Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Vote Chori’ Fight Is Mirroring JP’s Emergency Movement

Emergency or not, the tendency by elected political leaders to act like monarchs is a persisting human flaw.

Rahul Gandhi raising a copy of the Indian Constitution. 

(Photo: Instagram/Rahul Gandhi)

"History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors," wrote Thomas Stearns Eliot, the Nobel prize-winning American poet.

That phrase came to mind last week as Congress leader Rahul Gandhi faced the accusation of encouraging anarchy as he stepped up his 'vote chori' protest against the alleged manipulation of election processes by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP pounced on the Nehru-Gandhi family's political scion as he mentioned 'Gen Z' in his call to the youth to join his movement - seeing it as a dog whistle for unruly protests smacking of anarchy in the wake of an uprising in neighbouring Nepal that saw the term "Gen Z protests" trending.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress accusing each other of various kinds of wrongdoing is not exactly new, but what stood out in the "anarchy" buzzword was a throwback to the Emergency era, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had accused the opposition led by Jayaprakash Narayan of the same charge that Rahul Gandhi faces now.

Will History Repeat?

What is clear is that Gandhi is now leading a mass movement at the grassroots, making him resemble JP, the socialist leader who shunned office but led a powerful movement that changed India forever. A lot in what Rahul says and does may be described as indiscreet by those who want him as a prime minister in waiting - including controversial statements such as endorsing US President Donald Trump's clueless words of India being a dead economy.

What is this, I asked myself: an ironic twist of fate, the cunning way of history or some strange karmic burden?

The Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha finds himself accused of something his grandmother had on mind when she jailed opposition leaders, including JP and a host of leaders from the Jan Sangh, the BJP's predecessor.

JP's "Total Revolution" protests of 1974 led to the Emergency in June the next year, after the Allahabad High Court struck down Indira Gandhi's Lok Sabha election on the ground that government machinery was misused.

JP was from Bihar, where key protests led to a larger nationwide movement.

Strangely, Rahul Gandhi's call for a caste census in the company of Bihar Opposition leader Lalu Prasad Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) against the BJP-backed Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United) state government brings back memories of former Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh, who ruled for only 11 months in 1989-90 but became a champion of the backward castes with his implementation of the Mandal Commission in August, 1990.

Rahul's father, Rajiv Gandhi, as the Congress party's supremo, targeted VP Singh's Janata Dal-led coalition, and it was an open secret in New Delhi that the party fuelled the anti-Mandal rallies that swept the capital and elsewhere. Though the Congress did not officially oppose the report, it put roadblocks and egged on anti-VP protesters.

Notably, both Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar, now caught up in caste-based political rivalry, were political proteges of JP as well as VP - and Lalu might get a 'Gen Z' sort of tag as he was one of the youngest Lok Sabha MPs chosen in the post-Emergency elections of 1977.

Then and Now

From JP to VP and beyond, Congress has come a long way as the boot is on the other foot. While BJP leaders have accused Rahul Gandhi and his party of "anarchy" several times over the past few years, Gandhi's own extended entourage often mentions "soft emergency" or "undeclared emergency" to describe Modi's rule and the Congress party's own resolutions use words that sound a lot like what the opposition accused Gandhi of in the 1970s.

What has changed and what has not, I asked myself as I looked back at the peculiar twists of history.  

India has indeed put behind the Emergency whose imposition on June 25 is now being described by the BJP as "Samvidhan Hatya Divas" (Constitution Murder Day). JP is often hailed as the leader of India's "second freedom".

India has also emerged as a high-growth major economy and a robust technological power that has led the Internet-fuelled digital revolution.

But what has not changed is the tendency by strong-arm politicians to suppress dissent, muzzle critical media outlets, and manipulate academia to suit the ends of the powers-that-be.

The BJP says it has done nothing against the Constitution - sounding like Indira Gandhi, who pointed to how her Emergency rule was imposed well under the Constitution's procedures.

There are strong instances that suggest that unless constitutional institutions such as the judiciary and the Election Commission, besides critical media and an autonomous academia, function in a transparently independent way, talk of the Emergency era will swirl around the country and travel overseas with the help of real-time technology that has taken communications to new heights.

Emergency Mirrors

The Emergency era saw the use of draconian laws such as the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (which led to Lalu Prasad naming his daughter as Misa Bharti). The current BJP administration has its Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) under which JNU student leader Umar Khalid and civil rights activist Gautam Navlakha have been detained for years without a reasonable trial.

At the political level, the Narendra Modi government is accused of misusing the Central Bureau of Investigation, the National Investigation Agency, the income tax department and the Enforcement Directorate to target political rivals such as former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, ostensibly on charges of money-laundering or corruption.

During the Emergency, MISA was used against more than 200 Delhi University teachers who were taken into custody on a single day, while jailed student leaders like the late Arun Jaitley later emerged strong on in the BJP's political echelons.

Under the BJP, the appointment and behaviour of vice-chancellors of state universities like Jawaharlal Nehru University and the role of governors in academic conduct in their role as chancellors has been a matter of controversy. Along with whispers about government pressures leading to the exit of academicians in the private Ashoka University and elsewhere.

Has Anything Changed? Yes and No

Indira Gandhi's Congress government superseded three senior judges of the Supreme Court in 1973 to make AN Ray the chief justice of India, while the BJP made Ranjan Gogoi, a CJI used of sexual harassment, as a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha - besides facing criticism for its views on judicial appointments and reform.

Mediapersons, including celebrated journalist Kuldip Nayar, were jailed by PM Gandhi during the Emergency years. Under the BJP's rule since 2014, journalists and even stand-up comedians have been targeted at various times under dubious legal provisions, while industrialists considered close to the government, such as the Adani group, have led court cases against the publication of critical content under digital content laws enabled by the government

Mediapersons, including celebrated journalist Kuldip Nayar, were jailed by PM Gandhi during the Emergency years. Under the BJP's rule since 2014, journalists and even stand-up comedians have been targeted at various times under dubious legal provisions, while industrialists considered close to the government, such as the Adani group, have led court cases against the publication of critical content under digital content laws enabled by the government

In fact, former chief justice DY Chandrachud alerted courts to the use of what he called SLAPP - Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) by powerful entities against the media and civil society.

A lot has indeed changed in India, and we may quibble on the technical details of what the Constitution says and means, but the tendency by elected political leaders to act like monarchs is a persisting human flaw.

(The author is a senior journalist and commentator who has worked for Reuters, Economic Times, Business Standard, and Hindustan Times. He can be reached on Twitter @madversity. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)