44 years on, Modi to lead BJP attack on Congress over Emergency
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lead the BJP charge at an event organized by the Mumbai unit of the party to 'express gratitude to those who fought the Emergency'
Mumbai: The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government plans to fully leverage Tuesday’s 44th anniversary of Emergency to hit back at the Congress party for the latter’s dubious track record in protecting democracy.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lead the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) charge at an event organized by the Mumbai unit of the party to “express gratitude to those who fought the Emergency". Modi will address a gathering of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and BJP cadres at the Birla auditorium.
Mumbai BJP president Ashish Shelar told Mint that there would be a large gathering of people who fought the Emergency. “There won’t be any formal felicitation of people who played a key role in upholding democracy then. But Modiji will express gratitude to those people and discuss democratic values."
Another Mumbai BJP leader, who describes himself as a post-emergency BJP functionary, said his generation of workers was motivated to work for the party by the “stories they heard from their seniors about the Emergency travails". “Those stories motivated us to work to make Atalji (Atal Behari Vajpayee) the prime minister and bring a full majority government of BJP to power. We have achieved that feat also, but it is important for our generation to remember the Emergency. Modiji is a great communicator and we expect him to motivate us tomorrow," he said, requesting anonymity.
The anniversary of Emergency comes at a crucial time for the BJP with the Modi government increasingly facing charges of imposing “undeclared emergency" in the country. A picture of Modi disguised as a Sikh as an underground RSS activist is a popular WhatsApp forward during this time of the year since 2014. Like the Modi event in Mumbai, BJP president Amit Shah will preside over a similar meeting in Gujarat on Tuesday.
Predictably, the BJP went all guns blazing on the eve of the anniversary as senior leader Arun Jaitley posted on his Facebook page the second instalment of his three-part series titled “the Emergency Revisited—the tyranny of Emergency". Jaitley recalls how he was lodged in Delhi’s Tihar jail for a week and later shifted to the Ambala Central jail for a longer term. “An atmosphere of fear and terror prevailed in the country. Political activity had come to a grinding halt. The dissenters were mainly political workers of the opposition party and the RSS," Jaitley writes. In a significant acknowledgment and sign of the BJP’s current outreach to its allies, Jaitley also lauds the role of Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) for offering its cadres for satyagraha every day throughout the Emergency outside the Golden Temple. “This earned Akali Dal a great respect in the entire country. The RSS, which was unfairly banned, also provided a large cadre for Satyagraha."
Even Venkaiah Naidu, the vice-president of India and a BJP veteran, has written an op-ed article in The Indian Express titled “Lessons from dark times". Terming the emergency “the darkest chapter in modern India’s history", Naidu asks people to stay at the forefront of protecting democracy.
The BJP event also comes in the backdrop of the Devendra Fadnavis government’s recent decision to institute monthly pension for political and civil rights activists who fought the Emergency.
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