On 25th June 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency in the country.
25 year old Narendra Modi & Indira Gandhi’s most outspoken critic Dr Subramanian Swamy disguised themselves as Sikhs during the Emergency period to avoid being arrested and acted as messengers.
Fundamental Rights were suspended, censorship was imposed on media and prominent political leaders were arrested. Media, the fourth pillar of democracy, suffered immensely under Emergency.
Press was censored. All news articles had to be sent to the Govt for approval before publishing it the next day. Any form of protest against emergency by newspaper (editors) would be curbed. Most of the newspaper printers had come to a standstill because the Govt had cut off their electricity supplies to make them “fall in line”. While several news editors used different strategies to voice out their protest, Indian Express protested by leaving the editorial section blank!!
Organizations like RSS were banned and most of its prominent leaders were arrested. However, some of the leaders went “underground” to carry out back-end activities like spreading real news to people (since newspapers were censored), creating awareness & acting as messengers of those leaders who were imprisoned.
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