There are no burning issues left in India today as the BJP celebrated the 1975 Emergency across the nation with much theatrics. They even chalked out whole extravaganzas lest anyone forget it. Truthfully, though it rendered much to discussions, it has now mouldered into an unconvincing farce - mostly because the BJP has been targeting the Constitution since the day it rose to power.

Let us be clear. The BJP has always been disdainful of the Constitution. It has oft slipped, intentionally or inadvertently, from the mouths of its members. They have repeatedly advocated for a new order based on Hindutva aligning with the caste hierarchies of Hindutva. Its draft even made an appearance at the Kumbh this year. The government hasn't called it sedition, nor has the judiciary taken suo motu cognisance of the matter.

The BJP loves to appeal to censorship during the Emergency. Yet under their governance, India's press has been throttled into submission. Journalists critical of the regime face relentless harassment, arrests, and smear campaigns orchestrated by the BJP's troll armies. It is not only their opponents that are targeted. The Hindutva supporters have mentally regressed to the point that they do not even spare government spokespersons and those who call for peace, be they even Hindus. Alternative media is hounded, dissenters are silenced, and the mainstream press has been transformed into a megaphone for state propaganda.

The BJP's actions mimic Indira Gandhi's assault on institutions, albeit with more guile and long-term precision. From the Election Commission to the Judiciary, no pillar of democracy has been afforded reprieve. They have methodically hollowed out oversight bodies and subverted quasi-judicial institutions to serve partisan interests.

By engineering electoral roll tampering, gerrymandering through delimitation, and selective use of agencies like the Enforcement Directorate, the BJP has rigged the democratic process in its favour. This is not a democracy; this is autocracy role-playing masquerading as a popular mandate.

The RSS has always been adept at exploiting the gullibility of people. Once, they used the influence of Jayaprakash Narayan to spread chaos and ultimately pressured Indira into declaring the Emergency. Then, they capitalised on the public image of Anna Hazare to rise to power. They have been preying on the common citizens by feeding off their fears and spreading the fake narrative of religious conversion. No one talks about the Lokpal anymore. Where are the people who have been forced to undergo conversion?

Anyone with a shred of intelligence would agree that it is not Indira Gandhi's ghost that haunts us; it is the unchecked ambition of a regime that seeks to replace secular democracy with theocratic majoritarianism. For all their cries of "Never Again," the BJP is making the nightmare "Again" a lived reality.

This begs the question: Who actually did kill democracy? By declaring a "samvidhaan hatya divas," the BJP is existentially questioning the existence and relevance of the Constitution. The right wing must be taken to task for its attempts at systematically rewriting or destroying it.

History is indeed written by victors. The Constitution is the culmination of the history of India's rise to independence. It is secular precisely because it is the dream that the freedom fighters, not the saffron brigade, envisaged for us.