40th Anniversary of Emergency in India

One fine morning in early 1970s J L Arya, the justice of Allahabad High Court Judge, judged Indira Gandhi's victory over her rival Raj Narain (a political  buffoon ) as illegal. It was followed by calls for her resignations. Strikes and violence followed in most parts of India. Soon she would impose internal emergency on a sultry midnight in June. That was exactly 40 years ago,

At that point, India was independent by itself for less than only 30 years. The hangover of being ruled was still strong, so also the obsequiousness towards the ruler hadn't faded yet. It manifested itself by Indira Gandhi behaving herself as "Empress of India" by herself. She alone can't be blamed, as media branding her as "iron lady" and the success of Bangladesh liberation probably went to her head. Even Vajpayee famously ascribed her "Goddess Durga". Soon Indira would became a cult figure.  With cult status came sycophancy. D K Barooah, a Congressman famous said " India is Indira, Indira is India". She was soon surrounded by pliable sycophants who fed her what she liked. Her younger son and groomed political heir Sanjay Gandhi was already behaving as a bully.

All fundamental rights were snatched from citizens. Those who protested were put in jail. Indira and Sanjay Gandhi expected the opposition to bend, yet to their surprise many crawled. (One exception was Kishore Kumar, an extremely popular singer at that time. He refused to sing for Sanjay Gandhi and was promptly banned from govt controlled Radio and TV).

Not everybody opposed emergency.barring a few incidents in Kerala, not surprisingly South India was quite where she was popular with the masses as "AMMA INDIRAMMA (mother Indira, post emergency elections Indira swept South though she was defeated in rest of India). RSS admired her for teaching its arch enemy Pakistan a lesson by carving a Bangladesh out of it. It extended its covert support to her and she reciprocated by occasionally taking RSS's help during Emergency to further her political goals. She shrewdly played soft Hinduva card. But her son Sanjay had no soft corner for anyone and had no patience for the rule of law. He bulldozed slums of Delhi and rumored to have organized forced castration of Muslims, blaming them for India's population explosion.

But many who still remember those days say, though the freedom was clipped, it had its positive side. People in government offices (the biggest employer those days) came to work on time. Public sectors made profit. Buses, planes and trains were dot on schedule. Though short lived, it was proven that we respect the rod more than democracy.

I still believe a benevolent dictatorship with a vision is better than the chaotic democracy we presently have. We can disagree on this, but Jeffersonian model of democracy is a myth, a mirage and certainly doesn't fit to all milieu. yet we can agree that Emergency was one of the important events in the Post-Independent India and there is always have something to learn from history.