 I am very happy to welcome Praveet Murugan Yastav who is a familiar face to many of us here. In fact, I was thinking how should I introduce him and I felt he wears so many hats that itself is something. But what's actually interesting is how so many of his hats from a very different angle has something to do with freedom. And if it was not for the fact that he was actually leaving the country today for several weeks, he could have actually called it multiple times to talk about different issues, different things to do with freedom. He's an engineer by training who specializes on issues related to energy policy, on telecom, on climate. He's been very actively involved with the People's Science Movement. He's been very actively involved with the free software movement on the larger issue of knowledge commons. So that's another sort of very important angle on freedom on which he's got very special knowledge and things to say. But given that we're going to have only one location to call him, we thought there was this one very special reason to call him which was to get him to speak on what happened during emergency. Praveet was a first semester student when... You're doing a PhD. You're doing a PhD. But yeah, you just joined. You just joined JNU when emergency was clamped. And on 25th of September, outside the School of Languages, he was arrested, mistaken for JNU SU President. And he spent all the entire period of emergency in the jail. So we'll get to hear from him about emergency as seen from inside, more than as seen from outside. There's one special thing that I would want to mention that this October, Modi ji decided to have a meeting to honour some people who had sort of been arrested in emergency. Praveet was invited and he wrote a letter refusing to participate. Because he said what you've done is as bad as what emergency was like. And unless you're willing to deal with this, there's no point... You have no right to celebrate what happened during emergency. So we're very happy that Praveet is here and we're out of here. First, I must start by congratulating the students of JNU. You know, when we think about JNU, we always think ours was the best time. We were the most politically active. We did the best of everything. But when I really look at it objectively, I have to concede that you guys have really done far more than we actually did. So the second thing, as Ayesha is saying, there are times the faculties to be staid, serious, never really came out except in one location during the emergency when they actually condemned my arrest. The only time JNU in the 19 or 21 months of emergency passed a resolution against what had happened. But you also have a very active, vibrant teacher association which has been quite active in this. And it's the unity of the campus that has been the striking feature of what we are seeing and the maturity with which the students and the teachers have met the onslaught that is today on JNU and also in various parts and various other universities. The fact that university has been chosen to be the focal point of the attack is also interesting because since I've been asked to speak about the emergency and I'm going to correct what Vikas had said, couple of things. So it is also true that at that point of time the universities were also the focal point of attack because it also clearly understood that that's where the resistance of the youth come from. They are in a place where they can meet, there is an exchange of ideas and new thoughts, new movements spring up from the universities and that's why the universities are always thought to be dangerous places for the establishment. So it's not surprising that they have identified the universities as the focus of attack. That's what we are seeing today. I'll come to the emergency part but before I do that I need to give a little background why the emergency took place because it's also something that needs to be thought about 40 years later because it does seem that we are entering a certain kind of phase which has certain similarities with what happened then but also certain dissimilarities. So one should not think that history repeats itself. It is certain things which are common, certain things which are not common. The emergency was in some sense was also very interesting because Mrs. Gandhi had won a massive victory in 1971. The Garibi Hatau slogan was such that it had really moved the country's electorate and she had I think more than 350 seats in the elections. It was a complete sweep that the Congress at that time it was to be called Congress Eye. After the election it really started being called the real Congress because it was, the electorate had decided that the Congress, oh and the Congress Eye was no longer that, it became really the Congress. Within three years of such a massive mandate, Mrs. Gandhi started losing the people. So there were student movements, not a particularly good one, the Navadirman Samiti in Gujarat which was essentially an anti-reservation movement which had sprung up and then there was what was the call for total revolution by Jai Prakash Narayan which had sections of the left, the sections of the right and also the socialists all a part of the larger gathering and Jai Prakash Narayan was talking about non-party movements. So there was this call for non-party movements but against the corruption of the government. In some sense it is reminiscent of the Adna Hazare movement as well because this non-party talk about only corruption, don't talk about fundamental issues were also very much a part of this call for total revolution. 1974 we had what would be the railway strike. Jainu was also one of the places where there was a lot of, shall we say, resistance. I remember that the students and I was, though I was doing my master's computer work in IIT Delhi, I came from Mutila Lairu Engineering College in Ilhabar. So I was to hang around Jainu because in those days the computers are not the ones that were there in your pocket or on your desk. There is to be big room in which there will be an air-conditioned room. The only place that is air-conditioned in terms of the computer center and there would be one big room with lots of cabinet which was the computer and you had perforated cards which you gave in and after 7 days you got a printout saying what are the mistakes you had made. So this was what we had to do. So 99% of our master's thesis time, if you were doing some computer work was spent in waiting for your printout. So I spent that time in Jainu. I had friends there, I was a part of the Students' Federation of India. So in 1974 we had the railway strike and the railway strike was in some sense a watershed because the working class movement also came out against Mrs. Gandhi. So this kind of rising movements combined with what then was the verdict that came out that her election was not proper, that there had been misuse of government machinery for the elections and so on and she got disqualified by the Ilhabar High Court. At that point she felt that there was a threat to her government, threat to herself, whatever the threat perception was and she also felt that she had the right to rule which was being taken away, probably. So whatever it is, she declared emergency on June 25th, a whole bunch of people were taken to jail and all firms of formal democracy disappeared. That means you had complete censorship in the newspapers. Students' union was actually deregognized. All the normal fappings which had been accustomed to changed in a day. Now the interesting part was that it was largely, it was police action, police oppression that we were seeing. It was censorship, it was police action putting people behind bars, stopping all formal protests. This was the characteristic of the emergency and the university here of course fell in line very quickly and students who were admitted by the normal process of selection, a set of the students' names was struck off, the admission list. The key one at that time was Dave Prashatri Patti who was the president of the students' union at that time with the SFI who is now unfortunately or fortunately whatever one wants to say in the National Congress Party of India NCP and he is the general secretary. So DPT was a students' union president. This name was also struck off and then there was a students' union meeting in which Ashok Latha Jain who was the student councillor for the School of Social Sciences, she chaired the meeting because DPT's case was there and the students' union issued a protest against striking off the names. I think 11 students' names were struck off including DPT's after which she was expelled from the university. So the students at that time had also been organizing protests of different kinds. So we had what was in that, that those times used to be a broadsheet used to bring out the resistance. Since cyclostyling, these were cyclostyling days. You didn't have Xerox machines and so on. So we had to cyclostyle. And since you couldn't cyclostyle them outside in Beir Sarai somewhat similar to what I believe you guys are also facing now. So we actually bought a small cyclostyling machine and we used to cyclostyle it ourselves and distribute it at night as a resistance. So we called for a three-day strike. On the second day of the strike, Tripathi, I and Inrani, one of our friends and a couple of others were standing there when Menaka Gandhi came to attend her to her class. She was a student of the School of Languages. And then of course we told her there is a strike. The student has been expelled. You should go back. So she went back. Now next I'm reading the Shah Commission report which exists on this. It seems she went back and complained to Sanjay Gandhi who was de facto really running the country at that point of time. Mrs. Gandhi had sort of abdicated her role to being the figurehead and Sanjay Gandhi was more or less calling the shots, certainly Delhi. So she went and complained to him that, look, you say there is an emergency. You say all this is happening. But I was not allowed to go to the campus. I was not allowed to go to my class. So Sanjay Gandhi called them Bindar. And this is all in the Shah Commission report. Called up Bindar and said, come and meet me. So he met him. So he fired him. What is this, useless? You fellows, JNU doing all this. My wife can't attend her class. So Bindar came. P.S. Bindar was a DIG rage. And he was the key police person in Delhi at the time who was also later on involved in what is called Sundar Daku's murder. He actually killed him in cold blood. And he was invited for this. And of course, finally it all got dropped because Mrs. Gandhi won the election and then all these cases got dropped. But nobody raised the issue. Was Sundar really a dacoit or not? The only question was, was Sundar killed in cold blood by the police? The Ishwar Jihan case with people are now debating, was she elit or not? That was really not the issue. The issue was, was Sundar killed in cold blood, executed what's an extrajudicial killing or not? So here is Bindar who then comes in. You know, rather filmy style in a black ambassador with a policeman. I was still standing there. Deputy had moved off. I was still standing there. And grabs me, pulls me inside the car. The scuffle for about five minutes. I'm not very F.T. So I couldn't really resist for rather large-sized policemen, including Bindar. So I was sort of whisked away. And then the fun and game started because the DM, the additional district magistrate P. Ghosh, who was responsible for siding the rest warrant, he said, I really can't sign this warrant. You guys have nothing against him. How can I sign this warrant? How can I sign a visa warrant on that? So then it goes all the way to the, what is called the divisional commissioner, Shushil Kumar. Then it goes to the left-hand governor, Delhi, who was Kishan Chander. And then the Kishan Chander, and all this is recorded in the Shah commission, Kishan Chander and the divisional commissioner, and Bindar. All three of them said the PM's house is involved, which means Manaka Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi are involved. So we have to execute this warrant. He has to be put in under MISA. That's when I go under MISA. So now, of course, P. Ghosh had one thing, which he didn't disclose. It's quite interesting. He didn't disclose this. He and Ashoka, on whose, Ashoka and I were engaged to be married. And we had given our notice for the marriage three weeks before this incident. And P. Ghosh recognized Ashoka because in the railway strike, all the stone throwing and all which we did, of course, only in retaliation for all the fire, all the shells that they were throwing at us, this tear gas shells. So only in retaliation for that, we threw some stones. So all that exchange that had taken place. So Ashoka and Ghosh had an exchange, a verbal exchange on this. So you remembered her and you talked about how J.D. students are very militant and so on. So I think he had some kind of a personal remorse about this, that these people were getting married three, you know, just a week after this and I'm going to sign this MISA warrant, but it is not there anywhere. He met me recently, we meet in some of this environmental conferences and so on because he became the secretary department of environment. So he very proudly tells others, you know, I signed his MISA warrant, I put him behind bars and I also married him. Because finally when we did get married, we also still, he was still the ATM. So it was a civil marriage, so we still got married in front of him. And he came to my, in fact, that night for the dinner, my father had invited him and even presented with me a little booklet called Prison Notebooks of Regis Debre, who were also at that time, we had been in jail in Latin America during, for going with Che Guevara for certain things. So the interesting part of all this is that while we are sort of remembered as the people who sort of fought emergency, were in jail in various things, as to be called every 10 years, 15th year, 20th year, 20th year, 25th year, after that it is stopped. Okay, remembering emergency. The interesting part is that we really were not the heroes of emergency because once we had been arrested, we were in a very free space. We were in jail. We could say whatever we wanted. We had no fear of anything. While the people outside were the ones who were the real heroes of emergency because every day they had to continue their fight. How do you fight this emergency regime? So I think, you know, courage is a very peculiar issue. Who's more courageous? The one who got arrested. I mean, in my case, I can't even claim too much credit. I was kidnapped. So it wasn't that I was doing anything great except stopping Manicka Gandhi, which others would have also done. So here I was sort of recognized for a long time in JNU afterwards. My peers would still remember my emergency days and so on. But the ones who distribute at every night would distribute the leaflets in the various rooms. The ones who organized during emergency. Who organized the resistance that took place in JNU, which continued for a long time. In fact, I think once somebody, senior functionary of the government came, I don't know who it was. The students all sat in the front chairs. The military started speaking. All of them left. So different forms of protest went on throughout the period of emergency. So I think the real heroes of emergency were the students who fought every day for what was going to happen. So, you know, in that sense, the distinction between the normal time and times which are in some sense abnormal is that abnormal times call for heroism. Normal times you do what you think is right and there is no threat to you. So we seem to be entering again, abnormal times. Abnormal times in which what you think, what you say, what you wear, what is all under threat of different kinds. What we have today, which is different from emergency to the police action, the vice chancellor's action, all this is not that different. What is different today is that you also have the physical violence that today has been unleashed by the AVVP and various forms of the RSS, the various organizations of the RSS, in which today any faculty of JNU goes to speak anywhere the meetings are being attacked. If the JNU name is used in a meeting, those meetings are being attacked. We spent to speak in Uzafalpur in Bihar two hours from Patna and there are 200 Lathi-willing, stone throwing mob they had gathered to attack the meeting. So this is the difference that you see that you have not only a government which is willing to attack civil liberties in different forms, but also an attack accompanied by really the, what shall we say, local goons at different places who will decide now what is permissible and what is not permissible. What is nationalism, what is not nationalism. What is Bharat Mata is the only test of nationalism or whatever test of nationalism they will create. But there is the other part of it which is that in all this, their attempt is to always find divisive issues. The issue is not to find symbols which unite people. The issue is to find symbols which will divide the people so that they can vilify one section. You can say these are the people who should be put outside the pale of India. They do not belong here. So the attempt is whether it is Bharat Mata, whatever it is, whichever the slogans, whatever the issues are, it is to create consciously divisive slogans to divide the people. And I think that is the combination of government patronage and physical violence. The combination of these two is the change. This is the threat that we see for the nation. I think what has been happening in JDU has brought at least the recognition to a lot of sections that we are entering certain difficult times and we need to think about what to do. It has united a very broad set of people. I must say that the kind of sections who have come together on this are, I will say, from liberal to left. There has been a broad unity that this kind of things is not what we stand for. This is not the India we want. How we can enlarge it is really what today is a challenge for all of us. And you as JNU, people who have played a very important role historically, not that you chose this role. It has actually been thrust upon you, but you have stood the test well. So the fact that you have chosen to stand up to it as students, as teachers, I think you will carry this responsibility of how to take this struggle forward, how to take this resistance forward and how in the future it can take a broad resistance against what this regime, the Modi government is doing. I will end with only a small comment on what I think is happening. I think I do not remember any government losing its popularity so quickly as the Modi government seems to have done. And having done that, I think that one of the reasons that chose nationalism as the platform on which to attack others is something they were reserving for nearer the election. I think they have shot their arrow too fast too quickly. And I do believe that this is not sustainable for too long. So question is how do we shape up to it? How do you build our, retain our unity? How we can build a broader unity against this attack? This is a real challenge. It's a challenge for you, for all of us who are outside and I think for the country as a whole. Questions? For example, oil prices are very low and India is getting an advantage of about 2 lakh crore per annum and the government is able to invest quite a good part of it in infrastructure. So why these prices like things have, because of what, why they are filling prices? Well I am not going to be an economist because you are much better ones at the campus than me. So I will just give you a quick business answer to the question that it is true that has helped in terms of the taxes because they have actually not reduced the price of oil and taxed the difference. That's really what they have done and they have increased the price of oil very recently again. But you must see one thing. Our industrial production has actually fallen. The agricultural crisis is very deep at the moment. Inflation for food grains, what Kanhaiya called Har Har Modi to Har Har Modi is very much here. So there is no doubt that there is a financial crisis in terms of jobs, in terms of the farmers. This crisis continues. And that's what is leading to a large section. That is what is leading to disaffection. So one of the issues is that you may be able to invest in infrastructure, which is good because it needs to be done. You may be able to help the business interests, which is what is doing, but in terms of the people, in terms of either employment generation, which is a huge issue, and agriculture, these are the two areas which is electorally sensitive for them and therefore the problem I think is not going to solve this also quickly. But as I said, you are much better economists in the campus including the one standing here, so I'm not going to comment further. I have a question to ask. Why don't you say something about the role of RSS during that period? That's something that you have not touched and I think that's an important aspect. I was sort of ducking this for a different reason. It might appear that I'm being very mean to them. So I sort of not wanted to do that, but this is your answer question. A, the RSS, which for instance was also jail after the assassination of Magandhi, it was a very different kind of RSS than we met in jail. We had heard at the time they were very committed, they were really, you know, they believed in what they said and they didn't really religion their commitments inside jail. What we found inside jail was a finding how to get out. And various letters were being written, as you know Balasaheb Dehra said, Dehra said these two letters where he wrote to Mrs. Gandhi saying, I accept the 20 point program, you're doing a good thing and so on, I'd like to meet you and wanted somehow to really have a reconciliation and Mrs. Gandhi at that time did not respond. I have very personal recollections of this which I have to share. I was one of the very few people who got relief during emergency through a court order. I had also filed for behavior spot, court was petition like many others did. So I was, I had to appear for my master's viva. So the court allowed that I be taken, not allowed, ordered that I be taken to Ilhabad for my viva. So I was taken under handcuffs, it's quite dramatic, I was taken under handcuffs with 10, 12 policemen guarding me and this is the only time I've got full bar birth in an unreserved compartment. The minute they got up onto the compartment, everybody left the compartment. Dangerous criminal guarded by so many gunmen. So anyway, so Bananaji Deshpukh was the same ward as I was. So he had told me, talk to Gurli Banharjee, we were quite badly injured, it was a small ward of only 30, 30 back people so we were all very friendly. Arun Jaitli was also the same ward. So he put on a lot of weight during jail, it's only after his bariatric surgery he has lost some of that. So anyway, so we, I was told to talk to Gurli Banharjee and find out what his views are. So this is cold winter night, 90 jail is a huge jail, this is one of the advantages of the colonial jail, they have huge space. So he took me around that whole compound, he walked for about an hour and his constant refrain was that the work of wisdom is the same, that somehow, I mean repeated, somehow, it comes out of here. So he also, after that I came into the ward and there were other RSS people over there. So another section of them met me and said, look, it's their opinion, it's not our opinion. They spoke much better Hindi than I do. So it's their opinion, it's not our opinion. So I said, okay. So I conveyed this sentiment of Ulliji to Nanaji Deshmukh. So he heaped a deep sigh of relief and said, Auraat maane tabna. So I wasn't aware of the letters of Barasad Devas. So I later on understood why he had the deep sigh and why he said what he did. So a section of the RSS really was very willing to compromise and get out somehow or the other. But Mrs. Gandhi had a problem that having declared emergency and having declared as a fascist threat to the country, there wasn't much that she could do to reconcile with her. And honestly, I asked Birat this question, that why did she go in for elections because actually she had continued for another 2, 3, 4 years. She might have got away with it because honestly the resistance of the ground was building up but there is no political resistance physically left except in campuses like JNU or other places. The physical activity, political activity had really in that sense come to somewhat of a halt. So she said, you know, he said that this is because in South she didn't win by huge numbers, she did. South she swept at that point. The section of the Congress party believed the emergency was good for them and they would sweep the elections. And she, since like Modi, she has also the pre-election, she cannot listen to any criticism. So only gets the thing she wants to hear. Same thing Mr. Modi also seems to have. So I think that she got therefore the belief that the emergency, if she lifted and had elections, she would win. And it would be affirmation of what she had done and she was badly mistaken as she discovered later. One thing I must say, though this is not the question you asked which I should have covered anyway, that you know before emergency the Indian middle class was quite willing for an authoritarian regime. They quite often would say we need a benevolent dictatorship. All this democracy is bogus. And when the emergency was declared they actually said very good. Now we will get disciplined. But disciplined they meant of course they would be indisciplined but everybody else would be disciplined. So therefore they really meant the workers would be indisciplined. They were really not right. We need to discipline them. But when they found that the policeman, one lowly constable with a danda was more powerful than the middle class Babu, then they turned and they realized that actually the so-called electoral democracy which we for a long time for granted had a value and protected us in different ways which an authoritarian regime did not do. And this was put in very simple terms by a peasant activist when he said, you know in emergency the power of the vote that once in five years you can throw out your leaders is a big power. It's something they realized after the emergency and that's why for 25-30 years you didn't hear about this thing about how we need an authoritarian strong leader. Till now the generation which has forgotten it now we have a generation which never saw this. So you have a new generation and therefore you have again this opinion we need a strong leader. We don't want dissent. We need growth and therefore all these dissenting voices should be controlled strongly and that also explains why you have the phenomena today. Campuses in India is really a burden like everyone in different campuses are coming out of their classes they are in problem and they are speaking and there is a kind of student movement in all over India in different campuses but what I see if I compare it to student movements in different countries which has taken place recently like in Chile there was a student movement from 2011 to 2013 and in that movement hundreds of thousands of students came out on the street and it went for two years for a whole two years it was about against the privatization of education and accessibility of education to everyone. So I want to ask you like in India also you must have seen different kind of student movement in like from the time you have like in all of your time you must have seen different student movements. So what is the difference you see in different student movement in India which has taken place as far as your knowledge and what and the difference of the student movement which is happening now with respect to student movement like happened in other places in the world like Chile and what is the potentiality of this movement which is happening right now in India. Crystal ball is a difficult exercise how to predict the future. But quick answer you know we responded also to international events at that time in fact campuses all over the world were really burning at the end of the 1960s you had 68 what is famously called the Paris Revolt of the students but everywhere the campuses were alive in the United States it was draft which was the military issue drafting students into the military and sending them to Vietnam in the case of other parts of the world there were also radicalizing influence of the Vietnam War itself. So for a lot of us in fact in my case I remember you used to see every day Vietnam on the front page of the papers and I went to the library I was one of those studious guys used to read there you know so spend a lot of time reading stuff and disadvantage of having classes very early in life. So I used to go and read all the books on Vietnam that I could get in the National Library my house was just next to it. So then that was the radicalizing influence we have which brought a lot of us onto the streets. So part of it is not the student movement alone but the larger movement that is there in society and the students the working class movements together really created the end 60s phenomena India extends a little more because of the emergency it goes on to so I would say mid 70s or even end 70s. You get a student movement which is very vibrant all over the world we saw a down slide after that. So you really don't get that kind of student movement again. We are seeing some of it pick up again what it will do in the future we don't know but it's clear the students reflect the ferment that is there in society and they are the in some sense the advance guard of change. So a lot of what's going to happen is something that we have to look up now to you for what is that the future that you are going to create because we can only give advice now sit here give a few bashings but you really have to create the future that's true for you know what you have to do. So I don't think you can take help from the past you really have to craft your own future. Thank you. Thank you very much for this very very vivid and very very vivid description of what emergency was like particularly through your own personal experiences. I have to share one one little thing I had heard a very little small part of this and read a little bit of this there's a short piece on Bodhi Commons on Praveer's Arrest and I have to say when on the 11th on the 12th Kanaya was arrested the sudden sort of comparisons made between what happened in January at the time of emergency and how this was really coming back of what had happened during emergency and how it was perhaps worse and so on that little piece on Bodhi Commons has a photograph of Praveer's and it's really like you've been transported 40 years so I think that's another sense in which students of today are very similar for what Praveer and his comrades must have been 40 years ago 40 years ago so for that thank you very much