The central government announced on Friday, that June 25, the day when former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared an Emergency in 1975, will be observed as “Samwidhan Hatya Diwas” (Murder of Constitution Day).
Regarding the newly declared Samwidhan Hatya Diwas, PM Modi wrote on X, “Samwidhan Hatya Diwas will remind the citizens of Bharat of the kind of conditions and circumstances the country had to go through after the Constitution was tramped upon. This day is also a tribute to all those who tolerated the pain and horrors of the Emergency period. The country will always remember this oppressive move by the then Congress government as a dark chapter in the history of Bharat”.
Announcing the designation of 25th June as Murder of the Constitution Day, Home Minister Amit Shah wrote on X, “On 25th June 1975, the then Prime Minister of Bharat Indira Gandhi exhibited her dictatorial mindset by imposing Emergency on the country. She strangled the soul of Bharatiya democracy by doing so. During this period, lakhs of innocent people were imprisoned without any rhyme or reason and the voice of media was also suppressed. The government of Bharat has thus taken the decision to celebrate the 25th of June every year as “Samwidhan Hatya Diwas”. This day will also be an occasion to remember the contributions of all those great people who had to put up with the inhuman conditions of the Emergency”.
The opposition INDIA bloc, especially the Congress party has for long been perpetuating the narrative that the Modi government has been destroying the Constitution through its “draconian” laws and policies. How exactly the Modi government or the BJP is tampering with the Constitution, the opposition offers no evidence on that. But election campaigning functions on an emotional pitch and unfortunately, political parties don’t have to do much homework by way of facts and logic while trying to influence the voting decisions of Bharatiya citizens.
The fact that the Congress party has managed to create a fear psychosis in the minds of a considerable percentage of Bharatiya citizens that the BJP is trying to change the constitution and will eventually take away the rights to them guaranteed by the Constitution, is evidence enough for the power of this narrative.
The BJP should have been proactive in countering this narrative during the campaigning phase of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections itself. But the party, over-confident and smug in the halo of its previous election victories, failed to take the threat of the opposition narrative on “Samvidhan” seriously.
The results are there for all to see. One of the major reasons behind the BJP’s Uttar Pradesh debacle in the 2024 elections has been the successfully implemented “Samvidhan Misinformation Campaign” run by the Congress and the Samajwadi Party (SP).
The BJP has. on the contrary, started multiple new schemes for extending various economic and social benefits to disadvantaged sections and minorities. However, the abject failure of the Modi government in communicating its achievements to certain voter segments led to the strengthening of the bogus narrative that the Modi government’s return to power will be detrimental to the existence of SC/STs and religious minorities of Bharat.
However, with the announcement of the “Samwidhan Hatya Diwas”, the BJP seems to have finally woken up to the threat. It seems that the Modi government is now at least trying to create a counter-narrative to the opposition’s “Samwidhan khatre mein hai” ( Samwidhan is in danger) rhetoric.
The Modi government has been ramping up the Emergency narrative ever since they came back to power. The government also brought a resolution on Emergency in the Parliament to discuss its excesses. President Draupadi Murmu had also invoked the Emergency of 1975, calling it “the biggest and darkest chapter of direct attack on the Constitution” last month while addressing a joint session of both houses of Parliament.
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla also condemned the 1975 emergency imposed by the then Congress government after taking charge. He called the decision to impose emergency “dictatorship”.
To the embarrassment of Congress, its allies like the SP and the Trinamool Congress supported the Emergency resolution introduced by the NDA government. Many parties including the Janata Dal United (JDU), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), etc. had or still have leaders who were imprisoned during the Emergency.
Thus, the BJP’s attempt to create a narrative around Emergency can indeed be a masterstroke as it has the potential to deepen the faultlines within the INDIA alliance. The Congress is indeed in an embarrassing spot; it cannot counter the BJP’s narrative by justifying Emergency. All it can do is call the BJP hypocritical and further accuse the Modi government of destroying the Constitution.
The obvious loophole with the Modi government’s “Emergency’ narrative is that it talks about something that happened a long time ago. Emergency, unfortunately, has no relevance for the present generation, even Bharatiyas currently in their 30s and 40s are clueless about the Emergency.
Thus, the narrative might not really appeal to them unless and until the BJP backs it up with innovative campaigns to educate citizens of Bharat about the essentials of the Constitution, and how these were destroyed during that period.
Furthermore, the “Samvidhan is in danger’ rhetoric of the Congress party focuses on current issues – unemployment, paper leak, inflation, law and order, etc.
The Congress has very cleverly created a narrative amplifying these issues to create the perception that the Modi government is incompetent in tackling these significant issues affecting Bharat and its people. For the BJP to counter this vicious narrative, merely running the Emergency narrative is not enough. They need to come up with something more innovative and contemporary.
The BJP needs to create a narrative targeting the Congress and other opposition parties on how they are destroying the Constitution in the present context. For this, the Modi government must focus on running a dedicated social media campaign to proactively showcase the “murder of the Constitution” being undertaken in states currently ruled by the opposition parties.
The draconian rule of TMC IN West Bengal, the DMK in Tamil Nadu, the new Congress government in Karnataka, the AAP government in Punjab, etc. needs to be exposed from the perspective of saving the Constitution. If the BJP manages to tie these threads together and run a concerted campaign on how the Constitution is being put in danger by these parties in the present context, that might be an effective antidote to the opposition’s “Samvidhan khatre mein hai” rhetoric.
But merely amplifying the Emergency narrative wouldn’t quite cut it.
Also, the truth is that the common citizens of Bharat, even the educated ones, have no idea about the basics of the Constitution or the technicalities of how Bills are passed in the Parliament and laws are enacted. Thus, the Modi government should undertake multiple initiatives to educate the citizens on the technicalities of the Constitution and laws – how laws are passed, how Constitutional amendments are a regular feature of the legislative process, and how amending the Constitution is permitted by the Constitution makers itself and that doesn’t amount to changing the Constitution.
The mainstream media too needs to come out of its shell and do some stories educating the public on the basics of the Bharatiya Constitution and parliamentary processes rather than doing sensational stories on politics and politicians all the time.
