"What is happening in India today is worse than Emergency": D Raja on Samvidhan Hatya Diwas
New Delhi [India], June 26 (ANI): Communist Party of India (CPI) General Secretary D Raja on Thursday criticised the BJP for observing June 25 as Samvidhan Hatya Diwas, saying the current situation in India is worse than the Emergency.
He alleged that atrocities against Dalits, Adivasis, and minorities are rising and accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP, and the RSS of trying to change the Constitution framed by Dr BR Ambedkar.
Speaking to ANI, D Raja said, '...We see increasing atrocities on Dalits, Adivasis, and minorities, including Muslims, every day. What is happening in India today is worse than the Emergency, and never before have we seen such an arrogant, dictatorial rule as we are seeing today. We must understand this. PM Modi, BJP, RSS are trying to change the current Constitution given to us by Dr Ambedkar...'
While Shiv Sena leader Shaina NC slammed Congress on the 50th anniversary of the imposition of Emergency and said that Congress jailed opposition leaders, journalists and suppressed the judiciary in 1975.
'Today, June 25, is 'Samvidhan Hatya Diwas', the day when the Congress Party destroyed the Constitution. This is the same Congress Party that declared the Emergency without any discussion or debate. Over 1 lakh opposition leaders, journalists, and activists were imprisoned, and the judiciary was suppressed. We are proud that PM Modi has given us our country back and has also shown that no dictatorship will prevail in India. Remembering this, on June 25, the Constitution and its significance come to mind,' Shaina NC told ANI.
Meanwhile, TMC leader Kunal Ghosh said that the BJP has no right to politicise the Emergency.
'Our CM and TMC chief Mamata Banerjee has told very clearly that whatever happened it was for the time being...But the BJP has no right to do politics on these things because the BJP is attacking the Constitution now,' he said.
Between 25 June 1975 and 21 March 1977, India was placed under a state of Emergency under Article 352 of the Constitution. On 25 June 1975, the then-President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed issued the Emergency Proclamation under Article 352, citing threats from internal disturbance. This was the third Emergency in India's history, but the first one declared in peacetime. Earlier proclamations were during wars with China (1962) and Pakistan (1971). (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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