1975

The annual articles and reminisces of June 25, 1975 have begun doing the rounds everywhere. In a couple of days, India, will mark the 40th anniversary of the day when Indira Gandhi suspended civil liberties and declared a state of Emergency. It is a fascinating period in India’s history and a lesson to all leaders how no two days can ever be the same in politics. Post the shiny win in the 1971 war with Pakistan that liberated Bangladesh, Indira Gandhi was hailed as Maa Durga. Yet, less than a year later, she found herself battling growing social unrest in the country that found articulation in Jayaprakash Narayan’s leadership. The straw on her back was when she was found guilty of having violated electoral laws by the Allahabad Court. All of it combined, rattled her enough to clamp down the Emergency on June 25, 1975 which lasted until March 21, 1977.

In popular culture, my most favorite piece of literature on the Emergency remains Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance. On celluloid, I only had Aandhi has a reference point. Said to be inspired from Indira Gandhi’s life, Aandhi was banned ostensibly because the film’s director Gulzar was uncomfortable directing a film on the Youth Congress. I have not watched Kissa Kursi Ka which is a satire on the Emergency and which was again unsurprisingly banned by the Congress. I looked it up on YouTube now and plan to watch it over the weekend.

My mostest favoritest figure from the Emergency days however, remains Ramnath Goenka. In fact, I was reading this excerpt from Coomi Kapoor’s book today and was prompted to write this post.

Ramnath Goenka was the owner and the editor-in-chief of The Indian Express. If you have watched Mani Ratnam’s Guru, it might interest you to know that the editor played by Mithun Chakraborty in the film is loosely drawn from Ramnath Goenka’s own persona and the events in the film, an inspired portrayal of Goenka’s real life war against Dhirubhai Ambani. Madhavan plays the role of Gurumurthy who was the investigative reporter wreaking havoc on the Ambanis.

Growing up, I aspired to this very position and used to doodle ‘My Name, Editor-in-chief, The Indian Express’ on my notebooks. I would have been in hallowed company – Kuldip Nayyar, Arun Shourie, and Shekhar Gupta to name a few. One of my professors at DCS, had worked for Loksatta – the Marathi sister publication of the Express and in him I found a kindred spirit. We spent many hours talking about the legacy of Ramnath Goenka and The Indian Express trading anecdotes from the many books that we had read about this period and Goenka’s stellar editorship during this time. Whatever demands journalism makes of its practitioners comes naturally to me. I say this without being boastful. Coupled with my fanaticism for the Express brand of journalism, nobody was surprised when I did end up being offered a permanent position a week into my unpaid internship.

At the Pune office of The Indian Express when it used to be in the Aurora Towers, Goenka’s medium sized portrait hung unassumingly. It was easy to miss, but sometimes walking past it, I would be reminded of everything the newspaper stood for and I would find pulsating energy coursing through my body. Of course, 2004 was a different time from 1975 and the kind of journalism that was offered to me was not to my liking. I quit and decided to direct my skills to research that would still allow me to investigate and write, but on a completely different scale.

Today, when reading Coomi Kapoor’s excerpt, I felt a thrill run down my spine again. I had long forgotten this feeling and though I have no desire to return to active journalism as a profession, it was a reminder that no matter what I do, I will forever find fulfillment in the kind of things journalists are wont to do. Observation and investigations, interrogations and analysis, narrating and writing. I will forever, remain a reporter at heart ❤