Responding to Madhu Dandavate, Rajiv Gandhi had said in Lok Sabha, 1985: “Not only have the hon. Members not paid attention to my press conference, they have not been listening to what I have been saying now. I have just said barely two minutes age that it is highly unlikely that one set of circumstances will ever repeat themselves in their totality.
In my press conference I said the same thing, I said that one set of circumstances will not repeat themselves and after…".
Rajiv had referred to a statement he had made earlier at a press conference, and said: “I was asked a very specific question. One, whether I thought the Emergency when it was proclaimed in 1975 it was Correct? I said ‘yes’.
I think it is correct and I stand by that statement”.
India debates Democracy and Emergency on 49th anniversary of 'Black night'
New Delhi
A few weeks ago there was much furore in India's political space when during the election campaign Prime Minister Narendra Modi described Muslims as those who give birth to 'many children'.But a five decades back, the table was turned and it was like a reversed role.
It is interesting to note that Indira Gandhi's Emergency rule for 21 monthssince June 25, 1975 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 "Hum Do, Hamare Do -- We two, our two" and imposed measures such as 'forced' surgically sterilizing young husbands and wives in households that already had two or more children.
Indira Gandhi's second son and present Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's uncle Sanjay Gandhi (now deceased) was at the forefront of this "crusade," a move Muslims publicly opposed as being against their faith.
In 1975, Congress leader and the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, paternal grandmother of Rahul Gandhi, imposed a 21-month "national emergency" on the country, suspending the fundamental rights of citizens.She had restricted the powers of parliament as well as the courts.
Media persons and a series of opposition leaders were arrested and press censorshipwas imposed and news articles and new items were censored, checked and clearedby officials appointed by Sanjay Gandhi.
"India, that is our common people, should never forget. The then Opposition leaders includingtwo icons who later became Prime Minister Morarji Desai (of Janata Party) and Atal Bihari Vajpayee (of BJP) were put behind bars," BJP national vice president and a Christian M Chuba Ao told this blogger.
The Emergency, a period of sustained authoritarian rule, lasted from June 25, 1975, to March 21, 1977. The move authorized Indira Gandhi to curb civil liberties including press freedom.
In a blog in 2018, the then Finance Minister Late Arun Jaitley (under PM Narendra Modi) recalled that the Emergency was promulgated to curtail opposition protests seeking Indira Gandhi’s resignation as the prime minister after a High Court ruled against her in an election malpractice suit.
"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.
Indira Gandhi was also very fond of the likes of Congress leaders Devkanta Barooah — who echoed Nazi sentiments and coined the phrase "Indira is India".
BJP lawmaker Sudanshu Trivedi once said, "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".
Paradoxically, the incumbent regime of Bharatiya Janata Party led by PM Modi is oftenalleged for trying to sabotage the Indian Constitution. The opposition often compare Modi withHtler.In fact on June 24 (Monday), when PM Modi took oath as a member of Lower House of Parliament in the first sitting of the House, Opposition leaders including Rahul Gandhi were seen holding up copies of the Constitution book as Modi walked up to take oath.
Rahul later justified the gesture saying it was to show that the attack by “the PM and Amit Shah on the Constitution is not acceptable to us, we will not let this happen”. Certainly this was unprecedented and in bad taste on the first day of any new Parliament session after general elections.
But everything seems to be fair in a political war.
One irony of politics also is that often old circumstances and issues do come back to haunt those who make them.Can one mistake become a legacy?
This is the dilemma the leaders of India’s leading opposition party, the Congress, now face.
Modi, leader of the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has forged an image as a tough taskmaster since he rose to power in May 2014. This was used by Opposition during the just concluded elections to dub Modi as a dictator.
"Paradox is an art and a fashion in politics. Do not mind my rhetoric.... But the fact ofthe matter is the Present is more important than the Past. If in the past, Indira Gandhiimposed Emergency...in the present there are reasons to believe under Modi there isundeclared Emergency... No one is safe and minorities are scared," says pro-Left analyst Ramakanto Shanyal in the province of West Bengal.
Of course, the BJP leaders would deny such charges outright.
The BJP leaders and Modi's ministers every year on June 25th take to social networking sites, address press conferences, deliver speeches in seminars and write blogs lambasting the alleged "dictatorial traits" of the Congress party including Rahul Gandhi.
Recently when Rahul Gandhi announced that his sister Priyanka will contest from a southern statefrom Wayanad - a seat vacated by Rahul himself, the BJP leaders did not miss to point out that evenfamily or dynastic push in a democracy is actually anti-democratic.
One BJP spokesman said on the condition of anonymity, "Rahul Gandhi is an MP... his ailingmother who hails from Italy Sonia Gandhi has moved to the Upper House of Parliament -- whereasshe could have retired and take rest. And now the third member of the family is also set to enterParliament. Never in the past three members of the same family have entered Indian Parliament".
PM Modi, known for his anti-Congress rhetoric, has in the past on a number of occasions attacked the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi as a "black night that cannot be forgotten".
On June 25, 2023 (last year), Modi had tweeted: "I pay homage to all those courageous people who resisted the Emergency and worked to strengthen our democratic spirit. The #DarkDaysOfEmergency remain an unforgettable period in our history, totally opposite to the values our Constitution celebrates".
In fact on June 24 (this year), addressing reporters before the beginning of the first session of new Parliament, Modi described Emergency as a “dark chapter” in India’s parliamentary history, when the Constitution was disregarded and the country was turned into a "prison".
Provincial leader Anil Desai of Shiv Sena in Maharashtra flayed Modi saying, ”The Emergency period has gone, but what is the situation today? No one likes recalling the Emergency… I hope the dark days don’t return".
Communist N K Premchandran of Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) said, “It (Emergency) happened in 1975, 50 years have lapsed, it is totally irrelevant. We are talking about things that are happening at present. It is insignificant talking about the 1975 Emergency at this juncture".
Legend has it that Christians were also antagonized by Indira's Emergency rule. Allegedlyshe 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, say Congress detractors.
Like Modi, one thing can be stated here that Inidra Gandhi too was 'popular' at the mass level;but she too was extremely populist.
But Indian democracy has an inherent resilience of its own.
Apparently, it appears the BJP leaders ought to be told that Indira Gandhi was defeated in the elections following the Emergency.This implies the faceless Indian public would not accept any authoritarian rule -- either Modi's or Indira Gandhi's -- notwithstanding their earlier popularity.
Home Minister Amit Shah had posted on X (Twitter): “The yuvraj of the Congress party (Rahul Gandhi) has forgotten that his grandmother imposed the Emergency and his father, Mr Rajiv Gandhi, on July 23, 1985, said in the Lok Sabha, taking much pride in this horrific episode, “There is nothing wrong with an Emergency”.
ends
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