I never thought that the daughter of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru would dare or stoop to snuff out the lamp of liberty to serve her personal and dynastic ends. I was therefore rudely shocked-plunged into deep anguish rather than swayed by anger-when Smt. Indira Gandhi clamped down Emergency at mid-night on June 25, 1975 and ordered the large-scale arrest of Opposition leaders and critics of her Government.
Among those prominent freedom-lovers who were not taken in then as "Her Majesty's Guests" was my esteemed friend, Shri M. C. Chagla. I have good reason to believe that he was one of the few men who was intensely disliked and also feared by Smt. Gandhi during those dark days.
It is a matter of great joy and much satisfaction for me to write this Foreword to Shri Chagla's Epilogue to his autobiography, Roses in December, which is now going into its eighth edition in less than four years. In the Epilogue, he succinctly deals with the emasculation of the judiciary and the darkness at noon that was the Emergency. His historic inaugural address at the All-India Civil Liberties Conference held in October 1975 in Ahmedabad (Gujarat), a full text of which is given in the Appendix, reads like a classic and reminds one of the Magna Carta.
At a time when nail after nail was being driven into the coffin of Indian democracy, with spineless Congressmen and others cowardly looking on, and even applauding, Shri Chagla was one of those who heroically resisted the dictator's hammer strokes, unmindful of consequences.
When I was brought to Bombay on November 22, 1975 as an invalid, the Emergency was on in all its ugly manifestations, Shri Chagla was one of the first to meet me at Jaslok Hospital.
Shri Chagla's stiff and sustained opposition to the Emergency was being widely reported in the foreign press and he himself was expecting to be arrested any moment. During our talk, I told him that Smt. Gandhi would never detain him. He asked me why. My assessment was based on sound reasoning. First of all, he has never been a party man or a professional politician. Nor had he ever been a rabble-rousing demagogue. He has held high offices in the judiciary and he has also been a top-ranking diplomat, India's Education Minister and Foreign Minister as also Leader of the Congress Party in the Rajya Sabha. In view of all this, if an eminent personage like him widely respected in India and all democratic nations, were to be put behind the bars, Smt. Gandhi knew that the world would know, despite all her chicanery, camouflage and censorship that there was something clearly phoney about her avowed reasons for desecrating the world's largest democracy.
I am glad that my reasoning with regard to the nondetention of Shri Chagla, in spite of his most provocative stance against the dictatorial regime of Smt. Gandhi, proved to be correct. Believe me, every dictator is a bully and coward at heart and Smt. Gandhi was and is no exception. It is said that it is those who have no inner conviction about their own religion who turn out to be fanatics. This is true of politicians, too. The man of conviction will be calm because he is sure of himself.
Shri Chagla's Epilogue makes poignant reading. Despite his physical age of 70 plus, Shri Chagla exhibited the youthful vigour of a full-blooded crusader during the crucial 20 months of Emergency. His observations on men like the then Chief Justice A. N. Ray and the then Attorney-General Niren De, not to speak of the then Law Minister H. R. Gokhale and others of his ilk are candid. He does not mince his words even though the persons happen to be his personal friends. I think this capacity and courage for forthright, detached criticism is a virtue Shri Chagla has acquired by his long years as a member of the judiciary. He says of Niren De: "It is true that the Attorney-General represents the Government but he owes a duty not only to his client but also to the Court. He has to guide the Court and see that it does not come to a wrong decision even if it is in favour of his client. But Niren De argued only from his brief and sometimes advanced the most preposterous pro-positions. Compare this with the role played by Setalvad as Attorney-General. The great reputation that the Supreme Court enjoyed before the advent of Ray was due as much to the ability of the Chief Justice as to the sterling independence of Setalvad who would never accept a proposition, even if it came from the Bench and was in favour of Government, if he thought that the proposition was unsustainable in law.
Thrilled by the minority judgement delivered by Shri Justice H. R. Khanna in the Habeas Corpus case holding that notwithstanding the suspension of Article 21, no illegal or mala fide order could be allowed to stand and the right of the citizen to challenge such an order by a writ of Habeas Corpus could not be taken away under any circumstances, The New York Times wrote an editorial that the people of India should raise a monument to Justice Khanna.
In the case of Shri Chagla it would be no exaggeration to say that he, by his daring and manly opposition to dictatorship and his fearless expression of views during the dark months of Emergency, has carved for himself an abiding niche in the hearts of freedom-loving people the world over, for Freedom is indivisible and dictatorship anywhere is a threat to freedom everywhere.
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