Controversy erupted on the floor of the lower house of the Indian parliament, during the debate on the no-confidence motion against the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in New Delhi. The storm centred on the claims that Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had written letters of apology to Indira Gandhi during the state of national Emergency which she imposed in 1975. The spokesperson of the BJP has termed this allegation "the biggest lie of the year". The Lok Sabha Speaker, Manohar Joshi is reportedly examining the contents of a letter, purportedly written by Vajpayee, which the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Raghuvansh Prasad Singh sought to read out in the Lok Sabha during the debate on the no-confidence motion.
Whatever may be the outcome of the inquiry into the veracity of the said letter, one thing is certain: the not-so-glorious role of the Sangh Parivar and its affiliated organisations during the Emergency has once again come under the scanner. Today, the Sangh Parivar may want to project the impression that it led the democratic upsurge during "India´s Second Freedom Struggle" (as the anti-emergency struggle is called in Sangh literature), it may wax eloquent about the way thousands of its activists were interned by the Indira Gandhi regime, but that will not hide the fact that its leaders were found wanting during the crucial period in India's modern history .
While this period is frequently invoked in political debate, scholars of Indian history have not found it fit to examine it more thoroughly. Discussions about the Emergency normally gravitate towards Indira Gandhi's authoritarian personality and the damage she wrought on democratic institutions. This personification of the darkest period in Indian democracy can only lead to a blind alley and the socio-economic factors that precipitated this conjuncture and the real role of the various organisations remain uninvestigated. The result is that forces like the Sangh Parivar have been able to construct a mythology of their putative bravery during that tumultuous period.
The internal emergency clamped by the Indira Gandhi regime on 25 June 1975 was the immediate reaction to an impending crisis brought on by an adverse decision of the Supreme Court of India and growing mass discontent. The suspension of democratic rights and the clampdown on the press were accompanied by the internment of thousands of people belonging to different political and social formations. Most of the leading opposition figures were also put behind bars. Of the 145,000 people put behind bars during the Emergency, quite a few belonged to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its affiliated organisations as well.