Gujarat's Democratic Front Toppled Amid Emergency Chaos
On 12 June 1975, when the Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court, late Jagmohan Lal Sinha gave the verdict that the election contested by Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi from Rae Bareilly constituency of Uttar Pradesh in 1971 was cancelled due to illegal methods, on the same day the news came from Gujarat that Congress had lost the state assembly elections and the opposition alliance Democratic Front had won the majority. The leader of this front in Gujarat was Shri Babu Bhai Patel. At that time, all the opposition parties were running a movement against Indira Gandhi's rule under the leadership of Loknayak Jai Prakash Narayan, but 13 days later on 25 June, Indira ji imposed internal emergency on the entire country and put all the big leaders of the opposition in jail.
On the same day, 25 June, the electricity of Delhi's press area Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg was cut off and in the night it was announced that censorship had been imposed on newspapers. At that time, I was working in the biggest publishing house of this region. The next day, all the major English newspapers left their editorial columns blank. This sent the message that the editor's pen had been imprisoned. On one hand, while all this was happening in Delhi, on the other hand, a Democratic Front government had been formed in Ahmedabad, Gujarat under the leadership of Shri Babubhai Patel. Shortly after the imposition of emergency, the Congress toppled this government as well. Actually, Gujarat was the place from where the spark of the 1974 mass movement had erupted.
First of all, the student movement started here for civic amenities and it spread in Bihar, but after reaching Bihar, it turned into a flame. When socialist leader Shri Jai Prakash Narayan came to support the students in the Bihar movement, the writers of the state also jumped into it. Famous writer Phanishwar Nath Renu also joined the JP movement in Gandhi Maidan, Patna. At Gandhi Maidan, the Bihar Police had then tried to suppress the agitators with the help of sticks. Mr. Renu was also among those who were beaten with lathi. JP was already demanding that the then Chief Minister of Bihar Mr. Abdul Ghafoor be removed from his post because serious allegations of corruption and atrocities were being leveled against his government. Thus the centre of the movement gradually shifted from Gujarat to Bihar. Almost all the opposition parties in Bihar were running the movement under the shadow of JP's leadership.
These included Thakur Prasad Singh of Bharatiya Jana Sangh, socialist leaders Ramanand Tiwari and Karpoori Thakur. Late Thakur Prasad Singh was very quick to join the JP movement and did not hesitate to keep pace with his socialist friends. In fact, no other BJP leader of the stature of late Thakur Prasad Singh has been born in Bihar till date. He had spread the roots of Jana Sangh among the people. On one hand, when this movement was going on and its echo was being heard in the capital Delhi, all the opposition political parties of the country merged themselves under the leadership of JP, but due to all this, the date of 25 June 1975 came and all the opposition leaders were put in jail, but after this, the workers of Jana Sangh and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh were also arrested and put in jail.
At such a time, the present Prime Minister of the country, Mr Narendra Modi, worked in disguise with the aim of awakening the spirit of democracy and as a Sikh youth, he kept working for the organization and the nation while hiding at different places. At that time, Mr Modi was only 25 years old. Other workers of the organization in Gujarat also tried to do the same. After 21 months, when the Central Government officially announced the lifting of the Emergency in March 77, almost all the workers got relief from Changezi's rule. Now, elections were to be held after the Emergency. Indira ji was hopeful that her party Congress would win these Lok Sabha elections, because after the opposition leaders went to jail, there was no movement in her support in the country, but some time after the announcement of elections, the Dalit Congress leader of the country, Babu Jagjivan Ram, announced to leave the government and the party.
Along with him, Uttar Pradesh's strong leader late Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna and Haryana's leader Bhajan Lal also announced to leave Congress. This created a storm in the general public in favour of the opposition, although the opposition camp then had stalwarts like late Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Chaudhary Charan Singh, Raj Narayan and George Fernandes and great men like Acharya Kripalani were guiding all these leaders along with JP, but due to Babu Jagjivan Ram leaving Congress, the ground level electoral wind changed completely and for the first time in the electoral history of independent India, Dalits and Muslims voted for the opposition instead of Congress. The opposition parties ended their own existence to defeat Congress in the 1977 elections and together formed the Janata Party.
The 1977 elections were fought on the ground level under the flag of this party, but the Election Commission gave recognition to it only after the elections were over and the elections were fought on the election symbol of Chaudhary Charan Singh's Bharatiya Lok Dal, a farmer with a plough on his shoulder. Then it was asked from the Congress that who will be the Prime Minister of this Panchamal Party? Acharya Kripalani used to answer this question very politely and used to say that Janata Party is the party of the people and whoever the people want will be the Prime Minister. Elections were held after the emergency and Janata Party got a huge victory but the government could not last even for two and a half years. In these elections, Janata Party got 295 seats and Congress got 153 seats, whereas Janata Party had contested only 405 out of 543 seats and Congress had fielded its candidates on all the seats in alliance with the Communist Party of India, but when elections were held again in 1980, Indira Gandhi's Congress again won with a huge majority.
Political analysts think the Janata Party erred in selecting its Prime Minister, which is the reason for this. If Babu Jagjivan Ram had been made the Prime Minister in 1977 instead of Morariji Desai, the direction of the country's politics would have changed. But this is just a speculation because after 1980, when the BJP was reduced to just two seats in 1984, the way nationalism was awakened in national politics, it gave new dimensions to the expectations of all Indians, which Shri Narendra Modi gave a new direction to in 2014 and redefined the basic elements of politics. Shri Modi has done the bold task of changing the permanent quality of politics, which no Jan Sangh or BJP leader could do before him. Therefore, at present, we have to continuously keep our democracy strong.