Grey memories, silent youth: What Ahmedabad Emergency anniversary meet revealed

 

Recently, I attended what I would call a veterans’ meet — a gathering to recall the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi, whose resistance is said to have begun in Ahmedabad on October 12, 1975. At that time, Gujarat was one of the two states described as an “island of freedom.” It was ruled by Janata Morcha chief minister Babubhai Jashbhai Patel. The other such “island” was Tamil Nadu.

I call it a veterans’ meet because, although the event was intended to make the youth aware of what the Emergency was — and how today’s alleged human rights violations are seen by some as worse than those during 1975–77 when fundamental rights were suspended — it drew almost no young faces. 

Ironically, the gathering, held at Bhavan’s College hall on October 12, 2025, saw barely half a dozen young people. I could not identify a single student among them. The absence was so stark that one of the young organisers, Rohit Chauhan, recounted how a young woman had asked her whether there was an age limit for participants.

Organised by Citizens for Democracy (CFD), founded in April 1975 by Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) and others, the meeting marked the 50th anniversary of the first major public opposition to the Emergency, launched in Ahmedabad under the CFD banner.

The highlight of the original 1975 event had been a speech by Justice M.C. Chagla, in which he described it as a “stark, grim, ghastly reality” that civil liberties had been suspended and that democracy, the Constitution, and freedom had been betrayed. He had invoked Gandhi’s ideal of freedom “from tyranny, oppression, and injustice of every kind.” At this 2025 commemoration, copies of Chagla’s speech were distributed, and several speakers reflected that the realities of today might, in some respects, be “worse.”

Senior Gujarat High Court advocate Anand Yagnik lamented the absence of youth at the Bhavan’s hall. “It’s a failure of democracy,” he said, “that only old people gather to recall the excesses of the Emergency and compare them with the clampdown on dissent in India today.” Yagnik said CFD — with which he is associated — must accept this reality. Though he also heads the Gujarat chapter of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), he admitted he saw little hope in the current atmosphere. Referring to leading educational institutions in Gujarat, he wondered why not a single student had turned up for the CFD meet.

“Things won’t change in such a situation,” he said, pointing to how marginalised Muslim fisherfolk were being displaced along the Gujarat coast, how 42 RTI activists were behind bars, and how corporate giants such as the Adani Group were being allotted land at throwaway prices while a Kargil martyr’s widow had to run from pillar to post to get land at a concessional rate.

Prof. Anand Kumar, who was present at the 1975 meeting where JP founded CFD, agreed with Yagnik that only grey-haired participants had turned up this time. But he reminded the audience that even in 1975, JP’s first meeting had attracted mostly elderly people. “The youth, frustrated at the state of affairs, waited for someone to lead them,” he said, “and they came in large numbers once JP gave the call.”

Among other speakers was senior Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan, who said conditions under the Modi government were worse in several respects than those during the 1975–77 Emergency. He urged the audience to resist today’s “undeclared emergency” through nationwide protests and by creating an alternative narrative on social media.

Pointing in particular to the marginalisation of Muslims, Bhushan alleged that they were being systematically removed from electoral rolls, and that the homes of those who dissent were being bulldozed. He added that young activists were languishing in jail for five to six years without trial under the anti-terror UAPA law, while much of the mainstream media and several top judges had been “compromised.”