Emergency Spurred Seismic Shifts in Indian Politics

No other single event in Indian post-Independence history has had more dramatic political consequences in the immediate term, and led to deeper structural political shifts in the long term, than the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi exactly fifty years ago.

- Prashant Jha

The years between 1975 and 1977 altered the citizen-State relationship, created a new political culture, and triggered radically different political alignments.

The citizen-State dynamic At a conceptual level, think of how the Indian State was seen for most part since 1950 after the Constitution was promulgated.

For citizens, the State was benign, an instrument of justice, a vehicle to protect fundamental rights, a structure for political self-expression of the collective, a democratic and pluralist platform, the culmination of the historic freedom struggle.

To be sure, this was not a neat linear story. From the First Amendment that curtailed freedom of expression to the dismissal of elected governments starting from Kerala, from the brutal crackdown on challenges to State authority in the Northeast to the utter deprivation that marked the lives of the majority of citizens, the State didn't always meet the vision of the founders.

But it was not until the Emergency that citizens saw the State's brutality and arbitrariness on scale. Suddenly, the Indian State could not be trusted to protect civil liberties; it was instead a threat to civil liberties. The political leadership could not be trusted to play by the rules of the democratic game; instead, the leadership itself could be a threat to the rules of the democratic game. The bureaucracy and judiciary and media could not be trusted to speak for the citizens against the State; these institutions could well turn against the citizens themselves. Public health was not about the well-being of families; instead, it was about recklessly ending the dreams of many to have families at all.