Emergency: Weighing past with scales of today
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TRH Editorial
New Delhi, June 25: On this day, the Bharatiya Janata Party reminds the people loudly that the former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had imposed Emergency in the country in 1975.
People, otherwise, have largely moved in their lives, too worried of the immediate challenges that they would look back in the last century.
The BJP keeps alive the ghost of the Emergency with obvious objectives. The Congress remains the BJP’s main political rival. The BJP will make all efforts to paint the Congress as a democratic villain.
The BJP on this day comes out with printed works, video documentaries to connect with the people in their neighbourhood as part of the regular exercise to keep the cadre busy and connected.
The Emergency was essentially marked by the formal announcement of the suspension of the fundamental rights on the grounds that there were threats to internal peace. The claim was bogus and made to stick to power while the anger among the people gathered momentum in the first few months of 1975.
The imposition of Emergency was an anti-thesis of democracy. The fundamental rights and the accompanying environment to practice them without fear define the health of democracy.
History is weighed on the scales of present.
The mainstream media in the contemporary times undeniably stands compromised, starkly ignoring people’s issues. The mainstream media isn’t critiquing the establishment, neither at the Centre nor in the states, irrespective of which political party is in power.
Delhi faced unprecedented water crisis, and that didn’t stirred the mainstream media. Floods ravaged Assam and the other Northeastern states, but failed to gain the national attention.
If Emergency was defined by the press censorship, then the contemporary mainstream media needs to revisit the works of Editors in the 1970s.
But the business model of the mainstream media has gone much change that they would function as trumpets of the ruling establishments.
The people now have a larger responsibilities. They should show the mirrors to the mainstream media. If they fail in course-correction, the people should withdraw their patronage to such media houses.
The time may have come for the people to support and encourage new initiatives in journalism independent of the corporate interests.
At The Raisina Hills, the abiding principle is to be truthful to the readers, and take an unbiased view on the happenings in India and abroad.
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