mrs. (Indira) Gandhi opposing the promulgation of the bonus ordinance, which had reduced the bonus of public sector employees. Soon after the Emergency, on June 26 I was picked up by the police, while we were protesting for the Bangalore Dairy workers employment. My younger brother Lawrence was arrested from the gate of our residence in Bengaluru on May 1, 1976. He was badly tortured and the police threatened to rape our mother or put him under a speeding train if he didn't tell them about our eldest brother George, who had gone in hiding on the day Emergency was declared. George was in Gopalpur in Orissa, disguised as a fisherman. Though he was believed to be underground he toured the country in disguise. He came to Bengaluru and I was sitting right opposite him but I couldn't recognize him. He was dressed like a sardar. When he was arrested on June 11, 1976 from Kolkata he was disguised as a Catholic priest. He was taken to Hissar prison in Haryana and later to Tihar Central Prison.
Michael Fernandes
Lawrence Fernandes was tortured by the police so that he could tell them the whereabouts of his brother George Fernandes. Lawrence was not even in politics yet he was arrested, jailed and beaten up to the extent that even years after he was released he couldn't walk properly, with his legs having ballooned and his limbs smashed beyond repair. I married his brother Michael in 1983 and my doctor told me that she would often find my mother-in-law sitting and weeping in St Mary's Church during the Emergency praying for her three sons. Her sons - George, Michael and Lawrence were all arrested. George had gone underground and was taken in last. Lawrence was tortured and he carried the scars till his death in 2006."
Dona Fernandes, social activist and sister in law of the late Lawrence Fernandes
Emergency was a lesson to many of us. June 25, 1975 was a black day in the history of post Independent India. In the name of discipline individual freedom was severely curtailed and voices of opposition and protest were silenced. We didn't know that there was such a provision (Article 352) in the Constitution and we couldn't imagine that freedom and civil liberties could be arrested to such an extent in a thriving democracy.
In 1975 I was 26 years old engineering graduate and the all India secretary of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) along with Arun Jaitley (he was the president of the Delhi University Students Union) and Venkaiah Naidu among others. On June 25 political and Socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) had called for 'Sampoorna Kranti' - total revolution - to uphold and defend civil liberties and lakhs of people from across the country responded to JP's call to usher in a new democratic movement for India. There were agitations in Bihar and Gujarat against growing unemployment and the agitators met JP and asked him for support the cause. JP appealed to political leaders and asked them to shed their party affiliations and join the struggle. Co-incidentally, at the same time the Allahabad High Court unseated the then prime minister Indira Gandhi for electoral malpractice in 1971 Lok Sabha election and she imposed the Emergency on the midnight of June 25, 1975. JP was arrested.
The next day I along with Atal Behari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani, Madhu Dandavate and others protested against JP's arrest n in Bengaluru and were arrested. I was kept in Belgaum and Bangalore Central Prisons for 18-and-half months. I had with me in the prison political leaders like Vajpayee, Advani, Dandavate, Ramakrishna Hegde, S.N. Mishra, J.H. Patel, H.D. Devegowda and we used to debate and discuss political ideologies and the future of India. But one fellow prisoner, who impressed and converted my political ideology, was Socialist and trade union leader S. Venkataram. He spoke to me about Socialism and slowly he became my mentor. When I was released from the prison in 1977 I had changed. I was convinced that Socialism was a better ideology than what a theocratic society could do.
State Vice President of JD(S) P.G.R. Sindhia
(As told to Bala Chauhan)
