Those dark days

The democratic-minded people of the country in the past two days remembered the dark days of Emergency which was clamped down by the autocratic Congress regime of Indira Gandhi way back in 1975 just because her very political existence was at stake due to several reasons. India had witnessed prolonged political unrest from 1973 onwards particularly against the functioning of the Indira Gandhi government. Strikes had become the order of the day against the Congress misrule. There was an acute shortage of food grains because of rampant hoarding while corruption had reached a peak. Within the Congress party, the sycophants clamoured for a system that works more like a presidential one, with Indira Gandhi being projected even as goddess Durga. Then Congress president Dev Kanta Barooah went one step ahead to coin the infamous slogan "India is Indira, Indira is India." By the middle of 1975, the Allahabad High Court found Prime Minister Indira Gandhi guilty on the charge of misuse of government machinery for her election campaign. The High Court also declared Indira Gandhi's election to Lok Sabha null and void and banned her from contesting any election for the next six years. Officially issued by then-President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed under Article 352 of the Constitution given the prevailing "internal disturbances" faced by the country, it was clear that the Emergency was primarily intended at protecting Indira Gandhi. Civil liberties were so drastically curtailed that while all political opponents and critics of Indira Gandhi and the Congress party were arrested and dumped in jails, newspapers were brought under strict censorship. A large number of incidents of human rights violation took place but remained unreported because officers were engaged to scrutinize even classified advertisements in newspapers. Several student leaders critical of the Government and the Emergency were also arrested and a few of them even went missing, never to be found again. But India being a born vibrant democracy, the people kept fighting silently, while the dissension kept building up like a volcano. Being surrounded by a bunch of sycophants, all that Indira Gandhi however heard were the 'good things about the Emergency. Thus, at the end of about 18 months when she was 'convinced' and 'assured' that all opposition had been silenced and that no power on earth could defeat Indira Gandhi during her lifetime, the Prime Minister went for an election. The silent masses however we're waiting for the opportune moment to strike. And on the day the election was held, they voted in large numbers against Indira Gandhi's autocratic party and government, thus paving way for a newly worked out combination called Janata Party, whose 82-year-old leader Morarjibhai Desai became the next Prime Minister. India cannot afford to go back to such dark days. Needless to say, while Indira Gandhi's Congress party had resorted to all kinds of means to stranglehold the democratic rights of the people, the Communist Party of India stood by the side of the Congress and extended whole-hearted support to the Emergency. Those were the days when the Congress government of Assam headed by Sarat Chandra Sinha had also religiously replicated whatever the Union government of Indira Gandhi had done to muzzle the voice of the people. Such were the days that the State government had sent the police force to hound out all dissenting students from the Gauhati University campus, meted out inhuman atrocities on them and had dumped them in prison. That was also the time when several lakh people from erstwhile East Bengal and newborn Bangladesh who had entered Assam as refugees between 1969 and 1971 were allowed to disperse across the state and occupy various kinds of government land including tribal belts and blocks. While every citizen must always remember those dark days, it is also the responsibility of all right-thinking people and leaders to work hard so that the country does not ever slip back to such days of autocratic rule where critics are silenced and democratic ideals are murdered in broad daylight.