50 Years Of Emergency: Banality Of Evil, And A Warning

While India today is vastly different from the India of 1975, the need for vigilance against authoritarianism remains the same

- BY UTKARSH MISHRA

On its 50th anniversary, the Emergency proclaimed by then prime minister Indira Gandhi at midnight on June 25, 1975, is widely remembered as a dark episode imposed by an authoritarian regime.

However, on paper, the Emergency was a Constitutional act proclaimed under Article 352, with procedures followed and Presidential assent obtained.

The commonly accepted view is that Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency for reasons of political self-preservation, following the Allahabad high court's verdict invalidating her election. This view is not entirely unfounded, but the picture is more layered.

For starters, the verdict in question was stayed by the Supreme Court, and Indira Gandhi was yet to exhaust her legal options.

Her government, meanwhile, cited more systemic reasons for the exercise of extreme power: The 1971 War with Pakistan, economic dislocation, food shortages, and, above all, an Opposition movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan, popularly known as JP, which it claimed had paralysed administration.

In her address to the nation informing about the Emergency, Indira Gandhi cited JP’s appeal to government employees, including police officers, to disobey ‘unjust’ or ‘unconstitutional’ orders from the government.

Faced with JP’s ‘Sampoorna Kranti’ or ‘Total Revolution’, Indira Gandhi turned to a tight circle of loyalists and her son Sanjay, whose rise as an extra-constitutional authority would come to define the period. However, the suggestion to impose an ‘internal Emergency’ came from Siddhartha Shankar Ray, the then chief minister of West Bengal. He suggested it could be done on the grounds of threats to national security from within.

As per the procedure, the proclamation was presented to then President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, who signed it just minutes before midnight on June 25, 1975.