On 43rd anniversary of Emergency, Jaitley likens Indira Gandhi to Hitler

Union Minister Arun Jaitley said, 'Both Hitler and Indira Gandhi never abrogated the Constitution'.

Update: 2018-06-25 10:46 GMT
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley

Mumbai: Slamming the Congress party on the 43rd anniversary of Emergency, imposed in the year 1975, Union Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday accused former prime minister Indira Gandhi of transforming democracy into dictatorship, further likening her to Hitler. The Union Minister further said that her actions echoed Hitler's “Reichstag” episode.

Drawing a comparison between Indira Gandhi and Hitler, the Union Minister said the two leaders never abrogated the Constitution.

 

 

Highlighting the political situation of that time, Jaitley said an atmosphere of fear and terror prevailed in the country with all political activity coming to a halt.

 

 

The Union Minister also discussed how the press was subdued during the emergency and Congress pushed the idea of single-party democracy through its paper, National Herald.    

 

 

The BJP leader also recalled the famous “Indira is India and India is Indira” quote by the then Congress president Devakanta Barua. Jaitley remembered Jayaprakash Narayan telling Indira Gandhi in a letter, "Do not equate yourself with the nation. India is immortal, you are not”.

 

 

Jaitley, who is writing posts on Facebook on the anniversary of the Emergency under a three-part series titled 'The Emergency revisited', also said the lesson from Emergency is, "If you curb free speech and allow only propaganda, you become the first victim of propaganda because you start believing that your own propaganda is the truth and the full truth."

 

 

The senior minister has drawn parallels between the German dictator Hitler and Indira Gandhi in the past too.

On Sunday, in the first part of his series, Jaitley had recalled how more than four decades ago the government led by the then prime minister Indira Gandhi imposed ‘phoney Emergency on account of proclaimed policy that Indira Gandhi was indispensable to India and all contrarian voices had to be crushed.’

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