The Emergency declared by former PM Indira Gandhi was a topic of contention in Indian politics today. In 2020, a journalist who lived through the Emergency spoke to Brut about her experience.
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00:00It was literally like on the night of the 25th at midnight, emergency was declared.
00:04And when we got to work on the 26th, we had no idea what this meant.
00:30So there's a lot of turmoil in the country at that point, but I think nobody, I mean,
00:43we were all very young then, so we couldn't even think about it.
00:46But even the older people expected that Mrs. Gandhi would go this far as to declare a state
00:51of emergency and with such suddenness, you know.
00:54So I remember we also, you know, ran editorials that were virtually blank because we didn't
01:00know what to say about the emergency.
01:02If anybody traveled abroad, they would bring back newspapers.
01:06And from that, you would get more details of what is actually going on in India because
01:09you couldn't get any other details.
01:11And we were told there's press censorship, we didn't know what press censorship was.
01:23For them, they were very happy that the streets were clean and the trains were running on
01:26time.
01:27The people who suffered the most were the people who were anyway voiceless.
01:32The people who were the targets of the compulsory sterilization campaigns, the slum dwellers
01:37whose dwellings were just completely demolished overnight and they were not given any alternative.
01:45The amount of people who were out of work even at that time and the poverty that nobody
01:49wrote about.
01:50We couldn't write about it because it was seen as critical.
01:57In the days of print, people would say, oh, but I read it in the newspaper, you know,
02:01which was as if, if it has appeared in the newspaper, it must be true.
02:06Now you don't find that at all, you know.
02:08And if you go as a journalist, there's often hostility.
02:12When you go to interview people, there's not the kind of respect that many of us used to
02:15get when we used to go to interview people.
02:18But the competition has been raised to the bottom to see who can do the most sensational
02:24and nonsensical story to capture, you know, eyeballs and readers.
02:35Many journalists and media houses do not want to be seen as anti-national.
02:40So they hedge their bets in the way they criticize or investigate things.
02:44So there are some obvious things to be investigated that never get involved.
02:49And again, as I said, the government doesn't have to do anything.
02:52But when it does, it sends out a chilling message, you know, if media houses themselves
02:59are pulling back from criticizing this government on a whole manner of things.
03:09Many people say, this is another kind of emergency and I always argue and say, no, it is not.
03:14Let us be clear that it is a combination of the politics of today, the kind of government
03:19we have, the kind of laws that we have that are being misused.
03:23I think at all times in a democracy, I mean, we've always said it, speaking truth to power
03:29is the role of the media within a democracy.
03:32I think there's again an eternal truth that people read about people.
03:38So I think the story of what is happening in a country has to be told through the voices
03:43of the people.
03:44And which means journalists have to use good old shoe leather to get out there and do those
03:49stories and connect, you know, check, check, double check, you know, and check again before
04:00you write.
04:01To me, the encouraging thing is despite this dismal situation in India today, you still
04:07have the journalists who are doing this, you know, many of them are freelance, many of
04:11them write for these smaller digital platforms, but because of social media, you know, the
04:17stories travel.
04:18And really, if during censorship, we could still find space to say what we wanted.
04:25I don't see why now, despite all these laws and despite a government that is often seen
04:30as draconian, that this cannot be done.