Emergency is in debate and discussions and not without good reasons. 50 years back on June 25th, 1975, India's glorious Democracy was witness to highhandedness and suspension of people's basic and fundamental rights.
It is also a fact of the matter that after 1971, the 'liberator' of Bangladesh - Indira Gandhi could not handle the ‘success’ and grew suspicious about everything.
BJP leader Late Arun Jaitley said once in fact Emergency was promulgated in India only to curtail opposition parties protest seeking Indira Gandhi’s resignation after she was unseated by a court ruling in a election malpractice litigation by the Allahabad High Court.
"It was a phoney emergency on account of proclaimed policy that Indira Gandhi was indispensable to India and all contrarian voices had to be crushed,” said Jaitley.
An error of the past often actually becomes a legacy.
There is a dilemma the Congress leaders are confronted with today after they have been accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – in last decade years - of pursuing sectarian and communal politics – often crushing the democratic principles of the world’s largest democracy.
Narendra Modi is given to his image of a ‘decisive’ leader and a tough task master.
Thus in more ways than one – his government has been called “authoritarian and even anti-minorities”.
But BJP leaders in contrast take to social networking sites every year on June 25th, addressing press conferences and writing blogs lambasting the alleged “dictatorial traits” of the Congress party, ironically that fought for India’s freedom under peace apostle Mahatma Gandhi.
The principal reason being: in 1975 the Congress leader Indira Gandhi (grand mother of present Congress president Rahul Gandhi) had clamped Emergency in the country suspending fundamental rights of citizens and restricted the powers of Indian Parliament and also the courts.
The opposition leaders were put behind bars across the country.
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The emergency, a period of sustained authoritarian rule, lasted from June 25, 1975, to March 21, 1977. The move authorized PM Gandhi to rule by decree, suspend elections and to curb civil liberties including press freedom.
In his blog posted on Facebook Arun Jaitley (then India's Finance Minister) in 2018 referred to the episode wherein three senior judges of the Supreme Court Justice Shelat, Justice Grover and Justice Hegde were "superseded" and Justice A.N. Ray was appointed Chief Justice of India.
"The court was now packed with Government preferred judges. A dangerous thesis was propagated by Law Minister H.R. Gokhale that judiciary must follow the social philosophy of the Government and judges must be appointed on the basis of their social philosophy," Jaitley wrote. He has also compared Indira Gandhi with German dictator Adolf Hitler.
Paradoxically, during last 11 years Modi’s regime used to be often compared with that of Hitler – especially for its alleged anti-Muslim and anti-Christian slants and controversies like ban on beef eating or lynching of people for cow slaughter.
Other BJP leaders too went around the town slamming the Congress party and questioning its “democratic credentials”.
In 1975 on this day, democracy was murdered by the Congress party merely to meet political ends and to continue in power," Modi's trusted Home Minister Amit Shah had tweeted.
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| Blogger |
PM Narendra Modi, known for his anti-Congress rhetoric, has on occasions attacked the emergency, describing it as a "black night that cannot be forgotten."
On June 25th, 2025, Modi tweeted: "It was as if the Congress Government in power at that time placed democracy under arrest."
BJP leader Sudanshu Trivedi had charged the Congress with pushing a "Nazi mindset" by bestowing on one leader and her family almost cult-like status.
"In 1934, Hitler's associates used the phrase 'Hitler is Germany and Germany is Hitler,' and the same spirit was rekindled by the Congress in 1976 when its president Dev Kant Barooah used the phrase 'India is Indira, Indira is India.' This reflect a Nazi mindset," he said.
Congress leaders responded by attacking the Modi regime for unleashing an "undeclared emergency" after the BJP came to power.
"No one in the [current] Congress party leadership supports the excesses of the emergency that were committed in the 1970s. But now under the BJP and Modi, we have an undeclared emergency as media freedom is being curtailed and the federal government is grossly misusing the anti-corruption agencies," Congress lawmaker Abhiskeh Singhvi told this blogger a few years back.
Other Congress leaders concede that Indira Gandhi was known for her ruthlessness but they argue she had good intentions and held the country together in difficult times.
They refer specifically to the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 and subsequent developments in Bangladesh when then prime minister Mujibar Rahaman was killed along with his family during a military coup in 1975.
According to them, Indira Gandhi was a builder of "modern India" after India suffered defeat in the war with China in 1962. She was a builder of cultural institutions and she had a visionary mind.
In retrospect, while looking back at Indira Gandhi over the years and especially in the context of the emergency, she displayed a firmness and fortitude that earned her many admirers, notably after she lost her second son, Sanjay Gandhi, in an air crash.
One of her supporters was Rajmohan Gandhi — a grandson of Mahatma Gandhi but not related to Indira Gandhi — a prominent author who once wrote that Indira Gandhi was not afraid to gamble and could stand unmoved in front of a hostile crowd.
"I think she was unmatched in holding the country together. But BJP leaders also sometimes forget that Indira Gandhi was defeated in the elections following the emergency," said Congress spokesman Randeep Surjewala, suggesting the public could not accept her authoritarian rule despite her earlier popularity.
In fact, with regard Muslims – she was so much concerned about public appreciation that she pushed for Urdu promotion among Muslims in Kerala and West Bengal – the two states where Muslims prefer to use their respective mother tongues.
May not be religious, but she was extremely superstitious. However, by 1970s and 1980s, she developed a good working rapport with communists even as she was said to have been instrumental in dismissal of Marxist regime headed by veteran communist E. M. S. Namboodiripad in 1960s.
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