Bharatiya Janata Party leader Venkaiah Naidu said a chapter on the 1975 Emergency should be included in school curriculum, ANI reported on Monday. Describing former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s imposition of the Emergency as the “darkest chapter in electoral history”, Naidu said it was being treated as a curiosity today.
Naidu was addressing an audience at a BJP event in Telangana marking the 42nd anniversary of the Emergency’s imposition on June 25. His statements follow Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s comments on the Emergency during his monthly radio address ‘Mann ki Baat’. Modi had said he cannot forget the “black night” that had caused harm to democracy. Other BJP leaders also supported Modi’s statements after the Congress criticised his comments and said the Centre had imposed an “undeclared emergency”.
“I think Prime Minister Modi’s inclusion of the Emergency in his Mann Ki Baat address was a message to the people that we must not forget the black day,” BJP leader GVL Narasimha Rao was quoted as saying by ANI. BJP leader Meenakshi Lekhi said the Congress had no right to point fingers at the Modi Government.
“It is hardly remembered by younger generations and only a few of them can recite the trauma and torture stories of that era,” Naidu said. “Though four decades have passed, the Emergency should not be forgotten and forgiven. I feel there should be a chapter on Emergency in our school curriculum to make the younger generation know about the murder of democracy and how it was restored.”
Naidu said the Indian Council of Historical Research should release a volume on the matter.
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