On Friday, 12 July, the Government of India issued a Gazette notification declaring 25 June as ‘Samvidhaan Hatya Divas’, a loose translation of which would be ‘Murder of Constitution Day’. A year short of the 50th anniversary of the imposition of ‘Emergency’ shortly before midnight on 25 June 1975, by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the theft of constitutionalism under the cover of darkness now has an annual Remembrance Day. This follows the declaration of 14 August as ‘Partition Horrors Remembrance Day’.
It is important that Indians, especially future generations, should remember the Emergency blot on our post-Independence history, just as it is important to remember the unimaginable horrors suffered by Hindus before, during and after Partition. Forgetting the Emergency and the terror regime it spawned would mean running the risk of another dynast with an overwhelming sense of entitlement and privilege inflicting another wound on our Constitution. More importantly, it would amount to glossing over history and airbrushing those chapters that make us feel queasy, only to pave the path for history to repeat itself.
For, the urge that drove Indira Gandhi to impose Emergency remains encrypted in her descendants. Waving a pocket edition of the Constitution does not mean that that urge no longer exists; Indira Gandhi’s declared loyalty to the Constitution was no less, perhaps more, loud and raucous than Rahul Gandhi’s who keeps flashing a little red book.
Yet Indira Gandhi had sought to fatally wound the Constitution by invoking a constitutional provision (Article 352) meant for use in an extreme and extraordinary situation confronting the nation, not an individual, and making its invocation immune from judicial review through the 38th Amendment, thus disfiguring the Constitution even further. The 44th Amendment brought by the Janata Party Government to prevent future misuse of Article 352 can be easily undone through another illicit amendment: If a Supreme Court judgement can be controverted, so can a mere amendment to the Constitution.
The Emergency also demonstrated the ease with which the Nehru Dynasty could fuse the nation and the individual into one grotesque entity which then transmogrifies into a ruthless dictator with neither regret nor remorse. Recall Dev Kant Barooah’s fawning sycophancy reflected in all its lurid hues in his infamous slogan that ‘Indira is India and India is Indira’. Recall also the Emergency Regime’s assertion, said to have been inspired by North Korean propaganda, that ‘The Leader is right, the nation’s future is bright.’
Never mind Indira Gandhi’s official excuse as cited in her haughty address to the nation after getting an unquestioningly obliging President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed to sign on the Emergency Declaration of which the Cabinet and senior leaders of the Congress knew nothing — that India was facing an internal threat from ‘forces of disintegration’ — for stealing the freedom and constitutional rights of 62 crore Indians, trampling upon every aspect of democracy, defanging the Judiciary by stuffing the courts with handpicked grovelling judges more than eager to do her bidding, and cleansing the Legislature of all opposition, including those in the Congress known as the ‘Young Turks’ for not kowtowing to her.
The Emergency was all about Indira Gandhi circumventing the punitive provisions of the historic Allahabad High Court judgement by Justice Jagmohanlal Sinha that had unseated and disqualified her for electoral malpractices, by snuffing out the lamp of liberty and brutally strangulating the constitutional rule of law, and turning India into a single-party dictatorship (propped up by bottom-feeding Communists and Lutyens’ pink champagne socialists).
In the weeks following the shackling of freedom by an unscrupulous and power-hungry Prime Minister with contempt for the Constitution and disdain towards constitutionalism, a strange fear descended upon the people of this country — the fear of being punished and persecuted by the Emergency regime through its many agents and agencies. The Youth Congress morphed into Indira Gandhi’s Sturmabteilung, the police became the Gestapo, the jails were like concentration camps with their own chambers of horror, overflowing with prisoners of conscience and those who were picked up simply because the police, like the Gestapo, had to show they were active.
The dreaded midnight knock became the metaphor of those terrible, dark days when friends stopped trusting friends, relatives shunned relatives, teachers squealed on students and vice versa, and censors, deceptively called ‘Press Advisors’, decided what was fit to print. Press censorship was premised on the rule of thumb that ‘where news is plainly dangerous, newspapers will assist the Chief Press Advisor by suppressing it themselves; where doubts exist, reference May and should be made to the nearest press advisor’.
Barring the honourable exceptions of Ramnath Goenka, CR Irani and a few others, all owners and more shamefully, Editors, complied with press censorship. Journalists like Kuldip Nayar and KR Malkani who dared to protest were packed off to the nearest prison. While Emergency era data is not entirely reliable, as per a Home Ministry estimate of those days, nearly 7,000 journalists and media persons were arrested.
Editors were appointed on the ‘recommendation’ of Indira Gandhi and her cronies; editors were sacked on their ‘advice’. For all the false bravado we see today and the ad hominem abuse heaped on ‘godi media’, it would be instructive to recall and remember LK Advani’s gentle admonishment: “You (the Press) were asked to bend, you chose to crawl.”
Not everybody, though, was appalled by Indira Gandhi’s tanashahi enforced by hoodlums who wore white kurtas with Chinese collars. There were middle-class collaborators who praised the Emergency because the trains ran on time. Vinoba Bhave endorsed Indira Gandhi’s assault on the Constitution and its consequent impact on lives and limbs, calling the Emergency “Anushasan Parv”.
The Intelligence Bureau and the Central Bureau of Investigation were used for intimidating and harassing both rich and poor on mere suspicion of anti-Emergency activism. The Income Tax Department was instructed to let loose a reign of terror on trade union leaders. People were arrested under draconian laws like MISA and DoIA; many of them were brutally tortured to extract a confession that would serve the Emergency regime’s political interests — for instance, that he/she was a ‘CIA agent’. Being a ‘KGB agent’ was not deemed an offence. How else would the Communists who supported the Emergency have ensured food on the table for their families?
The Constitution was brutalised through the 42nd Amendment to declare India a Sovereign ‘Socialist Secular’ Democratic Republic, that is, a democracy restricted by deadwood Socialism and mangled Secularism, whose burden India is still forced to carry. To inspire confidence in the Supreme Leader, a massive Soviet-style propaganda offensive was launched. People were told to “Work more, Talk less” and warned that “Rumour-mongers are enemies of the nation”. It was all very darkly reminiscent of the Third Reich.
Indira Gandhi packed the Supreme Court with handpicked ‘committed’ judges whose job it was to overturn the Allahabad High Court’s judgement of June 15, declaring her 1971 election as void and disqualifying her from contesting elections for the next six years. To demonstrate their ‘commitment’ to her, the judges also suspended the provision for habeas corpus thus turning India into a terrifying police state.
Forty-nine years later, the excesses of the Emergency era may appear too distant in the past to be worthy of recall, remembrance and resolve. But to believe that would be indulging in self-deception. There has been no change in the attitude of the Congress and the party’s first family makes no effort to hide its unshakeable belief that it has the divine right to rule India, either directly or indirectly, and not be held accountable for the many sins of omission and commission of which the Nehru Dynasty is guilty. Indeed, to forget the Emergency would be a grave injustice to those who suffered horribly so that liberty and rights would be ours.
The decision to declare 25 June as ‘Samvidhaan Hatya Divas’ should be seen in this context. Remembrance leads to resolve: Never Again.
The writer is a veteran journalist. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
Comments
0 comment