riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) (11/22/83)
>>>> Indira Ghandi [sic] declared martial law awhile back >>>> didn't she? -- ihuxl!esj >> As a matter of fact, she didn't: what she DID do was to dissolve the >> state government of one of India's 22 states, Punjab, and institute >> "President's Rule", where the central govt. directly makes the decisions. >> According to the Indian constitution, the Prime Minister may declare >> President's Rule in a state if the law & order situation deteriorates to >> a point where local institutions aren't in control any more. This can >> last for a few months at most (I forget how many), after which she is >> constitutionally REQUIRED to hold elections in that state. This has been >> done in some state or other on more than one occasion since India's >> independence, and India is hardly under military rule! -- Saumya Debray (sbcs!debray) Not quite accurate, either. The initial reference was, I believe, to the "Emergency," Mrs. Gandhi's invocation of the emergency provisions of the Indian constitution in June 1975. Among the other effects of the Emergency were the suspension of civil liberties including habeus corpus, government censorship of the Indian press, the expulsion of foreign journalists who filed reports unfavorable to the government, and the cancellation of elec- tions scheduled for 1976. Thus freed of the difficulties of a pluralistic democracy, Mrs. Gandhi and her cohorts (most notably her late son, Sanjay Gandhi) proceeded to pursue some rather dictatorial and highly unpopular policies, including the arrest of thousands of political opponents and, most important from the point of view of India's destitute majority, forced campaigns of vasectomy and slum clearance. Apparently Mrs. Gandhi still had some room left in her heart for the demo- cratic tradition laid down by her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, for in early 1977, after having legitimized her dictatorship with a set of constitutional amendments, she surprised the world by a call for free elections. The opposition parties hastily formed a coalition which won the elections; since the coalition was based more on opposition to Mrs. Gandhi than on any shared platform or policies, however, it soon fell apart. When new elections were held in 1980, Mrs. Gandhi won again in an impressive comeback. My sources: "The New India" and "A Family Affair", two excellent books by the blind Indian writer Ved Mehta. I recommend Mehta's books highly to anyone interested in India or its politics. A frequent contributor to the "New Yorker", Mehta has also written novels and some novel-like memoirs about his family, "Daddyji" and "Mamaji", which I intend to read some time soon. ---- Prentiss Riddle {ihnp4,seismo,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddle riddle@ut-sally.UUCP
ram@uiucdcs.UUCP (ram ) (12/09/83)
#R:ut-sally:-44500:uiucdcs:29200047:000:830 uiucdcs!ram Dec 5 16:44:00 1983 just a addendum to your note on 'martial law' in India and good sources to find out more about it. Mehta is OK but if you want to get the 'seminal' work on the Emergency I would strongly recommend a book by an Indian author who writes in English namely Salman Rushdie, his book 'Midnight's Children' (which incidently won the Booker prize when it was published) A caveat though, while the book is extremely well-written the author gets quite involved in symbolism and allegorical references with respect to India and things Indian. What is so special about this book is that it mirrors very accurately what Indians really felt. This something that newspaper reports do not always capture (and the TV never!). Additionally if the area is of interest to you, Rushdie's new book 'Shame' is all about Pakistan. Happy reading!