Thread by @BurntOutCase

I am not sure @RepRoKhanna needs any backup from an anon account but let me say this as someone who doesn't necessarily agree with his liberal politics but does respect him as a reasonable Democrat. He is one of the few Indian-Americans to directly address ...

https://twitter.com/Iyervval/status/1640273669753819137

... Khalistani attacks on Hindus and say explicitly he opposes Khalistan which is not something every Indian American politician is willing to do. He was also the first Indian American Congressman to condemn Melinda Byerly's racist tirade even though she is a liberal Democrat.

Now getting back to this "gotcha" on his grandfather here are what I see as the facts - his grandfather was a freedom fighter and spent two years in a British jail which is two more than most of our ancestors from that era spent.

So before you attack his grandfather please respect his service to the nation and his sacrifice. Now maybe he did vote to support Emergency (I am not sure the evidence is slam dunk but will get to it) but so what if he did? Perhaps he did so reluctantly under pressure and ....

... because he thought he could be more effective in moderating the excesses being inside the system. Let us note that many other famous freedom fighters have written letters to the British that are unflattering. My friend @avataram posted a beautifully argued and sensitive Op-Ed

by @crkesavan that cautions us against using a binary prism to attack freedom fighters

https://twitter.com/avataram/status/1640475226386452482

In any case @RoKhanna has every right as an individual to criticize the recent troubling development in Indian Democracy where the leader of the opposition was convicted of a criminal offence and given 2 years jail for a routine stump speech.

Now getting back to the supposed evidence I want o raise a few questions about it. Abhijit-Iyer Mitra posts pages 31-32, 33-34, 39-40 and 41-42:

1. The specific resolution on which Rep. Ro Khanna's grandfather voted YES is not strictly speaking the declaration of national emergency but its application to the State of Jammu & Kashmir.

2. Why are pages 35-38 missing what content was in them?

I don't have access to Lok Sabha archives and nothing much seems available on the Internet with respect to the votes during the July-Aug 1975 period where I believe there were several votes (not just one) to ratify the Emergency declaration.

It does appear that Abhijit-Iyer Mitra has access to the Lok Sabha archives so why did he choose to post a vote that appears to be technical in nature in extending the Emergency to J&K?

After all maybe Rep Ro Khanna's grandfather thought that if we were going to have Emergency we should extend it to J&K for security reasons. What has been presented as a gotcha is NOT the vote to approve the Emergency as such.

Also is the reason that pages 35-38 omitted because it shows other Lok Sabha members (perhaps even from non-Congress Parties) voting YES on this resolution to extend the Emergency to J&K that AIM doesn't want us to see?

Or would the missing pages have made it clearer to the audience that the vote was not THE vote to declare Emergency but was simply a technical extension of it to J&K?

Also I couldn't help but note that Babu Jagjivan Ram who is one of the leading and highly respected politicians of this time and later left Congress and was a Minister in post Emergency Governments of Morarji Desai and Charan Singh voted YES on this vote.

Maybe it is possible a lot of Politicians thought that the Emergency would not be as bad as it turned out and might be an effective way to reduce chaos and strikes and protests and then were turned off by the excesses of the Emergency period.

It certainly seems Babu Jagjivan Ram followed that path. I want to be very clear I am not saying I know how Rep Ro Khanna's grandfather voted on the Declaration of Emergency itself and what his motivations were.

However I do find AIM's screenshots misleading and incomplete. To repeat this is NOT the vote to ratify declaration of Emergency merely its extension to J&K which enjoyed a special status under Article 356.

I find it interesting that the RW in India has jumped to gotcha conclusions on the basis of incomplete evidence. Not that it changes my views on Rep Ro Khanna's right to contest troubling developments in India one bit even we get a yes vote on the actual ratification of Emergency