Latest news with #Advani
Indian Express
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
L K Advani's prison diaries: Constitutional morality, Indira Gandhi, and Thomas Jefferson
Detained without trial for months in Bangalore Central jail, L K Advani maintained a prison notebook. On December 28, 1975, when Emergency was in full swing, the then Jana Sangh leader wrote that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi wanted the Constitution to be changed after a public debate but questioned her intentions, and countered her claim that the Opposition was in favour of an 'inflexible Constitution'. The observations are important given that 50 years after Emergency, both the government and the Opposition continue to swear by the Constitution and accuse each other of trying to damage it. Advani wrote that in an interview given just before the All India Congress Committee (AICC) session in Chandigarh earlier that month, Gandhi cited Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of the United States and its third President, who believed that the life of a Constitution should be just two decades. 'Indira Gandhi's statement is a part of an interview she gave to the souvenir published on the eve of the Congress session at Chandigarh. In the interview, she quotes Thomas Jefferson's well-known dictum about the desirability of reviewing a country's Constitution every twenty years. She has cited him against the opposition whom she described as being opposed to any change in the Constitution,' Advani wrote in A Prisoners' Scrap-Book, his writings in jail from 1975 to 1977 that later acquired the form of a book. While Gandhi had accused the Opposition of being against any change in the Constitution, Advani said the latter was in favour of desirable change but not change that would damage democracy. The argument Jefferson made is found in a letter he wrote to James Madison, his successor as US President and the person considered the 'father of the American Constitution', on September 6, 1789. '… No society can make a perpetual Constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished, in their natural course, with those who gave them being… Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it is enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right.' Taking a dig at the Congress, Advani wrote, 'There has lately been a welter of statements by Congressmen that the Constitution needs to be changed early and that delay would be disastrous. Indira Gandhi threw cold water on such talk with a statement that changes in the Constitution should be preceded by a thorough-going public debate.' He added, 'As if an electric button has been pressed, the tenor of speeches regarding constitutional amendment changes. Every Congress chhut-bhaiya (small fry) now talks of the need for a public discussion on the issue.' Advani wrote in his diary that 'none of the opposition parties in the JP movement is opposed to desirable changes in the Constitution'. 'Indeed, if one were to go through the election manifestos of the various political parties for the 1971 and 1972 elections, one would find that they are more committed to constitutional reform than the ruling party. The Jana Sangh has favoured the setting up of a Commission on the Constitution to review its working. The Socialist Party has advocated a fresh constituent assembly. So, there is no substance in Indira Gandhi's charge that the opposition parties are for an inflexible Constitution,' he wrote. The Jana Sangh leader, who was later among those who founded the BJP, accused the Indira Gandhi government of trying to change the Constitution in an ill-intentioned manner. 'We, however, hold that the present Government's annoyance with the Constitution stems not from social or economic factors, as it keeps propagating, but from political considerations. It is the democratic content of the Constitution which the present Establishment regards as a roadblock to its ambitions.' Advani added, 'The Emergency empowers the Government to suspend any of the Fundamental Rights. It is significant that Article 31, namely that relating to the right to property, has not been suspended. The Articles suspended are Article 14 (right to equality), Article 19 (the seven freedoms of expression, assembly, association, movement, trade etc.) and Article 21 (right to life and personal liberty etc). These are the provisions which embody a citizen's democratic rights. The Executive can ride roughshod over these rights during an Emergency. It is doing so shamelessly these days.' The Jana Sangh leader accused the Emergency regime of trying to 'make its present authority perpetual under the Constitution'. 'The ruling party has the requisite majority also to make the necessary change in the Constitution. But the Keshavananda Bharati judgment which lays down that the basic democratic structure of the Constitution cannot be altered has become an insurmountable hurdle. That is why the Government is so bitter about this judgment.' Advani was referring to the judgment of the 13-member constitution bench of 1973 that while the Constitution gave Parliament the right to amend it under Article 368, it could not be used to destroy the Constitution. It was in this context that the Supreme Court put in place the basic structure doctrine: certain fundamental features such as democracy, secularism, the rule of law, and judicial review cannot be taken away by Parliament through constitutional amendments. Irony of quoting Jefferson Taking a dig at the irony of the PM for quoting the third US president, Advani said it was a 'pleasant surprise to hear Indira Gandhi quote Jefferson'. 'For the past few months, quoting Western Liberal thinkers has become passe, if not altogether retrograde and reactionary,' he wrote. 'However, one wonders how familiar Indira Gandhi is with the political philosophy of Jefferson. His views reek with sedition. God forbid, he wrote to a friend, that we should ever be twenty years without a revolution.' Advani added that 'one of Jefferson's biggest contributions to liberal political thought is his insistence that a citizen has the right to defy an unconstitutional statute'. 'What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that the people preserve the spirit of resistance?' he added, quoting Jefferson. He quoted the former US president as saying that 'censorship of any kind would negate the very spirit of democracy by substituting tyranny over the mind for despotism over the body'. Advani added, 'Jefferson was the author of the American Declaration of Independence proclaimed in 1776. There is no doubt that if Jefferson had been living in India in the year of grace 1976, his speeches and writings would have made him one of the greatest threats to the security of the State and landed him behind the bars as a MISA detenu.'
New Indian Express
2 days ago
- Politics
- New Indian Express
J P Nadda: BJP president with nine lives
As the world's largest political party contesting serial elections, notching more hits than misses and running governments at the Centre and 14 states, the BJP is known to be a stickler for organisational propriety and discipline. It's no mean achievement considering that the exercise of executive and legislative power alters the dynamics within a party for the worse. In the long years when the BJP was in the opposition, it scrupulously adhered to its own Constitution—as distinct from the Indian Constitution— particularly when confronted with imbroglios involving the leadership. The veto power lay with the extended family's head, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, that had the last word and sometimes shot down the BJP's proposals and decisions to party leaders' discomfiture. The RSS's assertions were manifest after the BJP was seated at the Centre and some states. Competing pulls and pressures became inevitable as the playing field grew larger and the stakes for BJP leaders bidding for absolute power became apparent. In 1991, when L K Advani became the opposition leader in the Lok Sabha, without a fuss he relinquished the BJP presidency for Murli Manohar Joshi. The import of this act gets amplified when in 2005, he scripted encomiums for Muhammad Ali Jinnah during a visit to Jinnah's mausoleum in Karachi. Following the first outcry of protest from Gujarat, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the chief minister and in the thick of fighting local body polls, Advani was pressured by the BJP and RSS's sarsanghchalak K S Sudarshan to quit office as the BJP chief. But ringed by a cabal of new friends and advisers who advocated the merits of converting to secularism, Advani fought back for a while and eventually gave up office. If the BJP and Advani had still not become the forces they were by then despite the BJP losing the 2004 election, the view was he would have acquiesced.
The Print
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Print
Rajnath, Shivraj & Javadekar. How jail term during Emergency shaped leaders of today's BJP
Caught in that net were men linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the ideological predecessor of the now-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). At the time, many of them spent months, some well over a year, in jail. A few were students, whereas others were rising leaders. All carried the imprint of that period long after their release. On 25 June 1975, then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency, followed by the detention of voices across the political spectrum without any trials. The Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) became an instrument of control, granting the State sweeping powers to arrest and detain citizens without charges. New Delhi: It began with late-night arrests, blank editorial pages, and police vans stationed outside the homes of opposition leaders. Half a century later, some remain active in government and party roles. Others serve as governors or are on the margins of public life. Their recollection of jail, censorship, and resistance forms a crucial part of the institutional memory of the BJP and its claim to an anti-authoritarian legacy. Many of those arrested five decades ago now occupy some of the highest offices. Others have stepped aside, but their stories continue to echo in party narratives and commemorative events. As the Emergency completes 50 years, ThePrint revisits some of the then-jailed leaders, who, since then, have contributed to shaping the BJP, and how the experience of the Emergency years has stayed with them. L.K. Advani L.K. Advani, one of the most senior leaders arrested during the Emergency, spent over 19 months in Bengaluru Central Jail. A central figure in the Jan Sangh, he would later describe the Emergency as a moment when democratic values were under test, remembering who stood firm. Now 97 and retired, Advani remains a symbolic figure within the BJP, his jail term during the Emergency still referenced in party literature and public events. Also Read: BJP committed to RSS ideology, can't forget the mother who gave birth, says Nitin Gadkari Rajnath Singh In 1975, Rajnath Singh, a 24-year-old physics lecturer in Mirzapur and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) organiser, was arrested under MISA. He spent 18 months in jail—a period he has repeatedly described as a defining chapter in his political and personal life. The arrest deeply affected his family. Rajnath Singh's mother, already unwell, suffered a brain haemorrhage after learning the Emergency would be extended and her son would remain in jail. She was hospitalised for nearly a month and eventually passed away. Rajnath Singh could not attend the funeral. Denied parole, he was in prison when his brothers performed the last rites. The only ritual he was allowed to perform inside the jail was shaving his head. Later, Rajnath Singh was granted parole on unrelated grounds but used the time to campaign against the Emergency. His activities led to his immediate re-arrest, even before the parole period had ended. Reflecting on the ordeal, Rajnath Singh says he 'witnessed firsthand what a real dictatorship looks like'. The Emergency was a time of suspension of civil liberties, jailing of opposition leaders en masse, and wielding power without accountability, he argues. On X, Rajnath Singh's post on the Emergency reads: 'Fifty years ago, a despicable attempt tried to strangle Indian democracy through the Emergency… The manner of imposition, ignoring the Constitution, is a great example of misuse of power and dictatorship … Today, democracy is alive in India. For this, all those who struggled, went to jail, and suffered torture during the Emergency have made a huge contribution.' Now-Minister of Defence Rajnath Singh invokes the Emergency not as history but as memory, or his lived experience that forged his conviction in the constitutional order and the long struggle needed to preserve it. Bandaru Dattatreya In Hyderabad, Bandaru Dattatreya was active in the RSS and ABVP when detained under MISA. He would spend 19 months in jail. In later interviews, he has spoken about the personal cost of those days—how his mother faced social isolation but told him to stay the course. Dattatreya, now Governor of Haryana, continues to describe the Emergency as a turning point in his political awakening. Murli Manohar Joshi Then-physicist and Jan Sangh leader Murli Manohar Joshi was arrested in Uttar Pradesh. For Joshi, the Emergency was not only a political rupture but also a philosophical one—it confirmed that Indian democracy needed stronger cultural and ideological foundations. He later served as Union Minister for Human Resource Development and remains a respected voice in the Sangh Parivar. Prakash Javadekar A young ABVP worker from Pune, Prakash Javadekar's experiences from the Emergency years include hearing about media censorship from his journalist father, going to jail with hardened criminals, and starting a handwritten weekly, called Nirbhay (Fearless), inside the prison with the inmates. He was jailed for 16 months under MISA. Javadekar, who later held key Union portfolios, often describes his jail time as 'personally transformative'. He also calls the Emergency a 'murder of democracy' and says Congress has never truly apologised for it. During his imprisonment, he underwent open heart surgery in a government hospital. 'But after that, I did not get parole … On 15 August 1976, I was back in jail. That was the cruelty they showed to all,' he tells ThePrint. Explaining how the weekly was received in jail, he says, 'We used to write 20 pages … it would be a wallpaper-like thing, and we used to put it on all the walls of the different barracks. People used to rush and read everything.' Moreover, he says his father, a journalist, witnessed firsthand how the government machinery crushed press freedom: 'He came and said: 'Now, the police officer has come into the office, and unless he gives clearance, we cannot print any news.' That was the worst press … never had the press been muzzled like that,' Javadekar explains. Ravi Shankar Prasad A young law student in Patna, Ravi Shankar Prasad, came from a family steeped in Jan Sangh politics. Arrested under MISA during student protests, he spent several months in detention. Those years would later inform his career as a lawyer and legislator. He went on to become the Union law minister and remains an active MP. Also Read: Modi govt's selective embrace of RSS ideologue Deendayal Upadhyaya's ideology in policymaking Shivraj Singh Chouhan At just 17, Shivraj Singh Chouhan attended high school when the Emergency turned him from a student to a political detainee. Aligned with the JP movement, he was arrested in April 1976 after police barged into his rented room in Bhopal. Shivraj was physically assaulted, accused of circulating protest leaflets, and threatened with torture. Handcuffed, he was brought before a magistrate who remanded him without substantial evidence. Shivraj spent over nine months in jail, missing his Class 11 board exams. While in jail, he witnessed fellow detainees endure brutal punishments, medical neglect, and chilling disciplinary tactics. One inmate died after being denied timely care. Shivraj's grandmother passed away during this period, but he was not allowed to attend her funeral. Shivraj has described the period as a formative awakening to the fragility of rights and the dangers of unchecked power. He would go on to serve four terms as chief minister of Madhya Pradesh and now holds a Union Cabinet post. Vijay Goel Vijay Goel, a Delhi University student and ABVP organiser, when Indira Gandhi declared the Emergency, was arrested for staging protests and distributing anti-regime leaflets. Jailed under MISA, Goel later became a Union minister and two-time MP. He describes the Emergency as his political baptism that shaped his beliefs and public life. Vinay Sahasrabuddhe As a student in Pune, Vinay Sahasrabuddhe participated in protests during the Emergency, and soon, police arrested him along with 16 others. He spent 45 days in jail after refusing to pay a fine for defying prohibitory orders. During this period, he says, he engaged in deep political dialogue, including with inmates of different ideologies, such as the Communists, and began to see democracy as something earned, not granted. Speaking to ThePrint, Sahasrabuddhe, who later became a Rajya Sabha MP and policy scholar, says, 'There was a constant feeling that we were under watch. When we offered satyagraha, the women police gave us enough time to talk before arresting us. Jail time made us realise that democracy is not a gift—it has to be fought for and protected.' 'Black Day' For the BJP, the Emergency is not just a historical event but part of its founding mythology as the party continues to mark 25 June as a 'black day', honouring those imprisoned and using the period as a reference point to target the Congress. 'The BJP has always remained at the forefront of protecting the Constitution and democracy. As the former Jan Sangh, we saw our leaders jailed—Nanaji Deshmukh, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh ji, and even Prime Minister Modi—all faced repression during the Emergency,' says BJP's national spokesperson Guru Prakash Paswan. 'We will always be present wherever the Constitution is under threat.' (Edited by Madhurita Goswami) Also Read: BJP made big promises in Delhi on disability rights. Now comes the real test
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The ‘experts' you've never heard of inspiring Rachel Reeves's disastrous economic policy
A little like the Chagos Islands giveaway and, more recently, the apparent Gibraltar sell out, it's almost impossible to work out the motivations behind each and every idiotic decision this Labour Government takes. There's a palpable sense of incredulity spreading across Britain as the Prime Minister and Chancellor continue to insist that everything is going swimmingly despite most key markers showing precisely the opposite is true. Take the economy. In Wednesday's Spending Review, Rachel Reeves boasted that she had 'wasted no time' removing the barriers to growth. Less than 24 hours later, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed that UK GDP had shrunk by 0.3 per cent in April. Labour continues to splurge taxpayers' hard-earned cash despite the national debt sitting at around 96 per cent of GDP, the budget deficit more doubling in the past seven years, and public spending being on a par with the profligate Labour government of the 1970s, which almost bankrupted the country. Back then, taxes as a share of GDP were around 33 per cent. Forecasts suggest that, by 2027, they could reach 37.7 per cent. Unemployment is at its highest level in four years, UK payrolls have lost 276,000 employees since the autumn Budget, and a millionaire is reportedly leaving the UK every 45 minutes under Labour. Still, no one in the Cabinet appears able to rule out further tax rises, with Paul Johnson, the outgoing chief of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) concluding that 'council tax bills look set to rise at their fastest rate over any parliament since 2001-05.' Who is advising Reeves on tax policy, and her relentless assault on our wallets? Readers may not have heard of Arun Advani and Andy Summers, but these little known academics may have been the inspiration for Labour's seemingly never-ending tax grab. They run the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation (CenTax), which some credit for Labour's farm tax. Advani, who is associate professor in the economics department at the University of Warwick, called for inheritance tax 'loopholes' on farms to be scrapped in two reports for the Institute for Fiscal Studies, as well as writing a further report for CenTax making the same arguments for changes to both Agricultural Property Relief (APR) and Business Property Relief (BPR) last October. After Advani boasted at the Labour Party Conference that he was 'optimistic' because the Labour government is 'genuinely listening' to his ideas, Reeves announced in the Budget that the availability of 100 per cent relief for agricultural and business property would be capped at £1 million. So far, so predictable, you may argue. What's the harm in tapping up Left-wing think tanks for radical tax ideas? Do Conservative governments not rely on the research of free market institutes? Well, some have alleged the Treasury relied solely on CenTax's projection that the changes would raise £520 million, without doing its own calculations. As it conceded in response to a Freedom of Information request: 'H M Treasury does not hold a disaggregated cost projection for the revenue raised from the measure announced at Autumn Budget 2024 to restrict these reliefs. This is a combined policy across the reliefs, rather than separate policies for each relief.' Even more problematically, the £520 million figure has been challenged. The OBR itself said it was uncertain how much would be raised as a result of behavioural responses, whilst CBI Economics calculates that the new tax on both family firms and farms will actually cost the Treasury £1.9 billion over the next five years. Advani claimed that only around 500 farms would be affected by the tax. As the Adam Smith Institute points out, however, 'the government's much-quoted '500' a year is really 15,000 a generation.' The true number of farms could be more than 40,000. Separate research, commissioned by Ashbridge Partners, found that one in 10 farmers surveyed said they will face an IHT bill of more than £1 million due to the inheritance tax hike, with 31 per cent expecting to pay more than £500,000. Why didn't Labour listen? Treasury minister James Murray, who referenced back in 2022 how many Zoom meetings he'd held with Dr Summers, even hosted CenTax's official launch in Parliament last November when he declared his desire 'to make sure that collaboration between CenTax, Treasury and HMRC continues for many years into the future.' Advani and Summers also influenced Labour's pledge to scrap non dom status with Treasury ministers again seeming to unquestioningly swallow their claim that it would raise £3.2 billion, a figure repeatedly cited by the Government. The trouble is, that number was also based on some misguided premises, perhaps including Advani and Summers' quite ludicrous prediction that out of 70,000 non-doms, only 77 would leave. As other economists later pointed out, the projection did not take into account the impact of abolishing non-dom inheritance tax protections. Even the OBR assumed that the changes would likely lead to a loss of 25 per cent of non-doms with trusts, which could cost the UK more than £12 billion during the course of the parliament. Still the Government swallowed the £3.2 billion figure hook line and sinker despite some now estimating that 10 per cent of non-doms may have already left the UK. A report by the CEBR predicts the ongoing exodus could reach 40 per cent – costing the Treasury a self-defeating £7.1 billion over this parliament. This combined with the £1.9 billion revenue lost as a result of the farm and family firm tax could mean the Government is down £9 billion thanks to listening to these nitwits. CenTax also wrongly predicted that increasing the tax rate on carried interest to 45 per cent would raise additional revenue of £0.8 billion per year. Labour settled on 32 per cent – but a January 2025 estimate by the OBR suggests that only £100 million will be raised and since then Reeves has watered it down. Labour claim to be a 'party of business'. So why are they seemingly listening to two economists who are laying the intellectual groundwork for an expansion in taxation that could come to look like Corbynism on steroids. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Economic Times
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Economic Times
'We don't trust you': Director associated with four Shah Rukh Khan movies reveals why Bollywood lost its core audience
Who Is Nikhil Advani? Veteran filmmaker Nikhil Advani recently shared his thoughts on what has led Bollywood to lose its touch with the current generation. In a recent interview, Advani said that there is currently a huge trust deficit between the audience and filmmakers.'I think there is a complete distrust right now between the audience and the filmmaker. Basically, the audience is saying, 'Whatever you say, we don't trust you…' He told Hindustan Times. He also hinted that the audience has also lost faith in film reviews to be accurate and the same interview, the filmmaker admitted that there has been a steady decline in theatrical revenue since the COVID-19 the work front, Advani is one of the four executive producers behind debutante director Karan Tejpal's movie Stolen. The movie, which initially released in 2023, made its digital debut on Amazon Prime Video and has been met with rave reviews. The movie narrates the story of two brothers who witness a heart-wrenching scene: a helpless mother's baby is snatched away before her eyes. Stirred by a deep sense of justice, one brother urges the other to step in and support the grieving woman. What begins as a moment of compassion soon spirals into a dangerous pursuit, as the brothers plunge into an intense and risky investigation to uncover the truth and reunite the mother with her stolen movie features an ensemble cast led by Abhishek Banerjee Advani is a prominent film director. His directorial debut, ' Kal Ho Na Ho ,' which starred Shah Rukh Khan and Preity Zinta in lead roles, became one of the biggest hits of 2003. Some of his other works include 'Chandni Chowk To China,' 'Salaam E Ishq', 'Patiala House,' was also associate director for other Shah Rukh Khan-starrers such as 'Kuch Kuch Hota Hai', 'Mohabbatein', 'Kabhie Khushie Kabhie Gham'.Along with his sister Monisha, he runs a successful production house, Emmay Entertainment
