Reflections on 40 years after Emergency

[disha]

Narendra Modi
‏@narendramodi

We mark 40 years of one of India's darkest periods- the Emergency, when the then political leadership trampled over our democracy.

Inspired by the call of JP, several men & women across India selflessly immersed themselves in the movement to safeguard our democracy.

We are very proud of the lakhs of people, who resisted the Emergency & whose efforts ensured that our democratic fabric is preserved.

[disha]

The brutal murder of Snehlatha Reddy by Indira and her henchmen.

http://www.thenewsminute.com/article/ho ... away-31525

She was questioned for several days at the COD office, but at least we were allowed to see her. Then one night when we went there with her dinner, we found the whole place deserted. The building was locked and there was no one in sight. Seeing our panic a kindly watchman told us that she had been shifted to the Bangalore Central Jail. She had been remanded to judicial custody. But as they were not able to pin any crimes on her, rather than releasing her which would be proof of her innocence, they decided to detain her under MISA. No charges were filed, there was no trial and she had no recourse to appeal or even to be heard by a court of law...

I may or may not agree with Nandana Reddy d/o Snehlatha Reddy., but that is no way to murder a political activist.

As I say, CONgoons have blood on their hands.

[disha]

Are any of the main stream media or vernacular media running any shows/news series talking about the emergency? I did not find any. There was one Malayalam program (on Asianet News), which clearly omitted the role of the CPI government and dedicated around 5 minutes of time doing a "what-if" analysis on Modi's chance of declaring an emergency .

What do we expect from MSM #mediapimps?

[disha]

Recalling the brutal days of Emergency

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/emer ... 46866.html

'Stripped, I was flogged with leather belt'
Hemant Kumar Bishnoi was arrested when he was only 21. "I was arrested when I was organizing a students' meeting at the Buddha Jayanti Park," Bishnoi recalled. He said the police tortured him to find out about Jan Sangh leader ML Khurana. "After keeping me awake in the night, policemen started raining punches. I was stripped and flogged by a leather belt. Later, I was kicked by the policemen. I was suspended upside down on a stick between two chairs. Police poured water in my mouth to suffocate me. When this failed to break me, they mixed chilli powder in the water and ran it down my nose," Bishnoi added.

[disha]

The railway strike really shook up the officials in the Prime Minister's Secretariat. The nation was down to three days' supply of coal and steel, and all the power plants were in danger of shutting down since coal could not be transported to them. Indira Gandhi brutally suppressed the railwaymen's strike; the extent of the brutality shocked president VV Giri, for which he reprimanded the Prime Minister.

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/india/40th- ... 10106.html

[niran]

The railway strike really shook up the officials in the Prime Minister's Secretariat. The nation was down to three days' supply of coal and steel, and all the power plants were in danger of shutting down since coal could not be transported to them. Indira Gandhi brutally suppressed the railwaymen's strike; the extent of the brutality shocked president VV Giri, for which he reprimanded the Prime Minister.

yeah! so great of him, PM of India muders citizens and all his Honer could muster was a reprimand bunch of colluding congresi The President has the power to dismiss GOI and impose President rule and instantly become an immortal but no just this

next time be careful don't let the NEWS out.

[Yagnasri]

It would be better if NCERT and other school test books show full details of Emergency and the actions of Indira and her son.

Interesting articles

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/india/40th- ... 10106.html

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/india/40th- ... 10576.html

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/india/40th- ... 11378.html

Worth reading even if we do not agree with some of the ideas and conclusions.

[Sachin]

Swarajya Magazine has a few articles on the 1975 Emergency as well.
Emergency Supporters: A List That Will Surprise You
Beloved Bal, Khuswant Singh, M.G Ramachandran all in the list.

What Are These Emergency Era Laws Still Doing In The Statute Books?
The Three Republics – How The Liberal Constitution Was Scuttled

[Yagnasri]

One more Sachin sir missed.

http://swarajyamag.com/politics/janata- ... thout-rss/

[Yagnasri]

One more report

http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/h ... -emergency

[JwalaMukhi]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CIUTFOSUcAAYGca.jpg

[JwalaMukhi]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CIT6OEpUAAAy39q.jpg

[JwalaMukhi]

The facade of democracy that Nehru and his legacy (was a communist par excellence) was running, - was unmasked and culminated in revealing its original face during emergency.

Nehru's legacy has cursed India with the following four important things from which India is yet to recover.
1. Nehruvian Socialism: A crime against humanity for keeping 300 million Indians in dire poverty. Designed and nurtured Poverty freely for atleast three generations or more. Creating a servile population incapable of self-service (swayam Seva), but look to mammaries of the state to provide.
2. Celebration of medocrity: Worse, suppression of merit. Advancement of least qualified. Exhibit - Nehru's family.
3. Institutionalization of corruption: Across the board corruption.
4. Promotion of Fair and lovely culture: Worship of melanin deficiency, as sign of superiority. Dissing of superior native culture and practices. Promotion of duds, whose only qualification is to blabber non-sense in Queen's English (Englipish).

These four unpardonable crimes by Nehru and Kangressi's have afflicted and ails the nation to this day. These crimes have been given a free-pass and the midget Nehru family has been elevated with Bharat Ratnas and their statues and names are freely assigned where it is least deserved. Even communist "Soviet Union" got rid of Stalin's legacy to the extent possible.Well a nation which tolerates Aurangzeb and retains a road, has still lot of ways to go. But a beginning has been made.

[A_Gupta]

We also have a culture of needing to find someone to blame. It is like saying "Manu brought us caste system". If we accepted something wrong, the fault is in us.

[panduranghari]

We also have a culture of needing to find someone to blame. It is like saying "Manu brought us caste system". If we accepted something wrong, the fault is in us.

Actually we DO NOT have a culture of needing to find someone to blame. It's a very western construct. Look how companies are organised nowadays. Even hospitals. There are management levels. It's to find a scapegoat. That is not how we behave. Yes we may blame the government for their faults, but inherently we accept problems and try and strive to work around them.

[shravanp]

One of the good pics that captured spirit of those opposing emergency.

George Fernandes

[chaanakya]

MediaCrooks retweeted
Jaini ‏@manichejain 12h12 hours ago

2 people @narendramodi & @Swamy39 whom the Congress fear most today, disguised as Sikh when #CongressMurdersDemocracy

Narendra Modi and Su. Swamy as Sikhs in disguise during emergency. NaMo is Kanchan not mere gold.

[chaanakya]

Shah Commission Report Full text. How Indira Gandhi sought to erase the sordid tale of her Emergency regime.

In the 1977 election, JP led the Janata combine and threw the Congress out of power. Needless to say, the conspiracy to damage JP’s kidneys was never fully investigated and the Alva commission set up by Janata government was wound up under intense pressure from vested interests still owing allegiance to the Congress dynasty.

Links to Shah Commission Reports

http://www.scribd.com/doc/138076777/Sha ... nal-Report

http://www.scribd.com/doc/138066146/Sha ... m-Report-I


http://www.scribd.com/doc/138066806/Sha ... -Report-II



https://archive.org/details/ShahCommiss ... imReportII

Shah Commission was a commission of inquiry appointed by Government of India in 1977 to inquire into all the excesses committed in the Indian Emergency (1975 - 77). It was headed by Justice J.C. Shah, a former chief Justice of India.


The Indian Emergency of 26 June 1975 – 21 March 1977 was a 21-month period when President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, upon advice by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, declared a state of emergency under Article 352 of the Constitution of India, effectively bestowing on her the power to rule by decree, suspending elections and civil liberties. It is one of the most controversial times in the history of independent India. On 23 January 1977 Gandhi called elections for March and released all political prisoners. Pranab Mukherjee was secretly facilitated for helping Sanjay for arresting high profile political opponents. In the elections held on 16-20 March 1977 Gandhi's
Congress Party suffered a massive defeat at the hands of the Janata Party, which took office on 24 March 1977.


The government appointed the commission on 28 May 1977 under Section 3 of the Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952. The commission was to report by 31 December 1977, but was later given an extension to 30 June 1978.


In May 1978, after the second interim report of the commission had been issued, some leaders of the Janata party began demanding
that special courts be set up to ensure speedy trial of cases related to the emergency. Parliament eventually passed an act establishing two special courts on 8 May 1979. However, it was too late. The government fell on 16 July 1979.

After Indira Gandhi returned to power in January 1980 the Supreme Court found that the special courts were not legally constituted, so no trials were conducted Several of the officials indicted by the Shah commission went on to successful careers, although on 23 June 1980 Sanjay Gandhi died in the plane crash.


Indira Gandhi attempted to recall copies of the report wherever possible However, suppression was not successful. Some people had the copies of the Report. The Commission submitted 3 reports namely the First Interim Report, the Second Interim Report and the Third Interim and Final Report. Here is the copy of the report

[chaanakya]

A historical document on Emergency

We have heard a great deal of eloquent plaudits and sceptical comments about Indian democracy. We should reckon that both vouch for its strength and resilience in different ways. Dissatisfaction with its functioning is not a bad sign. That it has been creaking and huffing, apparently blundering on from strength to strength, is in itself a measure of success that should fly in the face of those who had predicted that the tender plant of democracy would not survive in the land of ‘Oriental Despotism'.

But there is a difference between democratic functioning and strengthening the democratic values. The latter is a slow process that involves a conscious and sustained act of political and cultural cultivation. It is also about overcoming the subversive challenges built into the functioning of a democracy. The biggest test to Indian democracy came when Emergency was declared in 1975. The memory of this unsavoury interlude tends to be either revived or swept under the carpet, depending on the political expediency of the person or party concerned.

The Shah Commission, set up to go into the various kinds of ‘excesses' committed during the Emergency, submitted its report in three parts, the last one on August 6, 1978. If the sheer size of the report — it had 26 chapters and three appendices running to over 530 pages — reflected the enormity of the violence done to democratic institutions and ethics, it also expressed grave concern about the happenings and the damage they had inflicted on the system.
Regime of repression

Sadly, there have also been some eloquent, unrepentant apologists, who spoke of it as a “shock treatment” needed for restoring Indian democracy to its healthy and disciplined ways of functioning. But the abuse of power and authority and the assault on the Constitution-guaranteed fundamental rights were too naked and brazen to be draped in flimsy defences. That the whole operation was designed to pander to the ambitions of an authoritarian leader, Indira Gandhi, who aided by a coterie of cronies unleashed a regime of repression in the name of implementing the tawdry 20-Point Programme, made it particularly galling to the nation's dignity.

The midnight knocks and arbitrary arrests; censorship of the press; premature retirement or supersession of inconvenient officers,including members of the higher judiciary; bulldozing of the slums; and forced sterilisation of men — all these sullied the claims of the country to the virtues of toleration. If the results of the 1977 national elections testified, at the popular level, to the veracity of the reported ‘excesses', the findings of the Shah Commission came as a judicial confirmation.

The reported ‘loss' of the Commission's report, after Indira Gandhi's return to power in 1980, showed that the old totalitarian instinct was still in place. Withdrawing or destroying the copies of the report is too naïve a method to tidy up one's place in history. Many despots have tried it before, and failed.
Posterity

In ‘regaining' the report and publishing it, Era Sezhiyan has ensured that an important document related to one of the aberrant phases of Indian democracy is not lost to posterity, especially to the students of Indian political system. By this, he has done a signal service to democratic education. It is easy to use the report as a weapon for running down the architect of the Emergency or those who operated the vicious engine or the party that endorsed the exercise. But political mud-slinging tends to become a case of ‘pot calling a kettle black'. Indian democracy has known, and faced, other variants of subversion too.

But a more abiding significance of the Emergency and the impulses behind it is the lesson it holds for India — the imperative to strike a fine balance between democratic compulsions and despotic instincts nurtured in its history. The colonial rule defended itself on the basis of many virtues, but it had the capital vice of denying freedom to the colonies. Independence did not quite achieve a clean break from the colonial past, as suspension of liberties under the Emergency showed. Behind the misadventure was the assumption that India was habituated — and hence was willing to submit — to despotic personal rule. But the bruised electorate proved quick to learn its lessons.
Precious

The learning and unlearning of lessons are, of course, part of the evolution and frustrations of democratic life. That makes the Shah Commission report a precious document. As Era Sezhiyan points out, “…it is more than an investigative report; it is a magnificent historical document to serve as a warning for those coming to power in the future not to disturb the basic structure of a functioning democracy and also, for those suppressed under a despotic rule, a hopeful guide to redeem the freedom by spirited struggle.”

[chaanakya]

The Then President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed

Indian Express cartoon by Abu Abraham

[chaanakya]

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/s ... bcYb1a_hYJ

Sent: Sunday, June 17, 2012 8:22 PM
Subject: Pranab Mukherjee's Emergency past. He has been indicted by Shah Commission. He is unfit to be President.- Wjhy people who were victims during Emergency Supporting Him?????

8.6.12
Pranab Mukherjee's Emergency past. He has been indicted by Shah Commission. He is unfit to be President.


Pranab Mukherjee's Emergency past. He has been indicted by Shah Commission. He is unfit to be President.

Anyone who reads the indictment by Shah Commission as brought out in the report brought to light by Era Chezhiyan should not even consider Pranabda's candidacy. He has been indicted by the Commission and is unfit to hold the office of President of Bharat. This article by V. Sundaram should be distributed to every voter in Presidential election. Let not the nation insult the sacred memory of Justice Shah who has given us a roadmap for a truly democratic nation through his Shah Commission Report which should be read and re-read by every politician and every voter in the forthcoming Presidential poll. Particular attention is invited to the way Pranabda tortured a noble aatman, Smt. Gayatri Devi. Read on the expose...

Kalyanaraman

TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 2011

PRANAB MUKERJEE! WHAT A GREAT SON OF BENGAL (REWRITING HISTORY OF INDIA)INDEED!!!-I

V.SUNDARAM I.A.S.




REWRITING NOT ONLY CONGRESS HISTORY
BUT ALSO SONIA HISTORY OF INDIA


Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (1838-1894) of Bande Mataram fame observed in 1882: “There are distortions and systematic suppressions of the achievements and physical prowess of the Hindus in the country of Western scholars. None of the books on Bengal written by British authors contain a true history of Bengal. The Bengalis have to write their history themselves, from their own viewpoint and relating to their own interests. We need a history of Bengal; otherwise there will be no hope for Bengal. But who will write it? You will write it, I will write it, every one will write this history. Whoever is Bengali will write it.”


Perhaps, Pranab Mukherjee has nothing but unconcealed contempt and hatred for the great Bengali leaders like, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Swami Vivekananda, Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, Sri Aurobindo and Rash Behari Bose, who created the political and cultural Renaissance in Bengal in the last quarter of the 19th Century and the 1st quarter of the 20th Century. Drawing vicarious inspiration from the message of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee to rewrite Indian History, today Pranab Mukherjee is working round the clock to rewrite the history of India according to the Firangi Memsahib Sonia’s anti-Hindu and anti-India model and perspective. Today he is committed only to the cause (nay, because!) of imposing a Sonia cum Rahul Gandhi Family-led Gargantuan Corruption Renaissance on this poverty stricken country!


At the Beginning was the 2G Scam.
The 2G Scam was Sonia Gandhi.
Sonia Gandhi IS 2G Scam.

At the Beginning was the CWG Scam.
The CWG Scam was Sonia Gandhi.
Sonia Gandhi IS CWG Scam.

Any Sonia scam is Pranab scam.
Any Pranab scam is Sonia scam.

Pranab laundering for Sonia
Chidambaram laundering for Sonia
Is the whole time occupation of the Sonia Congress Party
To the ecstasy of all Hawala Operators.

Firangi Memsahib Sonia Gandhi is the Mother Superior of all Scams in India today. Her only tower of strength and alter ego is Pranab Mukherjee. The whole country knows that Pranab Mukherjee --- Jo Memsahib kahenge, vahi hum karange! --- is the Chief Money Launderer for Sonia Gandhi. This patent fact has been clearly brought out into the open arena of public limelight by Dr Subramanian Swamy, the President of Janata Party.

Dr Subramanian Swamy has recently issued a stern, grim and scorching STATEMENT on 11thMarch 2011 against the unabashed, uncontrolled, unchecked and unconcealed black money laundering activities of the Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee undertaken with unmatched devotion and enthusiasm for and on behalf of Firangi Memsahib Sonia Gandhi. I am giving below the full text of the Statement issued by Dr Subramanian Swamy:

“The grant of bail to the notorious money launderer, Mr. Hasan Ali, is due to the collusive behaviour of the ED on direction of the Union Finance Minister Mr. Pranab Mukherjee. MR. MUKHERJEE HAS BEEN A LONG TIME MONEY LAUNDERER FOR MS. SONIA GANDHI. His frequent trips to Chittarajan Park, New Delhi, over the last two decades, were only to arrange for money transfers for Ms. Sonia Gandhi through Hawala Operators.”

“Hasan Ali was a conduit for Mr. Pranab Mukherjee—through Ms. Sonia Gandhi's, Political Secretary Mr. Ahmed Patel MP. Mr. Patel has met Mr. Hasan Ali many times according to the interrogation records with the Maharashtra Police.”

“Hence, I demand that for a free and fair investigation by ED, Mr. Mukherjee must made to resign from the Finance Ministership, or ED be transferred to the PMO.” (Subramanian Swamy)

What has been the track record of this by no means honest Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee? It is anything but honourable! Pranab Mukherjee was the most favourite domestic orderly in the ‘Imperial Household’ of that wicked dictator Indira Gandhi. During the dark days of the draconian Emergency of Indira Gandhi from June 1975 to March 1977, Pranab Mukherjee was the biggest CHAMCHA of that unruly gangster Sanjay Gandhi. Pranab Mukherjee from the Indira Congress Party and Navin Chavla from the bureaucracy were the two hatchet men of Sanjay Gandhi. With dictatorial authority, Pranab Mukherjee upon the oral instructions of Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay Gandhi sent innocent men and women to Tihar Jail, and tortured them. Upon oral instructions of Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi, he elevated the willing slaves of the Indira Congress Party as Chairmen and Managing Directors of Nationalized Banks.

Thus Pranab Mukherjee in his official capacity as Minister of State for Revenue and Expenditure in the anti-people Government of Indira Gandhi, violated all administrative rules and procedures and functioned in the most illegal, irregular, immoral, unethical and irresponsible manner. Taking advantage of his personal equation with Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi, he treated the then Union Minister for Finance C. Subramaniam with unalloyed contempt.

When Indira Gandhi came to power again in 1980, she was under the delusion that she was aChiranjeevinee and will continue to rule as the unchallenged Prime Minister of India for the next 10,000 years till the Year of the Lord 10,981 AD. For criminal favours rendered with unswerving slavish devotion by Pranab Mukherjee to Indira Gandhi during Emergency --- sending Maharani Gayatri Devi of Jaipur, a former Swatantra Party Member of Parliament and the Rajmata of Gwalior Vijayaraje Scindia to Tihar Jail --- Pranab Mukherjee was rewarded with the post of Union Finance Minister by Indira Gandhi in 1982!

To investigate the widespread misuse and abuse of power during the imposition of double Emergencies, External and Internal, by Indira Gandhi in 1975-1977, the Janata Government headed by Morarji Desai appointed in May 1978 a Commission of Inquiry under JUSTICE J.C SHAH, FORMER CHIEF JUSTICE OF SUPREME COURT. Justice Shah investigated enormous number of cases and assiduously recorded a voluminous mass of evidence from the former Union Ministers and officials and submitted his Report in August 1978. Due to internecine quarrel and split in the Janata Party, the Morarji Desai Government fell in August 1978.

ON HER RETURN TO POWER IN 1980, INDIRA GANDHI TOOK ACTION ON A WAR SCALE TO SEIZE ALL COPIES OF THE SHAH COMMISSION REPORT AND DESTROYED THEM TO THE EXTENT THAT PROMINENT WEB-SITES, JOURNALISTS AND SCHOLARS HAVE COME TO CONCLUDE THAT “not a single copy of Shah Commission Report exists in India”.

Taking a very statesman-like view that a precious historical and political document cannot die and should not be allowed to be “buried” and hidden, from the public of India, Era Sezhian, a former Member of Parliament during the THREE EMERGENCIES from 1962 to 1977, has come forward to compile and edit the full text of the SHAH COMMISSION REPORT. He has written a very detailed, scholarly and brilliant introduction to this new Edition (December 2010) of the Shah Commission Report appropriately titled as the ‘SHAH COMMISSION REPORT (Lost and Regained)’.

I am presenting below the front cover page of the ‘SHAH COMMISSION REPORT (Lost and Regained)’ which has been reissued by Era Sezhian.

I have already referred above to the criminal excesses of Pranab Mukherjee during the days of Emergency of Indira Gandhi from June 1975 to March 1977. In the most corrupt Sonia-directed UPA Government today, Pranab Mukherjee has become an obliging and ever willing satrap in the murky world of money laundering for and on behalf of the Firangi Memsahib Sonia Gandhi to whom – and to no one else – he owes his Cabinet post to boot!

In his very detailed Report given in August 1978, Justice J.C. Shah has adversely commented upon the illegal, unconstitutional and murky activities of Pranab Mukherjee during the days of Emergency from 1975 to 1977. I am giving below a few excerpts from the Shah Commission Report.

Like a Lower Division Clerk with very low cunning and trying to fudge a government file, Pranab Mukherjee also fudged the connected file relating to the illegal detention of Smt Gayatri Devi and Colonel Bhavani Singh. This has been highlighted and very adversely commented upon by Justice J.C Shah on Page 81 of his Interim Report 1 given on March 11, 1978. Let us hear the words of Justice Shah on Pranab Mukherjee, the then Union Minister for Revenue and Expenditure:

7.222 “Shri Pranab Mukherjee recorded a Note on September 7, 1975 which reads as under: ‘May be released on parole as proposed. However PM may kindly see.’

7.223 “Shri Mukherjee marked this Note to PM. The Secret Movement Register maintained by the then Personal Staff of the Minister of Revenue and Expenditure, Shri Pranab Mukherjee, which has been put up before the COMMISSION, shows that the relevant file bearing No: 686/100/75-CUS VIII/75 with the Notes of Shri C.T.A Pillai and Finance Secretary indicating the subject ‘Representation from Smt Gayathri Devi and Shri Bhavani Singh’ was marked to Shri Dhawan APS to PM on September 7, 1975 and was sent in a sealed cover. What decision was taken by the Prime Minister in the matter is not indicated in the file, but it has been noticed thatSHRI PRANAB MUKHERJEE PASSED HIS EARLIER NOTE DATED SEPTEMBER 7, 1975 RECOMMENDING RELEASE ON PAROLE. IF THE NOTE SHEET PAGE IS PUT AGAINST BRIGHT LIGHT, THE NOTING OF SHRI PRANAB MUKHERJEE REPLACED EARLIER CAN BE EASILY READ. THIS FILE WAS PUTUP BEFORE THE COMMISSION. … AFTER PASTING HIS EARLIER NOTE, SHRI PRANAB MUKHERJEE RECORDED ANOTHER NOTE ON SEPTEMBER 12, 1975 WHEREIN HE ORDERED THE REJECTION OF THE REQUEST REGARDING THE REVOCATION OF THE EARLIER ORDER OF DETENTION. SINCE SHRI PRANAB MUKHERJEE HAS NOT CHOSEN TO APPEAR BEFORE THECOMMISSION, AND GIVE EVIDENCE AND EXPLAIN THE VARIOUS MATTERS ATTRIBUTABLE TO HIM, IT CAN ONLY BE INFERRED THAT HIS SUBSEQUENT NOTING REJECTING THE REQUEST FOR REVOCATION OF THE DETENTION ORDER MAY HAVE BEEN ON THE ADVICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER INDIRA GANDHI.”


Soon after Justice Shah submitted his Report in 1978, the Janata Party Government of Morarji Desai appointed a Committee under the Chairmanship of Sri L.P Singh I.C.S, former Union Home Secretary to take effective follow up action on the recommendations of the Shah Commission.Sri D.P Kohli, the Father of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), an outstanding public servant and Sri M.L.M Hooja, the legendary Director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) were the members of this Committee. Sri B.S Raghavan I.A.S was the Member-Secretary of this Committee. This Committee gave its Final Report in the later half of 1978. This Committee had taken due note of the criminal fudging by Pranab Mukherjee, Union Minister of State for Finance (Revenue) in the file bearing No: 686/100/75-CUS VIII/75 referred to above and relating to the illegal incarceration of Smt Gayathri Devi and Shri Bhavani Singh’ and recommended that further Police investigation should be done into the matter. The LP Singh Committee Report was put into the dustbin by Indira Gandhi when she returned to power in 1980. She rewarded Pranab Mukherjee by making him Union Finance Minister for having cleverly fudged the file during the days of Emergency in 1975-1977. Law of Karma fixed Indira Gandhi on 31st October 1984 at her own Official Residence. Pranab Mukherjee seems to labour under the cosmic delusion that he is exempt from all Laws of the Land and more particularly from the inexorable working of the divine Law of Karma.

Now let me give some more excerpts from the Shah Commission Report on the shady deeds of Pranab Mukherjee (please see page 82 of the Interim Report I given on March 11, 1978).

7.228: “The manner in which Smt.Gayatri Devi was treated in jail makes a very poignant reading. She has narrated her experience in the jail before the COMMISSION. The Assistant Jail Superintendent has also given a Statement in this regard. She was not at all well when she was taken to the jail and was under medical treatment at the time of her arrest. According to her, the conditions in Tihar Jail were absolutely appalling ; there was complete lack of sanitation, no running water, the public latrines had failed and therefore all the people who were in prison had to use a drain to ease themselves. Rajmata Vijiya Raje Scindia of Gwalior was also brought to Tihar Jail and was kept in a ‘Phansi Kothi’(Cell for Condemned Prisoners) for want of any other accommodation. This cell happened to be next to the room where Shrimathi Gayatri Devi was living…..Smt.Gayatri Devi had lost 10kgs in weight and her blood pressure was very low”.

7.230: “It is thus clear on the basis of evidence that has been brought on record that Mr PRANAB KUMAR MUKHERJEE the then Minister of Revenue and Banking has misused his position and abused his authority in ordering the detention of Smt Gayatri Devi and Colonel Bhavani Singh on wholly insufficient grounds. IT IS A CLEAR CASE OF SUBVERSION OF LAWFUL PROCESSES AND OF ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURES”.

Again let me give another excerpt from the Shah Commission Report on the crimes of Pranab Mukherjee (please see page 57 of the Interim Report I given on March 11, 1978).

7.49: “Although Shri Pranab Mukherjee assisted the Commission at the preliminary stage of the fact finding inquiry, he did not file any Statement in this case as was required to be done under Rule 5 (2)(a) of the Commission of Inquiry (Central) Rules 1972. He had responded to the Summons u/s 8B of the Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952. But he refused to take oath and tender evidence. However, from the facts on record and the evidence analysed above, it appears that the normal established procedures in regard to the appointment of the Chairman of the State Bank of India (SBI) was not followed in this case and further it was not in accordance with the provisions of the State Bank of India Act, 1955, which made consultation with the Reserve Bank of India a condition precedent to the appointment of the Chairman of the SBI by the Central Government.

The Commission is of the view that considerations other than strictly professional and totally extraneous have unfortunately been allowed to operate in arriving at the decision to appoint Shri Varadachari as Chairman of the SBI. Shri Pranab Mukherjee has violated established Administrative Conventions and Procedures and misused his position in the appointment of Shri Varadachari”

My comment:

Pranab Mukherjee, the shameless and willing slave of Indira Gandhi bowed to her with reverence every moment every day and said all the time, “India is Indira and Indira is India”.

Pranab Mukherjee is the greatest Namak Harami in recent Congress history. When the 125thAnniversary of the establishment of the Indian National Congress was celebrated in 2010, he edited a book on the History of the Indian National Congress Party from 1885 to 2010. In this book Pranab Mukerjee has openly indicted Sanjay Gandhi for being solely responsible for all the excesses of Government during the Days of Indira Gandhi Emergency in 1975-1977. The Shah Commission Report has clearly brought out the fact that Pranab Mukherjee was just a chaprasi in the Office of Sanjay Gandhi during that period.
THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 2011

PRANAB MUKERJEE! WHAT A GREAT SON OF BENGAL (REWRITING HISTORY OF INDIA)INDEED!!!—II
V.SUNDARAM I.A.S.

[svenkat]

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~ghosh20p/page1.html

Raj Narain, a socialist who was recently defeated by Indira Gandhi (two to one) in the Rae Bareilly parliamentary constituency of Uttar Pradesh, submitted to the Allahabad High Court charges of corruption in the election process against Mrs. Gandhi. In 1974, Jayaprakash Narayan, ex-congressman, ex-socialist began to organize a campaign in Bihar to oust Indira Gandhi and her congress party from office on charges of corruption. On June 12th, 1975, Justice Jagmohanlal Sinha of the Allahabad High Court, found the Prime Minister guilty on the charge of misuse of government machinery for her election campaign. The court declared her election "null and void" and unseated her from the Lok Sabha. The court also banned her from contesting in any election for an additional six years. Some serious charges such as bribing voters and election malpractices were dropped and she was held guilty on comparatively less important charges such as building of a dais by state police and provision of electricity by the state electricity department and height of the dais from which she addressed the campaign rally. Some of these charges were in reality an essential part for the Prime Minister's Security protocol. In addition, she was held responsible for misusing the government machinery as a government employee. Because the court unseated her on comparatively lesser charges, while being acquitted on more serious charges, The Times of India described it as "firing the Prime Minister for a traffic ticket." Strikes by labour and trade unions, student unions and government unions swept across the country. Protests led by Raj Narayan and Moraji Desai flooded the streets of Delhi close to the Parliament building and the Prime Minister's residence.

[chaanakya]

Role of Navin Chawla during Emergency: and surprise mention of JetLee

Author: Ashok Malik
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: April 14, 2007

Lock them up

Chapter XI of the Shah Commission's Interim Report II dealt with the "1,012 persons detailed under MISA [Maintenance of Internal Security Act] during the period of Emergency". Before the Emergency, only the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi and the District Magistrate (DM) were empowered to issue detention orders under MISA.

On July 3, 1975, this authority was extended to five additional DMs (ADMs) as well. The DM and the ADMs were directed to expeditiously issue arrest orders, as and when requests were made by the police: "The detaining authorities were not required to bother much about the adequacy or veracity of the grounds of detention." Crucial to this endeavour was the Lieutenant Governor's Secretary.

The Shah Commission sought evidence from the ADMs: "S/Shri P Ghosh, GC Srivastava and Smt Meenakshi Dutta Ghosh have further stated that they were called by Shri Navin Chawla sometime after the additional district magistrates had been empowered to issue detention orders and were told to issue as many orders as possible."

The ADMs recalled that "Shri Navin Chawla had summoned... and told them to 'fabricate the grounds' whenever they found the grounds supplied by the police to be inadequate".

There was more: "Shri P Ghosh... was again summoned by Shri Navin Chawla and was told that the Lieutenant Governor 'would not hesitate to put even senior IAS officers behind the bars under MISA if he found them lacking in cooperation in the matter of MISA detentions'."

A committee headed by the Lieutenant Governor was set up in October 1975 to review detention cases. Cases to be taken up by the committee were pre-cleared by a three-member sub-committee that included Navin Chawla: "The main, if not the only, criterion for the recommendations was the severance of an individual's relations from his political party following a declaration of his support to the 20 point programme of the then Prime Minister."

There was also a hint of concentration camp approach: "A special sub-committee to interrogate certain persons who had tendered an apology for their past political activities was constituted ... (It) included a psychiatrist also. The purpose of the interrogation, conducted in jail, was to ascertain the genuineness of the political conversion of the persons. Smt S Chandra [then special secretary (home), Delhi] has stated that this special sub-committee was Shri Navin Chawla's idea."

Jail tale

What happened to the political prisoners in Tihar? This is how the Shah Commission saw it: "Though Shri Navin Chawla had no position in the jail hierarchy, he was exercising extra-statutory control in jail matters and sending instructions on all matters including the treatment of particular detenues. Shri Chawla had suggested the construction of some cells with asbestos roofs to 'bake' certain persons. A proposal to this effect was also processed but given up eventually due to certain technical reasons."

Parole was used as "an incentive to promote family planning". This "freedom for sterilisation" formula was also Chawla's: "According to Shri Krishan Chand [then Lieutenant Governor] Navin Chawla had given an assurance to the detenues to release them on parole if they got themselves sterilised."

However, when it came to allowing student prisoners to appear for examinations, there was no relaxation, no parole. As Chawla admitted, student prisoners were "considered a high security risk". Other officials remembered Chawla "used to deprecate in very strong language the activities of the students in general and the student detenues in particular".

One sample stood out. "It was seen that in one case the Delhi University agreed to open a special centre... just a mile from Tihar Jail," the Shah report said, but it was to no avail. The law student in question lost a year. His name was Arun Jaitley

[svenkat]

Another account of Jet Li during emergency
http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/talk-town?page=0,5

On the evening of 25th June, 1975 a massive rally was organized at Ramlila Maidan which was addressed by JP and several other leaders. After attending the rally I came back home late in the evening … At about 2 AM past midnight, I received a midnight knock at my residence. The police had come to arrest me. My father, a lawyer by profession got into an argument outside the gate of my house … I escaped from the backdoor…

The next morning, Jaitley organised what he called “the only protest against the Emergency which took place that day in the whole country,” where about 200 people gathered before the police arrived. Jaitley has also said that he “courted arrest”; a college friend remembers him running through the university coffee house shouting “Main bhaag raha hoon”—I’m running away—before being picked up by the police. “He knew he was going to be arrested,” Karanjawala told me. “But nobody really knew how long it would last. Arun may have thought that he would come out in a week.” Jaitley was sent first to Ambala Jail, then shifted to Tihar Jail in Delhi. He was imprisoned for 19 months.

Jaitley has often reflected on this time in Tihar with pride. “I was in charge of the kitchen,” he wrote in the 2010 Outlook article. “I found convicts to make us parathas for breakfast and convinced a kind jail warden to allow us meat, with the result that we got rogan josh for dinner … we all left prison looking rather plumper.” In another article, Jaitley wrote, “For us younger detenus who did not have the burden and worry of supporting families, jail became an elongated spell of a college or school camp.”

[saip]

Here is a contrarian view: Government officials came on time. Trains ran on time. Corruption came to a grinding halt, at least temporarily. No one jumped queues.

Ducking for cover

[chaanakya]

These are popular myths.

[ramana]

Here is a contrarian view: Government officials came on time. Trains ran on time. Corruption came to a grinding halt, at least temporarily. No one jumped queues.

Ducking for cover

Did you live in India at that time?
Did you ever go for late night movie show without worrying you will lose your testimonials?

It happened to a lot of people.

School teachers were given sterilization quota.
They turned in innocent school children for nas bandi.

Hope you come back and debate your point of view.

[disha]

Here is a contrarian view: Government officials came on time. Trains ran on time. Corruption came to a grinding halt, at least temporarily. No one jumped queues.

Ducking for cover

Why are you "Ducking for cover"? This is not emergency and this thread does not operate on such principles either.

Point is you are "ducking for cover" since you know very well that your "contrarian view" holds no logic or merit.

Trains ran on time before emergency and trains ran on time after and are still running on time. Government officials are coming on time and doing their work without corruption. At least the government officials I ran into for dealing with my father's property recently.

So the need to jail 1 Lakh people, torture them, rape them and murder some just because you think the benefit is that the trains run on time and corruption comes to a grinding halt (at the top level, it has come to a grinding halt today!).

What Emergency was then and now is., is what ISIS is now. Maybe less gory.

Mayans had a cultural tradition., in the time of drought - they would sacrifice their best to intercede on the behalf of the Mayans to the rain god(s) and ask for more rain.

Here you are saying that you would have people jailed, tortured, raped and murdered just because the train gods ensure that trains run on time and just because the lord of the files ensure that the files move on time.

Sir no doubt after expressing your opinion couched as contrarian, you ducked for cover. Knowing fully well that there is no logic in your opinion.

[NRao]

Emergency Days: Indira's Secretary comes to her defence

the declaration was necessary to save India from forces of anarchy

From what I recall there was anarchy. To the extent there were areas within central India where Chinese currency was the medium of transaction (along with the Indian currency).

Other than that things were noticeably dramatically different. Not just one or two things - pretty much across the board. Did these need an emergency? Perhaps not, but it did make a diff.

[SaiK]

http://www.the-criterion.com/V3/n3/Bhupinder.pdf
Naipaul’s India : A Wounded Civilization : A Political Perspective

http://www.thehindu.com/2000/06/13/stories/05132524.htm
Unlearnt lessons of the Emergency

By Subramanian Swamy

When attempts at seeking homogeneity of Indian society are carried beyond a point, it is dangerous for democracy... Those of us who can stand up, must do so now.

FOR TWO distinct reasons, it is ludicrous for the BJP to declare that it will hold meetings to remember the declaration of Emergency, whose 25th anniversary falls on June 26 this year. For one, during that 1975-77 period, most of the leaders of the BJP/RSS had betrayed the struggle against the Emergency. It is on the record in the Maharashtra Assembly proceedings that the then RSS chief, Balasaheb Deoras, wrote several apology letters to Indira Gandhi from inside the Yerawada jail in Pune disassociating the RSS from the JP-led movement and offering to work for the infamous 20-point programme. She did not reply to any of his letters. Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee also wrote apology letters to Indira Gandhi, and she had obliged him. In fact for most of the 20-month Emergency, Mr. Vajpayee was out on parole after having given a written assurance that he would not participate in any programmes against the Government. The vivid description of other erstwhile Jana Sangh worthies who chose to walk out of prison on promise of good behaviour is given in a book written by the Akali leader, Mr. Surjit Singh Barnala.

Some of us vigorously opposed the Emergency in our own ways. The full credit for inspiring the struggle must, however, first go to Morarji Desai, who was 78 years old and kept in solitary confinement, and to Jayaprakash Narayan who lay in Jaslok Hospital after both his kidneys were mysteriously made to fail in Chandigarh jail. More significantly, JP's heart had been broken when he saw an India utterly passive to the death of democracy, while those who had earlier egged him on e.g., the RSS, were now repudiating him and offering to work for the nation's tormentors. But JP never gave up. He sent me a message where I was hiding just after he had reached the hospital in August 1975, that I should escape abroad and campaign from there. But he warned me that the struggle may be ``life long''. Morarji, however, was completely unyielding and sanguine. When Indira Gandhi offered him parole on promise of good behaviour, he told the emissary who had come to visit him in jail that no sooner was he out he would start the struggle again. His daughter-in-law, Padma, had wept copiously and implored him to agree because of his age but he told her that death was a better option.

I must add that not all in the RSS were in a surrender mode. The exceptions were Madhavrao Muley, Dattopant Thengadi and Moropant Pingle. Muley had taken a tremendous liking to me. He supported me fully while I was abroad, and while I was hiding in India. But a tearful Muley told me in early November 1976 and I had better escape abroad again since the RSS had finalised the document of surrender to be signed in end January of 1977, and that on Mr. Vajpayee's insistence I would be sacrificed to appease an irate Indira and a fulminating Sanjay whose names I had successfully blackened abroad by my campaign. I asked him about the struggle, and he said that in the country everyone had become reconciled to the 42nd Amendment, and democracy as we had known it was over. Democracy was over for the RSS but not for all others. A few weeks later general elections to the Lok Sabha were declared. No one quite understood then what had made Indira Gandhi do that. But as a consequence, the RSS luckily did not need to sign the document of surrender.

It was an uncoordinated combination of forces that made Indira Gandhi declare elections, and the demise of the Emergency. My intensive campaign abroad and access to the American intellectuals had attracted the attention of the authorities, and especially the newly-elected President of the U.S., Mr. Jimmy Carter, who even before taking oath of office began to breathe down the Indian Government's neck about human rights, which quite unsettled Indira Gandhi. Then there was the unsung hero, Jiddu Krishnamurti, who was motivating her to withdraw the Emergency and acknowledge to her inner self that she had done wrong in imposing it. More pain came to Indira Gandhi when she prostrated before Sri Chandrashekhara Saraswati, the Kanchi Math Paramacharya, for 90 minutes but he had refused to even look at her, making it known that he thoroughly disapproved of the Emergency. And finally she had to contend with an unyielding Morarji Desai as head of the Lok Sangharsh Samiti who refused to withdraw the struggle or even acknowledge any good had come from the Emergency, which Indira Gandhi's emissaries implored him to say as a gesture. In other words, these moral and spiritual personages refused to legitimise the state of Emergency, the infamous 42nd Amendment to the Constitution, and accept a highly- shackled democracy as normal for India. Instead, they all held that the Emergency was subversion of the Constitution and viewed Indira Gandhi as the usurper.It was thus the sustained non- violent and moral approach that won the day, and not a foreign- financed terror. A violent resistance suited the advocates of the Emergency for justifying it, but that resistance had mercifully fizzled out early.

When Indira Gandhi called for elections, those who had failed in their violent resistance wanted to boycott the polls on the grounds that the Opposition parties had no chance in the circumstances since the illiterate masses would not be moved by the issue of democracy, and thus the polls would legitimise the Emergency. But Morarji and Charan Singh would have none of it. Obviously they had more faith in the Indian people than those who demagogically spoke in the name of the people.

It was the plurality and heterogeneity of Indian society that made people revolt against the authoritarian order. This is the crux of the Indian democratic paradigm. India is a democratic society in form because of the mutual gravitational pull of disparate sections that make the whole. Therefore, the lesson to be learnt from the Emergency is that as long as the composite nature of Indian society survives, Indian democracy will survive. Hence, when attempts at seeking homogeneity of Indian society are carried beyond a point, it is dangerous for democracy, at least till we have reached a level of education when good men and women will dare to struggle for fundamental rights.

Edmund Burke had said: ``For evil to triumph, good men must do nothing''. India has to progress considerably before we can confront evil in our society head on. During the Emergency, those who were in a position to fight, with notable exceptions, did not. But, today we do not even have giants like JP and Morarji to defend civil liberty. Mr. H. R. Khanna chose to forego his Chief Justiceship of the Supreme Court rather than undermine judicially the concept of fundamental rights. Does anyone remember him? Further, luck too was on India's side then because Indira Gandhi decided to go for the polls. Had she not done so, it may have taken us a long time to unwind the Emergency.

Today, we are in a much weaker position than in 1975-77 to defend democracy. One reason is that the tall caste-neutral leaders of the Freedom Struggle are no more. Another reason is that a cadre- based fascist organisation is in control of the levers of power. This organisation has spawned lumpen front organisations, that do not hesitate to kill even defenceless missionaries of religion. Worse, there is every indication that institutions are being undermined by a creeping Emergency. This is the second reason why the BJP plan to celebrate the struggle against the Emergency is ludicrous. The BJP has set into motion the overhaul of the Constitution not just a mere amendment to it. It has commenced the rewriting of history. Its sister front organisations such as the VHP and the Bajrang Dal are already unleashing eerie and shadowy terror at the micro level of society. How can the BJP then speak of defending democracy?

Thus, 25 years later we still cannot take democracy for granted nor put the challenge to it behind us. It is today invisibly under siege. ``Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty'' said the American revolutionary Patrick Henry. Thus, those of us who can stand up, must do so now. That sums up the lesson of the Emergency in retrospect.

[SaiK]

10. These principles have been borne in mind ever since 1952 when, under the Constitution, two
Houses—the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha—were constituted. However, in 1966, the Council
of Ministers was headed by Smt. Indira Gandhi who was not a member of the Lok Sabha. In the
Budget Session, a private member’s Bill which sought to amend the Constitution so as to provide
that “the Prime Minister shall be member of the House of the People (Lok Sabha)”, was considered
in the House. In reply, the Government stated that the present Prime Minister would herself have
been willing to contest the election to the Lok Sabha but for the reason that by-elections were not
being held because of emergency. While accepting the spirit behind the Bill, the Minister added
that “it would not be proper to have such a provision in the Constitution. There may be occasions—
that too for a limited period—when a Prime Minister has to be from the other House”—L.S. Deb.,
15-4-1966 and 13-5-1966.

http://164.100.47.134/intranet/pract&pr ... XXVIII.pdf

[SaiK]

Kuldip Nayar on why he thought Emergency could never happen
Even though there was censorship we stretched ourselves and became a sort of anti-establishment newspaper.

POLITICS | 7-minute read | 25-06-2015
Kuldip Nayar KULDIP NAYAR @kuldip_nayar
Forty eight hours before the Emergency was declared, I was in my cabin at The Indian Express building on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg when a correspondent of The New Statesman, London, came to see me. He asked me, suppose the Constitution is suspended, people are detained without trial, and fundamental rights are diluted, what will happen? I laughed. I told him this doesn't happen in India and dismissed him.

On June 25, I got a midnight call, well actually a call at 12.30am from one of the loaders in office. He told me the police was not allowing them to move from the premises with the newspaper of the day. I asked why. He said they did not give an explanation. They just said a "state of Emergency" had been imposed. When they asked, "Yeh kya hai", they were told "upar walon ne kaha hai, hamein kuch nahin pata". I tried to call KC Pant (later defence minister) who I knew well, but I couldn't connect. The paper was not distributed that day.

When I went to office the next day, I got a call from HJ D'Penha, who was deputy public information officer in charge of the prime minister's office (PMO) and appointed chief censor officer. He was a sharif aadmi but he had a job to do. He said you will have to bring the paper to me otherwise you take a chance and run the risk of being banned. So we decided to leave a two column space blank on our front page in protest every day. We decided to be careful in our news. I used to write a weekly column under my byline. I ran foul of the censors in the second column itself which was a comparison between the regime of Zulfiqar Bhutto and the dictatorship of Field Marshal Ayub Khan, in an elliptical way an allusion to the situation at home. D'Penha issued an order that nothing could be published under my byline.

Even though there was censorship we stretched ourselves and became sort of an anti-establishment newspaper. We started selling a lot. People started attributing meaning to even our regular stories, to whatever we wrote. The Indian Express used to sell at five paise less than other newspapers. We increased our price. Our circulation trebled, so much so that we used to run out of newsprint.

In fact, after the Emergency was lifted, our publisher Ramnathji (Ramnath Goenka) requested me, "Kisi tarah circulation to retain karna". It would not be possible, I told him. It was not Express that was selling, it was the sentiment.

I remember when they removed S Mulgaonkar and brought in VK Narasimhan from The Financial Express as editor, thinking he would be as harmless as he looked. But he was very biting and would often make our copy sharper than it was. But the censors couldn't do anything. They had, after all, already removed one editor.

Lifting the Emergency

Yes, I broke the story that Emergency was to be lifted. There's an interesting story behind it. I was at a party at the India International Centre where I met a superintendent of police. He was of my age. I asked him: "Bhai, kya ho raha hai?" Surprisingly, he answered: "Kuch toh ho raha hai. Hamein kaha gaya hai ki pata karen kaunsa candidate kis constituency se jeetega?" Now this was great information, but I wanted confirmation. So I went to Kamal Nath's home. He used to live in Malcha Marg in those days. I chatted with his wife while waiting for him. When he came out, I asked him casually, "Achcha yeh batao, tum wahi constituency se lad rahe ho? Sanjay Gandhi to Amethi se lad raha hai na?" He asked me, "Who told you?" That was enough for me. I ran the story but at 11.30pm so that no one else could pick it up. The headline on January 16, 1977 was a banner: "Lok Sabha elections likely in March". Ramnathji saw it, and he rang up, asking, "Are you sure?"

The next day D'Penha rang up and told me, "VC Shukla (then information and broadcasting minister) ka phone aaya", saying "phir usko pakad lenge" - I had been jailed under the MISA (Maintenance of Internal Security Act) in July 1975 for leading a protest against the Emergency. I told him, "Ek dafa ki hi sharm hoti hai". My political correspondent HK Dua said initially this story was not correct. But by the evening, after his rounds, he said it was true.

Two days later, in a broadcast to the nation, Indira Gandhi declared that the Emergency had been lifted and that there would be elections.

A changed Indira

Before I was detained, Indira and I used to be good friends. I was Lal Bahadur Shastri's information officer and as home minister, he was part of a citizens' committee set up by Jawaharlal Nehru on the 1962 war. It was a small committee so we would meet often. I remember Indira had long hair and when she cut her hair, she displayed it proudly, asking me, "How do I look?"

She used to love dirty jokes, the filthier the better, and would often urge me to tell her some. But in the run up to the Emergency I felt she had started concentrating too much power in her hands. I started writing pieces that were critical of her and her press adviser HY Sharada Prasad told me, "Yeh kya ho gaya hai tumhe?" I wrote her a letter, addressed Dear prime minister, quoting her father to her: that if given a choice between an unruly press and a controlled government, he would always choose an unruly press. I never met her after she imposed Emergency.

Why did she impose the Emergency? I think she really believed the Allahabad High Court judgement of June 12, 1975 (which found her guilty of misusing government officials and machinery for her 1971 poll campaign) had made a mountain out of a molehill. She thought they had used a hammer to kill a fly. She was still contemplating making Jagjivan Ram the prime minister. But Sanjay (Gandhi) managed to convince her. She used to consult him on all political matters. I knew at the dining table at home, she would talk only to him, not Rajiv (Gandhi). Woh to pilot tha.

As for why she lifted it, well, I think she was genuinely uncomfortable being compared to Adolf Hitler and being praised by the Soviet Union - she wanted the approval of Western democracies. Two, she really believed the advice of the intelligence bureau (IB) that she would win the elections - she had gone around the country too and thought she knew the pulse of the people.

After the defeat

When news came that Indira was trailing from Rae Bareli, I couldn't believe it. I rang up the Express correspondent and he said it has been recounted thrice and it's true. But "upar se order aya hai" to not declare it. Eventually the returning officer of Rae Bareli had to declare it: Indira Gandhi had lost.

The next day I went to Rae Bareli to meet the officer who had the guts to declare Indira Gandhi was defeated. I took a plane to Lucknow and then drove to Rae Bareli straight to the house of the deputy commissioner. I met the retuning officer who told me ML Fotedar (a close aide of Indira Gandhi) was on duty that day and kept pushing him to do a recount. But unofficially it had leaked out that she had lost. The deputy commissioner's wife said she would prefer to wash dishes than have her husband be dishonest. When Indira Gandhi won in 1980, I tracked the officer again. He had been shifted to an obscure portfolio, in charge of Allahabad Library. He begged me, "Aaj ke bad mujhe phone nahin karna". Indira Gandhi was back.

http://www.dailyo.in/politics/emergency ... /4591.html

[SaiK]

A tale of three Emergencies: real reason always different

Arun Jaitley : Mon Nov 05 2007, 00:03 hrs

The proclamation of Emergency in Pakistan by General Pervez Musharraf, though a cause of serious concern, did not take the world by surprise. Ever since the General assumed power in October, 1999, a smooth transition to democracy in Pakistan appeared challenging. A military dictator would hate to visualise the possibility of a democratic regime, which may ever hold the dictator accountable for acts done during his regime. Overthrow of elected governments was not unknown to Pakistan. Arresting and prosecuting political opponents also had its precedents. But pushing leaders of democratic parties into exile was somewhat unprecedented. How would any of these leaders once back in power respond to an erstwhile dictator? It was, therefore, logical for the General to eliminate the remote possibility of restoration of democracy. The path he has chosen is not original.
When I heard the General on the evening of November 3, 2007 addressing his country, the arguments; the logic and even the turn of phrases appeared to be identical to the language used by dictators in other countries countries who have resorted to a constitutionally empowered dictatorship.

Adolf Hitler did not command a majority in his own legislature. He used the pretext of the so-called fire in the Reichstag to proclaim a state of emergency. He assumed all powers to himself. He detained his political opponents and censored the newspapers. The composition of courts was changed and the intimidated court accepted and ratified every word of what the Fuehrer commanded. Hitler's logic was simple - the nation had been threatened and was being destabilised. He wanted a disciplined society which would make rapid progress. To identify himself with economic progress, he announced a 25-point economic programme. The fear psychosis built around him perpetuated his personality cult. "Adolf Hitler is Germany and Germany is Adolf Hitler," his supporters proclaimed. He claimed an achievement that even trains were running on time and people were welcoming the dictatorship due to growth and discipline. Hitler never enjoyed legislative majority. He used the emergency provisions to perpetuate a personal rule.

Indira Gandhi's emergency in 1975 took a leaf out of Hitler's book. She was unseated by a judgment of the Allahabad High Court. The Supreme Court granted her only a partial stay. Her continuation in power was threatened. Young Turks led by Shri Chandra Shekhar who were rebelling against her. A nationwide movement led by Shri Jai Prakash Narayan threatened her politics and popular support. Her alibi for the proclamation of emergency was not very different. She complained of the process of destabilisation of the Nation. The armed forces were being asked to disobey illegal orders. A Minister in her Cabinet had been assassinated and, therefore, India could not afford the luxury of democracy. She proclaimed a state of Internal Emergency, detained the entire Opposition, censored all the newspapers and banned all forms of political protest. The blackout of Pakistani TV channels this week reminds us of the power cut in the offices of a newspaper published from New Delhi the day emergency was proclaimed. Their publications were physically disrupted through power cuts. Censors were posted in each newspaper. Independent Editors were detained. The tackling of the Judiciary had begun two years earlier. Three independent judges of the Supreme Court were superseded in order to change the 'social and political philosophy' of the Court. The then Prime Minister and her supporters repeatedly complained that all socialist and pro-poor economic measures were being obstructed by the Judiciary. Seventeen independent judges of the High Courts who decided in favour of the detinues were transferred as a vindictive counter blast. Effigies of the Judge who had unseated Mrs. Gandhi were burnt in public demonstration. The forces of destabilisation had to be stopped. Even the well-meaning Vinoba Bhave called the emergency as a 'festival of discipline' — an Anushashan Parva.. Dictators find many honourable supporters too. With the suspension of all democratic activity and an environment of fear psychosis being created, Mrs. Indira Gandhi went a step further and thought the emergency was the best occasion to compel the country to accept a dynastic succession. The family was now the Party. In fact, the family was the saviour of the country. The Supreme Court was compelled to hold that both illegal detention and even killings could not be complained off.

Many of those who are born and have grown up after the mid-1970's may have forgotten the impact of these developments. Compare the striking similarities with what has happened in Pakistan in the last few days. The General's alibi for emergency is terrorism. That has been a constant factor for the last several years. The General hates an independent judiciary. When his attempts to sack the Chief Justice have failed, he is now constitutionally empowered to remove him. Judges who refused to swear by an authoritarian regime have to exit. A set of pliable judges has entered. Pliable judges would ordinarily endorse and approve every dictatorial measure that the General takes. Compare the remarkable similarities with what happened in India. The proclamation of the Internal Emergency in 1975 amended both the Constitution and the Election law retrospectively in order to validate her (Indira Gandhi's) invalid election. The then pliable court endorsed the legislative changes. In Pakistan the General was threatened from being declared ineligible to contest elections. The General's personal interest was more important than Pakistan's judicial institution. Democracy has been subverted to keep one person in power. The packaging of Pakistan's Supreme Court is intended to save the General's election. The media has been restrained and the dissenters will be arrested. The Court has been packed. Indira Gandhi followed the German practice of announcing a 20-point economic programme and using the emergency's discipline of the graveyard for compelling economic growth. It won't be surprising that the General now comes up with an economic package for Pakistan.

The Congress President during the emergency breached the German copyright by proclaiming that "Indira is India and India is Indira". Ultimately, subversion of democracy, censorship of the Press, packing of the judicial institution, illegal detentions of opponents, creation of a fear psychosis in all the three Emergencies was ostensible to prevent the Nation from breaking up or destabilisng. It was proclaimed that it was a pro-poor move in order to expedite economic growth. The real reason was always different - perpetuating personal rule, eliminating dissent and disallowing criticism. Societies have shown great resilience in overcoming these dictatorial moves. I have no doubt that what happened post Emergency in India would repeat itself in Pakistan.
http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/a ... t/235992/0

[SaiK]

The case that saved Indian democracy
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/t ... 647800.ece

A March 2013 picture of Kesavananda Bharati.

The judgment in Kesavananda Bharati v State of Kerala, whose 40th anniversary falls today, was crucial in upholding the supremacy of the Constitution and preventing authoritarian rule by a single party

Exactly forty years ago, on April 24, 1973, Chief Justice Sikri and 12 judges of the Supreme Court assembled to deliver the most important judgment in its history. The case of Kesavananda Bharati v State of Kerala had been heard for 68 days, the arguments commencing on October 31, 1972, and ending on March 23, 1973. The hard work and scholarship that had gone into the preparation of this case was breathtaking. Literally hundreds of cases had been cited and the then Attorney-General had made a comparative chart analysing the provisions of the Constitutions of 71 different countries!

CORE QUESTION

All this effort was to answer just one main question: was the power of Parliament to amend the Constitution unlimited? In other words, could Parliament alter, amend, abrogate any part of the Constitution even to the extent of taking away all fundamental rights?

Article 368, on a plain reading, did not contain any limitation on the power of Parliament to amend any part of the Constitution. There was nothing that prevented Parliament from taking away a citizen’s right to freedom of speech or his religious freedom. But the repeated amendments made to the Constitution raised a doubt: was there any inherent or implied limitation on the amending power of Parliament?

The 703-page judgment revealed a sharply divided court and, by a wafer-thin majority of 7:6, it was held that Parliament could amend any part of the Constitution so long as it did not alter or amend “the basic structure or essential features of the Constitution.” This was the inherent and implied limitation on the amending power of Parliament. This basic structure doctrine, as future events showed, saved Indian democracy and Kesavananda Bharati will always occupy a hallowed place in our constitutional history.

SUPREME COURT V INDIRA GANDHI

It is supremely ironical that the basic structure theory was first introduced by Justice Mudholkar eight years earlier by referring to a 1963 decision of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. Chief Justice Cornelius — yes, Pakistan had a Christian Chief Justice and, later, a Hindu justice as well — had held that the President of Pakistan could not alter the “fundamental features” of their Constitution.

The Kesavananda Bharati case was the culmination of a serious conflict between the judiciary and the government, then headed by Mrs Indira Gandhi. In 1967, the Supreme Court took an extreme view, in the Golak Nath case, that Parliament could not amend or alter any fundamental right. Two years later, Indira Gandhi nationalised 14 major banks and the paltry compensation was made payable in bonds that matured after 10 years! This was struck down by the Supreme Court, although it upheld the right of Parliament to nationalise banks and other industries. A year later, in 1970, Mrs Gandhi abolished the Privy Purses. This was a constitutional betrayal of the solemn assurance given by Sardar Patel to all the erstwhile rulers. This was also struck down by the Supreme Court. Ironically, the abolition of the Privy Purses was challenged by the late Madhavrao Scindia, who later joined the Congress Party.

Smarting under three successive adverse rulings, which had all been argued by N.A. Palkhivala, Indira Gandhi was determined to cut the Supreme Court and the High Courts to size and she introduced a series of constitutional amendments that nullified the Golak Nath, Bank Nationalisation and Privy Purses judgments. In a nutshell, these amendments gave Parliament uncontrolled power to alter or even abolish any fundamental right.

These drastic amendments were challenged by Kesavananda Bharati, the head of a math in Kerala, and several coal, sugar and running companies. On the other side, was not only the Union of India but almost all the States which had also intervened. This case had serious political overtones with several heated exchanges between N.A. Palkhivala for the petitioners and H.M. Seervai and Niren De, who appeared for the State of Kerala and the Union of India respectively.

The infamous Emergency was declared in 1975 and, by then, eight new judges had been appointed to the Supreme Court. A shocking attempt was made by Chief Justice Ray to review the Kesavananda Bharati decision by constituting another Bench of 13 judges. In what is regarded as the finest advocacy that was heard in the Supreme Court, Palkhivala made an impassioned plea for not disturbing the earlier view. In a major embarrassment to Ray, it was revealed that no one had filed a review petition. How was this Bench then constituted? The other judges strongly opposed this impropriety and the 13-judge Bench was dissolved after two days of arguments. The tragic review was over but it did irreversible damage to the reputation of Chief Justice A.N. Ray.

CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS SAVED

If the majority of the Supreme Court had held (as six judges indeed did) that Parliament could alter any part of the Constitution, India would most certainly have degenerated into a totalitarian State or had one-party rule. At any rate, the Constitution would have lost its supremacy. Even Seervai later admitted that the basic structure theory preserved Indian democracy. One has to only examine the amendments that were made during the Emergency. The 39th Amendment prohibited any challenge to the election of the President, Vice-President, Speaker and Prime Minister, irrespective of the electoral malpractice. This was a clear attempt to nullify the adverse Allahabad High Court ruling against Indira Gandhi. The 41st Amendment prohibited any case, civil or criminal, being filed against the President, Vice-President, Prime Minister or the Governors, not only during their term of office but forever. Thus, if a person was a governor for just one day, he acquired immunity from any legal proceedings for life. If Parliament were indeed supreme, these shocking amendments would have become part of the Constitution.

Thanks to Kesavananda Bharati, Palkhivala and the seven judges who were in the majority, India continues to be the world’s largest democracy. The souls of Nehru, Patel, Ambedkar and all the founding fathers of our Constitution can really rest in peace.

(Arvind P. Datar is a senior advocate of the Madras High Court.)

Revisiting a verdict
http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl2 ... 107100.htm
V. VENKATESAN
The Supreme Court's 1973 verdict in Kesavananda Bharati and the debate on the basic structure doctrine continue to fascinate observers.


IN an article written in 1974, in the immediate aftermath of the Supreme Court's landmark judgment in the Kesavananda Bharati case, the legal scholar Upendra Baxi predicted that “for a long time to come the Indian judiciary, constitutional scholarship and, above all, the Indian polity are likely to be consumed by the magnificent obsessions created by the 11 opinions of the Supreme Court”. He said in an article titled “The Constitutional quicksands of Kesavananda Bharati and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment” that even “a limited analysis of what the court decided … is as delicate and difficult as that directed to the unravelling of the significance of the smile of Mona Lisa”. Upendra Baxi was prescient.

The two books under review seek to unravel the varied and profound questions raised by the historic judgment of 700-odd pages, which was delivered by a sharply divided 13-judge Constitution Bench with a majority of 7:6. They try to answer the questions, to use Baxi's phrase, “with the chill of reason rather than with the passion of a moment”.

The Kesavananda Bharati case dealt with the scope and width of Parliament's amending powers as laid down in Article 368 of the Constitution. In Golaknath vs State of Punjab in 1967, for the first time an 11-judge Constitution Bench decided, with a majority of 6:5, that Parliament could not through amendment abrogate or abridge the fundamental rights. In order to nullify the Golaknath verdict, Parliament enacted the 24th Amendment to the Constitution in 1971 laying down that its powers to amend the Constitution were unrestricted and unlimited.

In March 1970, Kesavananda Bharati, the pontiff of a religious mutt in Kerala, took objection to the attempts of the government to acquire, under the Kerala Land Reforms Act, 1963, land belonging to the mutt. The mutt challenged the Act, through the famous advocate N.A. Palkhivala, before the Supreme Court by filing a writ petition seeking to protect the fundamental right of religious institutions to manage their own property without undue restrictions by the state. When this petition was pending, the 24th Amendment to the Constitution (amending Articles 13 and 368) was adopted. It was followed by the 25th, 26th and 29th Amendments. The 25th Amendment (1971) made many changes in Article 31 (dealing with compulsory acquisition of property) following the 1970 bank nationalisation case ( R.C. Cooper vs Union of India).

The 26th Amendment (1971) terminating the privileges and privy purses of the ex-rulers of the former princely states was aimed at getting over the Supreme Court's ruling in the privy purses case. The 29th Amendment (1972) added two Kerala Land Reforms Amendment Acts (1969 and 1971) to the Ninth Schedule, which is meant for Acts that the State legislatures and Parliament wanted to keep beyond judicial review. Kesavananda subsequently challenged this amendment, but as the challenges to the other amendments raised similar issues, they were heard together. Kesavananda became the lead petitioner since he filed the petition first.

Consequently, the validity of these amendments was challenged before a Constitution Bench comprising five judges. In August 1972, the five-judge Bench admitted the petition and referred it to a 13-judge Bench, which heard the case for over six months before delivering its verdict on April 24, 1973. The Supreme Court had only 15 judges when the 13-judge Bench heard the case. Palkhivala led the arguments on behalf of the petitioners, while the eminent constitutional scholar, H.M. Seervai, along with Attorney-General Niren De, argued on behalf of the respondents.

T.R. Andhyarujina was a junior to Seervai during the hearing of the case. The arguments before the court lasted 66 days and young Andhyarujina maintained a diary, noting down meticulously every twist and turn that marked the relationship between counsel and the Bench and among the judges within the Bench. He makes two points. One, he disputes the general belief that the Supreme Court held in the Kesavananda case that Article 368 does not enable Parliament to alter the basic structure or framework of the Constitution. Second, he asserts that the belief was the result of the stratagem of the then Chief Justice of India (CJI), Justice S.M. Sikri, who got a note titled “View by the Majority” signed by nine of the 13 judges.

This note had no legal sanctity whatsoever. The crucial sentence in the note relating to Article 368 not enabling Parliament to alter the basic structure was in fact lifted from only one of the 11 judgments in the case. That judgment was authored by Justice H.R. Khanna. The book is a chronicle of how a single judge's view became the holding of the majority of judges.

A certain amount of tension was building up between Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Justice Sikri before the hearing began. In order to prepare the Supreme Court to reverse the Golaknath verdict, Indira Gandhi wanted to pack the court with judges of her choice and did succeed in doing so to some extent. Justice Sikri resisted, but he was not always successful.

The odds were even when the hearing began. Chief Jusitce Sikri and Justices J.M. Shelat, K.S. Hegde and A.N. Grover were determined to defend the concept of implied limitations on Parliament's amending power. This concept was the bedrock of the Golaknath judgment. Justices Sikri and Shelat were part of the majority judges in the Golaknath case. All the four judges were part of the majority judges whose verdicts went against the government's moves to nationalise banks and abolish privy purses. The Supreme Court had decided these cases between the Golaknath and Kesavananda cases.

Justices A.N. Ray, K.K. Mathew, D.G. Palekar, M.H. Beg, and S.N. Dwivedi were pro-government judges on the Kesavananda Bench, and their collective view was that Parliament had unfettered powers to amend the fundamental rights. Justices H.R. Khanna, A.K. Mukherjea, P. Jaganmohan Reddy and Y.V. Chandrachud were non-committal at the start of the Kesavananda hearing, and no one was sure about their leanings until the delivery of the verdict.

In the final outcome, the number of Sikri-led judges went up to six, with two additions. They were Justices Reddy and Mukherjea. Justice Chandrachud joined the remaining five judges who decided that Parliament had the unlimited amending power. Justice Khanna thus became the only judge who could tilt the scales one way or the other. By signing the note circulated by Chief Justice Sikri, Justice Khanna apparently joined the Sikri-led judges, thus giving them the bare majority on the Bench.

Justice Khanna's position

Andhyarujina argues that there was an unbridgeable gulf between the views of Justice Khanna and the Sikri-led six judges and that it was impossible for them to have formed the majority. While the Sikri-led judges adopted the ‘implied limitations' route to reach the basic structure doctrine, Justice Khanna took recourse to, what a keen observer of the case called, the “semantic” route expressly rejecting the implied limitations theory. Justice Khanna held that the word amendment ipso facto overruled dismemberment of the existing Constitution through the amendment process.

The Sikri-led judges had a pre-conceived notion of what the basic or essential features of the Constitution were. These differed according to their perceptions, and they were clear that Parliament could not touch them. These included the republican form of government, separation of powers, fundamental rights, democracy and judicial review.

Justice Khanna held that any amendment should not leave the existing Constitution unrecognisable. The degree of weakening of the Constitution would need to be much higher than what was envisaged under the implied limitations theory of the Sikri-led judges, and the new Constitution resulting from such an amendment must be completely different from the original one so as to make it unrecognisable. Justice Khanna was against only this kind of amendment.

As a senior advocate of the Supreme Court explained to this reviewer, the distinction between Justice Khanna and the Sikri-led judges could be understood better by the metaphor of an obese person wanting to undergo bariatric surgery to trim his potbelly. To the implied limitation theorists (led by Justice Sikri himself), even this surgery would have been anathema as they would deem it as damaging the basic structure of that patient. The semantic theorists (represented by Justice Khanna), however, would have approved it, provided the surgery was not accompanied by a facial implant or a sex change.

In the note on the View by the Majority, the Sikri-led judges, along with two of the pro-government judges, dramatically merged their views with that of Justice Khanna without any explanation or reasoning whatsoever in order to help their brother Justice Sikri, who was to retire before the delivery of the verdict.

As the View by the Majority note essentially reflected his original position, Justice Khanna had no difficulty in signing it.

Change in interpretation

But it was Justice Khanna's subsequent conduct that cast doubts on his own position, and thereby hangs another tale. When the Kesavananda case was decided, the apprehension that the elected representatives could not be trusted to act responsibly appeared ridiculous. But, as Senior Advocate Raju Ramachandran, writes in his essay in Supreme, but not infallible (an academic book published in 2000 to mark the golden jubilee of the Supreme Court), this apprehension came true very soon and all too dramatically.

The supersession of judges in 1973 to choose A.N. Ray as the successor to Sikri as CJI was the first indication. The superseded judges, Justices Shelat, Hegde and Grover (who were on the side of Sikri on the Kesavananda Bench), resigned in protest.

The Allahabad High Court set aside Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's election to the Lok Sabha on June 12, 1975, on the grounds of corrupt practice. She then imposed an internal emergency, filed an appeal in the Supreme Court, got the electoral law amended retrospectively to take away the basis of the High Court finding, and rushed through the 39th Amendment Act inserting Article 329A to wipe out all judicial proceedings against her election.

In Smt. Indira Nehru Gandhi vs Raj Narain, the Supreme Court's five-judge Constitution Bench unanimously applied the basic structure doctrine to invalidate Article 329A, though it upheld the Prime Minister's election on the basis of the retrospective amendment to the electoral law.

Justice Khanna, who was part of this Bench, had no difficulty in going along with the four judges. However, he felt it necessary to interpret his own judgment in the Kesavananda case, probably realising that it had caused confusion. He clarified that he found “it difficult to read anything in his Kesavananda judgment to justify the conclusion that the fundamental rights were not part of the basic structure”. He suggested that he had held that the right to property, a fundamental right at that time (Parliament later removed it from the list of fundamental rights and converted it to an ordinary right), was not part of the basic structure. He argued that if he wanted to exclude all the fundamental rights from the basic structure, he need not have specifically mentioned the right to property as the one that needed to be excluded from the basic structure.

However, many observers, including Andhyarujina, consider that in Kesavananda, Justice Khanna did not share the Sikri-led judges' emphasis on treating the fundamental rights as unamendable “basic features” of the Constitution. In Kesavananda, they say that Justice Khanna was in favour of amending the fundamental rights as long as such an amendment did not result in changing the basic character of the Constitution.

Andhyarujina argues in the book that it is not open to the author of the judgment to explain it or to say later that he did not mean what his judgment plainly reads. If a judgment is to be analysed for its meaning, it can only be done by another court and not by the author of the judgment. He has also pointed to several inconsistencies in Justice Khanna's clarification of his judgment in the Kesavananda case made while delivering the Indira Nehru-Gandhi judgment. Justice Khanna did not convincingly answer these inconsistencies during his lifetime.

Irrespective of such inconsistencies, it is possible to suggest that Justice Khanna decided to identify himself with the Sikri-led judges on the question of the fundamental rights being a part of the basic structure in view of Indira Gandhi's blatant abuse of constitutional provisions to keep her in office. He might have thought that had he not cleared the doubts about the majority verdict in the Kesavananda case then, authoritarian tendencies in the government would have become unstoppable. By signing the View by the Majority note, Justice Khanna had created sufficient elbow room to adjust his position later.

To Andhyarujina's surprise, subsequent Benches of the Supreme Court accepted this clarification of Justice Khanna rather than what the plain reading of the Kesavananda judgments would suggest. The fundamental rights thus became an inseparable part of the basic structure of the Constitution.

Justice Khanna's clarification, though legally untenable, found support among subsequent Benches of the Supreme Court, primarily because he inspired huge respect by virtue of his unblemished and distinguished record. He was the sole dissenter in the five-judge Constitution Bench in the infamous A.D.M. Jabalpur case, which justified the suspension of right to life and liberty during the Emergency. The Indira Gandhi government superseded him while appointing Justice Beg the Chief Justice on Justice Ray's retirement in 1977. Justice Khanna resigned in protest and has since been hailed as a towering legal icon.

The second book under review was born out of an event, organised in Pune on January 16, 2010, on the 90th birth anniversary of the late Palkhivala, to reargue the Kesavananda Bharati case. Section 1 of the book deals with the comparison and critical analysis of 11 opinions in the Kesavananda case. Section II is devoted to the legacy of Seervai and Palkhivala and includes articles by Seervai's son, Navroz Seervai, and brother of Palkhivala, Behram A. Palkhivala.

Section III includes critical papers by invited authors, including Andhyarujina and Anil B. Divan.

The two books will contribute immensely to enhancing the constitutional literacy of lawyers, and through them, lay readers. They also help us understand how constitutional law, like political events, can be a result of accidents in history.

[SaiK]

Emergency: 'Rajan's mother died asking for him'
http://news.rediff.com/report/2000/jun/26/george.htm

George Iype in Kochi

In Kerala, where civil liberties activism peaks on special anniversaries, 25 years of Emergency was commemorated with street corner meetings, seminars, special media supplements and political arguments.

The state's most famous Emergency incident - the disappearance and death of P Rajan, an engineering college student in police custody - still prompts social activists and political leaders to say that Kerala suffered the brunt of police excesses.

During these 25 years, Eachara Warrier has been Kerala's most famous victim of Emergency. His only son, Rajan, was picked up by the police from the hostel of the Regional Engineering College at Kozhikode. Rajan was 'missing' for several days. Later, the police admitted that he died while in custody at the Kakkayam police camp, though they could not produce his body.

"The agony of my missing son will continue to haunt me till my death. When my wife Radha died three months back, her last words were: when will my son come back?" Warrier, a 78-year old retired college professor, told rediff.com.

Warrier says he suffered mental and physical agony for months while searching for his son. "We all know that K Karunakaran, then the state's home minister, knows the truth, but refuses to divulge it," he said. Karunakaran had to resign following the furore over the Rajan case.

"I lost my only son. There are hundreds and thousands of Emergency victims in the state. No one remembers or helps them," Warrier said. Presently, Warrier lives with his two daughters.

But Karunakaran says he has no regrets about the Rajan case. He claims police officials deliberately hid the truth from him. "I was not provided the true picture of the case though I was in charge of the home ministry," he said.

The People's Union of Civil Liberties held a meeting in front of Warrier's house on Sunday to protest the Emergency days.

"Karunakaran always tried to hide the truth. He will continue to do so because he is a shrewd politician. I lost hope in him after several meetings with him did not prove productive," Warrier told the protesters.

Warrier now insists that there should be no provision in the country's laws for the imposition of Emergency.

"I have no regrets because I do not think even now that I was responsible for what happened to Rajan. But as home minister, I accepted the moral responsibility for Rajan's disappearance and resigned," Karunakaran said.

He has no regrets about the Emergency either. "It was the need of the hour then," the senior Congress leader told rediff.com.

The Emergency days were the most peaceful period in Kerala's political history, he insists. "Naxalism vanished, trains ran on time, schools, colleges and factories functioned smoothly. There was discipline in public life and the bureaucracy was made accountable to the people," Karunakaran said.

He said the people of Kerala had willingly approved of the Emergency. "Proof of it is that the Congress and its allies won all the 20 Lok Sabha seats in the elections after the Emergency," the Congress leader said.

The former chief minister said that that his only difference of opinion with Indira Gandhi was on the issue of imposing censorship on the media. "I did not approve the idea. But I accepted it as a loyal, disciplined party leader," he added.

The excesses of that time led to the birth of the Emergency Victimised Patriots Forum. It has more than 4,500 members.

EVPF president Thaliyil Vanajen says many of those who opposed the Emergency are today haunted by acute poverty, loneliness and pain. "It was not any political affiliation, but their patriotism that forced them to oppose Emergency. But today they are unwanted people," Vanajen told rediff.com.

EVPF is collecting funds and donations to help its members, many of who suffer from spinal disorders, thanks to the police brutality during those dark days 25 years back.

What Happened to the Rajan Case ?
http://www.pucl.org/from-archives/81oct/rajan.htm
PUCL Bulletin, Oct 1981


Appeals against the District Court judgement in the Rajan case came up before a Divisional Bench of the Madras High Court in July 1981.

Both the Tamil Nadu State Government, as well as the police officers who were convicted - and sentenced, have appealed against the judgement of the- Sessions Judge, Coimbatore, M. A. Pakeeri Mohomed, delivered in September 1978. The Government appeals are for the enhancement of the punishment given to some offi-cers and for the conviction of the others acquitted by the lower court. On the other hand, the police officers are seeking their acquittal. A Division Bench consist-ing of Justice Natarajan and Justice Maheswaran is hearing the appeals.

On March 1, 1976, P. Rajan, a final year student of the Calicut Engineering College, was whisked away from the hostel in the early hours along with another student, Joseph Chali. Immediately after the arrest, the Princi-pal informed Rajan's father, T.V Eachara Warrior of his son's arrest. From the day word reached him in Ernakulam, where he was resident, Warrior made frantic efforts to trace this son. He met legislators, he petitioned the concerned authorities, he sought the help of the Home Minister, K. Karunakaran. All this had no effect. Those were the black days of the Emergency, when issues relating to the citizen's liberty could not be raised in the courts. After the Emergency was lifted, Warrior filed a suit of Habeas Corpus in the High Court in Ernakulam. The respondents were Home Minister K. Karunakaran, Home Secretary to Kerala Government, Inspector General of Police and other senior police officials. From the evidence of eight wit-nesses, it became clear that from the hostel, Rajan had been taken to the Tourist Bungalow, Kakkaya, in Cali-cut the next day where he was tortured by six police-men, including Sub-Inspector Puhikkode Narayanan.

But as far as the Government was concerned, Rajan was not arrested. The judge ordered that the boy be produced in court. Justice P. Subramaniam Potti, who heard the case observed, "Of course, it is open to res-pondents to show that Rajan is no longer in such cus-tody by reason of his having been released, or he hav-ing absconded; or having died in police custody."

At a subsequent hearing in a case which made legal history in Kerala, K. Karunakaran, Inspector General of Police V.N. Rajan -and Special Secretary to the State Government S. Narayanaswamy told the High Court that Raian had died in "unlawful police custody", as a result of continous police torture. A DIG was suspended and later arrested as was a Sub-Inspector.

The Division Bench of the Kerala High Court, consisting of Justice Subramaniam Potti and Justjce V.
Khalid held that Karunakaran had lied to the Court. They passed strictures against the then Police I.G., V.N. Rajan, who had in the interim period migrated to Central Government Services.

The verdict created a political furore in the state and following pressures from within the party and from the ruling front, Karunakaran had to resign as Chief Minister within one month of his taking oath. At the instance of the High Court, Karunakaran was also prosecuted for perjury but the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Ernakulam who tried the case, later acquitted him.

Another off shoot of the High Court verdict was the prosecution of the police officers by the State Gov-ernment. At the request of-the officers the case was transferred to Tamil Nadu.

[SaiK]

Vinay Lal.
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/Hi ... ndira.html

Mrs. Gandhi's response was to declare a state of emergency, under which her political foes were imprisoned, constitutional rights abrogated, and the press placed under strict censorship. Meanwhile, the younger of her two sons, Sanjay Gandhi, started to run the country as though it were his personal fiefdom, and earned the fierce hatred of many whom his policies had victimized. He ordered the removal of slum dwellings, and in an attempt to curb India's growing population, initiated a highly resented program of forced sterilization. In early 1977, confident that she had debilitated her opposition, Mrs. Gandhi called for fresh elections, and found herself trounced by a newly formed coalition of several political parties. Her Congress party lost badly at the polls. Many declared that she was a spent force; but, three years later, she was to return as Prime Minister of India. The same year, however, her son Sanjay was killed in an airplane crash.

In the second, post-Emergency, period of her Prime Ministership, Indira Gandhi was preoccupied by efforts to resolve the political problems in the state of Punjab. In her attempt to crush the secessionist movement of Sikh militants, led by Jarnail Singh Bindranwale, she ordered an assault upon the holiest Sikh shrine in Amritsar, called the "Golden Temple". It is here that Bindranwale and his armed supporters had holed up, and it is from the Golden Temple that they waged their campaign of terrorism not merely against the Government, but against moderate Sikhs and Hindus. "Operation Bluestar", waged in June 1984, led to the death of Bindranwale, and the Golden Temple was stripped clean of Sikh terrorists; however, the Golden Temple was damaged, and Mrs. Gandhi earned the undying hatred of Sikhs who bitterly resented the desacralization of their sacred space. In November of the same year, Mrs. Gandhi was assassinated, at her residence, by two of her own Sikh bodyguards, who claimed to be avenging the insult heaped upon the Sikh nation.

Mrs. Gandhi acquired a formidable international reputation as a "statesman", and there is no doubt that she was extraordinarily skilled in politics. She was prone, like many other politicians, to thrive on slogans, and one -- Garibi Hatao, "Remove Poverty" -- became the rallying cry for one of her election campaigns. She had an authoritarian streak, and though a cultured woman, rarely tolerated dissent; and she did, in many respects, irreparable harm to Indian democracy. Apart from her infamous imposition of the internal emergency, the use of the army to resolve internal disputes greatly increased in her time; and she encouraged a culture of sycophancy and nepotism. At her death, her older son, Rajiv Gandhi, was sworn in as head of the Congress party and Prime Minister.

[SaiK]

[SaiK]

Emergency: The Darkest Period in Indian Democracy
http://theviewspaper.net/emergency-the- ... democracy/

History bares testimony to the fact that great nations face grave crises. In 1933, the United States was struck by the great depression, which exposed the fallacies of the market economy. A few years later the military might of Japan was crushed by the United States during the Second World War. At the start of the last decade of the millennium, the fragilities of Socialism were exposed and it led to the eventual demise of the Soviet Union.


India’s strength has always been its vibrant democracy. Ours is perhaps the only country where people from contrastingly different castes, creed, religion and race live together in peace and harmony. The other hallmarks of our country are a strong judicial system and a free press. The imposition of the emergency in 1975 struck at the very core of these ideals, which constitute our democracy. It was perhaps the darkest period in the history of independent India.



The Reasons



On 25th June 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed an emergency in the country. Fundamental Rights stood suspended, censorship was imposed on the press and prominent political leaders were arrested. So what prompted Mrs. Gandhi to take such a drastic step? Could the emergency have been avoided? What role did her son Sanjay and his cronies play during this crucial period? Were there any personal motives? There are just some of the questions that we will try to answer.



In many ways the foundation for the emergency was laid when the Allahabad High Court set aside Indira Gandhi’s re-election to the Lok Sabha in 1971 on the grounds of electoral malpractices. This verdict, which came on 12th June, was later challenged in the Supreme Court, which on 24th June 1975, granted a conditional stay to Mrs. Gandhi, thereby allowing her to remain a member of parliament but disallowed her to take part in parliamentary proceedings. However, this was just the first step. The other, more significant reason for the imposition of emergency was the “JP movement”. Many regard Jayaprakash Narayan as “the Gandhi of Independent India”. In his entire political career he never contested an election. After the Allahabad High Court verdict, “JP”, as he was better known, gave the call for a “Total Revolution” and also demanded the resignation of Mrs. Gandhi. In fact on June 25, 1975, he announced a plan of daily demonstrations, not merely in Delhi, but also in every State capital and district headquarters until Indira Gandhi threw in the towel. He also appealed to the Army, the police and the bureaucracy “to refuse to obey Indira” and “abide by the Constitution instead”. His associate Morarji Desai went a step further. In an interview to an Italian journalist he said, “We intend to overthrow her, to force her to resign. For good…Thousands of us will surround her house and prevent her from going out…night and day.” Incidentally, Desai was once Deputy Prime Minister in her government.



Many argue that the emergency was the inevitable outcome of social, economic and political crises resulting in “systematic failure” One of them is Prof. P.N. Dhar, Secretary to the Prime Minister and her chief official advisor during this period. In his book “Indira Gandhi, the emergency and Indian Democracy”, he states that it was largely because of the opposition pressure that she was forced to resign. He says “Even before she could file her appeal, to which she was enticed, a delegation of opposition leaders from the Congress (O), JS, BLD, SP and Akali Dal called on the president and presented a memorandum to him saying that “a grave constitutional crisis had arisen as a result of Mrs. Gandhi continuing to occupy the of office of the prime minister despite a clear and categorical judicial verdict.” Apart from Dhar, there were others who supported the Emergency. One of them was prominent writer Khushwant Singh, who at the time was the editor of “The Illustrated Weekly of India”. He says “By May 1975 public protests against Mrs. Gandhi’s government had assumed nationwide dimensions and often turned violent. With my own eyes I saw slogan-chanting processions go down Bombay thoroughfares smashing cars parked on the roadsides and breaking shop-windows as they went along. Leaders of opposition parties watched the country sliding into chaos as bemused spectators hoping that the mounting chaos would force Mrs. Gandhi to resign.”



From the above arguments it is clear that Mrs. Gandhi was a power-hungry woman who imposed the emergency to safeguard her own political and personal interests. And the only beneficiary of this unfortunate period was her son Sanjay Gandhi.



The Man And His Mission



One of the most controversial figures in Indian politics, Sanjay Gandhi has often been accused of being the mastermind behind the atrocities committed during the emergency. It is widely believed that, through his associate Jagmohan, he ordered the demolition of Slums in Delhi’s Turkman Gate area. To make matters worse, both Sanjay and Indira Gandhi developed a Twenty-Point program which advertised the “salient features”.



However, the most controversial agenda was the implementation of a family-planning programme. This programme was a result of Sanjay Gandhi’s so-called “vision” to contain population growth in this country. Officially, this exercise was supposed to be a voluntary one for both men and women. However, there were reports that government officials were forcing young unmarried men, the poor and in some cases even political opponents.



That Sanjay had a dictatorial streak in his personality is evident, as he frequently used to order Cabinet ministers and other government officials. In one famous case I. K, Gujral, the then minister for information and broadcasting, was forced to resign after he refused to obey Sanjay Gandhi’s orders. Inder Malhotra remarked, “His ways were rude and crude. He had a knack of attracting riff-raff and roughnecks to him. But none of this prevented Congressmen, high and low, from fawning on him and swearing “eternal loyalty” to his mother and her family.”



However Khushwant Singh calls him a “lovable goonda”. He says “In some ways he epitomised the slogan he had coined: Kaam ziyaada, baatein kum – work more, talk less. He was a young man in a hurry to get things done. He had no patience with tedious democratic processes and red tape, no time for long-winded politicians or bureaucrats. The fact that he had no legitimacy for imposing his fiats on the country besides being the son of the prime minister was of little consequence to him.”



The fact that till today his name evokes fear among the public shows the notoriety in his personality. Also from the above the analysis it is evident that he showed utter contempt towards democratic institutions and would go to any extent to subvert them. In fact, it is said that Sanjay Gandhi was “furious” when Indira Gandhi decided to end the Emergency.



However, inspite of all his fallacies there is one contribution that Sanjay Gandhi gave to the nation: the Maruti car. It was envisioned as a cheap, affordable and indigenous car that the middle class could afford. Today it is India’s leading automobile company. However, even this car project had its share of controversy. The manner in which the land was acquired was questionable and there were serious doubts that the project might be shelved after the test version of the car failed.



The Impact



In addition to the common man, the judiciary and the media bore the maximum brunt of the excesses of the emergency. The Constitution, which is the most sacred document of any functioning democracy, was subverted in the most ruthless manner possible. Indira Gandhi ensured that all proclamations and ordinances were not subjected to judicial review. She amended the Representation of the People Act and two other laws in such a retrospective manner to ensure that the Supreme Court had no other option but to overturn the Allahabad High Court verdict. As senior advocate Arun Jaitley laments “The judiciary which had already been made pliable by the super cessions in 1973 was the main victim. The Supreme Court by a majority of four to one held that a person could be arrested or detained without legitimate grounds and there was no remedy in the law courts since all Fundamental Rights were suspended. The attorney-general of India argued for the government that a citizen could be killed illegally and no remedy was available since there were no Fundamental Rights of the citizen any more.” She misused Article 356 to dismiss the opposition governments in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu.



The fourth estate of democracy i.e. the media was also not spared. Censorship was imposed on newspapers and barring a few, like The Indian Express, no other newspaper had the courage to defy the censorship orders. When the Delhi edition appeared on June 28, The Indian Express carried a blank first editorial and the Financial Express reproduced in large type Rabindranth Tagore’s poem “Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high” concluding with the prayer “Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.”



In fact, Ramnath Goenka, the daring proprietor of the newspaper, explains the ordeal in his own words. “The government, acting under the personal directions of Indira Gandhi, abused its authority and subverted lawful processes to liquidate me and my group of companies economically and make me an object of public ridicule and shame. One of the prime minister’s first acts on 26th June 1975 was to remove her mild-mannered and democratically inclined Information minister I. K. Gujral and replace him with Vidya Charan Shukla, who she thought would better serve her Goebbelsian design.”



This censorship also had its lighter sides. Vinod Mehta, who edited the sleazy girlie magazine Debonair from Bombay, was asked to have his articles and pictures cleared before they were sent to the printer. The censor looked over the pages. “*****? Theek hai! Politics no.” Most of it was soft *****. It was quickly cleared!!



For the press, the emergency was a cruel reminder that the State can snatch its freedom arbitrarily. Hence, soon after the emergency ended, the Press Council of India was formed whose main aim was to safeguard the freedom of the press and to maintain and improve the standards of newspapers and news agencies in the country.



The emergency was a 19-month ordeal, which finally came to an end on January 23rd 1977; Indira Gandhi called for fresh elections and the release of all political prisoners. It was a courageous decision, considering the fact that she was under no visible compulsion to do so. It was a decision that would start a period of darkness for herself, her son Sanjay Gandhi and his coterie. However, this period would be short-lived as she staged a spectacular comeback in 1980.



The Aftermath And The Comeback



Soon after the withdrawal of the emergency, general elections were declared in the country. The Congress was reduced to just 153 seats in the Lok Sabha and the Janata Party led by Morarji Desai came to power. It was the first time a non-Congress government that assumed leadership of the country. Both Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay lost their seats. Thus began the darkest period in Indira Gandhi’s political career.



The government constituted the Shah Commission to probe into the excesses committed during the emergency. It recorded that highhanded and arbitrary actions had been carried out with impunity during the Emergency. In its report the commission recorded “Without the awareness of what is right and a desire to act according to what is right, there may be no realisation of what is wrong’”. Indira Gandhi herself was arrested on a number of charges including misuse of her official and another case related to deriving illegal benefits in connection with procurement of jeeps for election purposes. The arrest of Indira Gandhi was a dramatic affair to say the least. The officer in-charge at that time, Mr. N.K. Singh in his memoirs “The Plain truth”, records that he and his team had to take her to Badhkal, a tourist resort on the outskirts of Delhi, fearing that there might be a backlash in Delhi. However, this phase in her life would come to an end soon as the courts acquitted her. And in 1978, she re-started her political journey by contesting a by-election from Chikmanglur in Karnataka. Meanwhile, the weaknesses of the Morarji-Desai government were being slowly exposed. The basis of the formation of the Janata Party was only one: to remove Indira Gandhi from power, whatever the cost. It was this very factor that led to its break-up and their subsequent ouster from power.



Avneesh Arputham




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[Tuvaluan]

Srinath Raghava is the new chief Pimp for the INC and a "historian" along the lines of Ramchandra Guha spawned by power-mongering babu scumbags in New Delhi. Here the mofo writes a long article on the emergency without mentioning even once the damage done to the Indian constitution by the Indira Gandhi during emergency.

http://www.caravanmagazine.in/books/pow ... page=0%2C0

Mukherjee makes no pretence of offering an “objective” historical assessment of the period. He does not show much contrition for the decision to impose the Emergency. Nor does he make any effort to tone down his loyalty to Indira Gandhi during those years—and, by extension, to her original political heir, the imperious and ruthless Sanjay Gandhi. Indeed, the book is best read as a loyal insider’s account of Gandhi’s politics. It is easy to do a hatchet job on a book like this. But Mukherjee’s account is valuable precisely because it provides a glimpse into why capable young politicians like him gravitated towards Indira Gandhi, and also because Mukherjee has managed, mostly, to leave behind the passions of that time.

The funny part is the "oh, that naughty mukherjee" attitude to a guy who openly sold himself out to destroy the constitution as "political passions of that time".

Ditto for the other article penned by this guy who see "emergency" as a important historical reading that one should not get too judgemental about because, you see, it steered India in a completely new course economywise...when Indira Gandhi handed over the entire petroleum sector to Dhirubhai ambani and nationalized all the banks to shut out all business and political rivals who would not bend down to her.

http://www.ndtv.com/opinion/how-the-eme ... ?site=full

The pro-business tilt inaugurated in the mid-1970s was continued and intensified during Mrs. Gandhi's last term in office. This was symbolized by an unprecedented dinner held in her honour in a well-known Delhi hotel in 1980. Her host was India's largest producer of polyester: Dhirubhai Ambani.

So, the Emergency was an important inflection point in the long transformation of the Indian economy and a harbinger of a new pattern of relations between the state and big business. Whether or not we approve of these developments, the fact remains that the Indian economy did move to a higher growth trajectory during these years. Seen from this vantage-point, it seems clear that the Emergency was a more complex period than that portrayed by the conventional wisdom.

simply wonderful see this "historian" conveniently forgetting to note that Congress was referred to as his "dhukan" by the likes of Mukesh Ambani because of Indira's gandhi's shenanigans, and this is the pig Srinath Raghava wants to put a lot of lipstick on, in the name of "scholarship". If India was on a "higher growth trajectory" then it means that (a) his idol Bandit Nehru's economic policies were all sh!t as is common knowledge (b) it raises questions as to why India found itself in a balance of payments crisis within a decade of this "high growth trajectory". The only real high growth trajectory came under Sri PVNR when he ordered his peon Manmohan Singh to do what was required, but you won't see this INC w**re Srinath Raghava write that in any of his history books anytime soon. The way to spot a politically compromised analcyst or historian like this Srinath Raghava is to note the points they won't write about, not the points they make, which are usually banal and cliched.

[Sachin]

Supporting Emergency was a mistake: CPI leaders
“We committed a mistake. We had thought that the right wing reactionary forces will be defeated through the Emergency but it emerged as a dictatorship,” Mr. Reddy told The Hindu.
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So looks like this party (claiming "national" status, with currently 1 MP in Lok Sabha) was expecting that the right-wingers (BJP, RSS et.al??) to be completely wiped out during the emergency. Great plan, it reminds me of the two lambs and the wily fox story . These "leaders" may introspect what happened in these 40 years. What is the status of their party today? BTW, Kerala was ruled by a coalition government of CPI and Congress during the emergency. C. Achutha Menon of the CPI was the Chief Minister, while K. Karunakaran of Indian National Congress handled the important portfolio of Home Minister. The state police was under Inspector General V.N Rajan, but it was believed that the Home Minister had more faith (and worked along with) the DIG of Crime Branch, Jayaram Padikkal.