Scars of the emergency

SOME scars do not go away. They remind a nation of the rough period it has gone through. One ugly mark on the face of India is the emergency. The then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed it in June 30 years ago. She wanted to suppress the demand for her resignation after the Allahabad High Court unseated her on a poll offence. Not only did she suspend fundamental rights, but also put one hundred thousand people behind bars without trial. The press was gagged and effective dissent smothered. There was a general erosion of democratic values.

Because of the Janata Party's squabbles, its government fell, enabling her to return to power within three years. That probably explains why some of the scars have

stayed on. She did little to revive the institutions she had destroyed. They still have not regained their health. Yet the worst is the tinge of authoritarianism which the governments since then have come to acquire.

State chief ministers are particularly bad. They behave like Mrs Gandhi, aggressive and vindictive. Had political parties tried to curb the ills which came to the fore during the emergency, some scars would have disappeared by now. But they have done little. Congress in the last three decades has not been interested to find out what went wrong, because it would have meant finding fault with Mrs Gandhi. The non-Congress governments were merely coalitions which had supporters of the emergency as their allies.

Justice J.C. Shah was the only person who examined the excesses committed during the emergency. But his recommendations were not even considered because soon after he submitted his three-volume report, Mrs Gandhi came back to power. Still those recommendations are worth a debate.Ê He said: "The circumstances in which the emergency was declared and the ease with which it was accomplished should be a warning to the citizens of the country." He specially drew the government's attention to the manner in which the police was used and allowed themselves to be used for purposes which were questionable. He warned: "Employing the police to the advantage of any political party is a sure source of subverting the rule of law." This is what has happened.

Some senior retired police officials, who met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh a few days ago to follow up Shah's concern, requested him to make the police accountable. The officials also wanted every victim of communal riots to be compensated. Manmohan Singh proposed yet another law to determine the responsibility of the police.

What the government does not realise is that the people's confidence in the police and other wings of the administrative machinery has been shaken. What do they infer when they find in the Manmohan Singh cabinet the same old faces that were part and parcel of the extra-constitutional machinery under Sanjay Gandhi? Top Congress leadership is no different. And there is no evidence that it has changed.

Knowing well the barbarities committed during the emergency, the Congress spokesman had the temerity to say that those who vilified the party for the purchase of Bofors gun should apologise. The case has failed on technical grounds. The government-controlled CBI has come to the Congress' rescue. There is no doubt that Rajiv Gandhi had opened a "parallel channel" for the payoffs when the contract terms specifically precluded middlemen or agents. In fact, an apology is due from the Congress which detained opponents and critics without trying them in courts. Some 20 months of their precious life got wasted in jail. Even college boys and girls were denied examinations because they dared to protest. How would Congress make up for the loss which the victims and their families suffered?

The scars on the Indian face became indelible after Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri's death. Until the end of the sixties, Jawaharlal Nehru's liberalism animated the country. There was only one ugly mark the communist government's dismissal in Kerala -- when Mrs Gandhi, as the Congress president, forced it on Nehru, to his regret.

Then the culture was different. Certain things were not done. There was a Lakshman rekha. Mrs Gandhi was the first prime minister to cross it. Since then, the governance has become devoid of values and principles. The alarming aspect is the weakening of public opinion. People are still afraid to speak out. They are afraid of repercussions. In fact, protest has vanished from the Indian scene. It reflects sheer helplessness, not acceptance.

The bureaucracy was India's armour. It is now full of chinks. After having lost its "chastity of independent functioning" during the emergency, it has become a tool of tyranny in the hands of rulers. The ethical considerations inherent in public behaviour have become generally dim and, in many cases, beyond the mental grasp of public functionaries. No administrative reforms commission (Manmohan Singh's proposal) can set things right until the government servants realise that they can be dismissed.

Institutions like the judiciary and the media also did not come up to people's expectations during the emergency. The first threw the egg on its face when it upheld the emergency and said that fundamental rights could be suspended. It is still trying to live down that verdict, and some of the subsequent judgments have retrieved its prestige to a large extent. However, its "interference" in the Jharkhand assembly proceedings has raised fresh doubts. Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterji is right in saying that the judiciary should not cross the Lakshman rekha drawn between it and the legislature.

The media men, to use L.K. Advani's words, began to crawl when they were only asked to bend. Things have improved since, in the sense that they can express their opinion freely. But now their efforts have got directed towards amusing readers, not informing them. Very few in the media have any social obligation. The top looks too comfortable to pose any challenge if it ever came to something like the emergency.

The worst wound that has been inflicted is the credibility that the erstwhile members of the Jan Sangh, the Hindutva elements, got because of their arrest during the emergency. They are out and out communal, but they try to parade themselves as pluralistic. I thought the BJP had decided to be different when I read Advani's remark that Jinnah was secular. But I was proved wrong. Advani has turned out to be a false god. He has lost his credibility on the one hand and has put the party still more at the mercy of the RSS. He has no choice left. He will be driven out of the party if he ever pursues what flickered in his mind in Pakistan. Maybe, I was trying to indulge in wishful thinking.

Kuldip Nayar is an eminent Indian columnist.