On Tuesday, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that the Emergency imposed in 1975 by then-PM Indira Gandhi, his grandmother, it was wrong” and an “error”. It’s a topic that Congressional leaders largely avoid bringing up, but there have been exceptions over the years.
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Sonia Gandhi
The president of the Congress, Sonia Gandhi, had spoken about it in May 2004, during a Walk the Talk conversation with senior journalist Shekhar Gupta for NDTV 24 × 7. In recounting her memories of the Emergency, she said: “Well, my mother-in-law herself, after losing the election, she herself said that … she had a rethinking of that. And the very fact that she declared the elections means that she had a rethinking of the Emergency, ”he said.
When she was asked if she felt that Indira thought it was a mistake, Sonia said: “I think she did think it was a mistake. Because don’t forget that at least the Indira Gandhi I met was a democrat at heart, to the core. And I think circumstances forced her to take that step, but she never felt very comfortable. “
When asked if it was a lesson that no government should do it again, he said: “Yes, certainly,” but added that “these were different times.”
Congress history volume
In 2011, the fifth volume of the history of the Congress, marking 125 years of the party, was published by a group of historians led by the late Pranab Mukherjee. In the preface, Mukherjee says the party wanted the volume to be edited and contributed by experts in order to generate an “objective and scholarly perspective for the period under review” and “not necessarily have a party perspective.”
“There is no doubt that the emergency was a sordid chapter in the history of independent India and a 19-month nightmare for all who lived through it … it took an excruciatingly long time to eliminate the body politic that the emergency had pumped into system, columnist Inder Malhotra writes in his article, ‘Indira Gandhi: an overview’. “Given that all his confidants, especially his son Sanjay, increasingly powerful, had ruled out his retirement from office ‘even for a day’, the emergency coup and Indira’s monumental error had become inevitable … Sanjay and his cohorts had made elaborate preparations for Emergency in total secrecy, ”writes Malhotra.
In another chapter, ‘JP Movement and the Emergency’, the historian Bipan Chandra writes that Emergency centralized and concentrated the unlimited power of the State and the party in the hands of the Prime Minister to be exercised in an “authoritarian” way through a small clique of politicians and bureaucrats. . “Having castrated the Congress party and without any other organization to trust (Indira) Gandhi, the central and state governments depended almost entirely on the bureaucracy and the police for both the routine administration of the 20-point program and the programs family planning, ”Chandra writes.
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Jyotiraditya Scindia
In 2015, then-Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia (now with BJP) made comments similar to what Rahul said this week: that the Emergency enforcement was a “mistake” and that what happened during the period was “wrong.”
“What happened in the Emergency is wrong. Let’s not go from one place to another. What happened in the Sikh riots is wrong. Any loss of life in this country, regardless of which government is in power, we have to come out and say that what is right is right and what is wrong is wrong, “said Scindia. “I think the Emergency was a mistake for our country. Period.”
Manmohan singh
In 2014, the daughter of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Daman Singh, published her book Strictly Personal: Manmohan and Gursharan, in which she quotes Singh as saying that the Emergency came as a surprise to him.
“Well, it was a surprise. There were riots, but no one expected Ms. Gandhi to go that far, ”he quotes him as saying. And: “I think there was a lot more emphasis on punctuality, on discipline. Then some good things happened. But I think the atmosphere across the country was scary. There were arbitrary arrests and detentions ”.
Singh recalled that there was “a lot of unrest in the country, particularly due to the way the family planning program, the sterilization program, was implemented in some of the northern states and in Delhi.” He felt that Sanjay Gandhi was the most important “extra-constitutional authority”.
Pranab Mukherjee
The same year, Pranab Mukherjee published his book The Dramatic Decade: The Indira Gandhi Years. He called the Emergency a misfortune.
Mukherjee writes that Emergency was an “avoidable event” even though it brought with it some important positive changes such as discipline in public life, a growing economy, controlled inflation, a trade deficit reversed for the first time, increased development spending and a fiscal crackdown. evasion and smuggling.
“The suspension of fundamental rights and political activity (including trade union activity), the large-scale arrests of political leaders and activists, the censorship of the press and the prolongation of the life of legislatures by not holding elections were some cases of Emergency that negatively affected the interests of the population. Congress and Indira Gandhi had to pay a high price for this misfortune, ”Mukherjee writes.
Siddhartha Shankar Roy is believed to have played an important role in the decision to declare the Emergency; was his suggestion, and Indira Gandhi acted accordingly. In fact, Indira Gandhi later told me that she did not even know the constitutional provisions that allowed declaring a state of emergency due to internal disturbances, especially since a state of emergency had already been proclaimed as a consequence of the Indo-Pak in 1971, ”she writes.
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