Chronicle of Authoritarianism Foretold?

Eternal vigilance on the part of citizens is imperative Eternal vigilance on the part of citizens is imperative

- Janaki Nair

AMONG the many delicious ironies that permeate our public life was the recent decision of the National DemocraticAlliance (NDA) government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to officially commemorate the Indian Emergency of 1975-77 as "Samvidhan Hatya Diwas" (Constitution Murder Day). The irony is particularly rich since the Emergency gave the Hindu Right-then represented by the Jana Sangh-and its storm troopers, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a chance to wash off the stubborn stains of the assassination of M K Gandhi. By serving jail time, the Jana Sangh also made up for the significant absence of the Hindu Right in India's freedom struggle. By being banned, once more since 1948, the RSS was able to rehabilitate itself as an oppositional force to the Congress. Many who were jailed for just a month or more were able to claim, thereafter, fat 'Emergency pensions' in some BJP-ruled states of the Indian Union. No such fortune was bestowed on the members of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, which was also banned.

The irony is deepened further by the fact that the 21-month suspension of democratic rights and freedoms, a first in Independent India, was a mere baby step compared to what would become, as Arvind Narrain's detailed analysis has it, 'India's Undeclared Emergency' since 2014. Was the Emergency, then, just a forerunner of what an authoritarian state could achieve? Or does the dramatic backsliding of democracy of the past decade cast a rosier light on the earlier short stint?