Calcutta's sky is narrowing with every day. As one strains to look out from here, the Emergency appears to have a one-dimensional entity. It is through the powers conferred upon the authorities by the Emergency that the latter have been licensed to kill, maim, torture, lock up thousands of young ideologues, perhaps the richest crop the Bengali community has produced in a generation. You and I would have often sharply disagreed with their views, their processes of thought would cut diametrically across yours and mine. Still, they belonged to us; their courage and sense of imagination were, one dares say, among this nation's richest heritage. They could have constituted the capital stock on which could develop magnificent skills, magnificent technology, magnificent literature, a magnificent society. But the Prime Minister chose. Under the cloak of the Emergency, she worked out an arrangement: the idealists were liquidated or delivered to prison, the franchise to rule was awarded to a bunch of hood lums. In a sense, she is right. It is an emergency, a threat exists to the nation's security: she is the threat. Whoever diminishes the nation affects its security; she has diminished, and is diminishing, the nation.
