India's Tiananmen Square

INDIA and the world remember the protests by students and workers at the Tiananmen Square in Beijing and China's ruthless suppression through tanks. But the world, particularly India, has forgotten the imposition of the Emergency which had suspended even the fundamental right to live. Significantly, both tragedies occurred in the month of June -- the first on the 4th, two decades ago, and the second on the 26th, some 34 years ago.
The first saw military crushing hundreds of peaceful agitators and workers (official figure of casualties has never been given out). In the second, people were silenced to suffocation. The press was gagged. The police were let loose on critics and more than one lakh people were detained without trial. It was a death of sorts.
The reason why the world and India should recall the Emergency is the forfeiture of individual liberty. India's democratic structure was converted into dictatorship. Only after undergoing the sufferings for 23 months did people assert themselves and threw out the rulers to be free. The lesson learnt was that vigilance was the price one paid for freedom.
Pakistan's own experience should make it realise that it could not remove the shackles of martial law until the lawyers agitated to have the judiciary independent. That movement gave back Pakistan its democracy. Terrorism, which the country is facing, is the lack of courage to stand up and be counted. The army is reaping what its ISI wing had sown.
Bangladesh too has been able to defeat fundamentalists to a large extent through elections where people brought back their popular leaders. Here the light at the end of the tunnel came only when the military-backed caretaker government realised that the right to elect rulers was that of people, not theirs.
The right to choose is what Prime Minister Indira Gandhi confiscated when she imposed the Emergency. The Allahabad High Court disqualified her for having used the government machinery for election purposes. After getting a stay from the Supreme Court, she suspended the constitution itself and played havoc with the nation. Her son Sanjay Gandhi, who had by then emerged as extra-constitutional authority, helped her. Later, he took over and ordered the arrest of practically every known critic of his mother, smothered protest and used the government machinery to implement his scheme of things: one-person rule.
Three of those who assisted Mrs Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi are today ministers in the Manmohan Singh cabinet. They are Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni and Minister for Highways and Road Transport Kamal Nath.
During the Emergency, the Communist Party of India sided with Mrs Gandhi. It even supplied information on those who worked against the autocratic rule overtly or covertly. The CPI (M) was opposed to the Emergency but supported the Chinese when they attacked India in 1962.
The fallout of what happened more than three decades is more visible now. Abuse of law has become a precedent. The police have no hesitation in doing anything illegal at the behest of superiors. They are especially cruel to the aam aadmi. It is a daily occurrence. There is no report recorded, no document prepared. The legality of detention cannot be challenged because there is nothing on paper.
The worst outcome of the Emergency is the unaccountable bureaucracy. It has ceased to follow the rule of law and finds ways to circumvent it. Traditional practice of not violating the basic tenets of governance -- independence, fairness and justice -- have been thrown to the wind. Having overcome the initial hesitation, the civil servants do not know where and when to stop. Placating political masters has become a duty for them. In return, they got out-of-turn promotion or a cushy posting. Sanjay Gandhi put so much fear in the mind of bureaucrats that it still works.
I am not surprised over the findings of a study that India has the most corrupt bureaucracy. When you snap moorings you drift. Civil service, from top to bottom, has lost the moorings. Desire for self-preservation is what motivates it.
I am told that Mrs Indira Gandhi realised that she had committed a mistake in imposing the emergency. Had it been so, she would not have pursued or punished the few officials who did their job to bring the perpetrators of excesses to book. She was back in power before the delinquent officers could be punished. The biggest casualty was the police reforms. She shelved an outstanding report because the Dharam Vira Commission, which made the recommendations was appointed by the Janata government, which succeeded her.
I wish Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had offered an apology to the nation for the excesses committed during the Emergency. Sheer arrogance of power guided the Congress at that time. From what I have seen of new crop of Congressmen in Parliament it is no mood of admitting any mistake made by the party in the past. No doubt, the Congress MPs have come through the process of election.
Yet the moral of the story is that the victory does not justify the wrongs done to win. People in India should continue to recall the dark days of the Emergency. People in China too will one day openly pay homage to the martyrs at the Tiananmen Square. The pain inflicted goes away, but not the fact of tyranny. Rulers in India, China or, for that matter, in any country are the custodian of the people's ideals, beliefs and faith which make the nation out of a mere aggregation of individuals.

Kuldip Nayar is an eminent Indian columnist.