Recalling the period as 'one of the darkest chapters in India's history', Prime Minister Nardendra Modi and several political leaders paid tribute to those who 'fearlessly resisted the Emergency,' posting a video on Twitter.
There have also been attempts to correlate the 1975-77 Emergency with the present political atmosphere of the country.
“The campaign of law-breaking, paralysing national activity and inciting our security forces to indiscipline and disobedience would have led to our economic chaos and collapse, and our country would have become vulnerable to fissiparous tendencies and external danger,” Indira Gandhi had said in a July 1, 1975 address.
Taking a jibe at the central government, Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee said that in the last five years, the nation went through a 'super emergency', and that we should 'learn our lessons from history' in order to to preserve democracy.
Many political opponents were imprisoned. The press was censored. Art was censored. Men were forced into mass sterilisation drives for Rs 75 and a tin of ghee. These are just a few of the many horrors of a 19-month Emergency that India endured from 1975 to 1977.
Today, June 25, is the 44th anniversary of the Emergency, which was declared by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Here's how politicians took to Twitter to remember the time when all freedoms came to a halt.
Shashi Tharoor spoke about Kamalam Kondoth, a DCC secretary and family friend to Tharoor who passed away yesterday. She was the one who translated Gandhi's English speech to Malayalam.
Authors, celebrities and Twitterati gathered in remembrance of one of the darkest phases in India's history.
