NEW DELHI : The Congress bringing Sanjay Gandhi down now, they have blamed the excesses committed during the Emergency of 1975 on his overzealous promotion of family planning and slum clearance programme.
"Sanjay Gandhi had, by then, emerged as a leader of great significance. It was due to his support to family planning that the government decided to pursue it more vigorously. He also promoted slum clearance, anti-dowry measures and promotion of literacy but in an arbitrary and authoritarian manner much to annoyance of the popular opinion," says the party's official history released. This is the face saving formula to save Mrs. Indira Gandhi's decisions during emergency imposed on the nation in 1970's.
"Sanjay Gandhi had, by then, emerged as a leader of great significance. It was due to his support to family planning that the government decided to pursue it more vigorously. He also promoted slum clearance, anti-dowry measures and promotion of literacy but in an arbitrary and authoritarian manner much to annoyance of the popular opinion," says the party's official history released. This is the face saving formula to save Mrs. Indira Gandhi's decisions during emergency imposed on the nation in 1970's.
Rajiv Gandhi who entered politics after Sanjay's death in an aircrash, has come in for appreciation as a leader whose attempts to reform the Congress organization and cleanse it of "party brokers" could not succeed because of the resistance from the old guard.
On the Emergency, Congress says that while vast sections of the population had welcomed the move, it was Sanjay Gandhi's rash promotion of sterilization and forcible clearance of slums that sparked popular anger.
Congress has generally been defensive on the Emergency, but this is the first time that the party has pinned the blame for it on Sanjay Gandhi - the all-powerful son of Indira Gandhi who is believed to have influenced the former prime minister to take the controversial decision in June 1975 after the Allahabad High Court set aside her Lok Sabha election.
The excesses committed between mid-1975 and tail-end of 1976 provoked a huge backlash, leading Congress to lose the 1977 polls in its first-ever defeat in a Lok Sabha election.
"Vast sections of the population welcomed it initially since general administration improved. But civil rights activists took exception to the curbs on freedom of expression and personal liberties. Unfortunately, in certain spheres, over-enthusiasm led to compulsion in enforcement of certain programmes like compulsory sterilization and clearance of slums," says the book, edited by a team led by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee.
The references are clearly to sterilization camps and demolition drives such those carried out in Delhi's Turkman Gate locality. The demolitions at Turkman Gate in the heart of Delhi acquired a sensitive edge as it was largely inhabited by Muslims. Sanjay's personal involvement in the demolitions made it difficult for partisans to blame the actions on the bureaucracy as was done later for family planning excesses.
While the Opposition as well as popular opinion have all along blamed Sanjay's overzealousness for many of the ills of emergency, Congress has ducked such clear apportioning of responsibility.
The party dilemma on how to deal with the controversial decision of its towering leader Indira Gandhi has been the chief reason why its views on the issue could never evolve despite a pan-Indian thumbs down in the 1977 elections. The naming of Sanjay Gandhi is the first divergence in the opinion held for decades.