Just two days before this black day when Emergency was imposed on this nation 44 years ago, the senior Congress leader Mr. Ghulam Nabi Azad in his long speech delivered in the Rajya Sabha, in the presence of the Prime Minister, concluded saying “Keep this new India with you but give us the old India…” for which he seemed proud of.
One fails to understand what for Azad's old India feels proud off. The Congress's Old India is full of black spots and unpleasant references like red-tape, nepotism, communalism, sycophancy, dynastic power controls, communal riots, and many more. The worst references will go to the 1984 Sikh massacre by official Congressmen and still worst was imposition of Emergency in 1975.
It would be in fitness of things, if Mr. Azad is reminded of how stigma of Emergency would never ever qualify the regimes under the Nehru-Gandhi Family.
Instead of the established practices of discussion and consultation, Indira's colleagues were merely informed that Emergency was being imposed under Article 352 of the Indian Constitution. The Emergency effectively bestowed upon Indira the power to rule by decree, suspending elections and civil liberties.
In 1978, the Shah Commission — which went specifically into the Emergency and its excesses — found that there was no evidence of a threat to the Constitution or law and order in the country that warranted the declaration of an Emergency.
Indira's colleagues kept mum, perhaps recalling that discretion was the better part of valour. Only Defence Minister Sardar Swaran Singh made a feeble attempt to ask if such drastic action was necessary. Minutes later, Indira was heard announcing on All India Radio the merits of the Emergency — and Swaran Singh found himself replaced by Bansi Lal.
Subsequently, during the Emergency, the 42nd Amendment in the Constitution of India of introduced and enacted in November 1976 and the power of the Supreme Court and the High Courts to pronounce upon the constitutionality of laws contained.
The main author of this amendment was Dev Kant Barooah, who, as Congress president, had immortalised himself by coining the slogan, “India is Indira, Indira is India.”
AR Antulay was another prime mover behind the amendment. He was heard saying, “It has been left to Nehru's proud daughter, the daughter of the Indian nation, the daughter of India, ancient, present and future, to bring into effect what Nehru had visualised.”
Defence minister Bansi Lal tried to outdo both Barooah and Antulay when he told Indira's cousin, BK Nehru, “Get rid of all this election nonsense… Just make our sister (Indira) president (of India) for life and there is no need to do anything else.”
Thank God! This ‘Old India' is not there for the present generation of Indians.
