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From: riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Martial law in India?
Message-ID: <445@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 21-Nov-83 17:01:13 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.445
Posted: Mon Nov 21 17:01:13 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 23-Nov-83 03:20:10 EST
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 50


 >>>> 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