Union Minister Arun Jaitley, on the 43rd anniversary of the Emergency on Monday, drew parallels between former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, saying that both turned democracy into a dictatorship without totally abrogating the Constitution.
In the second part of his blog post on “The Emergency Revisited”, the Minister, recuperating from a kidney replacement surgery, said the methods used by the German dictator to seize power were similar to those employed by Indira Gandhi.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi endorsed this, tweeting out links of Mr. Jaitley’s blog from his personal twitter handle.
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“@arunjaitley writes about the dark days of the Emergency, the trampling of personal liberties, excesses committed and how the Emergency was a direct attack on our Constitutional ideals. Do read his blogs,” Mr. Modi tweeted.
“Both Hitler and Mrs. Gandhi never abrogated the Constitution. They used a republican Constitution to transform democracy into dictatorship,” Mr. Jaitley said.
He said there were a “few things” which Hitler did not do, that Indira Gandhi did.
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“She prohibited the publication of Parliamentary proceedings in the media. Unlike Hitler, Mrs. Gandhi went ahead to transform India into a ‘dynastic democracy’,” the Minister said.
‘One-party system’
“The press censorship laws imposed in India and in Germany were almost similar. You had effectively a one- party system in play,” he added.
Like Hitler, Gandhi arrested most Opposition members of Parliament, and therefore procured, through their absence, a two-third majority of members present and voting and enabling the passage of several obnoxious provisions through Constitution amendments, he further said.