The Emergency and its external dimension

The pain inflicted by the 21-month Emergency rule in India on its body politic and its people continues to hurt even after 50 years.

- SD Muni

The domestic dimensions of the Emergency have been discussed at length. A recent study by Srinath Raghavan ably explores its structural dimensions—of the gradual evolution of a powerful executive, creeping encroachments on freedoms and rights and authoritarian tendencies of governance—that have been building for long.

However, Indira Gandhi's oft-repeated allegations about the role of "foreign hand" (of the United States of America) in destabilising her government have often skipped rigorous scrutiny. Her political opponents, many media commentators, and even serious historians like Ramchandra Guha and Bipin Chandra have dismissed these allegations as a pretext to justify her authoritarian streak. This was also the position of the various US official organs, as expected.

The prevailing intellectual narrative clearly underlines that transformational changes in developing countries result from a conscious or coincidental coalition of domestic and external forces. Over the years, many new archives have opened and the present ruling dispensation in New Delhi has brought the issue back to the forefront of India's political dynamics.

The narrative of the US pushing Indira Gandhi towards the Emergency decision and supporting the people's uprising against its repressive regime deserves a second dispassionate look. This may be done at three levels.

First, regime change, through covert as well as overt means, against Communist/socialist or Left-oriented governments in Latin America (Chile) and Asia (Iran) has been an integral part of the toolkit of US policy since the Cold War years. According to American scholar Lindsey O'Rourke, the US carried out 64 covert regime-change operations between 1947 and 1989.