Congress must accept that Emergency was huge mistake and move on: Akbar

Panaji, Jun 25 (PTI) Former Union minister M J Akbar on Wednesday said the Congress must "find a way to accept" that Emergency was a huge mistake, and move on.

The Congress government led by Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency in the country on this day 50 years ago.

Asked whether the Grand Old Party of Indian politics should still live with "the guilt", Akbar said, "I think the Congress must find a way to accept that it was a huge mistake, an assault on the nation, and move on.

"After all, many political parties in India have found ways to correct themselves. Why can't the Congress?" the veteran journalist said, talking to PTI in Goa.

He also underlined the "maturity" of the Indian voters who brought Indira Gandhi back to power in 1980 after inflicting a rout on her in 1977.

"When they were given the chance in 1980 to vote again because the Janata Party experiment had collapsed, they brought back a stable government. They did not want instability. History is often a story of mistakes as much as it is of successes. So, the Congress must accept it and move forward," said Akbar.

Emergency was a period when arbitrary political power and dictatorship massacred the values and principles of Indian democracy, he said, adding, "But within that dark experience, India also found inspiration to rediscover itself." Recalling those days when he was a 24-year-old journalist, Akbar said Emergency, to begin with, was an unprecedented shock on an individual, institutional and the national level.

"We took democracy for granted. We could not believe that anyone could possibly interfere with the fulcrum as well as the foundational ideology of our nation. I think the shock took time to register," he said.

The first reactions from newspapers were of leaving blank spaces where the editorial was meant to be, Akbar said.

"Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the Emergency was that after two or three weeks, there was a normalization of behavior, as if this would continue, and this was what India was going to become," the former minister of state for External Affairs said.

The "perpetrators of the Emergency", prime minister Indira Gandhi and her younger son Sanjay Gandhi, began to talk of the next 20 years as if this was the new normal, he said.

"But we discovered that India may have become silent, but India was never supine. It was the people of India who actually fought against the Emergency." Asked about the Emergency from current perspective, he said, "Now, from the current perspective, if anyone were to try to repeat the Emergency today, it wouldn't be possible....No one could get away with it. That is the key lesson from 1975 to 77.

"Everyone now understands that the strength of India lies in its commitment to democratic principles," he said, adding that anyone who tries to challenge India's freedom for personal power will be discarded by history. PTI RPS KRK