Emergency was imposed on June 25, 1975........
"Newspapers are part of a force which is there to obstruct the social and economic changes that we try to bring about....
It (emergency) was just for a very limited period. And during war time, we have lot of political rights are taken away from people and this was for India as serious as a war" -
Indira Gandhi justifying emergency and lampooning at so called 'press freedom' !!
In 1975, Congress leader and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, paternal grandmother of current party president Rahul Gandhi, imposed a 21-month “national emergency” on the country, suspending the fundamental rights of citizens and restricting the powers of parliament as well as the courts.
Opposition leaders were put behind bars across the country.
The emergency, a period of sustained authoritarian rule, lasted from June 25, 1975, to March 21, 1977.
The move authorized Indira Gandhi to rule by decree, suspend elections and to curb civil liberties including press freedom.
In a blog in 2018 on his Facebook account, the then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley recalled that the emergency was promulgated to curtail opposition protests seeking Gandhi’s resignation as prime minister after the Allahabad High Court ruled against her in an election malpractice suit.
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| Vocal George Fernandes : Man who fought Emergency era |
Jaitley, who too was jailed during Emergency, referred to an episode whereby the India administration removed certain judges from the Supreme Court and appointed its own replacements.
This was real stormy period of undemocratic rule in India.
“The court was packed with the government’s preferred judges.
A dangerous thesis was propagated by Law Minister H.R. Gokhale that the judiciary must follow the social philosophy of the government and judges must be appointed on the basis of their social philosophy,” Jaitley wrote.
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| Sanjay Gandhi and Mom Indira : Autocrats !! |
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.
Congress party activists burn an effigy of Modi in Jalandhar against a fuel price hike in 2018 (Punjab)
In the past, Modi himself and other BJP leaders make blistering attack on the Congress party.
Amit Shah has more than once describing Emergency as a “black night that cannot be forgotten.”
BJP leader Sudanshu Trivedi once 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 had said.
In a piece for an international news website - in the context of Emergency and Modi's leadership, I wrote:
"Critics of politics often complain that it (Modi Govt) encourages and promotes the art of self-interest.
But one irony of this situation is that political decisions often come back to haunt those who make them, meaning one mistake can become a legacy.
This is the dilemma the leaders of India's leading opposition party, the Congress, now face after accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of pursuing sectarian politics for the last four years, often crushing India's democratic principles.
Modi, leader of the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has forged an image as a decisive leader and tough taskmaster since he rose to power in May 2014."
Indira Gandhi and Morarji Desai
Indira Gandhi’s emergency rule was immensely unpopular with Muslims as the regime imposed family planning. In order to popularize a two-child-per-family trend, the administration coined the slogan “We two, our two”.
Indira and her son Sanjay had imposed measures such as surgically sterilizing young husbands and wives in households that already had two or more children.
Sanjay Gandhi was at the forefront of this “crusade,” a move Muslims publicly opposed as being against their faith.
Other minority groups were also antagonized by Indira’s rule.
Legend has it she once declined to meet a Catholic leader on learning he only represented 2,000 voters.
In that sense, it can be said she was a “people’s leader” — but only so long as these people voted for her. She was extremely populist and able to strike a balance with all sections of voters.
In Assam, her party’s electoral policy in the 1970s was reportedly aimed at “winning over Alis (Muslims) and Coolis (tea garden workers)”.
Regarding Muslims, she was so eager to win their widespread support she even pushed to promote Urdu among Muslims in Kerala and West Bengal — the two states where local Muslims prefer to use their mother tongues of Malayalam and Bengali respectively.
By the 1970s and 1980s, she had even developed a rapport with the Communists, a faction of whom backed her emergency. Later, she would work well with long-surviving Marxist Chief Minister Jyoti Base of West Bengal.
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During the emergency and in the years after, it came to light that she preferred a system and political loyalists who would take orders from her son Sanjay.
She was also very fond of the likes of Devkanta Barooah — who echoed certain Nazi sentiments and coined the phrase “Indira is India” — and she was willing to take orders from her trusted lieutenants like Yashpal Kapoor.
ends
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