 Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. June 25th marks the 45th anniversary of the imposition of the internal emergency in India. Now this internal emergency was imposed when former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was in power. A court verdict led to the possibility that she might lose her status as a member of parliament and subsequently even as Prime Minister. And this led to her imposing the emergency. This emergency was marked by a very sustained assault on democracy, on fundamental rights. Leaders of the opposition were put in jail. Thousands were arrested. There was a huge crackdown on the media. And most importantly, the poor and the working class in large numbers were attacked through forcible evictions from their houses, through being put in jail and even through forced sterilization. In 1977, after almost nearly two years, Indira Gandhi who was under the assumption that she would win if an election was called, did call for an election. But the people of India rose up and opposed her and voted her out, leading to her resignation finally and a new government came to power. Today, it's 2020 and Indira Gandhi's Congress Party is no longer in power. It's the right-wing BJP that is ruling. But a lot of observers have pointed out that in a number of ways, the situation today is not very different from that of 1975. There is no real emergency in place now, but we see many of the same tendencies that were there during this emergency being replicated. So to talk more about this, we have with us Praveer Pulkayasar, the editor of NewsClick. Praveer was a student activist during the emergency and was also one of those who was detailed. So Praveer, to start with, could you probably give some a bit of context about that period both at the national level and internationally that led to the imposition of this internal emergency? Because until that time, India was very proud of the fact that it was a democracy, that it became a democracy immediately after independence in 1947. So what led to this phase where in 1975, it basically suspended fundamental rights and saw this attack on democracy? There's always been a question, was it simply because Mrs. Gandhi was a prime minister at that time and she had lost the court case by which she was unseated as a parliament member. And though the appeal was still pending in the Supreme Court, the question came up, was therefore her becoming a prime minister at least quasi-illegitimate in the eyes of the people? And this more than the legal issue, which is that she had to, as she was being unseated, could she appeal and get a steer order, continue as a prime minister? Instead of that, what she did was to declare emergency. So that is the therefore one proximate reason has always been held for being unseated as a member of parliament and therefore legally putting her prime ministership under the cloud. But I think there was also the other part which must not be some lost site of when we look at the consequence of what happened, that there was a strong section in the Indian middle class which always argued that democracy was not suitable for a country of India size and complexity. What we needed was really a dictatorship and a dictatorship by which they felt the, what shall we say, the poor, the working sections, those who are not really in their class, they could be silenced, they could be then forced to do what their betters told them to. And it also fed into, apart from the middle class or upper middle class, ideas of what a meritocracy should be and they always considered themselves to be meritorious and that the other people who have vote, the poor, the other sections who have vote, therefore are the sections who don't understand while they do, they felt that it will really empower them against the mass of Indian people and they're always held in the drawing rooms of the elite that democracy was not a suitable institution. So they felt that this was the time for them and then of course population which is the other major issue always in India. India is overpopulated, the poor breed too much. That's in fact the other issue. And there is also another argument, it's not purely a Malthusian argument of breeding too much, but also the argument which is also there in the various societies as a part of the eugenic program that the poor breeding too much means the best of society does not reproduce enough. So genetically there is a fall of equality and therefore sterilizing the poor is a method of controlling the racial in some cases the racial descent and in other cases the descent of IQ, et cetera. So the whole IQ debate is also very much a part of the elite eugenic debate so to say. So we have to also understand that why sterilization suddenly came up. It didn't come up because Sanjay Gandhi, Mrs. Gandhi's son sort of suddenly decided his own program in this, but it also came out because there were all these elements which also went into the middle class psyche which backed Mrs. Gandhi's emergency. Not so much because of they wanted her as a prime minister because they saw her as an instrument to institute a certain kind of authoritarian rule in the country, do away with people's protests and movements with the thought and fetters and also more important than also have their so-called sterilization program, which in their mind was as much population control as also the control of a eugenic kind. So all of this combined to provide, I think the larger framework of what caused the emergency, not simply the unseating of her being a prime minister or her unseating of her being a member of parliament, but also all these issues also combined to create essentially an authoritarian 19 months government which was what the emergency was really all about. And as you have said, putting political opposition in jail, large number of people who could protest and organize in jail, particularly the student activists, the workers activists, the workers leaders, the movement leaders, all of them in put in jail was very much a part of it, but also she put the right in jail so that she could argue that there was a fascist overthrow possible, which was being germinated somewhere and therefore she had to intervene. So that was her, shall we say, argument in front of the third world leadership, of which she was a very important component and she was really in the way in that point of time, also a international image for herself, which of course was solid badly by the emergency, but nevertheless she was trying to say, well, you know, there is this CIA, American possibilities, coups which take place in different countries. And of course, you know, the US has intervened in a number of countries and of course they had their fourth column in India too. So it was not that it was completely out of air in air that she moved the story, but that was not the thrust of the emergency that really we should understand today. So in this context, one of the key issues I think is also the fact that what was the kind of resistance that took place at that time? Because you mentioned how, for instance, political leaders, trade unionists, many of them were imprisoned and a lot of these operations were done very quickly without any warning, so it is not even that there was a lot of time to prepare for eventualities. So could you talk a bit about what was the kind of resistance, especially in the left that was taking place during that time? I think the left had actually thought that this is going to go on for a long time. That India has turned into an authoritarian direction and she wasn't going to give, you know, declare elections soon till she had established total control of the country. And I think that's where a lot of people had also miscalculated because they thought they had given up, in fact. A lot of the opposition parties that we are talking about, they really had given up because they did not know how to resist an authoritarian leadership of this kind. And they, after initial protests and so on, found that their model of protest wasn't working. So they decided that, well, there is nothing else to accept, try and see whether they can negotiate our way out of jail. So that was the way that, I think the different sections were operating. So the left had decided that it needs to build essentially what would be called underground apparatus, how to continue struggles without openly identifying who are the leaders so that they don't then immediately get put into jail. In fact, the university that I was in and the time to talk about me being a student activist in the time, we had organized a three-day strike and I was arrested on the second day. And it was, again, done anonymously in the sense that the flip was distributed. Everybody knew who were doing it, but the names are not there. So it was difficult for the state to make a case against us. And that's why when they arrested me during the second day of the strike, I was picked up and put under what's called the Maintenance of Internal Security Act, which did not have any specific evidence that need to be produced. It was essentially what's called preventive detention. So that was the bonus that was actually being used. So this was the left really model of resistance and it was something that we were organizing in different parts of the country. But what took everybody by surprise and honestly it did take everybody by surprise is that Mrs. Gandhi at one point decided to legitimize her emergency by calling for elections. And that was a miscalculation by her because she didn't expect that people would turn in this way and use the valid box to unseat her. So her expectation was, I guess this is what authoritarian rulers also have as a problem, that everybody around them tells them what they want to hear, which is what you see also in the current government. And if they hear what they think is happening, which is conducive to them, then of course the policies get more out of act with what the reality of the ground is. And the reality of the ground was all of this was creating enormous resentment among the people, particularly what you talked about the sterilization program in which men were targeted for the racism. And I think the Indian people, particularly the sections, the poorer sections, those who are most oppressed understood the value of the vote or even today understand the value of vote much more than what the middle class or the elite do in India. So I think that was one of the things that happened. And it's also interesting we stopped hearing talks about a benevolent dictatorship after that, which was quite popular in the drawing rooms at the time before the emergency. After emergency for 25, 30 years, we did not hear the talk. Unfortunately, the generation which was born after emergency or entered politics or social consciousness after emergency, that has forgotten that history. One thing I wanted to ask was also in terms of, in terms of democracy itself, in terms of institutions, in terms of politics itself, what was the legacy or what were some of the more dangerous legacies of that period which are perhaps playing out in much, much more strength today? You know, before we get into that question, which I think is an important one, I would also like to point out what actually happens during emergency and what we are seeing today. I think the most important part of its people's ability to resist was greatly weakened because your organizations, the leadership, the instruments of organizing, being able to communicate to others, all of these were taken away. And once you take them away, then of course resistance becomes much more difficult. And particularly organizing resistance means that some people immediately are identified and then of course you have prevented detention, they go to jail, the government doesn't have to prove anything. So the whole consequence of that was the chilling effect on resistance. And of course, coupled to that, you have the chilling effect on the media with the direct rules by which you could actually go to jail for printing something the government didn't want. And the media as was famously said by one of the right wing leaders, Advani, was that the press crawled and asked to bend, but they were asked to bend, there's no question about that. There was censorship and the censorship was quite strict and those who violated the censorship did or were harassed in different ways, including being set to jail for short times. So all of that meant the media also became compliant and of course you had the movements which could not operate openly. So the resistance of the people were subterranean, was building up, the anger was there, but there's no open resistance, which is possible. And today when you look at it, the COVID-19 provides an environment also which prevents the kind of mobilization on the ground because parties or political movements don't want to be responsible and therefore do not want to organize resistance in the same form that they were doing earlier. And also there is a recognition, epidemic is here for a shorter period and at some point this will normalize and then we will go back to our old forms of resistance which was actually taking place just before the epidemic was there. If you remember the attack on the minorities in the guise of what is called the national population register, national register of citizens, which was seen widely as a way to disenfranchise the minorities. This had run into serious resistance both from secular political formations, secular organizations and of course the minority which was being targeted. So this resistance which is building up actually got derailed in some sense by the COVID-19 epidemic because people had to endure or give up mass mobilization. So I think the resistance being weakened is something which has happened today because of the COVID-19 epidemic and the fact institutionally the government has passed or has taken powers under the Disaster Management Act which is an emergency provision. So we have it not a de facto but a legal desure emergency in the country. So that is also the parallel. You have an institutional mechanism which allows for emergency powers in the central government and you have a collapse of the resistance because of COVID-19 in this case. And at that time because of the authoritarian nature of the emergency rule that was declared. So these are the two panels that I think are very important to focus on. And yes, I do think that both these things just as it changed earlier emergency lift got lifted and you have the delay the therefore dethroning of Mrs. Gandhi in that election. We are going to see a change at some point of time. It will become normal again. And I'm sure it will if not with herd immunity but with the vaccine. And then if you do get you will get an opportunity then to go back to quote unquote new politics again or the normal politics again. And then of course the resistance can build. Without the resistance I think the emergency by itself is not so easy to fight. You were asking about the legacies in the constitution. You know, one is the legacy of the constitution worked in a different way. In fact, we tried to inoculate the emergency provisions in a way they're more difficult to exercise today. So you cannot have the emergency that Mrs. Gandhi did at that point of time that easy. That is one that that happened. The second part of it we have more provisions within the system now to say put checks and balances in the government. You have various transparency laws which have been passed. You have the rights to examine a lot of the government documents. The courts have been active in this period establishing certain very necessary conditions on what is life to write to life and liberty. But of course the problem that we have now is while all those provisions exist institutionally their applicability is where the problem comes because you have a court which is the key instrument of protecting our legal rights. The court today says all the right things and then does not give any relief to the petitioners. So effectively what it does is says yes, these things should be very important. They exist. They should be examined. Then gives the power of examining or the authority to examine on the same people who have committed shall we say the violations of law. So you have Kashmir as a case. You have various other cases which are going on in the courts today. And all of them you do not hear a violation of the law in terms of the judicial pronouncement being obviously wrong. But what you hear is essentially that yes we agree with that these are the legal provisions but some little small loophole is found by which the court finally does not give any relief to the petitioners. So I think that is the more issue here. It is not the legal structure which is being changed. Take for instance the labor laws. The labor laws have not been changed. All that has happened is the government said for next three years because of COVID-19 because we have an emergency situation in the country they're all being held in evanesce. Now under Disaster Management Act can they do so? If they cannot do so, who do we go to to strike down that pronouncement? We go to the court and that's where the problem lies. So unfortunately without resistance on the ground I do not think courts will protect the people or their rights. And that's always with the issue. Under democracy it is not the rulers. It is not the judiciary who protect the rights of the people. It is the people themselves. And that's the conclusion that we have to come to today or under any other emergency. Talk a bit maybe about how the right wing has evolved also. We know that since 2014 it's been in power under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a lot of experts have pointed out that a lot of the atrocities that were committed during the emergency a lot of the very problematic aspects of government that were displayed during that period of time can be seen again now. For instance, the all out attack on critics of the government, the influencing of the media, the weakening of the federal structure all this can be seen even now. So can you talk a bit about also how the right wing from that part of the 70s is now emerging to what it is today? Well, you know, the political emergence of the right as a phenomenon is not limited to India. It's happening in different countries in the world. So I think that's a much larger trend which perhaps we should not make it specific to India itself. If you talk about the emergency and what were the actions that were taken which are similar today, you're right that, you know, the various instruments, the various ways that the critics are being sought to be silenced. I will not agree they have been silenced or sought to be silenced have various legal backing. Those laws unfortunately came under bipartisan support earlier the Congress government as well as this government both have strengthened those kinds of laws. And one of them is the one which allows a lot enormous amount of powers to the state investigative agency under the guise of investigating threats to the national security. So these are the lawful activities prevention act and the instrument that has been created national investigative agency has got enormous powers and there are separate courts which have been created for that purpose very much similar to what are called the FISA courts in the United States, for example. So all of this so-called anti-terrorist acts can be misused of course, and we know that and they are misused in different ways in different countries and we are no exception to that. The part that I think is important is that this is always true. It has never not been true that there are no laws in the statute books which cannot be used against the people. They all always were even very, very innocuous sounding laws to draconian anti-sedition acts. All of these clauses which are almost the remnants of the British colonial rule exist in our books. The how is it that those instruments are not used? They are when they are used, there is a lot of criticism and there's a lot of resistance and the judiciary then gives a favorable verdict after a long drawn out legal battle. Those are the instruments by which we have been able to keep these kinds of powers at the check. And I think the erosion of that is the essential issue that comes up. And we have seen this erosion gradually taking place with the 2014 elections that Modi won and came with an explicit promise to have a strong government. And the strong government meant that it will take action against all resistances of this kind and which it has slowly built up. But I think that what really the watermark has been this last victory and then the COVID-19 epidemic which has consolidated this power because he had managed to break the resistance of the Supreme Court and how or why that happened to the different story. And having weakened the Supreme Court, then of course the right wing forces got to get enormously strengthened if they are in power. And this is something which happens in different countries as well. It's nothing which is exceptional here. So I think this is the part of it. And if we see also the loss of legitimacy of other forces which have been there, the democratic forces, the weakening of the left which all of it has helped to generate more power to this particular right-wing formation that we have. So the fact that other political movements have weakened I think is also very much we have to be objective about it. We have to accept that has also helped the consolidation of the right wing forces. So the question still remains, why is it that more than 70 years after India has become independent? Why is it that these forces of today gathered so much strength, particularly when they played virtually no role during the independence movement or the anti-colonial, anti-British Empire movement? Why is it that today they have suddenly become strong? It's a question that we have to ask ourselves as well. And Prabir, finally as a media professional yourself, but like you already mentioned, one of the key aspects of the emergency was with some exceptions, of course, the very poor performance of the media. There was almost a complete bowing down to government dictates which were very formally issued. And like you said, there was strong censorship. Today, India at one level has a very vibrant media. The amount of money that is invested in it is huge. There are a huge number of channels, online portals. But at the same time, we also see the production of a huge amount, a considerable amount of right-wing content or fake news. And even TV channels, for instance, running on maybe the Fox News model, endorsing a very strong government line and even running a campaign against its critics. So how do you see the shifting and the change of the media scenario today that has brought us here? You know, the media has always been pro-big capital. And one of the reasons why Indian media has been prone to supporting a certain kind of agenda is also because it is, as you said, sitting on a lot of money or it depends on the health of capital for its business model. After all, what does the media run on? It runs on advertisements. Where do they come from? They come from big capital. So, being friendly to big capital is a sine qua non of commercial big media. So this is essentially the way media really functions. And that's why what's called the neoliberal agenda has always been strongly supported by all sections of the media, liberal or right-wing. So this is one part of the story. The second part of the story, as you have said, is that there is a section of media today which out of fear connives or collaborates with the government, but also a very strong troll media which brings some digital platforms to what you're calling as the Fox News model, which wants to go to war with Pakistan in the morning, in the afternoon with China, and the prime time launches a complete attack on minorities as well as on the opposition. So they do not speak to power. They speak power to truth. So that's basically the functioning of this kind of media. They are on the fringe of troll media which is outright lies, fake news and abusive campaigns. And the quote unquote legitimate media, they're really on the borderline of that, like Fox News is. I think there's a poll taken once in the United States and it found that if you don't look at any media, you're better informed than if for a Fox News viewer. So that's a kind of media that you get also with in India, Republic TV, which is really the Fox News model you talked about, but there is not one Fox News model. There are a number of them in India and they really are not averse to manufacturing news. So that's the other part of it that exists. But so this is one part of it, but there also has been digital platforms have come up and I think we are going to see soon different ways of trying to regulate them on the name of regulation, really try to control them, harass them in different ways and make them totally lie. So I think this is the new model that we'll probably see in the coming years. But what we do see now, the resistance is coming from smaller, more dispersed media groups, which are not conventional media. They are small platforms, getting a certain amount of support from the people. So there is a certain amount of money that they have, but because they're not into printing or into dishes of the sky, so they don't have to hire satellites. They are able therefore to do a certain number of certain kind of news, which are more critical of the government and at least therefore act as a kind of, what shall we say, leash on the kind of narrative that can be promoted. And I've always argued that these platforms are not going to be an alternate media as some people think they will be. What they can do is to break news so that you cannot completely keep certain kinds of news out. So it allows that news to leak into media because it will start appearing in different places, that different kinds of people will pick it up and social media then amplifies it. So reality cannot be covered up for too long. And I think that is the problem that this government and all authoritarian governments have. How do you control the people's voices and social media and digital platforms today being one of that? But don't forget the emergency, none of this existed. But people knew what was happening and in spite of the fact Mrs. Gandhi controlled the media completely. Even up to the day the elections were being held, the point is she lost extremely badly. So it shows that the people's media, that means people's communication will always exist. And that even if you take away all the formal channels of communication, it doesn't mean that you can take away people's voices, resistance completely just because you control the media. I think that's a mistake that people make. People in power believe they can create a new reality and people will not wake up to the real world out there and they will believe what they're being told from the various screens in their houses or from the newspaper. Thank you so much for being here, for talking to us.