Excesses of Emergency should be part of curriculum: Vice President
New Delhi, June 25: Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu on Monday said it was time the "dark age of Emergency" became a part of the curriculum so that the young learnt to value the democratic freedoms they enjoy.
Naidu stressed that a crucial lesson of Emergency was that it was the responsibility of each citizen to uphold liberties and freedom of fellow citizens and that "intolerance" should not be accepted.
Speaking at the release of the Hindi, Kannada, Telugu and Gujarati versions of the Book ‘Emergency: Indian Democracy's Darkest Hour', Naidu said: "It is time the dark age of Emergency becomes a part of the curriculum so that present generations are sensitised to the dreaded events of 1975-77 and they learn to value the democratic and personal freedoms they enjoy today."
"While our history books and textbooks talk of medieval dark days and the British Raj, the fallacious causes and consequences of Emergency is not made a part of the learning of the young," he added.
Emergency was clamped by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on June 25, 1975 and citizens' fundamental rights were suspended. It was lifted with the 1977 general election.
Naidu lamented that even the Supreme Court became "a mute party to placing some individuals above the law".
"It was only Justice H.R. Khanna that dared to differ with the government's position ... and asserted that 'the Constitution and the law of India does not permit life and liberty to be at the mercy of the absolute power of the Executive'.
"He paid a price for his conscience by losing out on the office of the Chief Justice of India. I see him as one of the great heroes of what I call the second freedom struggle. The other being Ramnath Goenka of the Indian Express," Naidu said.
He said the one good thing that flowed from the Emergency was "an unequivocal assertion" by the people that they value their freedom "much more than their bread".
"We need to keep this spirit alive," he said.
"We need to guard against ‘intolerance' on the part of certain misguided citizens. We have been occasionally witnessing such words and deeds of intolerance by some citizens in the name of so-called cow protection, Love Jihad, eating habits, watching films...
"Such incidents lead us to the point that individual freedoms can be in full play only when every citizen respects such freedoms of fellow citizens... The core Indian values and ethos have no place for intolerance."
He said post Emergency, the State "would think twice before riding roughshod over the liberties and freedoms of citizens".
"On the 43rd anniversary of the Emergency, I would like the message to go out that any citizen who violates the freedoms of fellow citizen would have no right to be called an Indian. It is because he is hurting the Constitution of India and all that India stood for ages."
Naidu recalled that "in the name of internal disturbance", those seen as a threat to the government were jailed.
They included Jayaprakash Narayan, Morarji Desai, Biju Patnaik, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani, Chandra Shekhar, Charan Singh, Nanaji Deshmukh, Balasaheb Deoras, H.D. Deve Gowda, Ram Vilas Paswan and Nitish Kumar among others.
Naidu said he himself went underground for two months, coordinating resistance to the Emergency but was then arrested and jailed for over 17 months.
Naidu said those jailed during the Emergency also include several current Union Ministers such as Arun Jaitely, Ananth Kumar, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Prakash Javdekar.
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Rare polar bear showed up on shores of Iceland. Police shot it
A rare polar bear that was spotted outside a cottage in a remote village in Iceland was shot by police after being considered a threat, authorities said Friday.
The bear was killed Thursday afternoon in the northwest of Iceland after police consulted the Environment Agency, which declined to have the animal relocated, Westfjords Police Chief Helgi Jensson told The Associated Press.
“It's not something we like to do,” Jensson said. “In this case, as you can see in the picture, the bear was very close to a summer house. There was an old woman in there.”
The owner, who was alone, was frightened and locked herself upstairs as the bear rummaged through her garbage, Jensson said. She contacted her daughter in Reykjavik, the nation's capital, by satellite link, and called for help.
“She stayed there,” Jensson said, adding that other summer residents in the area had gone home. “She knew the danger.”
Polar bears are not native to Iceland but occasionally come ashore after traveling on ice floes from Greenland, according to Anna Sveinsdóttir, director of scientific collections at the Icelandic Institute of Natural History. Many icebergs have been spotted off the north coast in the last few weeks.
Although attacks by polar bears on humans are extremely rare, a study in Wildlife Society Bulletin in 2017 said that the loss of sea ice from global warming has led more hungry bears to land, putting them in greater chance of conflicts with humans and leading to a greater risk to both.
Of 73 documented attacks by polar bears from 1870 to 2014 in Canada, Greenland, Norway, Russia, and United States — which killed 20 people and injured 63 — 15 occurred in the final five years of that period.
The bear shot on Thursday was the first one seen in the country since 2016. Sightings are relatively rare with only 600 recorded in Iceland since the ninth century.
While the bears are a protected species in Iceland and it's forbidden to kill one at sea, they can be killed if they pose a threat to humans or livestock.
After two bears arrived in 2008, a debate over killing the threatened species led the environment minister to appoint a task force to study the issue, the institute said. The task force concluded that killing vagrant bears was the most appropriate response.
The group said the nonnative species posed a threat to people and animals, and the cost of returning them to Greenland, about 300 kilometers (180 miles) away, was exorbitant. It also found there was a healthy bear population in east Greenland where any bear was likely to have come from.
The young bear, which weighed between 150 and 200 kilograms (300 to 400 pounds), will be taken to the institute to study. Scientists took samples from the bear Friday.
They will be checking for parasites and infections and evaluating its physical condition, such as the health of its organs and percentage of body fat, Sveinsdóttir said. The pelt and skull may be preserved for the institute's collection.
A Coast Guard helicopter surveyed the area where the bear was found to look for others but didn't find any, police said.
After the shot bear was taken away, the woman who reported it decided to stay longer in the village, Jensson said.
