RECENTLY, the country observed the 50th year of the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi in 1975. A lot has been written about this period when many democratic liberties stood suspended, thousands were jailed, and the media were muzzled. This period is seen very differently by some Dalit leaders who recall the radical measures taken by Indira Gandhi in the previous decade, like nationalisation of banks and abolition of privy purses.
The Union Cabinet last month passed a resolution condemning the Emergency and praising those who sacrificed immensely in opposing it. It was resolved to “commemorate and honour the sacrifices of countless individuals who valiantly resisted the Emergency and its attempt at subversion of the spirit of the Indian Constitution, a subversion which began in 1974 with a heavy-handed attempt at crushing the Navnirman Andolan and Sampoorna Kranti Abhiyan.”
The BJP is putting heavy emphasis on its great role during the 21-month Emergency. This matches the claims of the RSS that they were the major force opposing the Emergency. Like most of its other claims, this one is also devoid of any element of truth.
The search for some of the serious efforts by journalists and books by some others has another tale to tell. Prabhash Joshi, one of the doyens of journalism, wrote, “Balasaheb Deoras, then RSS chief, wrote a letter to Indira Gandhi pledging to help implement the notorious 20-point program of Sanjay Gandhi. This is the real character of the RSS…You can decipher a line of action, a pattern. Even during the Emergency, many among the RSS and Jana Sangh who came out of the jails gave mafinamas (apology letters). They were the first to apologise… Atal Bihari Vajpayee was [most of the time in hospital]… But the RSS did not fight the Emergency. So why is the BJP trying to appropriate that memory?” He concludes that “they are not a fighting force, and they are never keen to fight. They are basically a compromising lot. They are never genuinely against the government”.
TV Rajeswar, who served as Governor of Uttar Pradesh and Sikkim penned a book, “India: The Crucial Years” [Harper Collins] corroborated the fact that “Not only they (RSS) were supportive of this [Emergency], they wanted to establish contact apart from Mrs Gandhi, with Sanjay Gandhi also”.
While many socialists and communists were undergoing prison sentences, the RSS cadres were restless to get released from jail. Subramanian Swami of the BJP, in an article in The Hindu, narrated the emergency story (13 June 2000). He claimed that Deoras and Vajpayee betrayed the anti-Emergency movement by writing letters of apology to Indira Gandhi. “It is on record in the Maharashtra Assembly proceedings that the then RSS chief, Balasaheb Deoras, wrote several apology letters to Indira Gandhi from inside the Yerawada jail in Pune, disassociating the RSS from the JP-led movement and offering to work for the infamous 20-point programme. She did not reply to any of his letters.” (The 20-point programme and Sanjay Gandhi’s five points are cited by the Congress regime to justify the imposition of the Emergency, in its endeavour to regenerate India)
One of my friends, Dr Suresh Khairnar, former chief of Rashtra Seva Dal, was also in jail during that time. When he saw the RSS cadres signing the mafinamas, he was furious at this act of betrayal and confronted them. As per their style, they said what they were following the path shown by Tatyarao (VD Savarkar). So true of the strategies of the Hindu nationalists!
One also remembers that when Vajpayee was arrested in Bateshwar near Agra, overseeing the Jungle Satyagrah procession, which pulled down the Union Jack from the government building and hoisted the Tricolor, he immediately wrote a letter and disassociated himself from the 1942 Quit India Movement. He was released immediately. The followers of this ideology have been well characterised by Prabhash Joshi above.
While their verbally aggressive language is so loud, the practice is completely different. When Vajpayee led the NDA Government in 1998, the human rights activists did feel the difference. Many committed human rights activists regarded Congress and the BJP as two sides of the same coin. This period of their rule opened the eyes of many of us to the fact that the BJP was a party with a difference. That was despite the fact that the BJP on its own did not have the full majority at that time.
Now, Narendra Modi has been in the saddle for nearly eleven years. In 2014 and 2019, he got a full majority. And with this full majority, the true colours of their credentials are loudly apparent. While the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi followed the norms of the Constitution, now we are witnessing an “undeclared emergency”.
In 2015, in an interview with Shekhar Gupta of The Indian Express (26-27 June 2015), none other than Lal Krishna Advani said: “Today it has been 40 years since the declaration of Emergency at that time. But for the last year, an undeclared Emergency has been going on in India.
The freedom of expression has been totally muzzled. Many have been imprisoned for daring to speak the truth. Freedom of religion has a free fall. Justice is being overtaken by a bulldozer menace. The intimidation and torture of minorities on the pretext of love jihad, and cow beef is abominable. Many eminent social activists have been put behind bars in the Bhima Koregaon case. Young Muslim activists like Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam and Gulfisha Fatima are incarcerated and their cases are not coming up for hearing. The corporate-controlled media is ever ready to plead for the government’s policies and suppress the dissenting voices.
While the Union Cabinet and RSS-linked organisations are taking all the credit for resisting the emergency of 1975, the present regime is imposing the same by other means. The index of democracy on the global scale is constantly on the decline. There is a need to introspect and overcome the undeclared emergency which India is undergoing at present.
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Ram Puniyani is an eminent author, activist and a former professor at IIT Mumbai. The views expressed here are personal and Clarion India does not necessarily share or subscribe to them.
