Express View on 50 years since Emergency: Lest we forget

Indian Express

a day ago

Today, June 25, a nation pauses to remember the time when an elected government brought constitutional democracy to a halt. It is a sobering day of commemoration of a slide into the dark, and a moment to say 'never again'. It is for that reason, too, that the day of promulgation of the Emergency is an occasion to celebrate the Opposition — with a big 'O' and a small 'o'. It includes the politicians who went to jail, standing up, in 1975-77. This, even as the Bench went down on its knees and large sections of the Press crawled, making the blank editorial on this page and journalists of The Indian Express in prison an exception. Today, it encompasses those who question the dominant common sense, the lonely dissenter, and the rebel with a cause; the political party that articulates an alternative to the dominant idea and established policy; the student on campus who objects; and the institution that protects its sense of purpose, no matter who is in power. The Emergency was an assault on all of these. The Indira Gandhi government came down on the right to oppose, undermined institutional checks on the abuse of power, and corroded processes of accountability. That is why, 50 years later, it remains a thick and dark stain on the body politic. Gestures of penance, like the overruling by a former Chief Justice of India, 41 years later, of an Emergency-era verdict given by his father — one of the four judges on a bench which decreed that a person's right to not be unlawfully detained can be suspended by the state — are not enough. A collective reckoning is still incomplete.
The fuller reckoning must acknowledge that the work of democracy is not yet done. And that the onus is on the leaders of institutions, it cannot be cavalierly passed on to 'the people,' or frittered away in partisan jostling and election slogans. Much has changed since Mrs Gandhi imposed the Emergency and withdrew it nearly two years later. But a dangerous set of ideas that were set in motion then, when the nation was not yet 30 years old, have had a troubling after-life. Some have got a disquieting new lease of life, 50 years on — be it the demonisation of the Opposition, the over-reach of preventive detention, viewing those who ask questions with suspicion, the undermining of judicial independence, the genuflection by sections of the media, or the constant search for the 'enemy' within. In the battle between fear and trust, fear wins more not less.
Yet, there are substantive ways in which democracy is stronger today. After missing a step during the Emergency, the judiciary recovered its balance; civil society has grown more vibrant; technology has created echo chambers but also broken down walls and amplified voices long silenced; the federal frame, reinforced by strong regional parties, has acquired resilience. Some, though not all, monitorial institutions have gathered respect, and electoral-political mobilisations have empowered neglected constituencies. And yet, at the same time, a democracy carrying the burden of accumulated cynicisms and waning idealism is also coming under pressure from new forces. Public discourse is being shaped by the anonymised forces of othering and hate, allowing lies to fly and assisting in short-circuiting due process. Let this day, then, be marked with a sense of humility, and an acknowledgement: The Emergency is long over, mercifully. But a politics and governance that ensure it never happens again are, and should always remain, work in progress. The stain of 1975-1977 should never be whitewashed — let it remain visible lest we forget.