Calling former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi a “dictator” for enforcing the Emergency in 1975, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley on Monday compared Gandhi with German leader Adolf Hitler, known as one of the most notorious dictators in history. Jaitley also blamed her for transforming India into a “dynastic democracy”.
On the 43rd anniversary of the Emergency, in a long note on Twitter, Jaitley wrote, “Mrs. Gandhi’s imposition of Emergency under Article 352, suspension of fundamental rights under Article 359 and her claim that ‘disorder was planned by the opposition in the country’, echoed Hitler’s ‘Reichstag’ episode as exposed by the Nuremberg trials after 13 years.”
He further said that Indira Gandhi included few provisions in the Constitution to make an invalid election into a valid one, mentioning an atmosphere of fear and terror prevailed in the country during the Emergency.
He tweeted, “Both Hitler & Mrs. Gandhi never abrogated the Constitution. They used a republican Constitution to transform democracy into dictatorship. Hitler arrested most of the opposition Members of Parliament& converted his minority Government in Parliament into a 2/3rd majority govt.”
Jaitley added that it was a black chapter for the Indian Press as Gandhi curbed free speech and endorsed only propaganda, for which she had to pay the price later.
He wrote, “The Lesson from the Emergency is that if you curb free speech and allow only propaganda, you become the first victim of propaganda because you start believing that your own propaganda is the truth and the full truth.”
