An Irreversible Dent

Bans and arrests then, bans and arrests now. We have come full circle, say political experts

- Abhik Bhattacharya

JUNE 25, 1975. It was around 9 pm. Delhi's Ramlila Maidan was flooded with people. The sweltering heat was not a bar. The capital city was yet to imagine a metro. People walked for miles, piled into DTC buses and rode cycles to reach the protest venue. Their demand was unequivocally clear-Indira, step down'.

On the stage were Morarji Desai, who came out of retirement to fight the allegedly corrupt Congress government in Gujarat run by Chimanbhai Patel; Raj Narain, whose plea led to the controversial Allahabad High Court judgement that banned Indira Gandhi from fighting elections for six years; RSS pracharak Nanaji Deshmukh; Delhi Jan Sangh leader Madan Lal Khurana; and Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) who demanded a "total revolution". Addressing the cheering crowd, JP read out Ramdhari Singh Dinkar's poem:

Singhasan khaali karo/Janata aati hai' (Leave your throne, people are coming)

A few km from the Ramlila Maidan, a different script of Indian democracy was being drafted. Around the afternoon, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, along with West Bengal Chief Minister Siddhartha Shankar Ray, met President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed and informed him about the decision to impose the national Emergency. Except for a few close aides of Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay Gandhi, nobody in the Cabinet was aware of it.

Elsewhere, at Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, in the office of The Indian Express, things were heating up. Journalist Coomi Kapoor, who later wrote the book 'The Emergency: A Personal History', was asked to check why there were frequent power cuts.

Nobody was prepared for what was going to hit them.

In the middle of the night, the police started knocking at the doors of listed' Opposition leaders. The plan was to arrest all of them at once so that they don't get a chance to escape or plan anything, reminisces Kapoor in her book.