The Normalization of Malfeasance: What does Modi’s India have in common with Indira’s Emergency Rule?
Words by Sandeep Radhakrishnan
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The Normalization of Malfeasance:
What does Modi’s India have in common with Indira’s Emergency Rule?
On 14th September 2020, a 19-year-old Dalit woman was brutally gang-raped by four men of the Upper Caste in the district of Hathras in Uttar Pradesh. In a little over two weeks, she died due to her injuries and was cremated by the UP police without the family's consent, almost immediately after her death. Petroleum was allegedly used to burn the body. The shambolic handling of the incident by the state’s authorities drew instant and acute condemnation from those seeking justice for the victim and her family. Nationwide, there was outrage.
Naturally, the media began arriving at the scene to get the full story. One such journalist who was making his way from Delhi was Siddique Kappan, a Muslim originally from Kerala. Travelling with three others by car, all four were arrested while passing through a toll booth in Mathura, en route to Hathras. He was booked under the controversial ‘Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act’ (UAPA) for sedition and for promoting violence between religious groups and was held in jail for nearly two and half years before finally being released on bail in February 2023. Kappan continues to fight his case. Such arrests of journalists, activists, opposition politicians, and many others have become routine under the rule of the present government. Questioning the government now comes with a level of risk whose only precedent in post-Independent India was likely during the Emergency period under Indira Gandhi.
To understand the aberrant nature of the political climate today, we have to sift through the history of modern India to find parallel situations. This country has endured many a crisis and nobody can argue that it has ever been a perfectly functioning democracy. Two PMs have been assassinated while still in office and six PMs have failed to complete even a full year. The reason this article focuses on the Emergency as a point of comparison is because this is the only other period where the ruling party and ergo the PM commanded not only complete control of the government, but also enjoyed the adulation of the masses. Such privileges helped create the conditions for malfeasance on a scale that is at best, perturbing.