6/6/2023 0 Comments Kuldip nayar emergency![]() ![]() ![]() The Constitution makes it difficult because of the amendment that the Janata government effected. The then Jana Sangh leader L K Advani made an apt remark: “You were asked to bend but you began to crawl.”Ĭan the Emergency be reimposed, I have often wondered. Indira Gandhi’s action was shocking but more appalling was the collapse of journalists, who otherwise would pontificate on courage and confrontation. He had told the All-India Newspaper Editors’ Conference on December 3, 1950, “I would have a completely free press with all the dangers involved in the wrong use of that freedom than a suppressed or a regulated press”. How do I explain to the youth of today that India nearly lost its freedom? And of all people, it was Indira Gandhi who was responsible for this calamity, the daughter of our national icon, Jawaharlal Nehru, who had put the country on the path of liberty and democracy after Independence. And, as before, my personal rights and freedom of expression had been forcibly taken away. I don’t want to get lost in the details, but what the Emergency meant was that British-type colonial rule had returned through the back door. I wondered how they could declare another Emergency when there was already one continuing from the days of the Bangladesh war. Their explanation was that the Emergency had been declared. But there was a telephone call from my office, The Indian Express, informing me that the police were not allowing the distribution of that morning’s edition. True, there was no proverbial midnight knock. ![]()
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