Mr. EMBREE. I would say quickly that I do not think it was specifically a serious concern. The Government was extremely concerned that there might be a widespread breakdown of law and order, as apparently there was-there is evidence that this was a genuine fear. If there had been more breakdown of law and order, then, I think there might have been secession movements. Not just in the south, but perhaps Bengal and elsewhere.

Mr. JACK. Certainly it was in the background. I do not think it was in the foreground a year ago.

Mr. EMBREE. I agree.

Mr. DERWINSKI. I have one other concern that both of you gentlemen touched on more indirectly than directly.

Recently prior to participating in a parliamentary meeting, I had the State Department give me a list of parliamentarians imprisoned and the figure at that time was 36. You stated, Mr. Embree, it is probably up to the sixties.

To what extent do you have a legitimately functioning parliament when you have people not only of the opposition parties, but even of the ruling party in prison for political activity?

Doesn't this, in effect, stifle legitimate parliamentary expression by the very nature of the confinement of these individuals?

Mr. EMBREE. I am sure Mr. Jack and I agree that it does. The Indian Parliament, in effect, has become an instrument of the ruling party. I think there is general agreement that India is moving clearly and quite deliberately to becoming a one-party State.

Mr. JACK. I agree, Mr. Congressman. From your experience here in Washington, you know how important it is for at least honest, balanced-if not full-coverage of a hearing like this or debates on the floor. By the very kind of press rules, there is a truncation of parliamentary debate in the Indian press. So in many ways it is not a parliament using all the democratic processes.

Mr. EMBREE. The rule of the press in India was enormously important. Indeed, it is in any country. The fact that the opposition speeches are not reported obviously limits the reality of the parliament.

Mr. DERWINSKI. But the functioning of parliament itself, under our rules, is important. The Rules of the House of Representatives, which were inherited from the British Parliament, basically provide rights for the minority.

The rules are to protect the minority as much as they are to aid the majority. I presume that this kind of functioning of parliamentary structure no longer exists in the Indian Parliament.

Mr. JACK. Not completely. There are minority parties, including the Communist Party of India (CPI) which is part of the majority coalition. But, there are minority parties that are functioning in Parliament and their spokesmen are free. They are not in prison. It is not just the Congress party doing business in Parliament. In Parliament today there are opposition votes. It is not completely automatic, Delhi is not yet Moscow.

Mr. DERWINSKI. But is Professor Embree absolutely correct when he notes, in fact, that this opposition in Parliament is not reported any more in the press?

Mr. JACK. By and large, it is not reported. In some cases, speeches by the opposition are reflected in the press. It is a differential kind of censorship as it has worked out, at least as I have read the Indian press during the January session of the Parliament when I was there. Mr. EMBREE. If an editor is daring, he can sometimes give some sense of what the opposition has said.

Mr. DERWINSKI. How about the academic freedom?

Mr. EMBREE. This is a question of great personal interest. There has been no opposition in the Indian universities. As far as we can tell, the only Indian academics who were arrested are the members of the right-wing extremist party.

They were arrested because they are leaders of the party and also one or two members who are members of the left-wing extremist party. The general impression one gets is that the university professors are certainly not in opposition.

Mr. DERWINSKI. Perhaps as good Indian philosophers, they are looking at the long-term picture, not being stampeded by immediate

pressures or concerns.

Mr. EMBREE. Or as one man said, there are no academic jobs in India except those that the Government pays for. You are right, but on the other hand, one has to take the economic reality that if one speaks out, one loses one's job.

Mr. DERWINSKI. Mr. Chairman, you have been very patient. May I ask one more question?

There is an interesting argument that is always made for strong man governments and that like Mussolini, they make the trains run on time. There have been complaints for years about the inefficiencies of the Indian bureaucracy.

To what extent has this seizure of tremendous power, permitted the Government to improve the functioning of the bureaucracy?

Mr. EMBREE. Mr. Jack and I may disagree. My impression and that of most people I talk to is that the bureaucracy is functioning much more efficiently.

If one wants to make an argument for doing away with democracy, India, unfortunately, provides considerable argument for it. Everyone says it will not last. I have the feeling again, somewhat different than Mr. Jack, that there was a sense of discipline that people are going to work, people are actually doing what they are paid to do and so on, and that there is a sense that the country is working better in a structural sense.

It is hard to get evidence for that. That is the impression even of Mr. Gandhi's opponents that I talk with.

Mr. JACK. I would not disagree, but I think it is terrible price that India and the people are paying for the trains running on time or for the discipline there is. Are the people as disciplined as they were a year ago, and really how important is discipline?

As I indicated in my paper, this is external discipline. It is a discipline of fear. It is not the kind of discipline that one would hope would have been engendered through real leadership by Mrs. Gandhi's father. He gave that spirit at least for those first, few, heady years, before independence and after.

I think this dynamic leadership is completely lacking today, even though people now come to work on time. I hope you would agree

with me that this is not a new, dynamic society. Here and there things. are running better.

Mr. EMBREE. I guess I would feel that is something.

Mr. DERWINSKI. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman.

Mr FRASER. What do you see in the long-run? You have indicated that there may be elections, but as the matters stand today, the political opposition today would not be able to speak out so that Mrs. Gandhi may be able to strengthen her political position and then pass laws which will, I gather, correspond to the effect of the emergency. Then, they can do away with the emergency and still claim that everything is constitutional.

Mr. EMBREE. That is my view.

Mr. FRASER. I gather from that, you think that is the way India is going to be for many years?

Mr. EMBREE. My own gloomiest estimate is that if Mrs. Gandhi retains power, it will certainly move in a more authoritarian direction. If she falls from power, which is quite likely, I see no likelihood of any return of the kind of democracy

Mr. FRASER. You say it is likely she may fall?

Mr. EMBREE. I think it is possible.

Mr. FRASER. How would that happen?

Mr EMBREE. From groups within her own party, within her own Parliament who may want power themselves. I do not think they want it for democratic reasons, but simply because they want power. Mr. FRASER. Will she give it up?

Mr. EMBREE. No, but she will probably face a struggle from people within her own party who will push her very hard.

Mr. JACK. I think that is the general feeling, if one may reflect persistent rumors, that Mrs. Gandhi may go the way of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of Bangladesh. There is a general feeling that as Mrs. Gandhi's base gets narrower, the possibility of a coup d'etat gets greater. This is a parallel that one certainly hears in India today. I would say one other thing. It is my impression-and I may be quite wrong that there will not be a new election without the lifting of the emergency.

I think there is an agreement that before there is a national election-there was supposed to be an election last March and that was postponed last January for a year-the emergency will have to be lifted so that those people who are in prison, these political leaders who are in prison, will be out for at least the duration of the election campaign.

Mr. DERWINSKI. One question.

Senator McGovern, after a visit to India, made the comment that a great deal of the opposition had gone underground. Given the situation you just described, Dr. Jack, do you think that the political opposition that is underground would then surface? Would they be allowed to participate in the campaign?

Mr. JACK. I think I agree with Dean Embree's remarks. I think the opposition is not that great. Unfortunately, from my point of view, I think really Mrs. Gandhi has nothing to fear by lifting the emergency and having national elections.

I think she would probably win, even with everybody from the underground surfacing and having an old-time Indian national election. I wish that there could be the coalition of forces that would oppose her and win. I do not see it.

However, let me say for my part of the record, I do not, obviously, agree with Dr. Embree's characterization of J. P. Narayan. I consider him one of the great men of India and of our times. He is really a great man and if he was not a wholehearted follower of Gandhi, neither was Mrs. Gandhi's father.

I will not take time to argue with his sentence here, but in my exhibit No. 1 I quote what J. P. said about the police and the army. I quote it in the exihibit at length.

I think it is not quite accurate to say that J. P. called upon the police and army not to obey the Government if they felt it was tyrannous. I think it is much more complicated than that, but this is the allegation of Mrs. Gandhi, which I think is wrong.

Mr. FRASER. Let me put a general question to you.

I get the sense that authoritarian regimes either maintain themselves in power through the sheer use of police power and the development of third and fourth arms of government like the KGB or KCIA, or they develop a very intense ideology which would be more characteristic of the authoritarian regimes in which they enlist the allegiance in the intense ideological campaign.

So, while there may be the presence of power, at least there has been some loyalty generated through an ideological campaign. This may not be a useful dichotomy here, but for whatever value it is, as you look down the road, which way would you see this Government, this group in power going?

Are they capable of developing a mass-based following with a genuine commitment with an ideology or is it going to be increasingly policy tactics?

Mr. EMBREE. Mrs. Gandhi is hedging her bets by doing both. This is an organization called the research and analysis wing. The acronym is RAW. Everyone says the acronym is more descriptive. It is a kind of autonomous CID, if you like.

There is a great attempt made to establish ideology. India is covered with slogans that symbolize that express idea that the only magic way to remove poverty is hard work, which some of us did not regard as radical socialism.

They are making a great effort to create an ideology that will symbolize the sense of discipline. Whether it will work or not, it is hard to say. They are endeavoring to go that way.

Mr. FRASER. To work, you have to get an elaborate organization in which people are involved with political organization at the very lowest level and a very high degree of ideological development.

Mr. EMBREE. That has always been the strength of the Indian Congress Party, it has complete organization down to the very grass roots level and if they are able to maintain this and push this kind of ideology, it will perhaps work.

The ideology does not strike most of us as being very impressive. To tell people to work hard, it certainly is not one that will catch their imaginations, but they are making a great attempt.

Mr. JACK. It sounds like a page out of Dale Carnegie; "discipline makes a nation great," "the need of the hour is discipline," "work more, talk less." Also they chanted in front of Indira Gandhi's home a year ago, "Indira is India and India is Indira.”

That is about the level of the ideological dialog in India today. Mr. EMBREE. It certainly is being pushed. I think they would recognize your point, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. FRASER. If they do not get something that is likely to attract more allegiance, there may be an increasing use of police tactics.

Mr. EMBREE. That is what many of us expect will happen. When people do not respond by working harder, there will be forces there to make them work harder.

Mr. FRASER. Where does that go then?

Mr. EMBREE. I would suppose simply to more repression and then possibly they will discover that, given the size of India, it is difficult to control it.

They will find that the negative forces, so to speak, will become greater than they can control. It will not necessarily be unified opposition, but there may indeed be inevitable breakdowns in law and order simply because the Government does not have the machinery to enforce it.

Mr. JACK. I think as we suggest these various senarios, we should not omit another. It has been said that India, with a legacy of Mahatma Gandhi, will never go for a military dictatorship. I think one can make an argument that it will be hard for a military coup to take over India; however, there are those who say that, given various alternatives, that may indeed be an alternative.

I, myself, do not see it that clearly, but I think if one were to line up 8 or 10 possibilities, one would have to say that one cannot exclude the possibility at some time in the future of a military takeover even in India.

Mr. FRASER. What has happened so far comes under a constitutional framework, is that true?

Mr. EMBREE. Yes; that is the argument.

Mr. JACK. By and large the Indian Constitution does have these exceptions. It provides for this emergency legislation. By and large it is constitutional, given the Constitution of India.

Mr. EMBREE. And given the fact of complete control of Parliament. Mr. FRASER. And then there was an amendment passed to bar the courts from reviewing the question whether the emergency is justified. Mr. EMBREE. Again, that is passed by Parliament. Justice Khanne, a well known jurist, protested this in that it went against the consent of constitutional law. But, the answer was that Parliament is supreme and could make such a rule.

Mr. FRASER. To what extent do you regard the claim of legitimacy for all of this because it is within the constitutional framework? To what extent does that or should it constitute a defense of what is going on in India, I suppose in legal terms, but rather, more broadly and moral terms?

Mr. EMBREE. It strikes me one has to ask it in moral terms. I think in strict legal constitutional terms, the Government of India is probably correct in its claim.