Chandigarh, Jun 25 (PTI) Haryana Governor Bandaru Dattatreya on Tuesday said the Emergency was the darkest period in India’s history.
In a statement on the 49th anniversary of the declaration of an internal emergency, Dattatreya said “When on the morning of June 26, people came to know that the government has imposed an Emergency in the country, there was an atmosphere of chaos in the whole country,” the 77-year-old governor was quoted as saying in the statement.
The Emergency was the darkest period in Indian history, he added.
Dattatreya said when Emergency was imposed, he was an RSS ‘pracharak’. Several prominent leaders like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Morarji Desai, L K Advani, and George Fernandes among others were arrested under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA), he said.
“On the morning of June 26, when I went out for a tour, I found that the police were coming to search our office. I left from there but I did not know where to go. If I went to the house of any Sangh (RSS) worker, police surveillance was imposed there too,” he recalled.
“In such a situation, I was informed that everyone would have to work underground. So, I decided that instead of wearing a kurta pyjama, I will wear a trouser-shirt and went to another state.
Once there, I came to know that leaders had been arrested across the country and censorship had been imposed. Only government news was allowed to be published in newspapers and broadcast on TV. The whole country was tied up like a prison, he said.
“In normal circumstances, we used to go from village to village and do the work of organisation building. Then we had identified some places where I started living after changing my name. I had changed my name to Shailendra. Due to censorship, no correct news used to come in newspapers or on TV. We could not know what was happening in the country and the state.
“Therefore, a movement was started in the name of Lok Sangharsh Samiti. Under the leadership of Jayaprakash Narayan, we used to get news from Delhi to Hyderabad. A circular used to come from Delhi, which had to be printed and sent to all the states and distributed to all the workers and social workers.
“During this time, I was arrested and put in Chanchalguda jail in Adilabad district of Andhra Pradesh. In the jail, I was repeatedly asked how and from where I got this bulletin; who sends it and where do I get the money for it. The DSP (police official in prison) used to ask me questions about this repeatedly. Despite their threats, I did not tell them anything. I was threatened with an electric shock but I refused to say anything.” Dattatreya said “I was from a very poor family.
My mother Eshwaramma used to sell onions in Osmanganj. During Emergency, my elder brother Manik Prabhu died. I was given parole and after attending the funeral, I was again put in jail.
“I also suffered a lot… I was in jail for one year. There were people from all parties in the jail,” he said.
Dattatreya said, “According to the Constitution of our country, those who were supposed to run the country, those people had turned the country into a prison. My mother and my family members were given a lot of trouble. We can never forget the scene of Emergency in which our fundamental rights were abolished and democracy was thrown into darkness.” He further said, “I want to pay my respects to late Shri Goenka ji, the head of The Indian Express at that time for the work he did in The Indian Express and our Telugu newspaper Andhra Prabha during the Emergency. I liked the newspaper he sent with great courage and bravery…”.
On June 25, 1975, the then prime minister Indira Gandhi, a Congress stalwart, imposed Emergency in the country, suspending civil liberties, jailing opposition leaders and dissidents and effecting press censorship.
Hyderabad-born Dattatreya, a former Union minister, was sworn in as the 18th governor of Haryana in July 2021.
He was the minister of state for labour and employment in the NDA government headed by Narendra Modi in 2014 and was also part of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee cabinet earlier. PTI SUN RHL
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