Emergency was declared at midnight of June 25, 1975, marking the beginning of the ‘darkest hour’ of the Indian democracy. Since the Allahabad High Court convicted Indira Gandhi of electoral malpractices on June 12, 1975, the opposition was demanding her resignation. The political atmosphere was in turmoil, but no one imagined that the ruling Congress would take away all the democratic rights through the proclamation of Emergency.
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) led the people’s movement and fought the battle for the restoration of democracy. One of the Swayamsevaks, Shri Krishnanand Sagar Sharma, who was then an RSS Pracharak, was witness to each and every event from the mid-night of that dreaded night from the RSS Delhi office of Jhandewalan. His day-to-day account is serialised to apprise the present generation about the real horrors of Emergency and the real democratic struggle of RSS Swayamsevaks to protect the Constitution. Here is the first part, when the police gave a first knock at the RSS head office in Delhi and initial experience of the worst things to come:
The Dark Night of June 25, 1975
It was the midnight of June 25-26, 1975. At Delhi’s Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh’s (RSS) Office located at Jhandewalan, the telephone bell rang. Office in-charge Shri Devraj woke up and picked up the phone receiver. At the other end, it was Shri Kewal Ram Malkani (K R Malkani), Editor of The Motherland, who was also editor of the Organiser (Weekly). He informed Shri Devraj that Delhi Police had reached his resistance to arrest him, and he was leaving with them to an unknown location. The time was 1.30 am.
The message was clear that widespread arrests had begun. Shri Devraj immediately broke this news to the prominent Sangh workers. Resultantly, many of the RSS workers had left their respective homes before the arrival of the police.
At around 3 am, Delhi Police Jeep arrived at the Sangh Office. No sooner did Shri Devraj see the Jeep, than he put the telephone receiver down.
“Who all are here”? a police officer asked.
“Whom do you want to meet?” Shri Devraj reverted with a counter-question.
“Disclose the names of the people who are here”, police asserted.
“Whom do you want? Tell their names”, said Shri Devraj.
The other police inspector who was standing beside them respectfully explained that they were supposed to arrest a minimum eight to ten Sanghwalas (Sangh workers).
“At the moment, I am the only Sanghwala here. You can arrest me”, Shri Devraj retorted in the same tone.
“Fine, then you will have to come along with us”, the policemen said, and Shri Devraj accompanied him to Jeep and took him away.
Then, I was sleeping on the roof of the building. A Swayamsevak woke me up and apprised me about the arrival of police on the ground floor. For some time, I could not make out the reason for the arrival of the police. There was no disturbance anywhere, nor was there any nuisance. Everywhere there was peace, and still, police had arrived after midnight that also at the Sangh Karyalaya. There must be something wrong, I thought.
I asked Swayamsevak to inform me once the police officers departed. After some time, he returned and informed me that the police officers had carried Shri Devraj with them in their Jeep.
I immediately came downstairs and contacted four or five Sangh Swayamsevaks. I learnt that a few of them had already been arrested while many others had left their homes before police reached their doorsteps. On inquiring with the Motherland office, it was revealed that a large number of Swayamsevaks were being arrested.
Media Muffled
Around 3.15 am, two students from Maulana Azad College arrived, breathing heavily and restlessly. One of them was Sudheer Sharma, who apprised that an hour before, Shri Jai Prakash Narayan had been arrested from the Gandhi Peace Foundation. He also said that there was complete darkness near offices of Indian Express, Times of India, Veer Arjun, Patriot etc., located at Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, Delhi. I contacted the Motherland office again and learned that their power supply was disconnected; hence newspaper printing would be impossible.
Soon I started realising the gravity of the situation. Certainly, the Government was hatching a grave conspiracy, and to keep the public in darkness about it, the power supply to the media houses and their printing press was disconnected.
After this realisation, I thought of contacting some people from different locations outside Delhi to inform them about the situation. I telephonically communicated with the Sangh Karyalaya located at Jalandhar, Jaipur, Jammu, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Agra, Kanpur, Patna etc. and informed them about the series of events happening in Delhi. It seems, outside Delhi, comparatively a few arrests had been made on the night of June 25, as hardly anyone shared that such arrests had been registered at other locations I contacted. Only at Chandigarh, Jitender Veer Gupta, Advocate, the then Karyavah (General Secretary, RSS, Punjab Province) and his father Dilip Chand, Advocate the then Sanghchalak (President – Punjab Province) had been arrested.
At the same time, Sangh ShikshaVarg (RSS Training Camp) of Delhi, Haryana, and Punjab regions was going on at Rohtak which was supposed to end on June 30, 1975. Prominent RSS functionaries, Madhav Rao Mulye – Sarkaryavah (General Secretary), Shri Bapu Rao Moghe – Uttar KshetraPracharak, Thakur Ram Singh – Punjab PrantPracharak, Vishwanath – Delhi Pracharak and many other workers were stationed in this camp. Therefore, informing about the grave situation was critically important. As there was no direct telephone service available then between Delhi and Rohtak, I tried to book a trunk call at 3.30 am, but despite repeated attempts, it could not be materialised.
In the morning, with the announcement of the promulgation of the Emergency via All India Radio, the reasons behind the sequence of events in the night became clear. Declaration of Emergency in the country without any reason for any informed citizen was just an indication of the things stored in the coming future. As this news reached Rohtak through a radio announcement, Shri Vishwanath immediately left for Delhi. Around 10.00 am, he reached Delhi but did not directly go to theJhandewalan office. From somewhere, he called me up, and when I told him there was nothing to worry about as of now, he briefly came to the office, gave the necessary directions and immediately left. Since then, his underground days in exile started. Till the Jhandewalan office was sealed on July 3, 1975, he came merely four times for a brief period.
On June 26, 1975, Sarkaryavah Shri Madhav Rao Mulye reached Delhi from Rohtak. He also did not go to the Jhandewalan office but did not attend the office but went straight to the residence of M P Degvekar, who then was the General Secretary of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).
On arrival in Delhi, he called upon various functionaries one by one and discussed the prevailing situation, which included Sangh workers, political leaders and senior journalists. No one was clear about the future, but all concurred that the Government’s intentions were not good and could stoop to any level. Here onwards, Shri Madhav Rao decided to remain underground.
