Emergency clamped when acts of fascist groups crossed limits: MHA paper in Parl in July 1975 

Barely a month after the then Indira Gandhi government imposed Emergency in the country on June 25, 1975, the Ministry of Home Affairs tabled a white paper in Parliament explaining the rationale behind the move.

The white paper titled ‘Why Emergency’ was presented to Parliament on July 21, 1975 and said the emergency was clamped to protect democratic institutions after the activities of fascist groups operating at the time crossed all permissible limits.

The preface of the document shared by Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on the 50th anniversary of the Emergency says, “The democratic rights of the people can only be safeguarded if political order is ensured; lack of order is often taken advantage of by anti-democratic and fascist elements to rise to power and put an end to all political and economic rights of the people. In the last two years, time and again, the Prime Minister and other leaders of the country had warned the nation against the consequences of the activities of miscreants, of misdirected politicians and of the well-organised fascist groups in the country. It is only when such activities had crossed all permissible limits that the government was constrained to declare the Emergency.”

The white paper says the declaration of Emergency and the various actions taken by the government to restore discipline, order and stability in the country had been welcomed by people from various strata of society. "The Prime Minister has said that the attempt of the government is to put democracy back on the rails and to ensure that the activities of an organised anti-democratic minority did not lead to the end of the very institutions of representative government which the nation had evolved over the years," the document reasons.

It says, “Some political parties (read Bharatiya Jana Sangh, Congress O) with fascist leanings had combined with a set of frustrated politicians to destroy the country's self-confidence and to challenge the very basis of democratic functioning.”

“They campaigned in the name of democracy to launch violent agitations, to paralyse the country's economic life, to divert the nation's attention from its social and economic tasks and to create anarchy and chaos in order to overthrow elected representatives of the people,” says the paper, adding that an attempt had been made in the document at hand to review the scope and nature of the challenge that had been thrown up and to describe the conditions that “impelled the government to invoke Article 352 of the Constitution to withstand the calculated onslaught on the country's political institutions and economic progress”.