O’Cracy: D.E.M., died 26/06/1976
Here is another story from Indira Gandhi’s emergency rule in India. It is only in the last couple of months that I have been learning about this period in India’s history and this quotation is also from Rafiq Dossani’s India Arriving.
The Emergency marked both the low point of press freedom and a turning point. With the exception of the Statesman and the Indian Express, the English-language press scraped and groveled to accommodate the state during the Emergency. Even the former had to be very careful to escape the censor’s eye. In what are now iconic tales of defiance, the Indian Express got away with the following message in its obituary section in 1976: “O’Cracy: D.E.M. O’Cracy, beloved husband of T. Ruth, Father of L. I. Berty, father of Faith, Hope and Justice, on June 26.”[1] And a library in Calcutta issued a notice in the Statesman in December 1975, stating: “On and from 1st January 1976, newspapers will be found in the fiction section.”[2]
1. Indian Express, Mumbai edition, June 27, 1976
2. Statesman, Calcutta edition, December 31, 1975.
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