Badly stung by the "Defeat BJP, Save Constitution" campaign in the 2024 elections, the BJP is now desperate to project itself as the 'saviour' and 'champion' of India's Constitution. India already observes 26 November, the day the Constitution was adopted by the Constituent Assembly in 1949, as Samvidhan Divas or Constitution Day. Now the Modi government has declared 25 June, the day Emergency was proclaimed in 1975, as 'Samvidhan Hatya Divas' or 'Constitution Murder Day' - not attempt to murder, but outright murder. India must be the only country that will henceforth be observing a day to commemorate the murder of its Constitution. And like the names of the recently imposed criminal codes, it seems the Modi regime has now decided to name everything in Hindi written in Roman script.
The declaration of the Samvidhan Hatya Divas came after the President's Address to the 18th Loksabha described the 1975 Emergency as "the biggest and darkest chapter of direct attack on the constitution". The Speaker of the Lok Sabha and Chairman of the Rajya Sabha too made similar remarks, the Speaker even getting a resolution adopted by the Lok Sabha. The 50th anniversary of the Emergency will surely be an occasion for defenders of democracy and constitutional rights and liberties of citizens to remember the Emergency-era reign of state repression. Every discussion of 1975 would however invariably lead to a comparison between the Emergency then and now. Yet the Modi government believes it can use the memories of 1975 to silence today's protests against the ongoing Emergency.
Except perhaps the mass vasectomy campaign, every other horror of the 1975 Emergency is being replicated and amplified manifold in the current period. The press censorship has of course been rendered redundant with the near-total transformation of the dominant media into a willing tool of official propaganda. Most of the opposition leaders arrested during the Emergency were released before the 1977 elections, whereas the Modi regime arrested two chief ministers during the 2024 elections and used persecution, intimidation and allurement as tools to secure the loyalty or defection of many leaders. And going by the incarceration of prisoners of conscience and bulldozer demolitions of homes and shops, the declared Emergency of Indira Gandhi was no match to the everyday violence of the permanent Emergency of the Modi era.
The mob lynchings and hate campaigns against Muslims and other marginalised groups, dissenters of various ideological shades and protest movements are of course an exclusive feature of the Modi era. Let us also remember that after playing a role in the pre-Emergency youth movement in Gujarat and Bihar, the RSS was quick to buy its peace with the Emergency regime. The letters written by RSS chief Babasaheb Deoras to Indira Gandhi assuring her of the support of RSS volunteers are all in the public domain. The Emergency was promulgated by invoking Article 352 of the Constitution and the suspension of fundamental rights and reversal of the principles of natural justice followed in its wake. Not only has the Modi government never talked of repeal of Article 352, it has normalised the draconian culture of detention without trial through UAPA and the newly enacted criminal codes.
The Constitution had not overnight become an issue in the 2024 elections. The serial attacks on the basic values and core features of the Constitution have not gone unnoticed since Modi's ascent to power in 2014. The fact that the RSS had rejected the Constitution at the time of its adoption and that at every opportunity it has been espousing the Manusmriti as the ideal code for the Indian people have been common knowledge. The conversion of multicultural multireligious India into a monolithic Hindu Rashtra, the quintessential RSS project since its inception, can never happen without a major subversion of the letter and spirit of the Constitution drafted by Babasaheb Ambedkar. And it was not just the BJP loudmouths who invoked the cause of a new constitution to explain the 400-plus target in the 2024 elections, the principal economic advisor of the Prime Minister had also openly argued for a new constitution in a newspaper article written on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of India's independence.
Three years ago the Modi government declared August 14 as Partition Horrors Remembrance Day. And now we have this Constitution Murder Day. The very choice of words about these days perhaps speaks volumes about the Sangh brigade's own agenda of re-enacting the horrors of Partition and murdering the Constitution. But whether it is the Shaheen Bagh protests against discriminatory citizenship laws, powerful assertion for social equality and representation of marginalised groups or the determined resistance against corporate takeover of agriculture, 'we, the people of India' have repeatedly rallied around the Constitution to defend their rights and defeat every fascist design. The 2024 elections have told the world that the Constitution is very much alive and kicking in India because the people of India are ready to defend this achievement of the freedom movement with all their might and uphold it as the secure foundation to turn free India into a sovereign socialist secular democratic republic.
