A number of activists who took part in protests against Indira Gandhi's Emergency are now prominent politicians.
Emergency was imposed in the country exactly 40 years ago today. In that summer of discontent, many of the country's top leaders, across parties, began their political journeys. Union Ministers Arun Jaitley and Ravi Shankar Prasad and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar are among the batch of 1975 in Indian politics.
Runaway inflation coupled with a food shortage, a three-week-long railway strike led by the fiery George Fernandes and finally, the Allahabad High Court order holding Prime Minister Indira Gandhi guilty of violating election rules had added to an anti-establishment mood. Socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan or JP, came out of retirement and called for
sampoorna kranti or total revolution.
From Gujarat to Bihar, students launched protests. "After all, the JP movement was fueled by a students' movement," said communist leader Prakash Karat, who was then 27, and the chief of the CPI(M)'s student wing.
Nitish Kumar, then a 24-year-old student leader, followed JP and became a full-time politician. His partner for the Bihar elections this year, Lalu Prasad Yadav, was a trusted lieutenant of the JP movement in Bihar. So were BJP leaders Sushil Kumar Modi and Ravi Shankar Prasad, who at 21, was one of the main faces of the movement in the state.
In Delhi, Arun Jaitley, then an activist of the BJP's youth wing, was arrested for taking out a protest against Emergency. "JP was the glue who brought all of them together," said Ravi Shankar Prasad.
Left leaders Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury were active in protests that began from Delhi's famous Jawaharlal Nehru University. Mr Yechury, now 62, describes how he went underground and was picked up by the police the day he brought his father home from hospital after a surgery. "That was the kind of surveillance," the CPM general secretary recalls.
On the other side, the Youth Congress was fielded to counter the Opposition's onslaught of the young. Leaders like Kamal Nath and Ambika Soni, then in their 20s, were part of a team handpicked by Sanjay Gandhi, the younger son of Indira Gandhi. They would later be senior ministers in Congress governments.
"Indira Gandhi's government was a popularly elected government. They were a trying to dislodge her through an extra-Constitutional agitation. But eventually, elections were called and Indira Gandhi herself lost the elections," said Anand Sharma, who too was a Youth Congress leader then.