By Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan

India remembers 26th June,2024, as the fiftieth anniversary of the promulgation of internal emergency by Madam Indira Gandhi on 26th June,1975. Time to recall the amazing facts leading to it, in and around, including the roles played by no less than Justice V R Krishna Iyer and the iconic jurist Nani Palkhivala, in the events unfolding then.

It was on June 12th,1975 that Justice Jagmohan Lal Sinha, Allahabad High Court unseated Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, as Member of Parliamrnt for ‘indulging in corrupt practices’. A stunning verdict out of the blue.

Indira Gandhi engaged Nanabhoy Ardeshir Palkhivala as her counsel,  to impugn  the orders in the election petition filed by Raj Narain. The challenge was listed before Justice V R Krishna Iyer before the Supreme Court. After hearing Nani Palkhivala on 25th June,1975, Krishna Iyer granted ‘interim stay’ of Allahabad High Court. But, the nature and wordings of the order made ‘a telling difference’ wrote a political columnist. Did proclamation of internal emergency on 26th June,1975, had anything to do  with it?

Tomes have been written on the “causes” leading to the draconian Emergency and the suspension of fundamental rights of citizens. Primary among the reasons cited are the Sampoorna Kranti – total revolution – urged by Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) and his call on June 20, 1975.

At a public rally in New Delhi, JP asked Chief Justice of India AN Ray not to hear Indira Gandhi’s petition against the Allahabad High Court order that set aside her election and in his 80-minute-long speech, JP also “deliberately” reiterated his appeal to the police, armed forces and government servants not to obey the “illegal and immoral” orders of the government.

 Supreme Court heard the case. In the interim order, Krishna Iyer wrote, “At the first flush I was disposed to prolong the ‘absolute stay’ granted by the High Court, moved not only by what Shri Palkhivala had urged but by another weighty time factor that the appeal itself, in the light of the directions I have already given yesterday, may well be decided in two or three months. But on fuller reflection I have hesitated to take that course.”

The ultimate  order passed by Krishna Iyer on “fuller reflection”, on 25th June,1975, was one not to grant “absolute stay” but grant “stay” with “conditions” that while the prime minister could attend Parliament, “She will neither participate in the proceedings in the Lok Sabha nor vote nor draw remuneration in her capacity as Member of the Lok Sabha”

Indira Gandhi felt slighted. She perceived the ‘conditional stay’ as an insult to her and the  constitutional position she occupied. And her lackeys and sycophants made so much noise which triggered a bugle, on the advice of Sidharth Shankar Ray, an advocate himself. Thus, was born the infamous internal emergency.

We can continue to speculate, in the fiftieth year,  that if Nani Palkhivala had succeeded in persuading Justice V R Krishna Iyer ‘to continue the absolute stay granted for 20 days’ by Allahabad High Court and ensured avoidance of the ‘conditions’, there may have been no internal emergency!

Could it have been avoided? Nani Palkhivala thinks otherwise, as he wrote about this true experience he had on the flight back to. Delhi to Bombay on 25th June,1975 itself. One was waiting to go on record with this Nani speak, for long, which has remained tucked away in ‘ We the Nation’, in the Chapter-  ‘Are We the Masters of our Fate?’.

Let us read it in Nani’s own words, as it happened, on 25th June,1975, the very day the election appeal of Indira Gandhi was heard by Justice Krishna Iyer as Vacation Judge. Destiny or happenstance as Justice R F Nariman called it!

“On the plane which I boarded to return to Bombay, next to me was seated an elderly, simple man dressed in khadi, carrying a khadi cloth bag. He asked me what had happened that day in the Prime Minister’s case and I told him briefly what the judge had decided.”. He was an inmate of Gandhi Ashram, Bangalore. He told Nani what a clairvoyant in Bangalore had told him sometime in May,1975 .

Nani again, “The conversation between us ran somewhat as follows. ‘When I left the ashram in May,1975 the clairvoyant told me that the Prime Minister would lose the case which she was fighting in the Allahabad High Court and yet, after losing the case, she would become the most powerful woman in the world. In surprise, I asked, ‘How can Mrs. Indira Gandhi become any more powerful than she is today? When she is already the head of the largest democracy on earth, what can possibly add to her power.

“I do not know. I am only repeating to you what he said? Unimpressed, I did not bother even to make a mental note of the name of the clairvoyant. But to carry on the conversation, I asked, ‘Did the soothsayer say anything else? ‘Yes, he said that the extraordinary power which the Prime Minister is to acquire will end in March,1977.’’ Did he mention precise month and year? ‘Yes, he mentioned specifically that the cessation of the extraordinary power would be March 1977’.

“Did he make any other prediction?’. ‘Yes, he said that Jayaprakash Narayan who is today the most popular figure in India’s public life would be stricken by a fatal illness which would carry him away in about two years. He also said Mr. Y B Chavan who aspires to be the Prime Minister of India would never attain that position’.

“I came home, wondering what the future would bring. In less than 36 hours Emergency was declared, the invaluable fundamental rights of the people were suspended, and the Prime Minister virtually acquired all the powers of a leader of a totalitarian state”.

To cut the story and predictions short, Palkhivala records that he disclosed his conversation with the passenger about the clairvoyant’s precise predictions to the Editor of Times of India and Ramnath Goenka of Indian Express, who was being hounded out by the Congress Government I need hardly mention that all the four predictions were accurately fulfilled’

Facts are always stranger than fiction. And internal emergency promulgated in India was of no different genre!