Panaji: Senior journalist and former union minister of state for External Affairs M J Akbar said that the Congress must find a way to accept that imposing Emergency was a huge mistake and move on.
Talking to GNH in Goa on the day of 50 years of Emergency in India on Wednesday, Akbar said that the history is often a story of mistakes as much as it is of successes.
When asked whether Congress should still live in the guilt of Emergency imposed 50 years back, Akbar said “I think the Congress must find a way to accept that it was a huge mistake—an assault on the nation—and move on.”
“After all, many political parties in India have found ways to correct themselves. Why can’t the Congress?,” he questioned.
The 74-year-old leader said “look at the maturity of the Indian people. When they were given the chance in 1980 to vote again—because the Janata Party experiment had collapsed—they brought back a stable government.”
“They did not want instability. History is often a story of mistakes as much as it is of successes. So, the Congress must accept it and move forward,” he said.
Akbar said that the Emergency was a period when arbitrary political power and dictatorship massacred the values and principles of Indian democracy. “But within that dark experience, India also found inspiration to rediscover itself,” he added.
Recalling the time of Emergency when he was 24-year-old young journalist, Akbar said that the Emergency, to begin with, was an unprecedented shock—on an individual level, institutional level, and national level.
“We took democracy for granted. We couldn’t believe that anyone could possibly interfere with the fulcrum, as well as the foundational ideology, of our nation. I think the shock took time to register,” he said.
Akbar said that the first reactions from newspapers were of leaving blank spaces where the editorial was meant to be.
“Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the Emergency was that after two or three weeks, there was a normalization of behavior—as if this would continue, and this was what India was going to become,” the former minister said.
He said that the perpetrators of the Emergency Mrs. Indira Gandhi and her second son, Sanjay Gandhi, began to talk of 20 years, as if this was the new normal—and that’s where the real danger came in.
“But we discovered that India may have become silent, but India was never supine. It was the people of India who actually fought against the Emergency,” he said.
When asked about the Emergency from current perspective, Akbar said “Now, from the current perspective if anyone were to try to repeat the Emergency today, it wouldn’t be possible.”
“No one could get away with it. That is the key lesson from 1975–77. Everyone now understands that the strength of India lies in its commitment to democratic principles,” he said.
Akbar said that anyone who tries to challenge India’s freedom for personal power is bound to be discarded by history.
