Prime Minister Narendra Modi's opponents often allege that a kind of undeclared emergency has been imposed in the country ever since he took power. Those who are comparing the 21 months of Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi on the country from June 25, 1975, with the present era, are insulting the victims of that Emergency. It is also an insult to the sacrifice of all those who strongly opposed it for the restoration of constitutional values and the democratic system.
Many people even called it the second war of independence, because if Indira's wish would have been done, then the democratic system in India would have collapsed forever. Although there are many examples related to the dictatorship of Indira at that time, one incident of the Supreme Court is enough to tell that during that period India was under the shadow of not only a totalitarian government but also a fascist regime. This incident came before the Supreme Court in 1976, when the Emergency was at its peak. A five-member bench of the Supreme Court heard the matter in ADM Jabalpur vs Shivkant Shukla. The bench comprised the then Chief Justice AN Ray, besides Justices HR Khanna, MM Baig, YB Chandrachud, and PN Bhagwati.
After the approval of the emergency, the President had on June 27 issued a direction to suspend some fundamental rights as well. These included rights like equality before the law under Article 14 and protection of life and personal liberty under Article 21. Those who were arrested under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) had called the said order of June 27 as an attack on the Constitution and asked that it be withdrawn and the court should hear their writ petition related to habeas corpus. needed. During the hearing, then-Attorney General Niren Dey argued that as long as the Emergency is in force, no citizen can approach the court on the right to life and personal liberty. Anyone who believes in democracy will be shocked to know that barring Justice Khanna, the other judges did not behave properly.
So something like this happens in a real emergency. Citizens have forfeited their fundamental right to life and personal liberty and in an unfortunate manner, the apex court upheld that decision. It is clear from this that in the Emergency all the vices of a fascist regime were present. In such a situation, it seems more ridiculous to call the current period of undeclared emergency for those who keep on blasphemous against the Prime Minister to his cabinet colleagues, senior leaders, and even the judges of the Supreme and High Courts. There is a flood of such delirium on the Internet media, where there is a severe lack of decorum and decorum.
Back to the habeas corpus case, the sacrifice that Justice Khanna made for the sake of democracy, in that case, will never be forgotten. He had to bear the brunt of this in the form that despite being senior, he was not made the Chief Justice. Justice Baig was crowned in his place. Not only this, two other judges of the bench, Justices Chandrachud, and Bhagwati, were also later oblivious to the top judicial post.
According to Justice Khanna, he received many congratulatory messages for his "courageous" decision. Ironically, one of those congratulations came from Niren Dey himself. Grenville Austin, a scholar of the Indian Constitution and author of an eminent book on the constitutional history of the country, explained Niren Dey's dishonesty. He told that the Attorney General was apprehensive that he and his foreign-origin wife would be tortured if the doubts about the Emergency and Constitutional amendments were caught by Indira Gandhi or her courtiers. According to Dey's friends, during that time he used to live under a lot of stress and used to smoke a lot. The bottom line of this long story is that it was the real Emergency, which the people of the country declared and fought against. Leave aside other rights, even the right to life was nibbled in it. That is why if we care about our constitutional and democratic betterment, then oppose any attempt to reduce the impact and consequences of that emergency.