Panic button

Hinting at a possible emergency some time in the future should the situation demand it, is the latest trial balloon to be let loose on th...

Hinting at a possible emergency some time in the future should the situation demand it, is the latest trial balloon to be let loose on the Indian citizen. On Monday, the Samata Party, headed by men who made their reputations fighting Indira Gandhi8217;s emergency two dozen years ago, meekly issued a public statement that it will support an emergency if it is declared in 8220;national interest8221;. There is great irony in this. Being in power seems to have brought about a seachange in the personality of these leaders. Yesterday they would have demanded to know what constitutes 8220;national interest8221;. Today, they are more than willing to acquiesce in the caretaker coalition8217;s definition of it.

The genesis of this wave of needless and unnecessary debate on the possibility of an emergency can be traced to Home Minister L.K. Advani8217;s observations in Bangalore last week. But Advani had, in fact, described the emergency as an 8220;aberration8221; which could only be justified in the face of a serious external threat. He had alsoexpressed the view that given the fact that the armed forces were meeting the Kargil challenge effectively, there was no need to impose an internal emergency.

In other words, even going by the Home minister8217;s words, it would be both highly premature and irresponsible to talk about a possible emergency at this juncture. In fact, resorting to such a draconian measure would only signal panic and seem to suggest that the Indian state is not capable of evicting the abominable intruders from across the border without summoning these extraordinary powers for itself. The facts, however, speak otherwise.

The army over the last few weeks has made significant gains along the border and has done this without in any way disrupting normal life in the country or dimming the prospect of a general election in late September as per Constitutional requirements.

To state that India8217;s vibrant democracy is its greatest asset is to state the obvious, especially when the democratic pretensions of its obstreperous neighbourhave been so clearly exposed to the gaze of the world. Besides, the people of this country have come to value their fundamental rights dearly, having suffered the bitter experience of three years of draconian rule under Indira Gandhi8217;s Congress, years in which the Supreme Court actually suspended the right of detained people to judicial redress even if their detention orders were mala fide.

They will not easily reconcile themselves to living once again under the shadow of the iron fist unless the most extraordinary circumstances dictate that they do. A war, or a war-like, situation may sometimes persuade even democratically elected governments to take recourse to draconian measures that are later found to be utterly reprehensible and totally unnecessary. In the wake of the Pearl Harbour bombing, the US government decided to indiscriminately evacuate and relocate US citizens of Japanese ancestry. To this day this one measure undertaken by overzealous administrators is universally regarded as a blot on thatnation8217;s democratic traditions.