AN UNFORGIVABLE EMERGENCY OF 1975 !

Today is the forty third anniversary of the black chapter in the Indian political history when emergency was imposed in the country by the then prime minister Indira Gandhi after she lost to the Allahabad High Court Judgement, thus instead of resigning honourably as the country’s prime minister, preferred to impose an unconstitutional and undemocratic emergency forcibly putting all the opposition leaders of the country behind bars whether they were the leaders of the left or right barring the leaders of the Communist Party of India who solely supported this unconstitutional proclamation. It was termed as a horrible saga to capture power by crushing the constitution and democracy and the opposition still calls it an unforgivable sin.

I fondly remember how people of the country, men and women were terrorised by the police and the law enforcing agencies who misused the act and weilded their dictatorial authority to harass, victimise and terrorised the opposition party leaders and workers and even the common masses.

Late Mrs. Gandhi’s son Sanjay Gandhi was then the autocratic boss who actually run the government during the emergency phase using his dictatorial tactics on fiicers and the entire police force to ensure that his five point programmes were implemented at all costs that included plantation on a massive scale, forcible sterilization (NASBANDI) of men andd women to contrl population etc. It was during the emergency that the then DDA governor Jagmohan was ordered by Sanjay Gandhi to demolish the Turkman Gate JJ clusters and colonies housed and inhabitated by the minorities creating lots of hue and cry that made headlines of every newspapers.

Sanjay wanted a clean and systemetic Delhi irrespective of the fact whether the Congress party gets votes or not. The forcible sterilization has badly annoyed the people of the country who were even put behind bars for not fulfilling the requisite quotas of NASBANDI CASES. It was ultimately the leader of the total revolution a socialist Jay Prakash Narayan who led a movement against the draconion emergency and formed the Janata Party to overthrow Mrs. Gandhi in 1977.

However, the conglomeration of good number of anti Congress parties, national and regional, whose one point agenda was to avenge Mrs. Gandhi by putting her behind bars for only two days have generated so much of nationwide sympathy for her that after 22 months these fractured parties, who always quarrelled within themselves fell apart and the Congress Party under the leadership of Indira again came back to power at the centre with a resounding majority.

The two most significant leaders of the Congress party then, the then Defence Minister Babu Jagjiwan Ram and former UP chief Minister Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna who accorded the red carpet welcome to Indira Gandhi’s bete noire Jai Prakash Narayan in Lucknow when the former was the chief minister joined the opposition band wagon in 1977 opposing the draconion emergency and Indira Gandhi thus providing a significant impetus to the process of formation of Janata Party.

According to an authentic report of an international human rights organisation about 1 lakh 40 thousand people from all walks of life were arrested without trial and put behind bars for more than twenty months. The prime minister Narendra Modi was today in Mumbai to commemorate the 43rd anniversary of emergency which he termed as the black chapter in the India history. While addressing the audience on this black day he said: Emergency is a black spot on the golden history of the nation. Observing black day today is not just to criticise the Congress for its sin of imposing Emergency but also to create an awareness for the protection of Constitution and democracy,” PM Modi said.

Prime minister Modi further said:
“I salute the courage of all those great women and men who steadfastly resisted the Emergency, which was imposed 43 years ago. Their struggles ensured people power prevailed over authoritarianism and the stifling of civil liberties,”.