EMERGENCY PARALLELS: India and Pakistan

Legal tangle
1. There was an adverse court decision against Indira Gandhi by Allahabad High Court which unseated her. She should have resigned and the Indian prime minister should have changed.

On the advice of some of her confidantes, she declared emergency and saved herself.

Compare the parallels as you read on.

Pakistan faced a similar situation and a judgement by Pakistan Supreme Court on 6 November was feared to be against the constitutional validity of the candidature of Musharraf in the presidential election. To avert it, Musharraf did not wait for the judgement to come but after imposing emergency got removed the inconvenient judges and got his own men appointed.

Imprisonments
2. Indira Gandhi got all opposition arrested and put them in the jail. If Musharraf has not already done it, he will do it.

New law or amendment
3. Indira Gandhi got the People’s Representation Act amended retrospectively in a captive parliament in which only the members of her party were present with the opposition in jail, and made the Supreme Court of India totally ineffective as far as upholding the Allahabad High Court judgement was concerned. Neither the prime minister nor the president of India could be touched easily by courts thereafter.

Musharraf has come out with provisional constitutional ordinance under which he has acted and removed the judges of the Supreme Court eight of whom had declared the declaration of emergency unconstitutional. Where are they now ? In jail, if alive ?

Terrorizing the judiciary
4.A judge of the Supreme Court of India, we know (and a cardiologist has confirmed it) used to call Indira Gandhi “Durga” or Goddess Durga in sheer dread.What Musharraf has done is much worse and is well reported already. But the judges there were not in dread at all is the report.

Media
5. During the Indian emergency of 1975, we did not have private television channels, mobile phones, internet communications etc. Yet, the newspapers and their editors were controlled except two who bold proprietors, came out with sensational stories and suffered at the hands of the government. The media as a whole in India behaved in most cowardly fashion forgetting its freedom of free expression given under the constitution. Fundamental Rights were suspended.

It was the dasha of Mecury in the third house, representing media in two ways and also in transit Mars was aspecting the third house.

Musharraf has had to control mobile, television channels, newspapers, internet communications and even telephones. This is always the worst deprivation of a great democratic right and Musharraf has done it very strictly. Fundamental Rights have been suspended.

Justification of Emergency
6. Indira Gandhi had failed to control prices and in 1973 onwards agitations all over India, starting from Gujarat and later when the great leader Jai Prakash Narayan led an all India agitation, it was clear that Indira Gandhi could be shaken up. So she made it a law and order issue and imposed and justified emergency. Indira had no iota of justification to do it.

In the case of Musharraf, the justification has existed for many months now with the growing strength of Taiban and terrible terrorist activities some of which aimed at the assassination of Musharraf and a terrible situation in north west frontier provinces.

If Musharraf had imposed such an emergency in July, it would have looked justifiable to some extent. But imposing it, two days before a crucial judgement against him was to come, possibly unseating him and declaring his candidature in the presidential election unconstitutional, he has clearly exposed himself to the charge of making his emergency a skin saving measure.

I will watch the situation as events unfold in Pakistan and Musharraf becomes very unsafe inspite of emergency and write more as India is going to be affected by it.

( 4 November 2007)