This is no Emergency

By looking for an Emergency in our times, we forget to notice that the first Republic inaugurated with the Constitution of India is already over

The 45th anniversary of the imposition of Emergency must not be wasted on bashing dead villains or on silly nostalgia. The experience of India’s past brush with authoritarianism must be used to think about how democracies die.

Emergency is at once an energising and misleading prism to think about the state and the fate of our democracy. It is energising as the struggle against Indira Gandhi’s authoritarianism invokes powerful memories.

Memories of resistance

I recall my father’s grim face as he listened to Indira Gandhi’s radio broadcast on the morning of June 26, 1975, in our village Saharanwas in Rewari, Haryana. I was