Life in a Derailed Democracy

Once outspoken Indians glanced nervously over their shoulders to see if anyone was listening before they dared engage in whispered political discussions. Single-page underground newspapers circulated in an attempt to provide information barred by censors from India's once lively established dailies. Some politicians who have not yet been arrested have gone into hiding; others have become temporary political emigres by slipping over the border into Nepal.

That was the accumulating legacy of the state of emergency, now in its third week, under which Prime Minister Indira Gandhi has suspended India's fundamental freedoms. Although the country generally seemed to be responding calmly to the emergency, Mrs. Gandhi last week showed no signs of easing her authoritarian rule. Arrests of the regime's opponents and of alleged smugglers and black marketeers continued across the subcontinent. Police seized the leaders of 26 extremist groups that had been previously banned and sealed their offices. Estimates of those detained ranged from 5,000 to 20,000. Internal censorship of information has become so tight that quotations from the works of India's national heroes--including Mohandas Gandhi and even Mrs. Gandhi's father, Jawaharlal Nehru--must be vetted before publication.

The Prime Minister last week continued to defend her draconian measures by insisting that India had been endangered by a conspiracy. For the first time, she singled out a culprit--the Jana

Sangh, a right-wing Hindu organization that has become the largest opposition party in the country and whose leaders are now in jail. Speaking in New Delhi, she declared: "There are people in this country who have tried to put every kind of pressure and obstacle in the path of our forward development." To prevent her opponents from "seizing power [and] bypassing democratic methods," she argued, she had to take democracy "somewhat off the rails." So far, however, Mrs. Gandhi has provided no real evidence of a sizable conspiracy. Although police raids of the offices of extremist parties produced caches of weapons, they hardly seemed sufficient to threaten a country of 600 million. Moreover the police had sufficient authority to seize the weapons without a declaration of a state of emergency. If Mrs. Gandhi fails to give more concrete proof of a dangerous conspiracy, a significant number of India's literate public will become convinced of what is already obvious to outside observers: that she has acted primarily to preserve her own power.

Blaming the CIA. Perhaps to bolster the Prime Minister's conspiracy theory, some Indians last week insisted that her political opposition had received support from abroad. Members of the Congress youth wing demonstrated outside the U.S. Information Service library in New Delhi, shouting: "Shame, shame, shame on the CIA." They were parroting the inevitable, automatic cry of Indian pro-Soviet Communist leaders and some Congress Party politicians who have charged that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was linked to the imprisoned opposition leaders.

That Mrs. Gandhi's government permitted the demonstrations, despite the ban on public gatherings of more than four persons, seemed an abrupt contradiction of the warm and friendly remarks she directed toward America a week ago when she praised "great fighters like Jefferson and Lincoln." She may now feel she needs the CIA as a scapegoat for India's current crisis.

Meanwhile Mrs. Gandhi has been carrying on with an economic program geared to win and retain her broad public backing. With organized labor already solidly behind her, she has been wooing businessmen by assuring them that she has no current plans for further nationalization of industries and by warning labor to eliminate crippling strikes. In a belated effort to nudge India's notoriously slothful bureaucracy, the government has been cracking down on civil service inefficiency. Minister of State Mohammed Shafi Qureshi paid a surprise visit to the railway headquarters just after the working day began. Finding that 150 employees were not yet at their desks, he locked out the stragglers for the rest of the day.

Since the declaration of the state of emergency, Mrs. Gandhi has been careful to remain technically within the bounds of legality. Last week she announced that Parliament would convene on July 21 for a week-long session. The constitution requires parliamentary approval of a state of emergency within 60 days of its imposition. Since the Congress Party has a two-thirds majority in the powerful lower house, Mrs. Gandhi will have her way.

Corrupt Practices. Convoking Parliament, however, is not without risks. To many, the session will seem a travesty so long as most of the leaders of the opposition remain jailed. Moreover, with freedom of speech guaranteed on the floor of Parliament, the remaining members of the opposition and perhaps even some Congress Party members may dare to criticize the Prime Minister's authoritarian acts.

Mrs. Gandhi must also worry about how the Supreme Court will rule on her petition to reverse a lower-court decision finding her guilty of corrupt practices during the 1971 election campaign. The ruling by the court is expected in one to three months. If she loses her appeal, she will be ordered to resign her seat in Parliament--and hence as Prime Minister. In this case, however, the Election Commissioner is expected to set aside the ruling that Mrs. Gandhi must forfeit her seat. By then, Parliament will probably have indefinitely extended the state of emergency, which would enable the Prime Minister to keep postponing the next national election--now scheduled for February 1976. Doing so, however, would probably mean that India's 28-year-old experiment in democracy had been permanently derailed.

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