On this day in - 1678 –
Venetian mathematician Elena Cornaro Piscopia became the first woman to receive
a Doctor of Philosophy degree. !!
Today
is 25th June . .. .. Cricket fans memory would gloat back to
the iconic image of Kapil Dev standing at the Lord’s balcony holding
aloft the World Cup.
It was Sri Azhagiya Singar Aani Brahmothsavam ~ those were the days, when people would at street corners stand in group listening to radio commentary. Gordon Greenidge left to a big banana inswinger of Balwinder Sandhu – trying to leave the ball, but the ball kept coming in and clipping his stumps. Viv Richards strode in and took on the bowlers – Madanlal was the workhorse and every Indian supporter would remember that frozen moment. Richards getting into the line and flicking Madanlal over midwicket – Kapil Dev kept running back and took the catch with effortless ease – an exemplary effort – great anticipation, finest athleticism and classy fielding. It was really a combined effort as India defended the low target to emerge victorious. Most of us thought Srikkanth’s pick and throw caught Bacchus short of the crease but those of days when TV replays would not be conclusive.
On this day in 1991 Martina Navratilova won her record 100th singles match at Wimbledon, beating Elna Reinach of South Africa 4-6, 6-2, 6-4 in the 1st round. In 1903, Eric Arthur Blair known by his pen name George Orwell, was born. As a writer, Orwell produced literary criticism and poetry, fiction and polemical journalism; and is best known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).
BUT FOR THE NATION THIS DAY DAWNED DIFFERENTLY 46 years ago - in 1975, India saw its darkest phase when
then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared emergency across the country. The
emergency was issued by President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed under Article 352(1) of
the Constitution and lasted 21 long months beginning 25th June 1975 and going
on until 21st March 1977.
JP Narayan and Morarji Desai called for daily anti-government protests. On 25th June 1975 JP organised a large rally in Delhi, where he said that a police officer must reject the orders of government if the order is immoral and unethical as this was Mahatma Gandhi's motto during the freedom struggle. Such a statement was taken as a sign of inciting rebellion in the country. Later that day, Indira Gandhi requested a compliant President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed to proclaim a state of emergency. Within three hours, the electricity to all major newspapers was cut and the political opposition arrested.
So from 25th June 1975 for 21 months it was dark days of Emergency – the order bestowed upon the Prime Minister the authority to rule by decree, allowing elections to be suspended and civil liberties to be curbed. For much of the Emergency, most of Indira Gandhi's political opponents were imprisoned and the press was censored. News was censored and remember that Thuglak had nothing but a dark black colour on its coverpage and Indian Express used to release its paper with dark ink cutting out many of its daily news.
Here is an interesting article reproduced from Indian Express of 19th June 2018 by A Suryaprakash.
A part from the
dreaded heat that June brings with it, the month also brings back painful
memories of the despotic Emergency that Congress Prime Minister Indira Gandhi
imposed on the country on 25 June 1975. The move turned a vibrant democracy
into a dictatorship and snatched away not just the fundamental rights of citizens
but also the right to life itself. If we are to preserve our democratic way of
life, we need to recall the events of 1975-77. We must also make a list of
things relating to the Emergency which we should never forget and also a list
of incidents we should never forgive. So, here goes:
We should never
forget: The sacrifices of a large number of political and social leaders and
workers who risked their lives and fought against the autocratic regime and
eventually put democracy back on the rails in March 1977. Among them were
Jayaprakash Narayan, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Chandra Shekhar, George Fernandes, L
K Advani, Charan Singh, Madhu Dandavate, Morarji Desai, Nanaji Deshmukh,
Ramakrishna Hegde, Sikander Bhakt, Narendra Modi, H D Deve Gowda, Lalu Prasad Yadav
and Nitish Kumar.
The role of the
RSS in the restoration of democracy in the country. Of the 6,330 political
activists jailed under the much-feared Maintenance of Internal Security Act
(MISA), 4,026 belonged to the RSS and the Jan Sangh (predecessor to the BJP).
Among them—apart from some of those named above—were the then RSS
Sarsanghchalak Balasaheb Deoras, Venkaiah Naidu, the current vice president of
India, union ministers Arun Jaitley, Ravishankar Prasad, Prakash Javadekar,
Ananth Kumar, Ram Vilas Paswan and senior RSS leader Dattatreya Hosabale. Dr
Subramanian Swamy, now an MP, slipped out of the country twice and launched
campaigns against Indira’s dictatorship in the US and UK. Prime Minister
Narendra Modi, then an RSS pracharak, was part of the underground movement,
organising resistance, producing anti-Emergency literature and helping the
families of the jailed leaders.
Justice H R
Khanna, the sole dissenting judge in ADM, Jabalpur vs. Shiv Kant Shukla Case
(also known as the Habeas Corpus Case) in the Supreme Court. The court had to
determine whether a citizen had the right to move courts to safeguard his right
to life and personal liberty under Article 21. This is the bedrock of a
democratic Constitution. As the Attorney General, Niren De, pressed for
acceptance of the government’s view that the citizens did not have the right to
life and personal liberty, Justice Khanna asked him if there could be no
judicial remedy if a cop killed a person out of personal enmity. Niren De said,
“Yes, there would be no judicial remedy.”
Those in the
courtroom were stunned to hear this and Justice Khanna recalls in his
autobiography that the other judges on the bench—Chief Justice A N Ray and
Justices M H Beg, Y V Chandrachud and P N Bhagwati—sat tongue-tied when this
was going on. Eventually, these four judges upheld the government’s view and
snatched away the citizen’s right to life and personal liberty. Some months
later, Justice Beg was appointed the chief justice—superseding Khanna—by
Indira. That is why Justice Khanna remains a hero for all those who value
democracy and fundamental rights.
We should not
forgive: Indira Gandhi, for turning a democracy into a dictatorship; for
forcible sterilisation of the population; for amending the Constitution and election
laws just to protect herself; for bringing in the 42nd Amendment to cripple the
higher judiciary; and for empowering the president to amend the Constitution
through executive orders.
The Kerala
policemen who brutally tortured and murdered P Rajan, a student of the Regional
Engineering College, Calicut but went unpunished. The Karnataka cops who
tortured Lawrence Fernandes for months but went unpunished. V C Shukla, the
minister for information and broadcasting in the Indira government, who
threatened journalists, imposed censorship, passed draconian anti-press laws
that empowered district magistrates to raid newspaper offices. He ordered the
All India Radio not to broadcast any song sung by Kishore Kumar because the
artist refused to sing a song for a government advertisement.
Justice Beg,
for his deplorable observation in the
‘Habeas Corpus’ judgment, that Indira
was taking “maternal care” of the political prisoners. He said, “We
understand the care and concern bestowed by the state authorities upon the
welfare of detenus who are well-fed and well-treated, is almost maternal.” Navin
Chawla, then the secretary to the lieutenant governor of Delhi, Kishan Chand,
who became an extra-constitutional authority.
He directed Tihar Jail to “bake” political prisoners in cells with
asbestos roofs. He also directed that some of the detenus “should be kept with
the lunatics”.
Bansi Lal, then the chief minister of Haryana and later defence minister, who behaved like a medieval despot. He personally supervised mass sterilisation camps, the most terrifying example of which was the assault on Uttawar village, largely populated by Muslims in Haryana. Cops arrived in trucks, surrounded the village, pulled out every male resident from age 8 to 80 and took them to a camp where they were forcibly vasectomised. In most of the northern states, school teachers and policemen were given sterilisation quotas. In many cases, the teachers themselves had to undergo vasectomy. Those who refused were jailed under the dreaded MISA.
This in no case is the complete list. But, if we fail to remember the villains of the Emergency and draw the right lessons from those days of repression, we will not be able to protect and preserve our democratic way of life.
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