Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday drew attention to the self-righteousness of the Congress on the issue of intolerance, saying fundamental rights remained suspended during the party’s imposition of Emergency.
The Finance Minister also drew a comparison between Hitler’s Germany and the tinkering of the Constitution during the Emergency.
While talking about the inviolate nature of the Fundamental Rights, he said they had been tinkered with at different point in time. He said there was a need for Parliament and society to consider whether the amendments were appropriate or not.
Equating the proclamation of Emergency in India and what happened in Germany during the Third Reich (Hitler’s regime), Jaitley said measures should be taken to strengthen the Constitution and ensure that democracy was not subverted again.
Narrating the events that took place in the Germany of 1933, he said: “When we say that there are dangers to the Constitutional order, there can be. And dangers to the Constitutional order can come when constitutional systems are used in order to subvert the Constitution. It is not unknown that this has happened. You don’t have to bring a military dictatorship; you don’t have to bring an individual dictatorship. There are illustrations in history, and I think the most glaring example of the last century is what happened in Germany in 1933. A Constitution and its provisions were used to subvert democracy, and show to the world the worst kind of dictatorship,” he said.
“You impose Emergency, detain opposition, amend the Constitution, impose censorship on newspapers and announce a 25-point economic programme. Thereafter, you brought a law that no action taken by government was justiciable in court and then Hitler’s immediate adviser Rudolf Hess in his speech ended by a sentence that ‘Adolf Hitler is Germany, Germany is Adolf Hitler’,” he added.
On Fundamental Rights
On the fundamental rights, he added: “Let us just remember – I am just flagging that point and leaving it at that – that one of the fundamental rights that the Constitution had given to every citizen was also the right to acquire and own properties. It was a fundamental right. Since, we were then swayed by a different set of economic policies, there was a big campaign and the only fundamental right which has been repealed in India during the 1970s was the Right to Property, to own and acquire property,” the Finance Minister added.
He said Parliament thought it was progressive enough to repeal it and then forty years later, “we came out with a contrarian argument” in the Land Bill. “I think it is about time that the last seventy-year debate on this issue, some of us must now try and revisit that vision in dealing with Constitutionalism which is not necessarily the correct perspective to have,” Jaitley said.