'Repeating BJP word for word': Manickam Tagore hits out at Shashi Tharoor over Emergency comments

Manickam Tagore

Congress leader Manickam Tagore lashed out at party fellow Shashi Tharoor after the latter's take on the Emergency. Tagore said that a colleague is now "repeating BJP lines word for word".

"When a Colleague starts repeating BJP lines word for word, you begin to wonder — is the Bird becoming a parrot? Mimicry is cute in birds, not in politics," Tagore wrote.

This came after Tharoor, in one of his Opinion pieces, said that the Emergency, that was imposed by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was proof that erosion of freedom often happens.

In his opinion piece published by Project Syndicate, the Congress leader described how on June 25, 1975, India awoke to a new reality. “Prime Minister Indira Gandhi insisted that the draconian measures were necessary: only a state of emergency could combat internal disorder and external threats, and bring discipline and efficiency to a chaotic country,” Tharoor wrote.

He further said that the Judiciary was under immense pressure to back the imposition of the Emergency and the Supreme Court even upheld the suspension of habeas corpus and citizens’ fundamental right to liberty.

“Journalists, activists, and opposition leaders found themselves behind bars. The broad constitutional transgressions enabled a horrifying litany of human-rights abuses. Torture in detention and extrajudicial killings – though less publicized at the time – were dark realities for those who dared to defy the regime,” Tharoor wrote.

"Though the judiciary eventually found its spine, its initial faltering would not quickly be forgotten. And the period’s “excesses” caused deep and lasting harm to countless lives, leaving a legacy of trauma and mistrust in affected communities – which they demonstrated by overwhelmingly voting Gandhi and her party out of power in the first free elections after the Emergency was lifted, in March 1977,” he further said.

"It reminded us that a government can lose its moral compass and sense of accountability to the people it purports to serve. And it showed how the erosion of freedom often happens: subtly at first, with the chipping away of seemingly minor liberties in the name of virtuous-sounding causes, until “family planning” and “urban renewal” become forced sterilisations and arbitrary home demolitions," he wrote, while speaking of the Emergency period.