With Samvidhaan Hatya Diwas, BJP seeks to push Congress to a corner

Accused interminably by its rivals for its assaults on the Constitution, the Narendra Modi government has intensified its pushback against the Congress-led INDIA bloc. The Centre announced on Friday (July 12) that June 25, the anniversary of the imposition of Emergency during the late Indira Gandhi’s prime ministerial reign back in 1975, will henceforth be observed as Samvidhaan Hatya Diwas.

The Centre’s decision, made public by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, comes in wake of the BJP’s aggressive campaign to revive the horrors of the Emergency era in public imagination in a bid to counter the INDIA bloc’s combined blitzkrieg over the Prime Minister’s alleged undermining of the Constitution and, more importantly, to isolate the Congress from its allies.

'Dictatorial government'

In a post on X, Shah said the Modi government’s decision was aimed at honouring all those who “struggled to revive democracy despite facing numerous atrocities and persecution at the hands of a dictatorial government”.

Since returning to power for a third consecutive term, albeit with a reduced majority, last month, this is the second move by the Modi regime to refresh the dark memories of the Emergency.

Having been accused by the Congress and its INDIA partners throughout the Lok Sabha poll campaign for trying to vastly alter the Constitution, the government had ensured that President Droupadi Murmu’s address to the joint session of Parliament during the inaugural session of the 18th Lok Sabha dealt at length with and condemned the excesses of the Emergency. Later, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla too had made a suo motu statement in Parliament’s Lower House condemning the Emergency.

Cong protests

The Congress, which nearly doubled its Lok Sabha seat tally in the June Lok Sabha polls, had protested strongly both in and out of Parliament against the government’s crafty move of using the President and the Lok Sabha Speaker to rake up the Emergency nearly 50 years after it was first imposed. During these protests in Parliament, it was evident that the government had succeeded in employing the Emergency bogey to divide the INDIA bloc. Given that senior leaders of several INDIA bloc constituents too had suffered spells of incarceration during the Emergency, the Congress was largely left to fend for itself in Parliament when it tried to hit back at the Centre.

Opposition recalibrates strategy

However, the Opposition, sources say, has recalibrated its strategy since the Parliament session concluded on July 3. A senior INDIA bloc leader told The Federal that the Opposition coalition realises that “raking up the Emergency will now be a permanent fixture in the BJP’s strategy given the success that the Opposition had during the Lok Sabha polls in convincing large sections of voters that Modi and the BJP are continuously assaulting the Constitution and will try to change it substantially if they ever return to power with a mandate that is similar to the one Modi had in 2014 and 2019”.

As such, the Opposition’s response to the Centre’s decision to observe June 25 as Samvidhaan Hatya Diwas was markedly more cohesive on Friday than it was when references to the Emergency and attacks on the Congress for it were made in Parliament by the President, Birla and the BJP brass.

'Headline grabbing excercise'

The Congress dubbed the move a “headline-grabbing exercise in hypocrisy” by Modi with its party president Mallikarjun Kharge accusing the Prime Minister of “murdering the Constitution every single day of the past 10 years” by “robbing the poor and the oppressed their self-respect”. Jairam Ramesh, the Congress’s communications department chief, hit back at the government asserting that June 4, the day the Lok Sabha results brought the BJP’s brute majority of the past decade down to a 240-seat minority, will “go down in history as Modi Mukti Diwas”.

The Congress’s ally, Lalu Yadav’s RJD, too slammed the BJP claiming it was ironic that the BJP was talking about murder of the Constitution after having “spent the last 10 years completely destroying the Constitution by jailing elected representatives and dissenting voices and misusing central probe agencies against political rivals”. RJD MP Manoj Jha asserted that if the government was so keen on naming new days or renaming old ones, it should first rename Martyrs Day (January 30) – the day Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by Nathuram Godse – as “Gandhi Hatya Diwas” and then ensure that “the political and ideological affiliations of Gandhi’s murderer are explained to the people”.

'Can only think of death and destruction'

Jha also said that if the BJP had any real regard for the Constitution, it would have come up with a Samvidhaan Samarthan Diwas “but then, they (BJP and RSS) can only think of death and destruction”.

Naresh Uttam Patel, Samajwadi Party’s UP unit chief and newly elected Lok Sabha MP from Fatehpur, told The Federal that the Centre’s decision was “yet another diversion created by the BJP to evade the public and Opposition’s questions on livelihood issues of unemployment and rising prices and the other challenges of rising social inequity and communal polarisation towards which Modi has pushed the country over the past 10 years”.

NCP hits out

A senior leader of Sharad Pawar’s NCP claimed the “BJP wants people to remember the excesses of the Emergency, something that happened 50 years ago and for which the Congress and even the late Indira Gandhi have repeatedly expressed regret over and apologised for, because it suits their political need but the same BJP wants school textbooks changed to eliminate all references to the demolition of the Babri Masjid or the Gujarat riots on the grounds that dark memories of the past are best left in the past.” The NCP (SP) leader asked, “if this is not hypocrisy, then what is? You cannot be selective here; you can’t say the country must remember the Emergency because it reflects poorly on the Congress but the country must forget the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the Gujarat riots because they reflect poorly on BJP and Modi”.

'Nervousness'

Sources in the Opposition say the manner in which the Modi regime is repeatedly harping about the Emergency only exposes the BJP’s “nervousness” and proves that it is “rattled by the INDIA bloc’s determined opposition to any move by the government that will undermine the Constitution in the way it was done over the last 10 years”.

A senior Congress leader told The Federal that by “repeatedly bringing up the Emergency, the BJP is hoping that the Congress party will be pushed to a corner within the INDIA bloc but these tactics will not work now... everyone in our alliance knows why Modi is doing this; we will continue to raise the issues on which we fought the Lok Sabha polls and, as Rahul Gandhi (Leader of Opposition) said in the Lok Sabha, we will continue to defend the Constitution against any assault by the government.”