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“Most of the BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leaders had betrayed the struggle against the Emergency,” senior leader Subramanian Swamy wrote in his article for The Hindu in the year 2000.
Swamy is now a BJP MP, but back then he was a Janata Party leader who had said it was “ludicrous” for the BJP and the RSS to hold meetings to remember the declaration of Emergency on its 25th Anniversary.
Swamy was against the idea back then for two reasons:
He recalled that Vajpayee was allowed parole for most of the months during the Emergency because he had given a written assurance that he wouldn’t participate in any anti-government programmes.
Swamy alleged in his article that a book written by the Alkali leader, Surjit Singh Barnala recounts how erstwhile leaders of Jan Sangh had also promised “good behaviour” in return of being let out of the prisons.
Crediting Morarji Desai and Jayaprakash Narayan, popularly known as JP, for profoundly inspiring the anti-Emergency movement, Swamy recalled a personal encounter with the latter.
He said JP who lay in Jaslok Hospital after kidney failure in Chandigarh jail was heartbroken “when he saw an India utterly passive to the death of democracy, while those who had earlier egged him on, eg: the RSS, were now repudiating him and offering to work for the nation's tormentors.”
Describing Morarji Desai as “completely unyielding” and “sanguine”, Swamy recalls how Desai had refused to promise “good behaviour” in return for parole.
Swamy notes that RSS members like Madhavrao Muley, Dattopant Thengadi and Mordant Pingle were the exceptions who did not wish to surrender. He recounts how Muley had asked him in 1976 to escape abroad before RSS submits their “document of surrender”.
A few days later, Indira Gandhi had shocked everyone by calling for Lok Sabha election and RSS never had to sign the “document of surrender”, Swamy writes.
In his piece, Swamy credits a “combination of forces” that urged Gandhi to declare the general elections – the pressure from the newly-elected US President Jim Carter who acknowledged the threat of Emergency in India following Swamy’s extensive campaigns abroad, motivations from philosopher-thinker Jiddu Krishnamurti, disapproval of Emergency from Sri Chandrashekhara Saraswati, the Kanchi Math Paramacharya and the undying spirit of Morarji Desai.
Swamy notes that many “who had failed in their violent resistance” wanted to boycott the general elections on the grounds that opposition wouldn’t stand a chance because common people do not get affected by the “issue of democracy”. However, Swamy credits India’s plurality and heterogeneity for voting Indira Gandhi out of power in the same year.
Swamy writes that the second reason for calling BJP’s celebration of struggle against the Emergency “ludicrous” is the saffron party’s repeated attempts to overhaul the Constitution.
Concluding his piece, Swamy had written, “The BJP has set into motion the overhaul of the Constitution, not just a mere amendment to it. It has commenced the rewriting of history. Its sister front organisations such as the VHP and the Bajrang Dal are already unleashing eerie and shadowy terror at the micro level of society. How can the BJP then speak of defending democracy?”
Repeating his opening lines in the article, Swamy ends with, “Thus, those of us who can stand up, must do so now.”
In another article written for the Frontline magazine in January 2000, Swamy had said:
Swamy had gone to the extent of saying the RSS has two components to its game plan:
Swamy’s stance has, however, changed quite a lot over the years. From slamming the BJP and RSS for hypocritically holding meetings on the anniversary of the Emergency, to appreciating both parties for doing so in 2018.
Speaking to Republic TV on 26 June 2018 after the BJP’s ‘Black Day’ events to remember the Emergency, Swamy said:
Seemingly repudiating his previous outspokenness on the RSS, Swamy even said that during Emergency, it was the RSS that, by going underground, had ensured that it remained as an organisation to fight the election soon afterward, at a time when India was losing its democracy.
(With inputs from The Hindu and Frontline)
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Published: 28 Jun 2018,07:38 AM IST