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Implicit Call. Mrs. Gandhi's decision to suspend civil liberties was a response to the political tactics of Jayaprakash Narayan, 72, a mercurial onetime Mohandas Gandhi disciple whose grass-roots movement against corruption in the ruling party has become an umbrella for Mrs. Gandhi's political opposition. In a fiery and ill-considered speech to a crowd of 50,000 in New Delhi, Narayan announced a week-long massive civil-disobedience campaign to force Mrs. Gandhi from office until the Supreme Court rules on the Allahabad decision. His plans called for anti-Indira rallies in all state capitals and district headquarters down to the village level, as well as daily marches to Mrs. Gandhi's New Delhi home. In what appeared to be an implicit call for the overthrow of the government, he ended his speech by urging the army and police to mutiny—a remark that went well beyond the very permissive limits of Indian political rhetoric.
Following the rally, Mrs. Gandhi conferred with top-level Cabinet officials, including senior officers of the army. A short time later she asked President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, whose job is mostly ceremonial, for a new emergency proclamation; the 1971 emergency powers she assumed during the war in Bangladesh have never been rescinded but they apply principally to external threats. Even though civil disobedience has been so closely identified with India's struggle for independence, a government spokesman argued that the opposition demonstrations were "aimed at disturbing communications and generally affecting the law-and-order situation." He emphasized that it was "the call for action on the part of the armed forces and police" that led the government to act.
Who's Who. Operating under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act, which gives the government broad powers of detention, police began the sweep of dissidents in the early hours of Thursday morning. The police blotter read like a Who's Who of Mrs. Gandhi's bitterest foes: Morarji Desai, 79, a former Finance Minister who formed the Opposition Congress Party after a split with Mrs. Gandhi in 1969; Piloo Mody, 48, leader of the right-wing Swatantra Par ty; Asoka Mehta, 63, a former Congress Party minister who left the government in 1968; Raj Narain, 58, the Upper House member who brought charges of campaign irregularities against Mrs. Gandhi; and Jayaprakash Narayan. Also arrested were some 30 members of Mrs. Gandhi's own Congress Party, including Chandra Shekhar, 45, a member of the top policy committee, representatives of the Communist Party of India (Marxist),* and assorted nonpolitical "troublemakers."
Many of the arrests were apparently carried out with traditional Indian decorum. Desai, a lofty ascetic who undertakes Gandhi-style fasts and works at his spinning wheel (once when asked how he was able to make pronouncements with such absolute certainty, he replied, "Because I'm an instrument of God"), kept police waiting for an hour and a half while he carefully bathed and dressed. Mody was said to have kept four policemen waiting while he drafted a dramatic statement deploring "the inevitable knock on the door" by the "fascist forces."