50th anniversary of the Emergency
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as a 25-year-old youth, opposed the dictatorial ideas of then prime minister Indira Gandhi during Emergency and went village-to-village to protest against it, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said on Wednesday.
The Emergency was imposed to ensure prevalence of dynastic politics in the country and it was PM Modi who finally uprooted it (dynastic politics) in 2014, Shah said while releasing a book titled ‘The Emergency Diaries – Years that Forged a Leader’, a compilation of Modi’s experiences during the anti-Emergency movement.
“It was a 25-year-old youth who opposed the dictatorial ideas of the then prime minister,” he said.
The home minister said the Emergency was imposed to reinstate dynastic politics, but Modi went door-to-door, village-to-village and city-to-city to protest against it, and finally he uprooted the dynastic politics from the entire country in 2014.
Shah said the book mentions Modi’s work as a young ‘Sangh Pracharak’ during the Emergency, how he fought by remaining underground during the 19-month-long movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan and Nanaji Deshmukh.
The book details how he went to the homes of people jailed under the MISA Act and talked to their families and arranged for their treatment.
The book also describes how Modi distributed many newspapers published secretly in markets, squares, among students and women, and that he led the struggle as a 25-year-old youth of Gujarat, the home minister said.
Shah said that Modi used to work underground at that time, sometimes as a saint, sometimes as a sardarji, sometimes as a hippie, sometimes as an incense stick seller or sometimes as a newspaper seller.
The home minister said there are five chapters in this book on media censorship, government repression, the struggle of the Sangh and Jansangh, description of the victims of the Emergency and from dictatorship to public participation.
He appealed to the youth of the country to read the book so that they can know that a young person who fought against the dictatorship in his early days is now strengthening the roots of democrac
