AKA:
Prisoners of Conscience
Synopsis:
June 26, 1975 is remembered as a black day for Indian democracy. On this
day, 36 years back, the then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi,
declared a state of national emergency, thereby granting her
extraordinary powers to rule by decree; which was promptly followed by
launching a massive crackdown on civil liberties and on all political
opposition.
An important historical record of this dark period in
India's post-independence political history, Anand Patwardhan's
"Prisoners of Conscience" documents the State of Emergency imposed by
Indira Gandhi from June 1975 to March 1977.
During the Emergency
the media was muzzled, over 100,000 people were arrested without charge
and imprisoned without trial. Cases of custodial torture, beatings and
death were a plenty. Repression was also unleashed on defenceles people -
workers, peasants and middle class - outside of jails.
But
political prisoners existed before the Emergency, and they continue to
exist after it was over. Today, the common people of India witness a
state of 'undeclared emergency' as the Indian state holds tens of
thousands of political prisoners behind bars, often for years without
trial, and employing an arsenal of infamous and heavily criticized
draconian acts, some of the most repressive of which are the Unlawful
Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), the Public Safety Act (PSA) in Jammu
and Kashmir, the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act (CSPSA), the
Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), the colonial era
Sedition Law, et cetera.
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16 April, 2012
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