Asad Ashraf,
Narendra Modi was right when he said that emergency was a black spot in the history of India. It was a time when constitutional rights of Individuals were suppressed to neutralize the vigor created by the Jay Prakash Narayan’s led Sampoorn Kranti movement, it was a dire attempt by the Indira Gandhi to demolish all voices of dissent and Prime Minister’s remark on the same should be appreciated.
Many of us who were not born then, may not be ever able to understand what political activists might have to suffer, they were sent to jails overnight. We can only imagine, all that people had to undergo during those days, we can only pretend to feel their agony, and if pretention causes so much of pain, it wouldn’t be difficult for us to understand the actual pain and agony of people living in those times, mostly political activists.
Indeed it is important to remind people of the terror unleashed by the then government upon its people, and how their faith in the democratic process led to the ouster of that aristocratic government from power in the center. We are told by our senior colleagues that many newspapers were shut down and national radio became the voice of the government, it could only be a shame for a country that fought against British imperialism with a vision to create a democratic India. It must a bizarre for politically conscious people to witness people being sent to bars for reasons as such as, shouting slogans, cutting electric poles and looking into someone’s eye.
However, what Prime Minister Modi forgot to mention in his Man ki Baat addressed to the country it is alleged that his government too is engaging in measures, which are anti-democratic and against the nature of the constitution. The elected head of the state must come clean of all those allegations.
He should have justified all the moves taken by this government and explained to the people of this country that all that has been done in the past two years of his rule was not undemocratic. By doing so he could have shut the mouth of those who have alleged that there is an undeclared emergency during his regime as the Prime Minister. But probably he knew his limitations there.
Some people while drawing a comparison between these two phases of time would say that Indira promulgated an emergency which was driven by constitutional measures while present state of ‘emergency’ is not even constitutional, it is implicit. And if one looks at the incidents that have led the critiques of the government, it would be difficult to write off their allegations.
This government is alleged to have attempted to sabotage the elected government in the state of Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, one of the prominent ruler of the leading government, Lal Krishna Advani in an interview to a newspaper said that there is an emergency like situation prevailing in the country. Probably he was hinting at the fact that this government is capable of declaring another emergency. The detractors of the government alleged that the functioning of the Prime Minister is dictatorial in nature, leaving no room for his cabinet ministers to undertake any major decision on their own. Foreign Minister, Sushma Swaraj has been referred to as a clown minister.
The government has also been at constant war with the universities and students’, be that the FTII, the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohit Vermula at the University of Hyderabad, the controversy over Periyar study circle or the JNU row. There has been a continuous tussle between the government and the students of different universities.
As far as the press is concerned, it has consistently been alleged that various electronic and print media have been forced to toe the line of government, a journalist who filed an RTI on the Ayush ministry was sent to jail. The national news channels have been parroting the lines of the government, the height of it was when Doordarshan telecasted six and an hour show celebrating the government’s two years in power. Is this what watch of a democracy is supposed to do?
The government has also been accused of fostering a communal agenda, by civil society activists and opposition parties. The main accused of the Muzaffarnagar riots have been appointed as the union Minister, one by one people accused of carrying out Hindutva terror in the country are being acquitted in the dearth of evidence. Rohini Sarin, the public prosecutor had alleged that she was asked to go slow against the accused in Malegaoan blast by National Investigation Agency.
A primitive style lynching of a Muslim man has been carried out under the nose of this central government, for his eating habits. A BJP leader was openly saying that the country should be Muslims Mukt now and the government chose to maintain an absolute silence over it. Is this not the murder of democracy?
It is true that the emergency of the past continues to haunt the nation today but many would claim that a serious threat of another emergency is lingering in the country, it’s time the government and Prime Minister come out of the state of denial and restore people’s faith in constitution and democracy by taking stringent actions against these fringe elements, hell bent to destroy the secular and plural ethos of the country unless that all this itself is not the policy of the government in power.
(Asad Ashraf is a journalist based in Delhi.)
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. IndiaTomorrow.net is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information on this article. All information is provided on an as-is basis. The information, facts or opinions appearing in the article may not reflect the views of IndiaTomorrow.net and IndiaTomorrow.net does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.
