The BJP seeks to project the RSS and the Jana Sangh as the foremost fighters against Emergency but this amounts to economising with the truth, the CPI-M has said.
"While it is true that a large number of RSS leaders and workers were put in jail (during Emergency), it is also a fact that a number of them tendered apologies and declared support for the 20-point programme of the Indira government to facilitate their release," said an editorial in the CPI-M journal "People's Democracy".
"They did so, probably taking the cue from the RSS sarsanghchalak Balasaheb Deoras who (from) jail wrote two letters to Indira Gandhi offering to cooperate with the government and declaring support for the 'constructive programmes' of the government." it said.
"Thus, the doughty fighters against the Emergency were shown to be craven and vacillating in the face of State repression."
The editorial follows the 43rd anniversary of the 1975-77 Emergency rule when thousands of political activists of all hues were jailed and fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution were suspended.
The CPI-M editorial said that the occasion "became, as usual, an occasion for the BJP leadership to put out its own distorted and boastful version of this eventful period in post-independent India".
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It said that the four years of Modi government had witnessed an "'undeclared Emergency' which is nothing but the institutionalisation of an authoritarian regime.
"When the BJP talks about the Emergency era of four decades ago, it blithely sidesteps the fact that a far worse authoritarian regime has been put in place marked by a systematic encroachment of civil liberties and democratic rights; subversion of the institutions under the Constitution; State-aided vigilantism and lynch mobs; and intimidation of the media and suppression of dissent."
--IANS
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