Trains and aircraft have emergency exits. Not so with politics. I vividly recall the day 50 years ago. I was attending a Youth Animators' Training Programme in Allahabad, the epicentre of the Emergency earthquake. It was promulgated by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on June 25, 1975.

The day after the declaration, a classmate of mine, who was an army officer, called to meet with me. He was in Allahabad, but I can't recall how we got in touch. He picked me up in a non-descript battered jeep, the type that military intelligence uses to avoid detection. Over tea, he quizzed me about the programme that I was attending. At the time, I didn't fully comprehend the portents of what was about to unfold.

A few months later, unlike the rich young man, I left home searching for answers and landed up in Jyotiniketan Ashram, Bareilly. That's where I had a first-hand experience of the brutality of the Emergency. The ashram was 7 km outside the city, and we often cycled down there.

Back then, there were octroi checkposts at the entrances to the cities. The Emergency goons would stop poor villagers carrying their farm produce for sale, especially the milkmen. For fear of being forcibly sterilised, these poor people would abandon their cycles and milk cans and flee for their lives. It was heart-rending. Nobody dared challenge the Emergency.

At that time, my mother was an active member of the Congress party. She was a member of the AICC and UPCC Minority Cells. However, she too could not stomach the Emergency and quit the party to join the splinter group Congress (O). That was her political denouement.

At about that time, Bp George Saupin, SJ, of the Daltonganj diocese, visited the ashram. I was alone at the time. Dressed in his trademark kurta pyjama, he joined me in threshing arhar dal (pigeon pea) on a wagon wheel and in making rotis on the wood fire. We had neither electricity nor running water in the ashram. Saupin was the epitome of simplicity and sincerity. He lived among the Adivasis of his diocese, sitting on his haunches and smoking a bidi with them.

News of his work for human rights among the Adivasis reached the ears of Indira Gandhi. Saupin is a French name. With his blue eyes and fair skin, he was mistaken for a foreigner, so Indira wanted him deported. To her dismay, she found that he was an Indian citizen, hence could not touch him. Next best, she pressured the CBCI to transfer him. He was shunted off to the Bhagalpur diocese, where he died a broken man.

Rev. Zeitler, SVD, was not so lucky. He was the founder of the National Vocation Centre and Ishvani Kendra in Pune. He had gone on a visit to his native Germany. On his return, he was detained at Bombay airport and packed off on the next return flight to Germany. Through Arun Nehru, her nephew and bulldog Home Minister, Indira had even tried to control the appointment of Indian bishops. I cannot recall how the CBCI handled that sizzler.

However, I do recall some Catholic stalwarts who stood up to Indira. The first was Alban Couto IAS, then Commissioner of Patna. When I met his widow, Maria Aurora Couto, several years later in our native village of Aldona, Goa, she told me that her husband's greatest concern was for the safety of Jayaprakash Narayan, Indira's bête noire. Fortunately, nothing happened to him in Patna.

JP then came under the protective wing of another Catholic IAS officer, the redoubtable MG Devasahayam. He was the Collector of Chandigarh, where JP was now incarcerated. He told me that, at the risk of incurring Indira's wrath, he went out of his way to ensure whatever safety and comfort he could provide for JP.

The third Catholic was the strapping 6-foot-tall John Lobo IPS, the CBI Director. I had a hunch that he may have played a part in assuring Indira that if she then held an election, she would win handsomely. That prompted her to end the Emergency. Here again, several years later, I met an officer who had served under Lobo at the time. When I put this question to him, his countenance froze. His silence spoke more eloquently than words.

Indira's Emergency was against her political opponents and had more than its share of excesses, including press censorship. In protest, The Statesman of Calcutta had carried a blank front page, thereby conveying that all news had been censored, so there was nothing to print!

Over the last eleven years of NaMo rule, we have had an undeclared Emergency. This is where the surrogacy angle kicks in. There is something called surrogate advertising. It abides by the letter of the law but throws its spirit to the winds. Tobacco and alcohol products cannot be advertised directly, so their manufacturers spend crores of rupees on surrogate advertising – such as McDowell's soda, glass tumblers, or Vimal silver-coated elaichi.

The brand names are the same as those of the original alcohol or pan masala/tobacco products. There is complete memory recall, which is what advertising is all about. They have mega stars like Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan as their brand ambassadors for "glass tumblers." The masses that are asses are fooled by these glasses!

We find the same game being played out in today's politics. While the big guns talk of "vikas" (development), the lesser minions do the dirty work through hate-filled or openly communal speeches. Waqf, talaq, love jihad, so-called forced conversions, disproportionate population growth, and campaigns against what to eat or wear are all forms of political surrogacy. They circumvent the letter of the law on secularism while blatantly going against the spirit of the Constitution.

To deflect blame like water off a duck's back, the convenient response is that these are just "fringe elements." This is not the official party line. However, the damage is done, and the purpose has been achieved. Who needs an Emergency when surrogacy suffices?

This brings me to the third word in the title – suffocation. It is a slow death, like carbon monoxide poisoning. One lights a coal stove in a closed room in winter. The warmth lulls one into slumber. The carbon monoxide released by the coke is lethal, especially since one is often unaware of what is happening. By the time the effects kick in, irrevocable damage has been done.

Other than hardcore andh-bhakts, it is more than apparent to everyone else that all four pillars of democracy have been suffocated, rendering them lifeless. As with carbon monoxide, this slow death is not visible to the naked eye. But it is in your face to those with critical awareness.

Both houses of the Parliament have been reduced to a sham by over-riding presiding officers. The Executive has long been tamed. Watch dogs have become lap dogs, reminiscent of the dog on the gramophone record of His Master's Voice. Due to the government's substantial advertising expenditure, the media, the fourth pillar, has also been tamed.

While the judiciary remains a beacon of hope, recent post-retirement appointments to the Rajya Sabha or Raj Bhawans have raised serious doubts about the impartiality of the higher judiciary.

Yes, Indira's Emergency lasted for two and a half years, but the present undeclared Emergency, which has lasted for 11 years, shows no signs of abating. In a communally supercharged atmosphere, there is no one to tackle the elephant in the room. There are only fragments of a decimated, rudderless Opposition in which the Congress is its own worst enemy.

Most of what is known as the Fifth Estate - the social media has been hijacked by the saffron-toting haters and blind followers of the Hindutva narrative. Hope now rests on a section of social media or influencers who have neither political affiliations nor ambitions. May their tribe and strike rate increase.