Forty years ago India was brought under a state of Emergency by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Some 19 months later, she was obliged to lift the draconian curtailment of civil liberties and call for fresh elections in which her party was ignominiously humbled.
In the last four decades, people’s rights have been sought to be curbed in a variety of ways by the country’s ruling classes and the political parties — in the states and the Centre — that attempt to do their bidding. This has been particularly the case with the poorer sections of the people.
But, in a more comprehensive sense, it has been widely felt over time that those running the state are no longer capable of fettering the people, as happened in 1975. The reason is that there has been a veritable communications explosion in this time — that people, thanks to advances in technology if not always through the means of the strengthening of democratic institutions, have developed many ways to dialogue with one another, making it much harder for rulers to impose their will, although they may not wholly cease to try.
For this reason, any recall of the Emergency was usually largely symbolic, and was generally intended by opponents of the Congress for name-calling purposes.
Small wonder, the trend of even symbolic recall on the anniversary of the Emergency fizzled out as time went by, aided by the fact that the Congress Party itself lost power in large parts of the country, until the formation of the UPA in 2004. But the general election of 2014 brought focus back to the Congress’ weaknesses.
This is why the spurt in remembering the Emergency this year is curious and is an evident by-product of the dynamics of contemporary politics — not excluding the fact that a “strong leader” has lately lost his shine and could conceivably resort to unusual steps, especially when his government is facing trouble owing to the obviously powerful associations of top BJP leaders with former cricket czar Lalit Modi. BJP patriarch L.K. Advani raised the issue of the Emergency in strong terms — saying that the forces that can “crush democracy” have now grown “strong”.
In spite of his subsequent disavowals, his remarks are apt to be seen as a comment on the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, although the RSS, whose ideas and ideology pervade different aspects of the present government and its political culture, openly differed with Mr Advani in a recent editorial essay of its trademark publication Organiser. In Mr Modi’s India, the perception is that the relatively poorer sections and their institutions are under pressure. This lends some credence to Mr Advani’s meandering articulations.
