Indians, why 25th June, 1975 was called the darkest day in the history of democratic India?

PART: 1

25 June 1975 will go down in the history of the Indian Republic as a most infamous day and a black day when the then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who headed the Congress Party as its dynastic head imposed an 'Internal Emergency' in India for reasons which had no bearing to the internal security of the country.

The Emergency was declared by PM Indira Gandhi to suppress the widespread political unrest and agitation generated by her refusal to submit to her unseating from power in a judgment by the Allahabad High Court on an election petition charging her with electoral corruption in her Lok Sabha General Elections . Rather than to submit gracefully to the verdict given in the Court judgment the Congress Prime Minister by political subterfuge decided to continue in office.

The political agitation against the Congress PM was not led by any run of the mill Opposition political party leader. It was led by one of India's most venerated Gandhian and Sarvodaya leader Shri Jaya Prakash Narayan who stood for high moral values ​​in political office and political life. He was a freedom fighter of Indira Gandhi's father's generation and he could have assumed a high political appointment after Independence. But seeing the emerging trends in the closing stages of India's freedom movement he opted to be a crusader for morality in public life and of India's political leaders.

The Emergency was declared post-midnight with Congress PM Indira Gandhi virtually forcing a pliant President Fakhruddin Ahmad to sign the Proclamation imposing the Internal Emergency. Placed in office as a pliant President, by Indira Gandhi, he did not even question the reasons from the Prime Minister for such a grave measure.

Overnight, hundreds of political Opposition leaders and activists were arrested and put in jails all over India. The Indian media was strangled and put under stringent censorship. Human rights and freedoms were brutally suppressed by the Indira Gandhi regime. India's Supreme Court judiciary was interfered with. Some reports indicate that as many as eighteen Supreme Court judges were changed including a Chief Justice. There was talk of a committed judiciary. Even from within the Congress Party, the Young Turks MP's led by later PM Chandra Shekhar were also put behind bars for questioning Indira Gandhi's policies earlier.

Pliant bureaucrats were positioned in important appointments and were given sweeping powers to stifle all opposition to the Government and they really went on a rampage. Some of them occupy high Constitutional positions today under the present Congress Government.

The Indian democracy stood subverted by Congress Party Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and India was to be under a draconian siege till the 1977 General Elections. Till then the unquestioned writ of Indira Gandhi and her younger son, Sanjay Gandhi as an unconstitutional power centre plagued India. The Emergency imposition was to impose a 'shock and awe' effect on the Indian polity and the Indian public for their temerity to agitate against the existing political set-up.

In a manner of speaking the Emergency rule in India imposed by Congress Party Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was no different from the military dictatorship regimes of Pakistan.

It was ironic that an Emergency was imposed in India for reasons of political survival by the daughter of India's most admired democrat and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. It was more tragic that Indira Gandhi who also joined the freedom struggle for India's freedom struggle alongside her father should in 1977 stoop to suppress the very same freedoms and democracy that were fought for in order to continue as Prime Minister. The self-proclaimed high political morality of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty stood compromised.

It was also ironic that the vast majority of Congress Party political leaders with the exception of the Young Turks did not raise even a whimper of protest against their dynastic political leader for the subversion of democracy. They supinely went along and many of the senior Congress Party leaders stooped low even to touch the feet of the young dynastic heir apparent.

Another 25 June came and went past without India even pausing to recall this infamous black day thirty two years ago. The Congress Party could not be expected to recall the political misdeed of an earlier dynastic head. The Bharatiya Janata Party which fought against the Emergency in its earlier avatar as the Jan Singh seems to be politically frozen today by political inertia. This was an occasion which should have been highlighted on a massive scale by it all over India. It was only in the Punjab Legislative Assembly that Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal made special mention of the excesses of the Emergency despite vehement protests by Congress MLA's. Many would not know that the Akalis under the leadership of Badal spearheaded a massive protest against the Emergency rule. More than 40,000 Akali workers were put in jails.

The bulk of the Indian media controlled by industrial houses close to the ruling Congress Party, did not highlight this infamous day. If for nothing else they could have emphasized that India's democracy should never be allowed to be subverted by self-seeking politicians.

Congress Prime Minister Indira Gandhi Imposes Internal Emergency

Against such a background, the only redeeming feature that strikes the mind is that the people of India did no hesitate to strike back in 1977 against Congress Party Prime Minister Indira Gandhi for her subversion of democracy and the Emergency excesses. They unseated her from power. Though she came back to power again, not because of any new found political popularity but because of the internal squabbles of the Janata Party, politically the things were never the same again for her. Her image took a dive.

In this lie many lessons for the India of today stretching from attempts to put into Rashtrapati Bhavan once again a pliant political non-entity as President by the Congress Party President, to the questioning of Supreme Court judgments on unconstitutional legislation passed by the Parliament by political leaders and contriving dubious legislative measures to perpetuate in office those unseated as happened in the Office of Profit controversy.

India's middle class in1977 was small and yet they along with the rest of India unseated Indira Gandhi for her political transgressions and subversion of democracy. Today India's burgeoning middle class is over 300 million strong and they must politically empower themselves not only to correct the distorted electoral arithmetic imposed by casteist political leaders and custodians of minority vote banks, but also to act forcefully as sentinels of Indian democracy.

Never again should the people of India ever allow another Internal Emergency to be imposed on India by self-seeking Indian politicians, however charismatic. It is well said that 'Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty' and every Indian citizen should be alive to it.

24-Jun-2014

Well begun… Mr Modi

Who would have imagined the kind of Modi wave that has swept the country? That he has an unhampered mandate in the Lok Sabha of course augurs well for the country. But what augurs even better is the transformation of Modi into a near-statesman. His parliamentary speech could have ranked among the best that we may have heard in recent times from world leaders, Obama included, even if his electoral speeches were obviously pitched to the galleries. Each and every interview of his has been measured, judicious and wise, compelling one to believe that if Modi means what he is saying in the media, ‘achey din’ are certainly nigh!

True, Mr Modi stands exonerated by the SIT set up by the Supreme Court on the Godhra carnage. This should deflect much of political fire that he may have otherwise attracted. However, having spent my longest stint in life – nearly two decades – in Ahmedabad, with an abundance of friends there, I can say that the Ghost of Godhra is pretty much alive in many minds. Instances of some tenacious victimization of those, even academics, who dared point a finger at Modi aren’t entirely unknown. It is quite possible that such victimization was the doing of over-zealous underlings, and not necessarily of Modi himself. But be that as it may, Mr. Modi at least appears to have learnt some lessons and sobered up more than somewhat over these last few years. Whether his party has learnt some lessons, it is still too early to say, especially since the party is still in the euphoria of its honeymoon period, with the PM just sworn in and his ministerial team just getting into place. However, one fervently hopes his team will deliver, even if it appears more than a little thin on experience.

But Congress seems to be learning very little from its debacle. For its utter rout, Jairam Ramesh seems to believe his party did not manage ‘perceptions’ well! The party seems to believe their Ad agency, Dentsu, let them down, by not projecting ‘Rahul Gandhi as a young and dynamic leader out to empower the common man.’ It would have us believe that Modi and BJP’s electoral performance was primarily on account of their success in ‘preparing and successfully implementing a cohesive marketing and branding campaign’, as if their gross acts of commission and omission had no role to play in their rout.

In short, what these worthies believe is that it does not matter whether as a party you performed or not; it is irrelevant how corrupt you were or how indecisive; nor does it count that you brought down a perfectly functioning economy down from a 9% growth to a 5% one, with the inflation marching in the opposite direction. All that matters is how successful you are or are not in projecting a certain image of yourself before the public. In this understanding of politics, the public is an idiot who could have been had; except that Dentsu failed to deliver for the Rs. 600 crore it was paid to fool the masses. So what is the learning for the Congressmen from their debacle? No, it is not to control corruption, or to have better follow-up mechanisms for the performance of its Ministers, or to be more imaginative in delivering electoral promises, beyond populist gimmickry. Their learning is: Next time, get yourself a better ad agency; if necessary, pay them more. Performance does not matter. Only perception does, and an ad agency can and should be able to create any desired perception, never mind the reality of the product being advertised!

And what is AAP’s learning? Considering Arvind Kejriwal has been repeatedly bemoaning his mistake in having abdicated his responsibility in Delhi rather hastily, what has he learnt? Very little it seems. He is continuing to indulge in the very antics that lost him his public sympathy and is now losing him some of his high profile colleagues–whether Shazia Ilmi, Balakrishnan or Gopinath. But what is worse, he has ensured that for a long time, the very cause of anti-corruption would remain suspect in the eyes of the common man, for the aam admi will always wonder if anti-corruption platform is just another gambit for entering politics, so that once there, you play the same game as anybody else.

Well, history has given Modi and his party a rare mandate. Whether they capitalize on the opportunity to ensure they rule India for another ten or fifteen years at least is entirely their call. If they truly work for inclusivity, get necessary amendments to Lokpal Bill passed to make it truly effective, bring about judicial and police reforms and ensure a healthy and cleaner investment climate particularly in infrastructure, and give agriculture a strong fillip of productivity, BJP may well go down in history as the party that put India on a double digit growth path for the first time. There is no reason why it shouldn’t; and within two years at that. But let us remember, Rajiv Gandhi did have 415/543 seats in 1984 – the biggest-ever mandate of nearly 77% – much larger than BJP’s 282/543 this time – but Congress lost its power in 1989, thanks to the Bofors scam. If there is one bit of learning for the BJP, it is that it must avoid scams at any cost. Political and administrative probity will have to rank really high. Will it be too tall an order? Will Modi and his senior colleagues be able to control his inexperienced team and make it deliver? Will the hopes of the voters come true? Only time will tell.