Shashi Tharoors hard-hitting op-ed on emergency: New provocation for Congress
While recalling one of the darkest chapters in India's history, Tharoor took a dig at his own party and said that the efforts undertaken for discipline and order often turned into acts of cruelty that could not be justified.
PTC News Desk: Senior Congress leader and Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor's has talked tough on the emergency days in his op-ed, published in the Malayalam daily Deepika in which he said it showed how the erosion of freedom takes place and highlighted how the world remained unaware of a "horrifying litany of human-rights abuses".
Scathing attack on Sanjay Gandhi
While recalling one of the darkest chapters in India's history, Tharoor took a dig at his own party and said that the efforts undertaken for discipline and order often turned into acts of cruelty that could not be justified.
"Sanjay Gandhi, the son of Indira Gandhi, led forced sterilisation campaigns which became a notorious example of this. In poor rural areas, violence and coercion were used to meet arbitrary targets. In cities like New Delhi, slums were mercilessly demolished and cleared. Thousands of people were rendered homeless. Their welfare was not taken into consideration," the Thiruvananthapuram MP wrote.
Dissent silenced
The senior Congress leader also pointed out the that how essential democratic pillars of the democracy were silenced and that even the judiciary was drowned in immense pressure with the Supreme Court upholding the suspension of habeas corpus and citizens' right to liberty. He also asserted that during this time extrajudicial killings were rampant and fundamental rights were curtailed.
"Journalists, activists, and opposition leaders found themselves behind bars. The broad constitutional transgressions enabled a horrifying litany of human-rights abuses," he said.
Lessons from Emergency
In his hard-hitting op-ed in which he has taken a dig at his own government said that democracy is not something to be taken lightly, it is a precious legacy that must be constantly nurtured and preserved.
"We are a more self-confident, more developed, and in many ways a stronger democracy. Yet, the lessons of the Emergency remain relevant in troubling ways," he said.
"First, freedom of information and an independent press are of paramount importance... Second, democracies depend on an independent judiciary able and willing to serve as a bulwark against executive overreach," he said.
"The third lesson - perhaps the most pertinent in our current political climate - is that an overweening executive, backed by a legislative majority, can pose a grave danger to democracy, especially when that executive is convinced of its own infallibility and impatient with the checks and balances that are essential to democratic systems," Tharoor wrote.