New Delhi
The life of a nation is crowded with many events and developments, one following the other in continuous succession. Most of them last briefly. They make headlines for a week or a month, and recede into oblivion.
Some, however, have a lasting value. Their importance is enduring because they touch not the peripheral and ephemeral in a nation’s life, but its very core. For they compel the people of that nation to ask themselves: What kind of a nation we want to be? And is this event or development a boon or a curse to our vision of what we want our nation to be?
Indians asked themselves this question 31 years ago, when they came to know that the government of the day had clamped Emergency, severely curtailed fundamental rights and civil liberties, and also put behind bars hundreds – and later thousands – of opposition leaders and activists, including the venerable Jayaprakash Narayan.
What happened on the midnight of June 25, 1977 was a sudden turning point in the nation’s life.
India, the world’s largest democracy, became a country in which democracy itself was put behind bars.
From being the world’s largest democracy, India suddenly became the world’s second largest dictatorship – after China.
* * *
I earlier on said that many events and developments make headlines for a week or a month and then recede into oblivion.
Paradoxically, here was the most important development in the life of independent India, and yet what was happening during the Emergency Rule just did not make it to the front pages – or inside pages – of newspapers.
Because, for the first time in post-1947 India, the voice of the press was muzzled. The word ‘censorship’ entered the vocabulary of the common people for the first time, much in the same way that everybody came to hear the word ‘tsunami’ for the first time after it struck several countries in south and south-east Asia in December 2004.
Some brave editors and owners ran blank pages and blank editorials in their newspapers by way of protest, and they paid the price for their defiance.
Even ‘Emergency’ was one such strange word.
Most Indian had not heard of it. Between June 1975 and January 1977, they experienced it.
* * *
We are observing today 31st anniversary of the declaration of Emergency. Some people ask, “Of, it happened 31 years ago. Why are you still remembering it?”
Such people also add: “More than half of India’s population in 2006 was not even born when Emergency was declared in 1975. Why do they need to know about it?”
They need to know about it precisely because they are young and have no personal experience of this nightmarish period in our nation’s life.
For young or old, literate or illiterate, rich or poor – all have to decide what kind of a nation we wish India to be.
If the young are not told about this dark spot in the life of Free India, their very ignorance or apathy could prompt some future authoritarian ruler to bring our country again under Emergency Rule.
Young Indians should know who did it. They should know why it was done. And how it was done.
They should also know who resisted this strangulation of democracy. And why. And how.
A proverb has sounded the warning: “Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”
It is said, “Eternal vigil is the price of freedom.”
Eternal vigil is also the price one has to pay for democracy.
* * *
Let me remind this audience about another important anniversary that was observed in a different part of the world last week.
In Budapest, capital of Hungary, lakhs of people assembled to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s armed crackdown of a pro-democracy and pro-freedom movement in 1956.
Hungarians were resisting the Soviet domination over their country. They were also resisting the communist rule in their own country, which had deprived them of their basic democratic rights.
Their demand for democracy and freedom was crushed by Soviet tanks entering the streets of Budapest.
Hungary is now free. And it has also embraced democracy.
And so have all the countries in the erstwhile Soviet block, the so-called Warsaw Pact countries.
Even the term ‘Warsaw Pact’ – the counterpoint to ‘Nato Pact’ – has entered the proverbial dustbin of history.
Because the Soviet Union itself, along with communist-rule in Russia and all the Soviet-block countries, has entered the dustbin of history.
* * *
In today’s function, I have deliberately made a reference to the 50th anniversary of the crackdown of the pro-democracy movement in Hungary.
History tells us that the 1956 uprising was the first such mass protest in a communist country. The Soviets crushed it violently.
Then came the 1968 “Prague Spring”, when people rose to demand democracy and freedom in Czechoslovakia. It too was crushed by the Soviets.
When all this was happening, Indian communists were applauding.
Throughout the world, communist politicians and intellectuals were proclaiming that “democracy” is a “bourgeois” concept, which can be sacrificed at the altar of “socialism”.
I am saying this because this atmosphere was also being created in India.
The Soviet Communist Party, in gross interference in India’s internal affairs, called the JP movement “a fascist movement”.
And the communists in India, especially the CPI, applauded.
This emboldened the Congress party and its leader Smt. Indira Gandhi, who anyway was getting close to the communists after the 1969 split in the Congress party, to think that democracy can be dispensed with in India too.
I am recalling this Congress-communist linkage in today’s function because the linkage has resurfaced in a new context now.
Congress and the communists are partners in the UPA coalition.
To this day, neither the Congress party nor the CPI has sufficiently and comprehensively apologized to the nation for the sin of Emergency in 1975-77.
A few years ago, Shrimati Sonia Gandhi expressed half-hearted regrets for the excesses of the Emergency. But she has so far made no detailed statement on the Emergency, nor has the AICC passed a formal resolution saying “Sorry”, owning up the wrongs that were committed and categorically affirming that the Congress would never again attempt to murder democracy in this manner.
* * *
The Congress party’s failure to do so is telling.
For we must know that the clamping of Emergency was not an accident, not a whimsical decision by an unpredictable leader.
Two factors contributed to the making of the Emergency mindset in the Congress party.
- Personality Cult around a leader whose family has to be projected as the natural leader of the nation. Therefore, if the Constitution has to be subverted to secure this end, so be it.
- Subversion various institutions of democracy in order to protect the leader and her government from corruption scandals of their own making.
I shall dwell on both, because the Congress party’s thinking on both counts has remained unchanged.
We have seen recently how the Congress-led government abruptly curtailed Parliament’s budget session in order to introduce an ordinance to save its president from disqualification in the office-of-profit controversy.
It is only when the Congress leadership realized the high risk involved in doing so, that it quickly changed its strategy and enacted the “Sacrifice Drama” yet again.
The decision to adjourn Parliament sine-die, without even consulting the presiding officers of the two Houses, demonstrated that the Congress party is even today willing to go to any length to protect the Dynasty.
That the Congress party could not execute its undemocratic strategy shows that democracy-loving forces, led principally by the BJP, are far more powerful in 2006 than they were in 1975. It also shows that anti-democratic forces are far weaker today than they were in 1975.
We must therefore resolve to increase the strength of the former and decrease the strength of the latter in the years to come.
* * *
India’s Emergency experience also showed the close link between corruption and dictatorship.
All over the world, dictatorships have tended to be far more corrupt than democracies.
Corruption can take place in democracies too. But the institutions of democracy place many checks and balances to curb democracy and to punish the corrupt.
Therefore, those who are prone to corruption and have no genuine faith in democracy always try to subvert the institutions of democracy in order to secure protection for themselves. In extreme cases, they try to banish democracy altogether.
This is what happened in 1975.
The JP movement that preceded the declaration of Emergency was principally aimed at exposing corruption in the Congress governments at the Centre and in states.
The movement became mighty in Gujarat and Bihar, due to participation of tens of thousands of thousands who were inspired by JP.
Around the same time, the judgement of the Allahabad High Court nailed the corrupt electoral practices in the constituency of the Prime Minister herself, and disqualified her membership of Parliament.
The Prime Minister’s response to this gathering challenge to her leadership was to clamp Emergency, suppress independence of the judiciary, muzzle the press, and imprison anybody who dared to voice protest.
As I said earlier, the Opposition is far strong now than in 1975 and the Congress leadership is far weaker today than in 1975. Nevertheless, the latter’s mentality when it comes to the issue of corruption bears ominous resemblance.
Take the three major corruption scandals that have surfaced in the first two years of the UPA government: (a) Quattrocchi scandal (b) Volcker scandal (c) Scorpene scandal.
How the UPA government enslaved the CBI and subverted other institutions of governance to gift Ottavio Quattrocchi, the Italian fugitive, not only freedom but also 20 crore rupees of impounded money in the Bofors scam is brazen beyond words.
In Iraq’s food-for-oil scam, neither the Congress president nor any party office-bearer has so far broken their silence on how the Congress party’s name figured in the Volcker report as one of the recipients of slush money. No less a person than the country’s former external affairs minister, whose name also figured in the report, has publicly complained that he has been made a scapegoat. Shri Natwar Singh has pointedly asked why no one from the Congress party has been questioned in the scandal.
The last of the three scandals – the Scorpene submarine scandal and the related scandal of the “War Room Leak” in naval headquarters -- has now resurfaced with a bang. On Friday, the CBI conducted simultaneous raids at 19 places in New Delhi, Kolkata, Vishakhapatnam and Bhubaneshwar in connection with the sensational ‘War Room Leak’ in the Naval headquarters.
These places belonged to eight serving Navy and Army officers, a retired naval officer, and three bureaucrats in the ministry of defense.
More importantly, the CBI has also raided the offices and farmhouse of a well-known businessman who, according to in-depth media investigation so far, is the mastermind both in the ‘War Room Leak’ case and also in the Scorpene submarine deal.
I shall not mention that person’s name because he has filed a defamation case against me.
All I will say is that the CBI’s action, belated though it is, has vindicated the firm stand taken by the National Democratic Alliance in this matter.
We had charged that the government was guilty of a cover-up.
All along, the government maintained on the one hand that there was nothing serious about the leakage of secrets from the naval headquarters.
On the other hand, it continued to insist that the “War Room Leak” had nothing to do with the Scorpene deal.
Now, CBI itself has confirmed that the ‘War Room Leak’ is part of a “much larger conspiracy” impinging on vital aspects of India’s national security.
In the wake of the CBI raids, I demand categorical answers from the government on the following pertinent questions:
- What is this “larger conspiracy”, of which the “War Room Leak” is said to be a part?
- Specifically, will the government now accept that the “War Room Leak” is linked to the Scorpene submarine purchase deal?
- The Navy has stated, in an affidavit before the Delhi High Court on March 6, that certain “foreigners” are also involved in the “War Room Leak”. Who are these foreigners? Why has the government not named them so far? Why hasn’t it taken any action against them so far?
- In a matter concerning national security, why did the government allow unconscionable delay in action against the accused? Is this delay a part of the cover-up operation? Couldn’t the delay have helped the accused to tamper with the evidence?
- Who are the political patrons of those involved in these twin scams?
No active record(s) available currently for this section.
To Write Comment Please Login
.gif)
