Truth of the detail

The performance of the newly installed Modi-led coalition government in the Indian parliament on the morning of Wednesday June 26 is worth looking at. Not for any ominous intervention the government made, but for a “minor” yet perhaps ominous “error” in its pronouncements.

Modi, let us recognize, is ceaselessly, one might say impressively, ready to pounce on any “occurrence” of any kind anywhere in the world that could somehow be used to discredit the growing democratic opposition to him in India. Night and day, he’s on his mental toes for this. At some hour on or before June 25, a big penny wonderfully dropped for him.

He remembered that the night of June 25-26 was after all the date in the year 1975 when the late Indira Gandhi, prime minister of India for a total of nearly 17 years until her assassination in 1984, had imposed an emergency across India. During that emergency, which in effect lasted for 19 months and is well recorded in Indian and world history, democratic rights were suspended, scores of MPs and thousands of activists were put behind bars, and the press was either censored or pressurized to self-censor.

Early in 1977, Indira, evidently believing that her drastic measure had met with popular approval, called for elections. Instead of a ringing endorsement, India’s voters handed her a memorable defeat.

That 1975-77 emergency undoubtedly constitutes an adverse chapter in Indira Gandhi’s personal history and in the story of Indian democracy. I may be permitted here to mention that the print magazine HIMMAT, which served the Indian public for 17 years between 1964 and 1981 from Mumbai, and with which I was actively and proudly associated, was among a handful of journals that opposed the emergency and were willing to pay the price for doing so.

Little as HIMMAT was, its stand made big news at the time. A kind friend reminded me of this fact a few days back by sending me an image of a New York Times story of Nov. 2, 1976. Written from New Delhi by William Borders, that story, headlined “Journal in India Fighting to Survive,” spoke of how HIMMAT was urging readers to contribute towards a printing press because Mumbai’s printing establishments, of which there were scores, were being threatened, one by one, not to print our journal. (Our appeal was successful, I should add.)

After her March 1977 loss, Indira regrouped while those who had defeated her squabbled among themselves. Early in 1980, she was back in power with a large vote. In that 1980 campaign, she said more than once that she would not repeat her emergency mistake.

An acknowledged mistake, that 1975-77 emergency merits the full attention of scholars of democracy. However, when the big penny dropped Modi obviously felt that all the people of the India of 2024 could be encouraged to focus on that dark period, which ended almost a half century ago, rather than on today’s not particularly bright picture of unemployment, shortages, and curbs on democratic rights.

On the 26th of this month, therefore, Modi did the following things. He made sure that in her opening remarks to the new parliament, India’s president, Droupadi Murmu, would underline the horrors of the emergency. He ensured that Om Birla, the speaker of the new house, who belongs to Modi’s party, the BJP, would not only recall that dark period in his first remarks; as the newly re-elected speaker, Birla would move a resolution asking the new house to recall the dark days of 1975-77.

Legitimate politics? Perhaps. Astute politics? Possibly yes, given that Rahul Gandhi, freshly invigorated as the leader of the opposition in the new house, is after all a grandson of Indira Gandhi.

But the ploys didn’t click as they might have. For one thing, the emergency by now is a very old song. Secondly, and this perhaps is the most significant element in what was happening on the 26th, in order to maximize the impact of the penny that had dropped for Modi, the eminent individuals recalling the emergency under his influence said that June 25/26 this year was the emergency’s fiftieth anniversary.

No, it wasn’t. June 25/26, 2024 was the 49th anniversary.

Is the difference between fifty and forty-nine such a big deal? Especially when you’re talking of a “dark period of Indian history”? Should tiny details matter when the bigger context is more important? Or when Modi’s political “master strokes” are at play?

The truth may however be that it is the detail that counts, whether the person examining that detail is a surgeon or a historian. Or, sometimes, even today’s citizen or voter.