There are times in history when the invitation to engage in debate about a patently disingenuous gambit is a call to be complicit with it.

Think of the many arguments that were made lauding the positive features of the Emergency of 1975:

Trains ran on time; nobody dared come late to office; fractious public protests on flimsy partisan issues came to a halt; the wrong-doers found instant comeuppance, and much more.

So, the government of the day will argue, as it is already doing, that the proposed Constitutional amendment, number 130, ought to be a beloved piece of legislation for the middle classes, since its so-called sole aim is to make corruption in high places instantly punishable, bypassing the constitutional stipulation that no citizen may be held to be guilty till so proven in a court of law.

Another matter that these pietistic favourites of the right-wing seem somnolent when it comes to the refusal of the government of the day to serve a summons to a crony tycoon in trouble with the American justice system for alleged wrongdoing.

As stated, the Emergency of the mid 1970s too had such supposedly laudable, purposes, and yet no one was fooled that the motive for its imposition lay elsewhere.

Nor did it take long to see that the ravages it had wrought in the systematic arrangement of the state and the people's republic were catastrophic.

It must also be noted that the then prime minister came to be shaken by the fallout of her folly, and returned to the democratic path by calling elections despite crony advice to the contrary, knowing that she would lose.

To note further: if Indira Gandhi’s emergency will forever be remembered as a short ugly interregnum in the career of Indian democracy, the genius of governance over the last eleven years or suggests that the rulers of the day intend a perpetuity of unshackled executive supremacy in India, albeit always from the contenders of the present ruling party.

Totalitarianisms are characterised most of all by the lust never to relinquish state power once acquired by fair means or foul.

We may recall how Donald Trump wished an electoral officer in Georgia to manage some eleven thousand or so additional votes for him so that he could be declared the winner of the 2020 American Presidential race.

The parallel may be found in the grave complications now being alleged by representatives of some 60% of the Indian electorate with regard to how ruling party victories may have continued to be obtained in Bharat.

Not even the supporters of the ruling party may be fooled

The proposed amendment clearly seems a draconian response to the gathering storm, and an authoritarian modus to caution first the allies of the BJP not to have any wrong ideas, and then to find a "legal" way to rescind the constitutional basic structure that governments are to be elected or rejected by "we the people" and not by the Executive of the day.

Not even the supporters of the ruling party may be fooled that the provisions of the proposed law will ever be used to collar one single chief or ordinary minister from the BJP, although right-wing urbanites are busy making the point that even the prime minister has been made liable under the proposed amendment.

The republic, or what’s left of it, is clearly teetering on a totalitaran precipice, and it may be time, (if not now, when) for the corporate media houses, if not the corporations themselves, to come alive to the impending calamity and redefine their onus accordingly.

For now, a word of admiration on behalf of "we the people" must go out to the brave mensheviks among the electronic media who are sharing the truth of this and other matters with the audiences they have, and news dailies which are speaking up editorially with candour and insight.

There is the other speculation among conclaves as well, does the mass stir of peaceful protest now underway in Bihar have the makings of a second JP movement.

The coming days will tell.

Badri Raina taught English at Delhi University.

This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.

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