Why dynasty politics is worse than Emergency for democracy
In the post-colonial world, when many other former European colonies have marched well ahead of us in economic growth and living standards, we Indians have had one saving grace - a functional democracy. And though the frequent mention of ours being "world's largest democracy" is surely a feel good, it is honestly still some time in future until we evolve into a matured one. The lacunae we suffer are not only on account of parochial voting concerns or the use of money and muscle power in elections but also in the institutional failures to curb despotic streaks running amok from time to time.
The darkest chapter in Indian democracy was the proclamation of Emergency on June 25, 1975, by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Four decades after the sordid saga, it is an opportune moment to reflect on the political frame that provided Indira Gandhi impunity to trample upon our civil liberties and muzzle free press (or whatever of it wanted to remain free). It is also time to ponder over the likelihood of a repeat in near future - as Advani fears.
The events leading to the proclamation of the Emergency are all too well known and one more repetition will serve little purpose. The important part to bear is that a Nixon before, or a Marcos after her, could not brazen out improprieties in the manner Indira did. The Emergency was proclaimed with the sole aim to keep Indira in power - after the Supreme Court upheld Allahabad High Court order nullifying her election from Rae Bareilly Lok Sabha seat as void. For the ranks and file of a slavish Indian National Congress, it was impossible to think of India without Indira, with even party itself mattering a little. Debakant Barooah's infamous quote "India is Indira and Indira is India" plunged the depths of sycophancy.
It would not be wrong to say that the Emergency was the first major sacrifice extracted at the altar of the Congressmen's dynasty worship. However, the servility of the Congressmen, was paid for by India. Institutions of democracy were damaged to an extent from where they could never fully recover. With the second generation of Nehru-Gandhis in power and the third as a virtual regent, the largest party's crouching at dynasty's feet not only spurred in them, illusions of their own grandeur and indispensability, it also spawned a dangerous coterie of vested interests, as enduring as its patrons, in spheres of power structure beyond the legislative. Together, the two could ride roughshod over constitutional propriety without the fear of checks and balances.
Worse than promulgation of the Emergency was the meekness with which it was accepted. Barring a handful of judges and lawyers there was no much of censuring. Excepting very few newspaper editors, most capitulated. KR Sundar Rajan, assistant editor, Times of India, Bombay, who was arrested during the period, in an interview to Rediff recounted how a group of newspaper editors marched in a procession to prime minister's house - "Not to protest against the press censorship but to complain that the censorship was not strict enough to prevent 'counter-revolutionaries' from having their way."
If the Emergency has served any lessons to the Congress, there seem to be no hints of it; probably because the price it had to pay was far less than commensurate. The party, on the contrary, has gone ahead infiltrating democratic institutions with cronies and acolytes. "Intelligentsia" and "academia" have been eating out of its hands and mainstream media is ever so fawning in its adulation of Gandhis. The establishment ecosystem remains as obsequious towards the dynasty as ever; or perhaps even more. It still believes that while others are transient characters on the political stage, dynasty is going to be undulating but an undying character.
Having said so, the sociopolitical factors of the time are drastically different from mid-seventies. Democracy has grown triple its age - both literally and figuratively. Awareness is higher and the citizenry is far more assertive. And hence the possibility of a re-run of emergency which Advani fears, is more a paranoia of an old mind - borne out his worst memories. However, the unlikelihood of a repeat of the Emergency is no reason for comfort and complacency. Just as Holocaust is a reminder to remain alert and stop genocidal tendencies in the tracks, a recall of the Emergency should be ensuring that even its palest shadows do not fall on us again.
To that end, the UPA's ten-year term under the dynasty once again betrayed ominous signs. The Gandhis themselves remained unanswerable and removed from the burden of responsibility for any governmental actions; the CBI was thoroughly misused; governors were hijacking mandates and attempts were made to muzzle social media. The imperiousness of the regime was writ large upon the scene. Whether it was UC Bannerjee commission with a mandate to turn day into night or the IB officers being targeted for cheap political gains or the peaceful protestors at Ramlila Maidan being lathicharged in the mid of night, the UPA's tyranny ran unchecked. The most popular leader of opposition and present prime minister was continuously hounded by trying to spread a legal net around him.
A striking similarity with the Emergency was the mainstream media which, barring a few exceptions, not only condoned and justified each of these wrongs, but had some of its "luminaries" holding forth on the need to curb freedom of expression. Despite a number of corrupt appointments and gargantuan scams - some involving the dynasty directly - the Gandhi name was not to be uttered. In television discussions, anchors would outshout and deflect as soon as somebody mentioned the name. Media, which in seventies, crawled, when asked to bend was volunteering to be cheerleaders of the apocalypse.
For its corruption and tyranny, Lok Sabha elections in 2014 have dealt one of the most humiliating defeats on the Congress. But the political and pseudo intellectual frame which has sustained dynastic rule remains very much in place. The arrogance of long years of dynastic hegemony and the cosy vested interests surrounding it are still a force to reckon with. Unless the whole apparatus is comprehensively dismantled, the spectre of the Gandhian tyranny revisiting in bits and pieces and varying degrees continues to haunt.