(Editorial, PUCL Bulletin, Aug 01, 2024. Reprinted with permission)
Erasure of Evidence of an Undeclared Emergency
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting
– Milan Kundera
On 12th June, 2024, the Government of India came out with a gazette notification, in which it declared 25th June as “Samvidhan Hatya Divas” (literally translated as Constitution Murder Day) to ‘pay tribute to all those who suffered and fought against the gross abuse of power during the period of emergency, and to recommit the people of India to not support in any manner such gross abuse of power in future.’
The Home Minister, in a twitter post, noted that ‘the then PM Indira Gandhi, in a brazen display of a dictatorial mindset, strangled the soul of our democracy by imposing the Emergency on the nation. Lakhs of people were thrown behind bars for no fault of their own, and the voice of the media was silenced.’
It is worth remembering that much before the announcement of the ‘Samvidhan Hatya Divas’, the emergency has been sought to be memorialised by civil society. The PUCL marks the occasion when emergency was lifted on 23th March, 1977 with the JP Memorial lecture. For the PUCL, the act of remembering the emergency is done not in the spirit of vengeance and retribution but rather as a continuing search for justice. We choose to remember the sometimes nameless and often faceless victims in the face of state terror and honour the courage of those who resisted by inviting speakers to reflect on what emergency means to them today.
Thus Anuradha Basin delivered the 40th JP memorial lecture, reminding us that today Kashmir is the face of the emergency, Michael Sfard delivered the 41stJP memorial lecture, where he spoke about the struggle for justice in Palestine against the Israeli occupation. Sfard and Bhasin by speaking about the situation in Palestine and Kashmir, reminded us, of why the emergency is not about our past but also about our present.
For human rights activists, remembrance is not only about the present but is also about providing a key to a more just future. This is possibly what Tocqueville meant when he wrote that when ‘the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity’. For human rights activists around the world, memory is the key which opens the door to justice. Justice relies upon the work of human rights activists who through remembering, cultivate hope and build a culture of resistance. That is why for the PUCL, remembering the emergency is not only about marking the day it was declared but also about memorialising the day it was lifted.
Never Again : The purpose behind remembering and justice
The questioning of remembering and justice found its most famous expression in the report of the Truth commission which was appointed by the civilian Argentinian government to investigate the rights violations committed by the military junta in Argentina from 1979-1983. The report itself was simply titled ‘Nunca Mas’ which translates as ‘Never Again’.
Nunca Mas tells us that one of the purpose behind remembering the horrors of the past is to ensure that what happened never happens again. Thus justice for the horrors of the past includes establishing the truth of what happened, reparation for the victims, and a guarantee that what they suffered, will not recur in human history. The Human Rights Council by appointing a Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence has recognised the human rights implications of collective remembering.
How do we understand the purpose behind the sudden decision by the Modi government to remember the emergency, that too as the day of the ‘murder of the Constitution’? What does it have to do with truth, justice, reparation or non-recurrence?
The banal and prosaic truth behind the Government’s decision is that it has nothing to do with truth, justice, reparation or non-recurrence but everything to do with the desire of the government to destroy the claim of the opposition that it is the defender of the Constitution, by insinuating that it is the Congress party which has assassinated the Constitution. How dare a party which murdered the Constitution today claim to defend the Constitution? This is the rationale implicit in the decision to mark Samvidhan Hatya Divas.
To those of us in civil society, the remembrance of the emergency should open out a path to justice as non-recurrence. While it is important to chastise the Congress for the emergency, justice demands that we are not we silent in the face of the recurrence of the emergency in the form of an undeclared emergency.
Justice in the language of international law is not only about truth and reparation but also about non recurrence. If the Modi government was serious about remembering as act of justice, it would have pledged to eschew an emergency mode of governance. This is unfortunately not the case as can be seen by the latest manifestation of the emergency mode of governance which is the enactment of the three new criminal laws which aim to convert a de facto police regime into a de jure police state !
The history of human rights violations during the last ten years mirrors the emergency in every way. If the emergency saw the use of MISA, the undeclared emergency sees the use of the UAPA. Both the emergency and the undeclared emergency have seen a war on dissenting writers, journalists, students and politicians. Prabir Purkayastha, who was arrested both in 1975 as well as in 2023, symbolizes the fact that the lowest points in the history of Indian democracy is the period from 1975-77 and 2014- 2024. The stifling atmosphere of fear of speaking out or offending the government is common to both the emergency and the undeclared emergency. The emergency lasted nineteen months, the undeclared emergency is ten years and counting!
Samvidhan Hatya Divas is nothing other than an act of theft. Theft of the memory of a people’s movement against the emergency by the forces which are perpetuating an undeclared emergency. The BJP Government declaring June 25 as Samvidhan Hatya Divas is an Orwellian conclusion by those who in the guise of saving the Constitution are killing the constitution by a thousand cuts.
(This editorial was published in the August 2024 issue of the PUCL Bulletin, brought out by People’s Union for Civil Liberties, the civil liberties organisation that emerged as part of the struggle for civil liberties and democratic rights in India in the midst of the 21 months of the declared Emergency of 1975-77.
The PUCL bulletin can be accessed here).
