Imposing Emergency a mistake, even Indira came to feel the same: Sonia Gandhi

NEW DELHI: Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi has called the decision to impose the Emergency in 1975 a mistake, adding that she believes that her mother-in-law and then PM Indira Gandhi had eventually come to feel the same. Her remarks came in an interview with British daily Guardian ahead of the launch of her memoir "Belonging: A Journey of Love". The newspaper reported that Gandhi has written in her book that "keeping Sanjay (Gandhi) in check could have prevented much of the damage that followed".

Rajiv was against Emergency, Sanjay pushed for it: Sonia

According to The Guardian, Sonia Gandhi recalled crying as she witnessed the demolition of Babri Masjid on TV in Dec 1992. She said she knew then that they faced "a long battle for the secular nation that Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru and their colleagues had striven to build". She accepted that failures of her own party had in part contributed to the rise of BJP and its Hindutva politics, the daily reported. "I think we have been too complacent in many ways. There was a laissez-faire kind of an attitude," she was quoted as saying. Reflecting on the Emergency era, Gandhi said, "I always feel that Mrs (Indira) Gandhi was a democrat at heart. I know that many would laugh at this, but I believe she was never comfortable during the course of the Emergency. I think it sat heavy on her." Sonia said the family was split on the decision to impose the Emergency. Her husband Rajiv Gandhi was against the move, telling his mother to wait for the next election, but her younger son Sanjay pushed for it. In another interview published in The Hindu Saturday, Sonia said, "It was not only Sanjay, though in the public mind he is often seen as synonymous with the Emergency. There was a lot of pressure from some of her senior colleagues, and I think there were very few people around her like Rajiv who had a different point of view."

I think eventually my mother-in-law began to understand the situation through her own wisdom and took actions to remedy it. "It was only after the Emergency that I came to know about the true gravity of what had been happening. Yes, democratic rights had been curtailed, and there was a suspension of habeas corpus, but it was done constitutionally," the former Congress chief said. "Yet, when I take myself back to that period and try and see it from Mrs Gandhi's point of view, I see her struggling to cope with the rapidly deteriorating prevailing circumstances..." Gandhi said. "Hindsight allows us to put things in perspective." Sonia said the former PM had later publicly expressed regret and apologised for excesses during the Emergency.