I am afraid I have to diagree on the emergency issue. It was Mrs. Gandhi who was solely responsible for the emergency. But that was in 1975 and lasted until 1977, until she was thrown out, but then she came back in 1979! When she realized her populist "garibi hatao" (eliminate poverty) slogan was exhausted and she recognized that he staunch supporters within the Congress party were distancing themselves from her, she essentially grabbed the party power all to herself. This is the beginning of the decline of the Cong party (i.e. weakening internal party democracy). The BJP is certainly the worse party of the two at some levels.
Alas, in this country the public has been lulled into complacency by a strange form of fascist democracy. Cheers, anthony xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx Anthony P. D'Costa, Associate Professor Comparative International Development University of Washington Campus Box 358436 1900 Commerce Street Tacoma, WA 98402, USA Phone: (253) 692-4462 Fax : (253) 692-5718 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx Response Jim C: When I lived in Kerala, I got a chance to see Congress-I and the core elements of BJP up close. My village was half Congress-I and half CP-M and half Hindu and Half Christian. Not only was the corruption of Congress-I extremely pronounced, but they still had many of the policies--and continued elements of Emergency Measures--well into the eighties. The massive forced sterilization campaigns run by Congress-I (I knew medical students who were coerced into giving forced vascetomies in dirty tents set up by the Indian Army under the threat of being removed from medical school) were nothing but out-and-out fascism (In India, in the late 70s, there was a slogan "Indira hatao, Indiri bachao" or "abolish Indira and save your genitals" that sort of summed it up) and inspired by fascist and caste-biased "eugenics". On the BJP side, you have the core and rather covert elements of Shiv Sena, RSS and Arya Sammajayam that are out-and-out nazis and preach "Aryan Supremacy" in language right out of Mein Kampf. They are the real power brokers and engineers of mass action for the BJP. As they say in Malayalam: "Yaa-tha-ruu vitthiassum illa" or No real difference. Jim C.
