Reflecting upon the Emergency is more necessary than ever to gain perspective on what phrases like ‘rise of authoritarianism’ actually mean.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
Almost five decades have passed since the darkest period of India’s democracy, yet there remains a significant lack of awareness about the consequential episode of the Emergency. In the aftermath, India saw the rise of the Janata Party as individuals like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Arun Jaitley, George Fernandes, Vijaya Raje Scindia, Jayaprakash Narayan, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Raj Narain, Morarji Desai, Charan Singh, J.B. Kripalani, J. Basu, L.K. Advani, Gayatri Devi, Sitaram Yechury, V.S. Achuthanandan, among others, were incarcerated and detained as political prisoners.
Arrests were also made of regional leaders, be it Biju Patnaik in Odisha or DMK leaders in Tamil Nadu. Even the dissenters within the Congress Party, such as Mohan Dharia and Chandra Shekhar, were not spared. Most of these arrests were made under laws such as the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA), the Defence of India Rules (DISIR), and the Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Activities Act (COFEPOSA). It is reported that 34,988 people were arrested under MISA, and 75,818 individuals were detained under DISIR.
In the present context, foreign interference and woke liberalism-induced propaganda have propagated unfounded narratives like declining democracy, the rise of authoritarianism, and the crumbling of institutions, among other issues. Reflecting upon the Emergency is, therefore, more necessary than ever to gain perspective on what phrases like “rise of authoritarianism” actually mean.
NOT JUST POLITICAL
A common misperception about the Emergency is that it is primarily viewed, understood, and discussed from a political standpoint. Indeed, examining the political aspects and consequences of the Emergency is necessary. Yet, what needs to be understood is that although the aforementioned names suffered during the Emergency, a huge population of Indians was also caught in this time of upheaval with no recognition or remuneration for their struggle. People like P. Rajan, a student in Kerala who was killed in police custody, are a good example of how common Indians suffered for the ambitions of the Congress Party. There is a severe lack of historiography on the Emergency, particularly from a subaltern perspective, where the lives of ordinary Indians affected by the Emergency could be understood and learn how they coped with it.
Moreover, there is the tragic case of those Indians who could never get to be born. Forced sterilizations were conducted so rampantly and with such impunity that it hardly feels like an incident of independent India. At one point, the vasectomy no longer remained an issue of family planning, as Sanjay Gandhi and Congress espoused, but rather a numbers game where government officials, especially police, would forcefully take young boys and even older men to undergo vasectomy to showcase numbers. Therefore, the Emergency, although encompassing political aspects, had very personal consequences for the people of India, whose freedoms were snatched and whose consent was violated.
DEVELOPMENT THROUGH DEMOLITION
The period saw a series of property and resource destructions across India under the pretext of development. Programs like the Urban Renewal Plan, spearheaded by Sanjay Gandhi, caused massive displacements. In Delhi alone, around 1.5 lakh houses were demolished by the DDA, as noted by the Shah Commission. This pattern was everywhere, whether in Bihar, Maharashtra, or Madhya Pradesh. People were not only denied proper compensation but were also threatened with imprisonment under MISA and other laws like DIR if they resisted.
Besides these physical destructions, human resources were also severely affected. Changes in tax policy, which involved cutting income and wealth taxes, led to a shrinking of the government budget. The government raised indirect taxes while lowering the education and health budgets to compensate for that shortfall. Thus, ordinary Indians, already struggling with unemployment, were burdened with higher taxes while their access to education and health services was curtailed due to these destructive policies. Those in service found half of their dearness allowance withheld by the government under the Wage Freeze Act, leaving Indians of all classes helpless amidst rising prices.
INSTITUTIONS UNDER THREAT
Today, the institutions in India are often portrayed as “under threat”. Such trivializing is unhelpful but understandable, given the lack of awareness about what institutions look like when they are under threat. How can one forget, during the Emergency, Kishore Kumar’s refusal to sing at a Congress party event led to his songs being banned from All India Radio and Doordarshan, which were essentially the entire media landscape at the time? Several books and movies were also banned, and people were jailed for merely distributing newspapers. Journalists faced imprisonment, with media outlets either becoming propaganda tools for the Congress Party or facing severe repression. Writing a critical piece on Mrs Indira Gandhi was out of the question, and those who failed to understand this new status quo soon faced jail. Perhaps one of the worst aspects of this episode was the judiciary kowtowing to the Congress Party. Figures like Justice H.R. Khanna existed, but they made no material difference in what ensued.
So, understanding what happened during that dark period is critical to gaining a sense of proportion. Moreover, the post-Emergency attempts of Congress to whitewash, if not entirely erase, the atrocities and personal ambitions should also not be disregarded. One should remember that the Shah Commission reports, which investigated the excesses and abuses of power during the Emergency, were conveniently unavailable when Congress returned to power. Fortunately, they survived and are accessible today. But the efforts to suppress them showcase how horrifying the incidents and actions during the Emergency were, to the extent that the Congress felt the need to cover them up.
The Indian psyche was indeed hurt by the experience of the Emergency. Instead, history should be studied, awareness should be raised, and, more importantly, more historical accounts should be written about the Emergency. One should not use the Emergency as shorthand or lightly draw false equivalences. It was a dark chapter in Indian history. We should direct our energies to producing more historical accounts of the Emergency, whether based on the experiences of common Indians or on archival evidence. Only in that way will we enhance our understanding of the Emergency, give agency to those who lost their freedom, and equip ourselves with the wisdom to truly understand what authoritarian India really looked like.
Prof Santishree D. Pandit is the Vice-Chancellor of JNU.