Testimony to the Enduring Spirit of Indian Democracy

This week marks 50 years since the beginning of the anushasan parv

- SHASHI SHEKHAR

On a summer evening in 1976, a group of people were enjoying a friendly chat at the bungalow of a prominent figure in Mainpuri city, when a frail man approached the host and prostrated at his feet. The man, a washerman from a village nearby, had a harrowing tale to tell.

His ordeal started with an altercation—the person with whom he had tangled, turned out to be a relative of a police sub-inspector. This, the washerman learnt when, a few days after the incident, a police team raided his house to apprehend him for "conspiring to uproot railway tracks with the aim of bringing about armed revolution".

Fortunately for him, he was away visiting a distant relative when the raid was conducted. Else he would have landed in prison on charges framed under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (Misa).