Janata Party ( ): Creation of an All-India Opposition

Transcription

1 Article Janata Party ( ): Creation of an All-India Opposition History and Sociology of South Asia 11(1) Jamia Millia Islamia SAGE Publications sagepub.in/home.nav DOI: / Rakesh Ankit 1 Abstract This article focuses on the interactions among four parties during that led to their combining to form the Janata Party, which represented a united opposition to the then Prime Minister Mrs Indira Gandhi and her Congress government in January These inter-party exchanges remain an overlooked episode in the works on the Janata Party, when compared to its much written about the failure in government ( ). Forty years on, Janata Party s formation continues to be understood as a natural and inevitable response to the imposition of emergency by Mrs Gandhi in June This article, instead, focuses on the engagements among the leaders of the Bharatiya Lok Dal (BLD), Congress (O), Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) and the Socialist Party (SP) before, during and after the emergency and contends that Janata s creation was neither a foregone conclusion nor a straightforward process. Second, this coming together of disparate individuals owed more to the possibility of gaining power and personal inclinations than any political principles or policy impulses. Third, while Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) is rightly celebrated as the rival protagonist in oppositional politics to Mrs Gandhi, this article argues that there were limits to his leadership in forging the new party and there was no automatic evolution of the latter from the former. This article is based on the papers of JP and his secretary Brahmanand and, supplemented by other relevant material, shows an unheralded facet of an attempt, which might have come to power on hyperbole but its formation was hard work. Keywords Political history, party politics, coalition, opposition, JP 1 Jindal Global Law School, OP Jindal Global University, Haryana, India. Corresponding author: Rakesh Ankit, Jindal Global Law School, OP Jindal Global University, Near Jagdishpur Village, Sonipat , Haryana, India. Rakesh.ankit@gmail.com

2 40 History and Sociology of South Asia 11(1) The formation of the Janata Party in 1977 was arguably the most significant political event in the first three decades of independent Indian history. Within three months of its creation, the party was in power, making the first non-congress central government in India. It got 43 per cent of the national vote and won 298 parliamentary seats in the sixth general elections held in March The Congress party was reduced to 154 seats and 34.5 per cent of the vote, thus underscoring the importance of oppositional unity. 2 Forty years on, little historical work has been done on the coming together of this coalition. Of course, commentary began to be published when the Janata Party held power in and more have been penned since. But these have focused more on the Janata s Historic Failure than its getting together. 3 Recent political histories of independent India have, by and large, thrown light on the Janata Party formation through the two prisms of Total Revolution and Internal Emergency 4 one brought about by the self-righteousness of Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) and the other by the paranoia of Indira Gandhi. 5 Major scholarly interest on the Janata Party has come from the discipline of Political Science and while this literature is substantial, it has little to say about how they combined together to form the Janata Party, and is focused too on why they combined. 6 The latest major work, seeking to explain the formation, performance and demise of the Janata Party, focuses on the latter two at greater lengths as these were instrumental in sowing the seeds of the third force in the Indian politics in the succeeding decades. 7 Finally, books written from the standpoints of one or the other constituents of the Janata Party do no more than document the socio-economic crisis of and the subsequent political excesses of Indira Gandhi and present the Janata Party as a natural response to it. 8 In contrast, books from Congress /Mrs Gandhi s vantage emphasise shifting circumstances, fickle public opinion and systematic political failure and present the Janata Party as an amoral gang of selfish opportunists brought together by nothing but a destabilising pursuit of power that forced a strong response from the state. 9 2 Sanjay Ruparelia, Divided We Govern: Coalition Politics in Modern India (New York, NY: OUP, 2015), For an example of former, see Janardan Thakur, All the Janata Men (Delhi: Vikas, 1978) and for latter, see L.I. Rudolph and S.H. Rudolph, In Pursuit of Lakshmi: The Political Economy of the Indian State (Chicago, IL: University Press, 1987). 4 See, for instance, Ramachandra Guha, India after Gandhi (Delhi: Harper Collins, 2007). 5 P.N. Dhar, India Gandhi, the Emergency and Indian Democracy (Delhi: OUP, 2000), 256; also see Bipan Chandra, In the Name of Democracy: JP Movement and the Emergency (Delhi: Penguin, 2003). 6 See, for instance, James Manor, Anomie in Indian Politics, Economic and Political Weekly 18 no. 19/21 (1983): ; Paul Brass, The Politics of India since Independence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) and Sudipta Kaviraj, The Trajectories of the Indian State: Politics and Ideas (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2010). 7 See Ruparelia, Divided We Govern, See, for instance, Madhu Limaye, Janata Party Experiment: An Insider s Account of Opposition Politics, (Delhi: BR Publishing Corporation, 1994). 9 Dhar, Indira Gandhi, the Emergency and Indian Democracy,

3 Ankit 41 These analyses, for all their differences of perspective, tend to argue in a similarly teleological manner that the formation of Janata Party and its victory in the 1977 election was inevitable. This determinism makes the formation, success and then fall of the Janata Party no more than a Marquezian chronicle of a birth and then death foretold. Certainly, the period was one of deepening crisis in India and the heavy-handed response of the Indira Gandhi government culminating in the emergency of 1975 exacerbated the fault lines. 10 Nevertheless, by itself, this did not make the coming together of the Janata Party inevitable. This line of argument underestimates the organisational differences among the political opposition to Mrs Gandhi that made it difficult for them to reach an accommodation until January It dilutes the personal diffidence felt by the leadership of the many parties that came together under the Janata Party framework and inflates the personal hold of JP on them. This article demonstrates that there was nothing inevitable about the emergence of the Janata Party in To understand it, one needs to focus on the three-yearlong preceding period that saw a complex interplay among the various groups that resulted in its formation. Charan Singh, Asoka Mehta, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Surendra Mohan and their parties provided the four pivots that held this political process. They met on 19 January 1977 at Morarji Desai s house and formally launched the Janata Party four days later. This party, which its inspirational light JP later called a hotchpotch, 11 originated from party squabbles, which are worthy of a historical appraisal, at this distance and with more sources. This also allows an explanation for what went wrong with the Janata experiment by showing how during the process of coming together, the incumbent political unity was attempted the least and the last by the Janata groups. Attempting but a slice of this much larger task, this article does so by drawing upon the JP and Brahmanand papers, 12 held at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, which are unique in their ability to throw light on the decision-making among the various groups because JP occupied the moral centre and provided the intellectual gravitas to the Janata, and supplementing them by other relevant material. Jayaprakash Narayan gave the clarion call of Total Revolution and it was up to these groups of varying ideologies and interests to harness JP s call with their organisational strength. But they did not have to do it the way they did it. They had alternative choices that they considered. That they came together in the manner and at the time they did had little to do with their choosing, even less about high ideology, but was more about low political skulduggery, structural fault lines and individual pride. 10 On the emergency, see Emma Tarlo, Unsettling Memories: Narratives of the Emergency in Delhi (London: Hurst, 2003). 11 Illustrated Weekly of India, dated 6 March Correspondence Files and Subject Files Nos. 273, 277, 316, , 329A, 330, and from the III Instalment of JP Papers held at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (hereafter NMML), New Delhi.

4 42 History and Sociology of South Asia 11(1) A Prelude of Misgivings In August 1974, a student movement was in full swing in Bihar. Taking the baton of protest from the Nav Nirman Movement in Gujarat (January February 1974), a Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti had started it in March and succeeded in persuading JP, the freedom fighter, Gandhian, Congressman, Socialist and social worker of international fame, to provide leadership. Meanwhile, a massive railway strike led by the socialist general secretary of the All-India Railwaymen s Federation, George Fernandes, had paralysed the country for twenty days in May Opposition parties, from left to right, watching the spectacle unfold and licking their lips in anticipation of a call from JP, were, however, rudely shocked when JP told them that he would not like them to dominate his movement. A party functionary of the Congress (O) from Bihar wrote to Asoka Mehta, party secretary: How are we to participate in the movement? Are we to function in an amorphous manner? What would be our position as a political party in the post-movement stage? Do we have to eschew politics altogether? 13 JP had good reasons to steer clear from the political parties. He was distressed that in spite of Mehta s advice and senior leader Morarji Desai s support, Congress (O), the anti-indira section of the Indian National Congress post-the 1969 split, had done little to support his movement in Bihar. Jayaprakash Narayan wanted it, and other political parties, to stop worrying whether political parties should dominate this movement. It is by work and not by wanting to dominate that any party can hope to get any dividends. 14 Though wary, opposition parties had been dabbling in JP s movement, just like they had done with the Nav Nirman Movement in Gujarat, and this was making for some strange bedfellows the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), old guard Congress (O), urban Socialists and peasants-based Bharatiya Lok Dal (BLD). In Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka, these groups had joined hands for a Gujarat/Bihar style agitation. The only political outfit that drew the line was the left. P. Sundarayya, General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), explained to JP that it was difficult for his party to join in any joint demonstration with these communal and capitalist groups. 15 Although a criticism of the JP movement from his Gandhian associates such as Acharya Ramamurti, fellow social workers such as R.K. Patil or academics such as K.N. Raj had been coming in, 16 none of these were party politicians. Their criticisms had a common prophetic thrust: Spell out clearly your programme on which you accept popular support. Many aspects of [your] movement in Bihar cause concern. If fundamental issues are not discussed intensively at this stage, and agreement reached among those from whom you seek support, misgivings will grow. Consensus achieved by not facing the basic issues now would be dishonest [and] dangerous Letter from Sinha to Mehta, dated 31 August 1974, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 14 Letter from JP to Mehta, dated 16 September 1974, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 15 Letter from Sundarayya to JP, dated 22 September 1974, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 16 Letter from Patil to JP, dated 14 October 1974 and Ramamurti JP correspondence, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 17 Letter from K.N. Raj to JP, dated 17 November 1974, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi.

5 Ankit 43 For political parties, however, it was the nature of leadership more than the modes of protest that was a matter of concern because that was what they expected themselves to provide. In this, they were naturally more divided than united for each wanted to lead. An instance of this was Minoo Masani, one of the founders of the liberal Swatantra Party, warning JP that any association with [Congress (O)] cannot but tarnish [your] wonderful image. However, fed up the country may be with [Indira Gandhi], it is not going to replace [her] by [them] Time will come for a new political incentive. It is important that you keep hands free for such a time. 18 The first attempt towards this new political initiative was not made by JP. It was made by the multifarious liberal parliamentarian Piloo Mody, who told Masani that time had come for their Swatantra Party to dissolve itself in a new party. Masani was agreeable to a consolidation of all non-marxist parties but baulked at merger. In his letter to Mody, one can see the fears and hopes of these groups jostling with each other. First, it would be a drastic step that might only lead to a puny party. Then, for Masani, the only national party that would be called upon to dissolve itself will be the Swatantra Party, as all the others are local groups. Finally, he argued that mere adoption of a platonic statement of principles is not enough and asked, will the proposed new party have homogeneity and a credible image? 19 Close on Mody s and Masani s heels was the Uttar Pradesh peasant politician Charan Singh, who had left Congress in 1967 and formed the Bharatiya Kranti Dal (BKD). From then till mid-1973, Charan Singh had resisted repeated efforts on the part of Mrs Gandhi to get him to agree to a merger of the BKD and the Congress. 20 In August 1974, he formed the BLD by merging his BKD with the Pragati Dal, the Samyukta Socialist Party and the Loktantrik Dal, having earlier prevailed upon Masani to join hands with the BKD. In September 1974, the BJS held its conference in Hyderabad and resolved to join this political response to Mrs Gandhi and in December, the Socialists met at Calicut and adopted a resolution supporting this initiative. Meanwhile, with confrontation in Bihar and north India growing, Mrs Gandhi agreed to meet JP on 1 November It was an acrimonious and confrontational meeting that failed to end their deadlock. 21 Consequently, JP gave a call for a conference of political leaders to be held on November. Charan Singh (BLD), L.K. Advani (BJS), Ashoka Mehta (Congress [O]) and N.G. Goray (Socialist Party [SP]) presided over the four sessions of the conference. Jyoti Basu of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) was invited but the Kashmiri leader Sheikh Abdullah, JP s old comrade from the 1940s, was not. Older Congressmen 18 Letter from Masani to JP, dated 13 February 1973, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 19 Letter from Masani to Mody, dated 6 June 1974, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 20 Paul Brass, An Indian Political Life: Charan Singh (New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2011), 7; also see Terence Byers, Charan Singh, : An Assessment, Journal of Peasant Studies 15, no. 2 (1987): Katharine Frank, Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2001): 367; Guha, India after Gandhi, 483.

6 44 History and Sociology of South Asia 11(1) from the south India such as K. Kamaraj, Virendra Patil and Ramakrishna Hegde were invited as was the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leader M. Karunanidhi. Kamaraj demurred to attend, Karunanidhi sent his MPs while Patil and Hegde only agreed to meet JP separately. 22 The conference considered the people s charter of demands to be presented to the prime minister. It was still a matter of protest and not yet that of a party. In early 1975, JP once again invited opposition leaders to a meeting on February in New Delhi to discuss Congress authoritarianism. 23 This time, it was agreed that only a mass movement could prevent the collapse of democracy in the country. The meeting discussed various issues that could be projected to radicalise the movement. 24 Yet, there was no mention of a united opposition party to spearhead this movement. 6 March was decided as the date for a planned march to the Parliament to present the people s charter of demands. On that day, an estimated crowd of 750,000 gathered at the Boat Club lawns, adjacent to the Parliament to hear JP speech. However, even as the movement was gathering momentum, events elsewhere moved faster. On 19 March 1975, Indira Gandhi testified in court at Allahabad where a petition filed by her opponent Raj Narain against her victory over him in the 1970 Parliamentary elections was being heard. On 12 June, she was found guilty on two out of fourteen counts, her election was rendered null and void and she was given twenty days to appeal to the Supreme Court. Ten days later, the Supreme Court began hearing the prime minister s petition and Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer issued a conditional stay on the Allahabad Court judgment allowing her to attend the parliament but she could not vote there until her appeal was heard and judged. Instead, on 26 June 1975, she proclaimed an emergency and opposition leaders were taken in preventive detention. In addition, thus, before the burgeoning national protest could produce a national party and build upon the Janata Front the victorious coalition in Gujarat of the BJS, Congress (O), BLD and the Socialists that had benefited from the Nav Nirman Movement the political field was swept bare. The ten-member National Programme Committee, made from the party executives of the BJS, the BLD, Socialists and Congress (O), was put behind bars. 25 Underground Determination and Overground Differences With overground political activity now virtually impossible, an underground resistance began, the leading light of which was the old bête noire of Mrs Gandhi, George Fernandes. When JP was released on parole on health grounds in November 1975, Fernandes sent an anguished update on political parties to JP. Fernandes feared that there appeared to be anxiety on the part of some people in the opposition to have talks with Mrs Gandhi. Fernandes was angry: What can be the agenda for a dialogue with her; certainly not the legitimisation of her dictatorship and final 22 Letter from Radhakrishna to JP sent in November 1974, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 23 Letter from JP to opposition leaders, dated 3 February 1975, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 24 Press release dated 17 February 1975, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 25 Guha, India after Gandhi,

7 Ankit 45 acquiescence in the installation of the Nehru dynasty. If at all talks were to happen, for Fernandes, the basis was to be the people s charter of 6 March In a key passage foreshadowing the formation of the Janata Party, Fernandes wrote: We should not rule out the possibility of her ordering a snap election at a time and on terms of her choosing. She may go through the exercise of lifting the emergency and releasing some of the political prisoners...it is important for us to spell out in advance our own response...a common symbol, a common programme [and] the conditions in which we shall take part in the polls. 26 In another sentence anticipating difficulties in the formation of a united opposition, Fernandes acknowledged differences among us over methods and forms of struggle. Jayaprakash Narayan, who had been meeting Mrs Gandhi s envoys over September October 1975 in parleys that had led to his early release to allow him treatment for his worsening kidneys, 27 was somewhat roused by Fernandes communication and began urging the BLD, the Congress (O), the Socialists and the BJS to dissolve their identities and form a new party. In May 1976, he met the leaders of these parties in Bombay. It turned out to be an ill-prepared and hasty meeting. Charan Singh complained of receiving no communication much less a commitment from the Socialists and Congress (O) before the meeting about any agenda and was disagreeably surprised when presented with a policy and programme of the proposed new party. He had been under the impression that the meeting was only going to be a general appeal for togetherness. In a long letter to JP, written shortly afterwards, he called it putting the cart before the horse and, rather ominously, commented that we did not know what we or the new party will be standing or fighting for. 28 Charan Singh raised three key points. First, he had a fundamental objection to the proposal that the new party was to be a cadre-based party whose primary emphasis will be on training and integrating cadres on the basis of a new value system. Here, he was clearly worried about the influence of the BJS and more so the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). 29 Second, he was concerned that the policy and programme document gave the parliament only a secondary place as an instrument to bring about social change. Here was a sneaking appeal among certain Janata constituents of the Presidential form of government or what Max Jean Zins termed a presidentialist regime. 30 Third, grabbing at JP s Achilles heel, he pointed out that the document did not spell out what it meant by total revolution as the aim of the party...the idea of a total plan or total responsibility, which it smacks throughout, is likely to end up in totalitarianism. Above all, Charan Singh felt that Congress (O), Socialists and the BJS were neither sincere 26 Letter from Fernandes to JP, dated 27 January 1976, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 27 Dhar, Indira Gandhi, the Emergency and Indian Democracy, Letter from Singh to JP, dated 1 June 1976, Brahmanand Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 29 Ruparelia, Divided We Govern, Max Jean Zins, Strains on Indian Democracy (New Delhi: ABC Publications, 1988),

8 46 History and Sociology of South Asia 11(1) nor serious about creating and strengthening a national alternative to the Congress. As he reminded JP, he had persistently implored friends of the three parties right from April 1974 to April 1975 to join hands with us...even after BLD formally came into existence, we said we were prepared to sacrifice our name, flag and symbol with a view to form a still newer and more broad-based party provided the others were willing to join. But, they did not respond. 31 Turning to JP himself, Charan Singh reminded him that we had appealed to you also from October 1974 onwards to bring about a merger of the parties but again in vain. He now felt that JP s movement harmed the very cause which you seek, rather deem fit, to sponsor today and minced no words: I had told you that a motley crowd consisting of widely differing, even conflicting political elements, will hardly add up to an organisation which could carry on an agitation through to a successful end. Charan Singh held that today the position is that while people are politically more conscious than ever, the opposition is organisationally weaker, valuable time has been lost and it is not possible to make up for this lost time by rushing things. His suggestion was to defer the launch of the new party till the first week of August 1976 by when all preliminary steps would have been taken. And then Charan Singh expressed George Fernandes worst fear. It was his firm opinion (and he had held it consistently having told JP earlier on 20 March and 24 May 1976) that the movement should be suspended, people congratulated, workers asked to take to constructive work...history tells us that one has often times to beat a retreat in order to gather strength for a larger and more vigorous drive later. He claimed that Atal Bihari Vajpayee (BJS) and N.G. Goray (SP) also held the same view. The letter ended on a sore note. Charan Singh bristled at being kept in dark about the proposed new party and told JP frankly, I or BLD will not be able to reconcile itself to the position of a second grade member in your camp. If Charan Singh alarmed JP and disappointed George Fernandes thus, then the opposition MPs did the same by refusing to resign from a Lok Sabha whose term had expired in March 1976 and which had been extended for another year by the 42nd Amendment to the Constitution. The socialist stalwart Madhu Limaye and a young, rising Sharad Yadav issued a public letter from Malwa Jail in August asking their comrades what popular mandate and justification they had for continuing in a house whose term [had] expired and warning them that if you want the Janata Front or Janata Party (whatever it is called and however it is structured) to be respected by the people, here is the last honourable chance of getting out. 32 But it was not only Charan Singh and his BLD that were dragging their feet in this process. The Congress (O) too was reluctant. By September 1976, an impatient JP was imploring Mehta to take active and urgent steps to complete the process begun a few months ago. Letters received by me from inside and outside the jails have uniformly supported my move. This was incumbent upon 31 Letter from Singh to JP, dated 1 June 1976, Brahmanand Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 32 Letter from Limaye and Yadav to opposition MPs, dated 10 August 1976, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi.

9 Ankit 47 [Mehta] as the whole process of unification had been held in deference to your wishes. Jayaprakash Narayan wrote at length: It will serve no purpose for the cause of a united opposition if there is further delay. You had asked for 3 4 months time. At your suggestion, I had separately met the Congress (O) leaders of West Bengal, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat. [They] were not opposed to the idea of a new party being formed in which members of the Congress (O), BLD, Socialist Party and Jan Sangh and individuals who had been drawn into the Bihar movement might join. 33 Hectic Parleys It was in a series of meetings between 25 September and 11 October 1976 that the first tentative steps towards the formation of new, unified party were taken place. The BJS and SP working committees met on September and were followed by Congress (O) (8 9 October) and BLD (10 11 October). The first thing that became clear in these was that now the SP was being leaden-footed about the merger. It sent a note to others saying that it may take up to a month and half to join the new party. Charan Singh felt that this delay was uncalled for, especially, at a time when the first signs came from Mrs Gandhi that she was getting worried at the possibility of opposition unity. She had ordered that the BLD be barred from organising any public meeting or rally. 34 Turning to the BJS, Charan Singh raised the question of the RSS and held that no RSS volunteers should join the new party, dual membership should not be allowed and there should be no scope in the new party for surreptitious work. 35 Here was the point that was to emerge in 1979 as a casus belli for the end of Morarji Desai s Janata government. But like most mainstream Indian politicians, Charan Singh had an ambiguous relationship with the RSS. Bharatiya Jana Sangh leaders reminded him tersely of his old association with it and his repeated public and private praise of RSS s patriotism, self-less service and discipline. 36 Finally, by now, not just differences but an ill-feeling between Charan Singh and Asoka Mehta (Congress [O]) was on the rise. To the former, the latter engaged in delaying tactics; to the latter, the former was not progressive enough. Both were apprehensive that the other would be the stronger factor in the new party. For the watching Socialists, neither was radical enough. 37 They told JP that the only way to get a united opposition party off the ground would be for you to assume full responsibility and recommended that the new party be named Revolutionary People s Congress or Revolutionary Janata Congress or Revolutionary 33 Letter from JP to Mehta, dated 4 September 1976, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 34 Letter from Singh to JP, dated 4 October 1976, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 35 Letters from Singh to Tyagi, dated 8 July and 1 September 1976, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 36 Letter from Tyagi to Singh, dated 21 August 1976, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 37 Letter from Mohan to JP, dated 19 October 1976, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi.

10 48 History and Sociology of South Asia 11(1) Democratic Congress, with the last word [there] to accommodate the Congress (O). 38 Meanwhile, Charan Singh sought to unburden his heart to Mehta in a letter dated 24 October 1976 and make a fresh start to the stalled formation of the new party. First of all, retaining the existing name and flag of Congress (O), as suggested by Mehta, was not acceptable to him, for they will create confusion in the mind of the electorate and give a handle to the ruling party for misrepresenting the opposition. Second, while initially Charan Singh had agreed to Mehta s proposal of adopting the name Indian Democratic Congress, he now demurred claiming that he had done so in a hurry without realising what I was doing. 39 The best way out was to adopt a name, flag and symbol other than that of any of the four parties concerned any trading in this connection is likely to produce an ugly hybrid whereas we need a clean image easily distinguishable from that of the Congress (Ruling). 40 Even as the Socialists did no more than continue to request JP to step in, 41 Charan Singh turned towards the other potential ally with whom he was having problems the BJS. He believed that the right-wing outfit was engaged in a smear campaign against him that he had apologised to the prime minister (and thus been released) and that he would eventually join Mrs Gandhi. Still, he was hopeful that by the end of November 1976, the four parties would have some success in moving towards the new party. 42 The biggest hurdle in this was that Congress (O) was unable to relinquish its attachment with its organisation and wanted other groups to accede themselves within it. As Charan Singh s lieutenant Bhanu Pratap Singh succinctly put it to Mehta, as soon as you make it clear that you are also aiming at the creation of a new party and not in the extension of your own party, there will be no difficulty in resuming talks. 43 The second problem was that the Socialists wanted a position equivalent to the other three groups in the new working committee even though their national presence and influence was not comparable for such parity given the number of their members of parliament (MPs) and members of the legislative assembly (MLAs). Above all, there loomed the question of leadership. Bhanu Pratap made JP aware of the views of the BLD on this in the following words, which were a transparent advocacy for Charan Singh s candidature: There has also been an attempt to discredit us on the question of leadership. We have no special request except that whoever becomes the leader should be concerned about rural realities...you yourself in your note What JP expects from the New Party had written that the new party should be mostly from rural India. Rural leadership is also desirable because it is the villager who bears the heaviest brunt of the current dictatorship and change can come only through his awakening Letter from Kamath to JP, dated 23 October 1976, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 39 Letter from Pratap to Mehta, dated 29 September 1976, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 40 Letter from Singh to Mehta, dated 24 October 1976, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 41 Letter from Mohan to JP, dated 28 October 1976, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 42 Letter from Singh to Limaye, dated 29 October 1976, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 43 Letter from Pratap to Mehta, dated 2 November 1976, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 44 Letter from Pratap to JP, dated 3 November 1976, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi.

11 Ankit 49 Rather more ominously, in the same letter, Bhanu Pratap hinted to JP that BLD was willing to participate in the formation of a new party of those who have ironed out their differences, that is, without the Congress (O) and the Socialists. While the BLD general secretary was writing thus to JP, the Socialists upped the ante by meeting the man himself. They submitted to him their list of difficulties, chiefly directed against the Congress (O) s insistence of others merging in it and the BLD s bilateral style of working ignoring other parties. 45 However, both BLD and the Socialists were now not averse to consolidate three parties [BLD, Socialists and BJS] if a unification of all four was not possible. Jayaprakash Narayan responded by inviting all four parties to a conference at Patna. Charan Singh did not come but wrote that should JP be able to form a new party, the BLD will be the first to join. 46 Representatives of the other three met on 11 November 1976, passed a unanimous resolution to form a new, single opposition party, agreed to authorise JP to take immediate effective steps for it and announce its formation with groups that were prepared to merge their identity. Jayaprakash Narayan delegated his task to Asoka Mehta, whose reply to JP is very revealing of the sharp differences within the ranks of the opposition to Mrs Gandhi even at this late stage seventeen months into emergency: What do you expect me to do? [Karnataka] and [Maharashtra] are willing to go with you; on the other hand, [Tamil Nadu] and [West Bengal] have serious reservations. Gujarat and some other states will not countenance the idea of giving up on name and flag...i thought our Socialist friends were seeking to break the logjam...i happened to meet [Charan Singh] the other day and he was merely formal and correct. With a weak hand to deal, how do I keep the initiative going? 47 Replying the very next day, 30 November 1976, JP wrote that he appreciated Mehta s difficulties but repeated that a united opposition was the only thing that might stem the tide of totalitarianism. 48 Around this time, notes were exchanged by the four parties on the desirable unification. A handwritten copy of one such note is in the JP papers. Carrying the stamp of the BLD, it is a fascinating document showcasing different party positions, their hopes and fears and their bargaining stands. The note begins by announcing that in order to facilitate the process of unification of the democratic forces, the BLD, BJS and the SP were to merge into the Congress (O), with the latter making certain agreed changes in their name and framework. The procedure of the merger was to be such as to be consistent with the self-respect of these parties so as to enable each to persuade the largest possible number of its membership into the united party. In order to satisfy each of these parties need to persuade their rank and file to accept the merger, the following understandings were to be arrived at: 45 Letter from Mohan to JP, dated 5 November 1976, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 46 Letter from Singh to JP, dated 8 November 1976, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 47 Letter from Mehta to JP, dated 29 November 1976, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 48 Letter from JP to Mehta, dated 30 November 1976, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi.

12 50 History and Sociology of South Asia 11(1) (i) President of the new party was to be from BLD; (ii) Jana Sangh and rebel Congressmen were to share the two posts of general secretaries; (iii) the SP was to be adjusted by including the word Socialist in the name of the party and by accepting the objective of Gandhian Socialism and the right of peaceful direct action; (iv) Congress (O) s framework with certain modifications was to be adopted and it was to share the vice-presidentship; (v) Congress (O) s new name was to be the Indian Socialist Congress and its new insignia charkha, plough and wheel; and (vi) the general secretaries and the working committee at various levels were to be elected. This agreement was to be ratified by the working committees of all the concerned parties. Among the names being considered for the new party then was the rather complicated and unimpressive Lokvadi Janata Paksh, Shakti Kranti Dal and Lok Paksh. An entirely new flag of one colour, preferably green with symbol in white in the middle was suggested. BLD s proposed symbol, reflecting its agrarian base, was a Kisan driving a pair of bullocks yoked to a plough. Finally, BLD claimed the leadership for Charan Singh citing his rural orientation and centrist ideological disposition. Needless to say, the Congress (O) did not find this plan for unification desirable. It couched its refusal in a question of timing, claiming that this was not the proper time for a merger. It was not prepared to go beyond a united front and, even if the working committee of the party agreed, three of its state units, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat, refused to entertain the merger. On the other hand, the SP had held meetings of its workers from Maharashtra on November and from rest of the country on November in which resolutions for the merger were passed with large, almost unanimous support. Surendra Mohan, the General Secretary, was now headed to Delhi to meet the representatives from the BJS and the BLD. N.G. Goray informed JP that if the commitments made by the Jan Sangh as well as the BLD stand, then the position will be that the Socialist Party, the Jan Sangh and the BLD would be willing to merge unconditionally in the new party launched by you...we feel that even if Congress (O) refuses to join, lot of its workers will be willing to join such a party The BJS stood by its commitment and Atal Bihari Vajpayee implored JP that the question of the unification awaits your decision...those who do not agree; leave them to face the ire of the public. Today opposition has become a major embarrassment and if we do not unite even now, history will never forgive us. 50 JP was waiting for Surendra Mohan to get in touch with Charan Singh and confirm the BLD s stand. When he got the word on 10 December 1976, it was not good. The BLD chairman now felt that, being a life-long votary of free enterprise, he could not accept socialism. He accepted the proposal to merge in Congress (O), only if he were to be made the leader of the new party and, incredibly, if the agitation was withdrawn. Indeed, Charan Singh made the announcement of the withdrawal of agitation against emergency a condition for unification. To Congress (O), 49 Letter from Goray to JP, dated 1 December 1976, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 50 Letter from Vajpayee to JP, dated 6 December 1976, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi.

13 Ankit 51 Charan Singh was unacceptable as the president. They were also again being coy on the new flag. The Socialists now threw the gauntlet to both: either accommodate other parties in order to enable them to accept merger or take the position taken by other three parties that everything be left to JP. 51 The Darkness before the Dawn This then was the scene less than four months from the Janata Party s thumping win in March An anxious JP appeared helpless in the face of personal predilections on the part of Charan Singh and Congress (O) and a rather mechanical approach by the Socialists and the BJS. Writing to Asoka Mehta on 30 December 1976, he admitted feeling entirely cut off from the current events and handicapped in taking or advising any new initiatives. 52 Mehta, meanwhile, had been in correspondence with Mrs Gandhi, who had asked him to consider holding talks with the government. George Fernandes, alarmed at the possibility of a sell-out, wrote to assure JP of his commitment and pleaded with him to hold firm against the dithering opposition leaders. Disenchanted with them, Fernandes made it clear that, as the chairman of the SP, he will not be a party to the general anxiety for a settlement that is apparent from the attitude of the leadership of most opposition parties. 53 A feeling was gaining ground that just like January and June 1976, when the paroled leadership of BJS, Congress (O) and BLD had shown signs of making peace with Mrs Gandhi, now in December 1976 again, the trio of Asoka Mehta, Charan Singh and Atal Bihari Vajpayee were making attempts at peace. On the other hand, there was a rapidly emerging view among the Socialists that they had over-committed to a cynical, electoral merger with the diabolical BJS BLD Congress (O) leadership. This view did not spare even JP, a prisoner of his own lackeys, and argued for a withdrawal from any moves leading to an immoral merger with the other three parties. 54 Even as the young (Chandra Shekhar and Mohan Dharia) and the old (Morarji Desai and Biju Patnaik) among the dissident Congressmen gathered in New Delhi in the new year of 1977, some of them too were starting to feel that this whole exercise of merger seems to be ignoring history...these four parties had gotten together in but could not enthuse people...the youth started their agitation ignoring and avoiding [them]. 55 In fact, Chandra Shekhar and Mohan Dharia had pressed hard for a dialogue with JP in 1974 recognising early that it was JP s leadership that had inspired and mobilised people and helped opposition parties gain visibility and credibility. Lost in these labyrinth of adjustments was the simple fact that the new political party, whatever the name or organisational structure, must represent JP s movement and ideals; 51 Letter from Mohan to JP, dated 10 December 1976, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 52 Letter from JP to Mehta, dated 30 December 1976, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 53 Letter from Fernandes to JP sent in December 1976, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 54 Letter from JP to Limaye and Fernandes, dated 20 December 1976, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 55 Letter from Kant to JP, dated 7 January 1977, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi.

14 52 History and Sociology of South Asia 11(1) anything else and the merger would be simply an electoral exercise, which is what it eventually proved to be. There was an obvious gap between what the people expected of their political representatives, on the one hand, and what these political representatives wanted, on the other hand. Instead of new image, ideals and ethos for tomorrow, the leaders had been trying to bring about an arrangement, a compromise. This was the great chasm between the hopes from politics as a movement of sweeping change and the professional, practical, political operators. By the last week of 1976, the non- CPM opposition was confused more than demoralised and appeared keener to restore democracy than remove Mrs Gandhi. Elections had been postponed again, this time till February A week before the formation of the Janata Party, Charan Singh was still waiting to see whether there was any possibility of a dialogue at all materialising with Mrs Gandhi. Unknown to his compatriots, he had been carrying on back-channel talks with Mrs Gandhi through her envoy Mohammad Yunus. He had become fed up with agitation, wanted to bring about some rapprochement and had even prepared an Approach Paper to make the government more responsive and the opposition more responsible. 56 When it failed, an anguished Charan Singh wrote to JP on 16 January 1977 that as the probability of an unconditional talk with Mrs Gandhi faded, she might be staging an election soon as we are still not one party. Blaming this on a lack of urgency and equivocation on the part of Congress (O), Charan Singh argued for not participating in the farce, 57 an election that made him first deputy prime minister and then prime minister. Coda Two days later, on 18 January 1977, Mrs Gandhi announced the release of political prisoners and called for elections in March. The possibility of hanging separately and the probability of power in a highly regionalised federal parliamentary democracy compelled a change of heart among the potential Janata constituents. 58 The shared experience of emergency helped lessen that what divided them. Jayaprakash Narayan s political campaign, his public image and his moral halo hastened this process of people changing their views. In early February, the Janata got a great boost when Jagjivan Ram, Mrs Gandhi s Defence and Agriculture Minister, broke away and formed his Congress for Democracy (CFD) on account of civil liberties violation and decline of intra-party democracy. The great symbolism of the country s leading Dalit politician and the last Congressman standing from Jawaharlal Nehru s 1946 Interim Government leaving Mrs Gandhi and joining the Janata was unmistakable. Thereafter, the Janata entered into tactical seat adjustments with several opposition parties: the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) in Punjab, the DMK in Tamil Nadu and the CPM in Bengal. 56 Mohammad Yunus, Persons, Passions and Politics (Delhi: Asia Book, 1980), Letter from Singh to JP, dated 16 January 1977, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 58 This and the next para are based on Ruparelia, Divided We Govern,

15 Ankit 53 Insofar as its manifesto was concerned, it bore JP s imprimatur and, ironical in the light of its performance in the elections and balance of power in the government, reflected a Gandhian Socialist vision. Offering both Bread and Freedom: A Gandhian Alternative, the manifesto presented three charters: politically restoring India s parliamentary democracy, separation of powers and federalism, economically enhancing swadeshi, redistributive taxation and rural development and socially through the construction of a new society...of a free, progressive country. Once in power, the Janata s five-fold internal differences and the uneven balance of power among its constituents were telling. On caste, the Socialists espoused the cause of the rural poor and urban labour, the BLD was unabashedly a party of the landed interests of the Ahirs Jats Gujars Rajputs, the Hindu chauvinist BJS projected the interests of high-castes urban middle class and the CFD thrust forward the low castes. Similarly, the socialist ideology of welfare and redistributive justice ran into the economically liberal Congress (O) as well as the culturally conservative BLD. On the communal question, the BLD joined the Socialists against the BJS on the spectre of the RSS. All these pulls and pushes, especially the insuperable problem of integrating the RSS-affiliated political actors alongside the Socialists into a unified structure and reconciling the big-business orientation of the Congress (O) with the peasant-based politics of the BLD, were exacerbated by the uneven performance at the elections shown by these parties, which, in turn, conditioned the performance of the party once in power. Here, the greater influence of the Socialists pre-election was reduced by their getting 51 seats, while the Congress (O) had 55, the BLD garnered 68 and the BJS won 90 seats. Conclusion It is undeniable that the larger context for the emergence of an oppositional response to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, after her triumphal years of , was provided by the multiple crises of the succeeding years. In 1972, agricultural production declined by 8 per cent. By early 1973, 180 million people were affected by a spreading drought in the country. That year, prices rose by 23 per cent and more than 12,000 strikes were called for in Bombay alone. By early 1974, following the global oil crisis, India s import increased by a billion dollars and the resultant crisis within urban workforce came to fore in the May railway strike of more than a million workers. This was followed by the excesses of emergency between June 1975 and January 1977 and the Janata crested a wave against [it]. 59 Equally though, the tortuous coming together of the Janata Party was also symptomatic of India s cultural diversity and socio-economic fragmentations as well as of a political class in decay and system in crisis. 60 Thus, it was that the Janata constituents lacked effective leadership, compelling ideas and broad-based organisation. Their resultant squabbles and rivalries, once in power, robbed them 59 Ruparelia, Divided We Govern, See, among others, Brass, The Politics of India since Independence.

16 54 History and Sociology of South Asia 11(1) from becoming a long-term watershed in Indian politics. Barely four months to the day that the Janata Party came to power, Balraj Madhok of the BJS was lamenting to JP about the disunity, indiscipline, group-ism, nepotism and maladministration which has resulted in an alarmingly quick decline in the support and enthusiasm for Janata Party. 61 By September 1977, it was clear to Madhok that neither do the Janata groups have ideological nor emotional/personal unity. A caucus of old selfish leadership brought together by being anti-indira could not be kept together only through the basis of power. 62 Like many era-ending events, hindsight has distorted our understanding of the Janata groups by portraying their eventual coming together as something that had to be. As shown above, their interactions revealed more fault lines within opposition parties than between them and Mrs Gandhi. The positions of varying reluctance and eagerness taken by them were a response more to their own interests and pressure of their followers than to the political challenge represented by Mrs Gandhi or the moral call given by JP. Without these personal interests and organisational pressures, Janata would have been formed differently. At the root of these were the structural stresses like that of integrating the BJS/RSS with the other more loosely organised parties inside the Janata pantheon, which eventually led to the denouement of the Janata government and the disintegration of the party. The political space of opposition in India between 1974 and 1977 was like Borges garden of forking paths. Unlike argued by many, JP s untiring efforts did not automatically translate into Janata. 63 Throughout 1976, the Congress (O) and the BLD parleyed with Mrs Gandhi. Even the BJS and the overground Socialists were not averse to it. That credit cannot be taken by even JP, who continued to be in communication with Mrs Gandhi s officials till early-1977, but only by someone like George Fernandes. As late as January 1977, some kind of an understanding between Charan Singh and Mrs Gandhi was not impossible. As has been shown recently on coalition politics in modern India, internal party debates over whether to share power, with whom, to what extent, and how make more significant the strategies, tactics and choices of actors. 64 Acknowledgements I am grateful to Prof Nasir Tyabji for his encouragement, support and suggestions. I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and criticisms that have much improved the article. Special thanks to Prof Velayutham Saravanan for taking the time and interest to help edit the final draft. 61 Letter from Madhok to JP, dated 25 July 1977, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 62 Letter from Madhok to JP, dated 22 September 1977, JP Papers, NMML, New Delhi. 63 Dhar, Indira Gandhi, the Emergency and Indian Democracy, See Ruparelia, Divided We Govern.