Nayantara Sahgal speaks to Ajoy Bose: ‘We have a nightmare which is worse than the Emergency’
On June 25, 1975,
Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in India that lasted for 21 months.
The period saw widespread human rights violations, jailing of members of the
Opposition and a clampdown on press freedom. Forty three years
later, journalist Ajoy Bose, author of a newly relaunched book on the
Emergency, interviews Nayantara Sahgal, who wrote widely and critically about
Indira Gandhi’s policies during the time.
Four and a half
decades after the Emergency, how do you remember it and what do you feel was
its chief significance?: Well to begin with, the chief
significance of the Emergency was that we could not be complacent about our
democracy. And that we had to be extremely alert to safeguard it. We also
realised that we had taken our freedom of expression for granted and had
enjoyed it even though, throughout the country, millions of people did not have
the same protection against any kind of authoritarian rule or measures. So for
me, the chief significance was that we needed an organisation to guard our
civil liberties. Just after the Emergency, the Peoples Union for Civil
Liberties was set up and I was associated with the founding of it and served as
the vice-president of it for some years.
The draconian
powers that the state acquired during Emergency allowed it to unleash unprecedented
repression including forced sterilisations and arbitrary demolitions of entire
colonies of citizens, particularly those who were poor and marginalised. How
would you characterise such a state that turned what used to be a democracy
into a dictatorship overnight? Why was there so little mass resistance to
this? First of all, I don’t think it
happened overnight. I was writing political commentaries regularly for The
Indian Express during those years of Mrs Gandhi’s reign in power and
it was very clear to me that we were heading towards an authoritarian system.
We already had the call for committed civil servants, committed judiciary and
so on. And there was a bill drawn to curb the press. These things had been
happening before the Emergency was declared so it came as no surprise to me at
all. Now you speak of silence. I think one has to realise that there are
millions of people who cannot speak because it would cost them their jobs,
their livelihood, their safety, safety of their families. It was a draconian
time and, you know, the whole Opposition was in jail and [also] those who could
speak on behalf of those who could not. That is why I wrote a book on the
Emergency period and Mrs Gandhi’s political style, which, of course, was not
published during the Emergency but immediately after.
Well, we have an undeclared
Emergency, there is no doubt about that. We have seen a huge, massive attack on
the freedom of expression. We have seen innocent, helpless Indians killed
because they did not fit into the RSS’s view of India. We have seen known and
unknown Indians murdered. Writers like Gauri Lankesh have been killed. And there
has been no justice for the families of the wage earners who have lost their
lives in this fashion. In fact they are now being called the accused. So we
have a horrendous situation, a nightmare which is worse than the Emergency.
During the Emergency we knew what the situation was. The Opposition was in
jail, there was no freedom of speech, etc. Now we are living in a battered,
bleeding democracy. And though no Emergency has been declared, people are being
killed, people are being jailed; people are being hauled up for sedition and
for being anti-national. It is an absolutely nightmarish situation which has no
equal. This government is pretending to be democratic but we see what is
happening all around. And nothing has come out of the government’s mouth to condemn
all these goings on. So I rate it as a situation which has no equal in India…
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https://scroll.in/article/883686/43-years-later-we-have-a-nightmare-which-is-worse-than-the-emergency-says-nayantara-sahgal
