In her maiden speech in Parliament on Friday during a special debate on the Constitution, Wayanad MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra slammed the BJP for attacking the Congress over the Emergency imposed by her grandmother and former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Referring to Defense Minister Rajnath Singh’s remarks that started the debate, Vadra said: “He (Singh) spoke about the 1975 (Emergency) … toh khoz lijie na aap bhi (So why don’t you learn too) … you too. Of your mistake Apologize for… Aap bhi mat pe poll kar gaay…dudh ka dudh, pani ka pani ho jayega (Let’s have a fair election, everything will be clear).
This is not the first time Congress leaders have spoken about the Emergency. Many, including members of the Gandhi family, have admitted that this was “wrong”.
In March 2021, now Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi called the Emergency a ‘mistake’..
During a virtual chat with Cornell University professor Kaushik Basu, the Congress MP said: “I think it was a mistake. Of course, it was a mistake. And my grandmother (Indira Gandhi) said the same.
However, he added that “at no point” did the Emergency “attempt to capture India’s institutional framework”.
“Our (Congress) design doesn’t allow us, if you want to do it, we can’t.”
Earlier, Congress President Sonia Gandhi, who was close to Indira Gandhi a decade ago, also accepted the mistake of this step.
In a May 2004 conversation with Shekhar Gupta, then editor of NDTV 24×7, Sonia said that her mother-in-law “thought it was a mistake (later).”
“After my mother-in-law herself lost the election (in 1977), she herself said… she reconsidered it (emergency). And the fact that she announced the election means she reconsidered the emergency,” she said.
She added, “Don’t forget that the Indira Gandhi I knew was a democrat at heart … and I think circumstances forced her to take this step, but she was never comfortable with it.”
Asked if emergencies were part of the conversation at home, Sonia said: “I can’t remember any specific instance. But I remember that sometimes she was upset about it.
Asked about the forced sterilization program during the Emergency, Sonia said, “There is no way we can say that the Emergency was right”.
“… but there was a deliberate campaign against nasbandi (forced sterilization) … Yes, there were some things that should not have been done but not on the scale made by the opposition and other parties.”
Asked if it was a lesson no government should repeat, she said “yes of course, but “those were different times”.
What other Congress leaders have said
In 2011, the Congress brought together a group of historians to publish a volume on the party’s history to mark its 125th anniversary.
Former President Pranab Mukherjee wrote in his foreword that the party wanted the volume to generate “an objective and scholarly perspective for the period under review” and “not necessarily a party perspective”. Historians such as Inder Malhotra and Vipan Chandra spoke volumes about the Emergency period and also hit out at the Congress.
In 2014, Mukherjee wrote a book, The Dramatic Decade: The Indira Gandhi Years, in which she described the Emergency as a misadventure.
“Suspension of fundamental rights and political activities (including trade union activities), mass arrests of political leaders and activists, press censorship, prolonging the life of legislatures without holding elections are some examples of the adverse effects of emergency on public welfare. Congress and Indira Gandhi had to pay a heavy price for this misadventure,” wrote Mukherjee.
However, he said that Indira Gandhi was not aware of the constitutional provisions that allowed for the Emergency.
“It is believed that (senior Congress leader) Siddharth Shankar Roy played an important role in the decision to declare Emergency… It was his suggestion, and Indira Gandhi acted on it. In fact, Indira Gandhi later told me that she called for Emergency on the basis of internal unrest. were not even aware of the constitutional provisions that allowed the declaration of a state of emergency, especially since the Emergency was declared as a result of the Indian-Pakistani conflict in 1971,’ he wrote .
“Siddharth Babu was very close to Indira Gandhi from the day the Congress split in 1969… As a member of the CWC and the Central Parliamentary Board, Siddharth Babu had considerable influence over the decision-making process of the organization and administration,” he wrote.
In 2015, then Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia said that the imposition of Emergency was a “mistake” and what happened during the period was “wrong”.
‘What happened in the emergency is wrong. Let’s not back down on that. What happened in the Sikh riots (1984 under the Congress government) is wrong. Any loss of life in this country, no matter which government is in power, we need to come out and say what is right and what is wrong,” Scindia said.
In June this year, amid talks on Emergency in Parliament, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said Emergency was “undemocratic” but not “unconstitutional”.
“I am a critic of emergency, but the reality is that it may have been undemocratic but it was not unconstitutional. The provision of the constitution allowed for the imposition of internal emergency. That provision was removed,” Tharoor told NDTV in an interview.
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