We all know Indira Gandhi was a person who symbolized women empowerment during the early era of emerging India, but little do we realize about the cost at which this happened.
The cost was inception of corruption and failure of our democratic setup.
Popularly known as the ‘Iron Lady’, she managed to do irreversible damage to our country during her term as the Prime Minister without even letting the people have a clue about it. She always portrayed the image of a strong, independent woman who was not afraid to take bold decisions and stand her ground. But instead what she did was, abuse the powers and resources at her disposal and use the meanest of methods ever possible to hold on to a position of superiority. All she wanted to become was a dictator who cannot be challenged.
Questions were always raised against her by the opposition and public regarding electoral corruption, over expenditure during the elections and falsely using government machinery for her own party purposes. But it took almost four years to get a verdict after Raj Narain, the defeated opponent in the 1971 elections brought this up. She was guilty. Mr. Justice Sinha of Allahabad High Court ruled the decision against her, and that is when the upsurge reached its peak. (Source)
Any respectable person would have either resigned at that time or taken the decision to the upper court, but what Indira Gandhi did was a slap against the face of democracy.
In order to curb the voices rising against her and continue with her position of power, she took the ugliest decision in the history of Indian politics to declare a state of emergency. Her government and Cabinet recommended Fakhruddin Ali Ahmad (President of India at that time) to declare emergency. It happened because what followed the decision in Allahabad High Court was supposedly given the term ‘civil disorder’ and ‘state of lawlessness’. And thus Indira Gandhi kicked off the 21 month long dark period of emergency using the Article 352(1) of our constitution between the years 1975 and 1977.
(Source)
What happened in those 21 months was utter chaos and disturbance. The fake grounds on which Indira Gandhi declared the emergency started becoming a reality. The civil liberties were curbed, her opponents were imprisoned, and the media was also not allowed to print or say anything against the government. In short, a majority of the rights were snatched away from the people.
During this period, the government was extensively criticized for majority of their acts. It included arresting of political members without charge and torturing them, destruction of slums, forced sterilization, and illegal enactment of many laws.
Indira Gandhi was the Columbus who founded the island of democracy, her power hungry nature broke the backbone of our country at that crucial juncture of growing India, and we are still recovering from it.
Her actions were being observed by everyone at that time and that is the reason why somewhere down the line she is responsible for others also who took unjust routes to pave their way to a position of power and authority.
The bad example set by her cannot be ignored. We can still see the corruption trickling down in today’s era. And that is why I am not that surprised seeing the huge scandals and scams done by the prominent political parties of our country like Congress and BJP. When a person is this hungry to remain in power that she is ready to shut down the whole nation if that is what it takes, then there is not much that can be done stop it. Hopefully, a situation like this would never come up again, and even if it does, then we know who started it after all.
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