Sunday 4 September 2016

Dark Clouds

Chanced upon the June 14, 2015 special issue of The Week on Internal Emergency- 40 year anniversary. Made for interesting reading. Prominent writers like Kuldip Nayar and Rajinder Sachar threw light on the dark days of emergency rule. Student activists of that era- Sharad Yadav and Gita Ramaswamy- recalled the personal 'fire by the ordeal' and how it transformed them permanently. Everyone said that this period of emergency was the worst period of our democratic existence and this should not be repeated.
The magazine goes on to compare the present and paint a picture of how the conditions for emergency are the same as it was during the early1970s. The government is trying to suppress free speech and right to protest- two of our fundamental rights. We went through the Award Wapasi phase that was in reaction to what the writers, scientists and film makers felt was an atmosphere of intolerance. Have we come out of that? And then came the JNU and Rohit Vemula incidents to remind us that things are just getting worse.
Just utter the K word and you could be in trouble. Sedition cases have, according to recent statistics, gone down from the previous year- 30 cases registered in 2015 instead of 47 in 2014. Statistics can be used to cloud the real issue as we know in the context of 'poverty line'.
As Wendell Phillips (abolitionist- anti-slavery) said in 1852, "Eternal vigil is the price of liberty". Just when we think that there is scope for free thinking, we need to be cautious as someone will certainly feel threatened. And then use some pretext to shut you up or at least shout you down.