One major paradox of political situation is that the "political decisions" often come back to haunt those who make them.
The Congress party knows it well. One blunder can become a permanent legacy.
This is the dilemma the leaders of leading opposition party in the world's largest democracy, the Congress face.
They nevertheless keep accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of pursuing an autocratic style of governance; but Indira Gandhi's Emergency cannot be forgotten.
Indira Gandhi was assassinated on October 31, 1984, at her residence on Safdarjung Road in New Delhi by two of her bodyguards.
She was 66.
Her assassination followed Operation Blue Star, carried out at the Golden Temple in Amritsar in June 1984. Subsequently, there was widespread anti-Sikh violence across the country and especially in Delhi.
Storming the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple) in Amritsar
The military assault to flush out militant leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale resulted in heavy civilian casualties, severe damage to the Akal Takht, and deep alienation among the Sikh community. The decision directly triggered the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards later in 1984.
Many Congress leaders and others have publicly stated that Operation Blue Star was the "wrong way" to handle the crisis.
However, a school of thought also point out that the central government under Indira Gandhi had allowed Bhindranwale's influence to grow for short-term political gains against Akalis.
The Emergency was promulgated to curtail opposition protests seeking Indira Gandhi’s resignation as PM after the Allahabad High Court ruled against her in an election malpractice suit. It is worth recalling that the Indira administration had removed 'certain judges' from the Supreme Court and appointed its own replacements to head the top court during this stormy period of undemocratic rule.
"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," Late Union Minister Arun Jaitley wrote in 2018.
He has also courted controversy by comparing Indira Gandhi with Hitler.
However, there is a twist in the tale. The Opposition Congress now calls Modi's regime a dictatorial that could be likened to the Nazi Party.
It is also alleged to be "anti-Muslim and anti-Christian" especially for the BJP's direct and indirect support for calls to ban the consumption of beef.
Cows are highly revered animals in Hinduism.
There are also reports of refusal to crack down on vigilante squads and mobs who allegedly lynch people for engaging in the cow-slaughter trade.
In more ways than one, his government has been called authoritarian.
However, it is a fact that every Oct 31st; the BJP leaders and Union MInisters including PM Modi.
They take to social networking sites and even address press conferences and write blogs lambasting the alleged "dictatorial traits" of the Congress party.
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 PM Gandhi to rule by decree, suspend elections and to curb civil liberties including press freedom.
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.
Indira Gandhi was a builder of modern India after India suffered defeat in the war with China in 1962. 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.
One of her supporters was Rajmohan Gandhi — a grandson of Mahatma 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.
In 2018, Congress spokesman Randeep Surjewala said that: "The BJP leaders also sometimes forget that Indira Gandhi was defeated in the elections following the emergency".
It is suggested that the Indian public could not accept her authoritarian rule despite her earlier popularity. These words were taken as a cautionary tale for the BJP, which could suffer a similar fate if it were seen as trampling on democratic principles.
Meanwhile, 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" and 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 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.
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