Even before the Emergency Indira Gandhi government passed draconian laws that can be used to arrest the political elements opposing her. One was MISA (Maintenance of Internal Security Act) enacted in 1971. MISA gave extensive powers to the Government of indefinite preventive detention of individuals, search and seizure of property without warrants and wiretapping of telephones. This law is very conveniently used to place all political opposition as well as anyone who questioned the government in prison indefinitely.
The Government also renewed the Defence of India Rules which lapsed in 1967. The Defence of India act and Defence of India rules, 1962 (DISIR) were a set of emergency war-time legislations for preventive detention enacted in October 1962 during the India China war. They consisted of 156 rules that regulated all aspects of life.-travel trade, finance, communication, publication etc. This Act suspended the fundamental rights of any individual arrested under them. And enabled the Government to detain any person indefinitely without providing any explanation WHY and without any representation.
COFEPOSA (Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Activities Act) was also passed in 1974 even before the emergency, again to conveniently trouble her opponents.
And why did she make so many tough regulations, obviously to silence the political opposition when the economy floundered and the people were crying of frustration. But what was needed was competent administration to silence the opposition when she had draconian laws at hand. She totally lacked that competence and completely surrounded herself by sycophants closing her eyes to reality and happily used the laws to oppress her opponents.
After seeing this monumental stupidity and closed mind of Indira Gandhi, and her dictatorial tendencies, it is the biggest joke of the century if any Congressman called Modi dictatorial. That would be a massive subversion of the truth.
Here one thing had to be mentioned about the personality of Indira Gandhi. She grew up at Anand Bhavan in Allahabad, the ancestral home of Motilal Nehru. Theirs was a joint family where apart from Motilal, Jawaharlal, his wife Kamala, Nehru’s 2 sisters Vijayalakshmi Pandit and Krishna Huthee Singh also stayed. Nehru was away most of the time in political issues and was for some time in jail. Kamal Nehru was harassed by Nehru’s sisters and Indira was witness to that. Later Kamala Nehru also went into the Freedom struggle and Indira was left alone in the house with her aunts and they did not treat her kindly. Due to that childhood persecution Indira grew up as an extremely insecure child. This was mentioned by MO Mathai, Nehru’s PS for 16 years in the book that he had written on Nehru. He said in his book that Indira was always a lonely child and when political meetings took place at Nehru’s house, she went into the corner of the room and did not open her mouth.
Because of her troubled childhood Indira trusted no one and that was the reason why she surrounded herself with yes men who never did anything but obey her. But competent men do not become sycophants, so she was mostly surrounded by guys of low calibre who are fixers and manipulators and who are incompetent. The end result was that she was blanked about what people thought of her, the yes men always gave a rosy picture and she believed that stuff.
An excellent example is RK Dhawan who was just a clerk of no consequence in the Railways but later rose to be her PS and later became a powerful Congress leader. Similarly there was Yashpal Kapoor who was a stenographer who was nominated to the Rajya sabha and rose to become an important person in the coterie of Indira Gandhi. RK Dhawan was in fact Yashpal Kapoor’s sisters son.
Indira Gandhi had her own brat son Sanjay Gandhi whom she trusted very much. It was Sanjay that used this petty official RK Dhawan to manipulate the entire Government machinery. Now Sanjay Gandhi was a school dropout from Doon school and he later joined as an apprentice mechanic with Rolls Royce England, no doubt by the influence of her mother rather than by any ability of his own.
Add to this bunch Bansilal, the most unscrupulous politician there was at that time who was ready to do anything the Gandhi family wanted, be it legal or illegal. It was this guy who gave land to sanjay Gandhi for his Maruthi at a throw away price. Then there was Dev Kant Barua from Assam who was then the Congress President who was called the court jester by many and was forever singing praises of Indira Gandhi. His rise was totally because of Indira Gandhi and he was therefore loyal to her like a dog.
As you can see, none of these men in the inner circle of Indira Gandhi had any intellectual ability but they were great manipulators except for Baruah who was more proficient in doing bhajans of his leader rather than do anything else. It is downright horrible that any PM who is capable of thinking would keep such people around her. This clearly shows that what she wanted was not intellect but pure yes men who were ready to manipulate the system for her sake.
Invoking articles 352 and 356 of the constitution, Indira Gandhi granted herself extraordinary powers and launched a massive crackdown on civil rights and political opposition. Even congress leaders who protested against the emergency were not spared. Mohan Dharia and Chandrasekhar resigned from their government and party positions and were arrested Most of the arrests happened under MISA, DISIR and COFEEPOSA..
Looking at the way Indira Gandhi was going about even before the Emergency, the SC brought out a concept of that is known as the basic structure of the constitution. It said even the Parliament did not have the power to alter the basic structure of the constitution, thus safeguarding its power lest Indira Gandhi did further damage and bypass the Supreme Court.
The process of centralizing everything in the PM’s secretariat was started by Lal Bahadur Sastri with his Secretary L.K Jha interfered in everything and was called a super secretary. Indira Gandhi outdid that. Her secretary P.N. Haksar made everything revolve around the PM’s secretariat. Not even a Deputy Secretary could be appointed without its involvement. All the ministers took orders from the secretariat. Under him, for the first time in Indian history, the government machinery came to be used for political purposes.
After the Jagmohan Sinha Judgment Indira Gandhi wavered and was undecided whether to resign pressure from her own party, especially from the Young Turks Chandrasekhar and Mohan Dharia as well as Ram Dhan, Krishna kant and Lakshmikanthamma. But Sanjay’s advice was a firm no to any stepping down by her. Sanjay Gandhi told the press much earlier that he liked a dictatorship. He now obtained a copy of the censorship rules and details of the machinery set up to implement dictatorship in the Philippines. He hated the press and felt that Information Minister IK Gujral was not tough enough on them. Of course, Sanjay Gandhi controlled the PM’s secretariat.
Indira Gandhi gradually fought and strengthened her position in the party. Congress then started thinking about a way for her to hold on to office even if the SC ratified the High Court Judgment.
Sanjay felt convening the Parliament to be useless for anything and is a waste of time. By now Indira Gandhi was a changed person. She now believed what Sanjay believed, that Judgment was a conspiracy to remove her. Apart from the other Congress CM’s who rallied behind her Siddarth Shankar Ray, who was then the Chief Minister of West Bengal was her strongest supporter.
On 26th June 1975, the Emergency was promulgated and the entire opposition arrested. Press censorship was imposed and people were detained indefinitely without any explanation as to what the detention was for. All the telephones were tapped. Of the opposition, only George Feranadez, Nanaji Deshmukh, Subramaniam Swamy and a few others remained outside. All other leaders were arrested. Sanjay eased out IK Gujral from the Information ministry and brought in VC Shukla.
Justice Jagmohan Sinha was shadowed all the time by the Police, all his past career was screened to find loopholes and his relations were harassed. The cyclostyled forms of MISA orders were signed in blank by the DM’s and were handed over to the Police for detaining people.
All the publications of the Jana Sangh were shut down by the Police. The publishers of the papers could not find any counsel to defend them as they were afraid. Any who agreed to do so were arrested under DIR. Any reporter which dared to question the Government was arrested under MISA and detained indefinitely without trial.
There are many officials who misused the Emergency and used laws like MISA to settle personal scores. 3 Journalists Peter Hazelhurst of the London Times, Loren Jenkins of Newsweek and Peter Gill of the London daily Telegraph were informed that they could not remain in India and would be deported in 24 hours. Officials have been posted at the offices of the News agencies that are left for striking off any critical news at source. VC Shukla told the press that he would not tolerate any nonsense being published in the press. The editors were threatened with arrest if they publish anything against the government. So no editor had the guts to condemn Emergency. Lewis M Simmons of the Washington Post was banished from India because he reported something unpleasant. One friend who attended dinner with told Simmons that during the dinner Sanjay Gandhi slapped Indira Gandhi 6 times yet she did nothing and took it. So the control of Sanjay on his mother was total.
It was Sanjay who ran the show and gave instructions to Ministers. Sanjay had a dislike for Southerners and East Indians and the Kashmiris. He wanted Punjabis everywhere.
It is a big joke that Indira Gandhi went on claiming that she is working within the ambit of the constitution to save Democracy.
There was severe criticism of the government moves abroad but no Government officially condemned Indira Gandhi for what she did.
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