The popularity of Jayaprakash Narayan's anti-Congress movement and the Allahabad high court verdict against Indira Gandhi for electoral corruption were the two factors responsible for the clamping of Emergency in 1975, Deputy Prime Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani said on Thursday.
He was addressing Bharatiya Janata Party members during a function organised by the party to mark the 28th anniversary of Emergency, which was clamped by Gandhi, the then prime minister.
He said Emergency would remain a 'political lesson' for not only the younger generation, but also journalists and others who valued democracy and freedom of the press.
To some, it was a 'difficult chapter'. The people, by and large, were against it, he said amid applause.
Advani expressed happiness that after Emergency was revoked in 1977, Congress members had not defended it in Parliament.
JP had taken inspiration from the Nav Nirman movement in Gujarat and decided to conduct something similar in Bihar, he said, adding this prompted Gandhi to impose Emergency.
He said he was the Jana Sangh chief when he received JP's letter (sent to the chiefs of all political parties) to oppose Emergency. But soon after, most opposition leaders were arrested and lodged in different jails all over the country.
He emphasised that such was the ruthless nature of Emergency that when his two children, then aged 10 and eight, wanted to visit him in jail in Haryana, the authorities were only willing to let in two family members.
He said when friends and relatives wanted to send greeting or invitation cards to him in jail, the authorities asked them to address the envelope to 'L K Advani, c/o Indira Gandhi, New Delhi', so that his place of incarceration remained a secret.
Advani regretted that after the Congress and Indira Gandhi returned to power in 1980, the copies of the Shah Commission report, which recorded the excesses committed during Emergency, were confiscated.
"I don't know whether one can find a copy of the Shah Commission report in Parliament," he said.
On a different not, Advani said during his visit to the United States and Britain, he had made two significant discoveries: one was the professional and business competence of non-resident Indians. The second was that India, a nation of more than a billion, ran 'a vibrant and vigorous democracy for the last 55 years'.
Advani said he told NRIs in the US that they ought to commend Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee for successfully running a coalition government of more than 20 parties.
BJP chief M Venkaiah Naidu said that the BJP observed June 26 as anti-Emergency day so that 'the people can remain eternally vigilant' against such an evil.
"We have to learn lessons from the past to move forward," Naidu said.
Party general secretary Pramod Mahajan said it was to remind the Congress about its excesses during Emergency that its anniversary was being observed by all BJP units in the country.
