Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury slams EAM Jaishankar's remarks on Emergency:
New Delhi [India], June 27 (ANI): Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury on Friday criticised External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar for the latter's remarks on the Emergency, saying that multiple times Congress party has repeatedly expressed regret for it such that an election was called by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi knowing well that she might be defeated.
'His predecessor, Pranab Mukherjee, regretted the issue of the imposition of Emergency in public in 2008. Once the Emergency was lifted, Indira Gandhi herself admitted that it was a mistake. On several occasions, Congress repeatedly expressed regrets, but now the ruling party is trying to tarnish Congress,' the Congress leader told ANI here.
He said that all those things are known by the EAM; however, he is being subservient to the 'diktats' of the Centre to keep on continuing his ministerial tenure.
'Mr Jaishankar knows everything, but to continue his ministerial tenure, he needs to be subservient to the dictates of the present government... What was the role of RSS during the Independence movement, Quit India, partition, and after independence?' he said.
Meanwhile, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh also slammed the EAM, saying he should focus on dealing with the 'collapse of Indian diplomacy' rather than talk about the Emergency.
'EAM would be well advised to deal with the complete collapse of Indian diplomacy. Indian diplomacy has taken huge hits in the last couple of weeks. He should be worried about repairing the damage to Indian diplomacy rather than getting into the history of what happened 50 years ago,' the Congress leader told ANI.
Earlier today, Jaishankar aimed at the Congress party, stating that one family's interests were placed above the nation, while he remembered the 50th anniversary of the Emergency.
'All this happened because of one family... There's a movie titled 'Kissa Kursi Ka', and these three words aptly tell the reason behind the imposition of the Emergency. When a family is considered above the nation, things like the Emergency take place,' Jaishankar said.
The EAM was addressing the inaugural session of a mock parliament, which was organised by Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM).
He recalled that during the Emergency, the opposition side of the parliament was empty as leaders were jailed. He stated that during that time he was a 20-year-old student at Jawaharlal Nehru University. He further said that the biggest lesson from the Emergency was to never take one's freedom for granted. (ANI)
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Agencies Representational Each year at midnight, June 25-26, I wish my mother a very happy birthday. This year, I was late by 15 minutes as I got caught up 'doing the dishes'. I've put that in quotes not because 'doing the dishes' is a euphemism for some nefarious midnight activity involving my sole contact in the PMO, but because putting something like that in quotes can immediately arouse the suspicion of said O, and keep them on their toes. The thing is, my mother's birthday falls on the anniversary of the Emergency. She turned 33 a few minutes after president Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed signed and sent back the draft declaration using provisions of Article 352 of the Constitution to impose an internal emergency. Looking at Abu Abraham's famous cartoon - published some six months into Emergency - of Ali Ahmed stretching out from a Rashtrapati-tub to return pen and paper to an outstretched hand 'symbol' behind the door, I suitably-bootably wonder whether such a cartoon would have passed today. Not so much for its critique of an obsequious nominal head of state, as much for its depiction of a president in his birthday suit. So, even being the luckiest guy to have the least authoritarian of mothers, my mum's birthday is inextricably linked with Emergency. As Srinath Raghavan's illuminating new biography, Indira Gandhi and the Years That Transformed India, reveal, an emergency under Article 352 was already in place since December 1971 during the Bangladesh War. But Mrs G wanted a new emergency - her One Big Beautiful Emergency, if you will. Much before June 12, 1975, when Allahabad High Court found her guilty of corruption in the March 1971 general election - a case filed by Raj Narain of Samyukta Socialist Party, whom she defeated by more than 1 lakh votes at Rae Bareli - Gandhi 'came to regard the dangers posed by the RSS' activism as linked to an American-supported attempt at destabilising her government'. Assassination of her aide, cabinet minister, and Congress fundraiser LN Mishra in January 1975 didn't help matters. Gandhi wanted to crack down on RSS, and Ananda Margis, by invoking an all-encompassing emergency even before the Allahabad High Court verdict. As Raghavan reminds us, 'Far from being lawful, the declaration of emergency on 25 June 1975 was a coup d'etat: in the original sense of the term a 'master-stroke of the state,' whose signature elements were surprise and secrecy.' Like every year, the media and its content-providers rolled out thoughts on the Emergency this year, too - the one day that LK Advani is taken out of the freezer and thawed for his 'bend-crawl' aphorism. But for all the righteous horror poured on 'the day democracy died', 50 years on, the Emergency has a new function: as insurance against any charge that India today could possibly be anything other than a model democracy. One extremely handy thing about any 'darkest chapter in history' is that it allows 'dark chapters' to come across as gentle gambols in the park. Take the Jewish holocaust. After that particular Nazi pol science field study, you seriously reckon Israel can be charged of genocide for its 'tough love' with Gaza? With countries like Germany falling for it faster than you can say, 'Fast and the Fuhrious', the upper-cased 'Holocaust' is brought out like garlic and crucifix to drive away any accusation of lower-cased 'holocaust' being carried out by Israeli ghetto-blasters. The same principle holds with our Emergency. Mention any current dodge'n'damage to democratic institutions by the state - whether GoI or state governments - and 'Emergency' is trotted out like Asrani with a toothbrush moustache. Umar Khalid, almost five years in Tihar without a trial, charges against whom have yet to framed in court? 'Pfft. That's nothing compared to what happened during the Emergency'. The other standard rebuttal being, 'Have you seen Pakistan?' Which is why, after 'doing the dishes' with Pontius Pilate diligence, and wishing Ma on Thursday, I realised why so many people are horrified by Donald Trump, his ICEmen, executive orders, sending military to quell protestors, using social media telepathy to weed out bad apples from entering America, his sycophantasmagoric coterie... Poor things, they have no Indira's Emergency to measure Trump's Urgency against, and find phew-relief like we do. (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. 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