Remember the dreaded MISA, the so-called Maintenance of Internal Security Act imposed by Catherine the Great Indira Gandhi during the Emergency? Its one-line definition: dictatorial powers to arrest and imprison her political prisoners. As draconian as it was, it was also highly unoriginal, in fact, a cheap imitation of a far more malignant legislation in force for several years. It was pioneered by the British and enforced with special relish by her father Nawab Nehru’s Government almost immediately after “independence.” This was the awful Internal Security Act in force in all provincial Congress Governments. The Act was different in different provinces but the difference was only in the verbiage. Its practical application was underscored by the same intent: to destroy all opposition to the Congress. We have seen only a fractional application of this Act in the tragic story of Lekhraj Sharma. Lekhraj Sharma’s story shows that even hardcore Congress members could be—and were, brutalized for merely disagreeing.
This led a Bombay-based editor to write this remark in June 1948:
In fact, he compared the Congress Party and Government of “independent” India with the Nazi Government of Hitler by echoing the lethal Nazi slogan, Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer! (One nation, One Empire, One Leader!). In his chilling words,
The history of India in the months that followed August 1947 showed a marked similarity to the history of those people into whose lives fascism had crept… ADOLF HITLER BEGAN BY HELPING HIS PEOPLE AS OUR CONGRESS HAD DONE… Gradually he so regimented his people and exercised such absolute power over their minds and bodies that they were committed to follow his sole judgement, no matter what he decreed or where he led them. SOON HE REDUCED THE GERMAN PEOPLE TO MORONS who goose-stepped at his command, and he reduced the German Press to an echo of his own voice, mere puppets who shouted, EIN REICH, EIN VOLK, EIN FUEHRER! (Capitalization added)
This is an exact mirror image of the Congress ecosystem, right?
The editor was promptly fired from his job. He never got a newspaper job again.
In fact, 90% of “national” English newspapers of that era acted as glad slaves of the Congress, shilling for it, covering up its innumerable crimes, and generally betraying the Indian people in a soft-porn fashion. Today, successors of these media houses have become full-blown XXX Congress-Left porn stars. For example, B.G. Verghese writes without an iota of shame in his autobiography how he went to “report” on the Bhakra Nangal and other big dam projects for his paper. Perhaps it didn’t occur to him that something called “conflict of interest” exists.
Dictatorship breeds dangerous imbeciles. The role of the English media in India for seven decades is the textbook definition of this fact.
The fear of the Congress party after “independence” was real and bone-chilling and it centered around the aforementioned Internal Security Act. From the scattered archives of that period we can piece together only the contours of the whole story. By themselves, the contours are dotted with dead bodies, whose graveyard echoes of pain and torture still await a full telling. This is exactly how Hitler’s Nazism and Stalin’s Communism began: slowly. In the name of freedom, but more importantly, in the name of people—the trump card the Congress has used each time it was on a weak wicket.
Here are a few of those stories. All stories have the common theme: arbitrary detention under the Internal Security Act and consequent death by police torture.
On April 4, 1948, a man named Bharadwaj was picked up by the United Province (now, Uttar Pradesh) police on alleged charges of being a Communist. In reality, he was a vocal critic of Congress highhandedness. His arrest itself is interesting, if not heartbreaking: for six years, Bharadwaj had been suffering from tuberculosis (then a fatal disease). His body was ravaged from continuously vomiting blood. When he was arrested, he was barely conscious, running a temperature of 104 degrees.
Four days later, he died in jail. Mild police torture had ensured this great victory for Nehruvian democracy.
An outraged local Hindi newspaper wrote this in its editorial:
Nothing the Prime Minister has said can justify the government sending a man, even if he were a Communist, to his death. BHARADWAJ DID NOT DIE. HE WAS MURDERED. There can be no greater shame for a civilized government.
Capitalization added
In the same year in faraway Malabar, a former Congress worker, Moyarath Sankaran who had crossed over to the Communist Party, was chased and bludgeoned by Congress goondas. They then handed him over to the police who inflicted greater torture on the already injured Sankaran. When the police had fully satisfied their brute instinct, they took him to the hospital.
The next day, Sankaran died. It was clear that the final blow had been delivered by the police. The Congress Government ruling Kerala simply hushed up the matter by giving his body a stealthy burial. Sankaran’s mortal remains were not handed over to his family.
Fifty-six years later, the dead body of the lifelong Congress loyalist, P.V. Narasimha Rao’s body was not allowed inside the Congress HQ. When it was cremated in Hyderabad, dogs tore away the flesh of his half-burnt body.
Not many have heard the name of D.R. Kulkarni, a public-minded citizen in Ahmednagar district. He was arrested on April 2, 1948 under the Internal Security Act because his political conviction was opposed to the Congress. A lifelong asthma patient, he was thrown in the Visapur jail. It is important to note that no charges were framed against him and he was not given trial.
A month-long stint of torture in prison did the trick: Kulkarni’s asthma worsened and a severe stroke of paralysis struck him. He became unconscious and was taken to the Government hospital.
His wife petitioned the Home Minister but the great Congressman did not even acknowledge it.
After perfunctory treatment, Kulkarni regained consciousness but had become completely blind. The police threw him in jail once again. This time, he suffered a second stroke, lost consciousness and drifted into coma.
However, the Government still hadn’t had enough. He had to suffer more. He remained in prison.
Finally, a district court heard his wife’s petition and showed some mercy. The “mercy” was ridiculous. Here’s what the district magistrate said in his order: Kulkarni will be released for a month on parole based on some strict conditions. The order was a mockery of a mockery because here was a blind, paralyzed, comatose man who had to “sign” on the judge’s order to make it binding. No problem. The friendly cops who had brought him to this stage were ready to help this time as well. They yanked this comatose man’s thumb and “signed” the order!
We suppose these three instances are fairly representative of the naked reign of terror that the Congress Government of “independent” India had unleashed on its own population using exactly one legislation: the Internal Security Act.
In fact, a diligent and patient researcher can put together an entire volume documenting hundreds of such dead bodies, the posthumous proofs that cemented the Nazism of the Nehruvian Congress.
In hindsight, it appears that the British were more benevolent: they had a threefold classification for political prisoners: A, B, and C. The “C” class suffered the worst abuses and police brutalities.
The Nehruvian Congress which chanted and ruled the newly-independent India with the great mantra of “equality” found a fertile, virgin field for practical experiments in this mantra. It abolished the British classification. Henceforth, all Congress opponents were classified as “C.”
This is a chilling replica of the Nazi and the Stalinist motto: exterminate everyone who disagrees with you.
In the initial years, this reign of terror was confined to some provinces and people were sufficiently intimidated. However, after Indira Gandhi took absolute control, she realized how effective such measures were. Her first task was to axe all opposition to her within the Congress and reduce Chief Ministers and Governors to slobbering dogs. Once that was done, she turned against the very people of India who had elected her.
Finally, she transformed the provincial Internal Security Act to a national monster called MISA. It was the ultimate nationalisation of Nehruvian Nazism.
It couldn’t have been otherwise.
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