The institutional scaffolding of the Emergency

The Emergency was a defining moment in India’s history.

- ADITI PHADNIS

It has been justified: The Communist Party of India was the only political party that supported it. David Lockwood's 2016 book, The Communist Party of India and the Indian Emergency describes why. It has been explained extensively: More than a dozen books, ranging from David Selbourne’s An Eye to India to Christophe Jaffrelot and Pratinav Anil’s deeply researched work. It has been recalled by many through their experiences, such as in LK Advani's My Prison Diaries and the latest, The Conscience Network by Sugata Srinivasaraju, and analysed in books too numerous to cite.

But this volume is a bit different. It not only explores how the Emergency could be imposed in a democracy like India but also the many fine strands spun by the 18-month interregnum. Some of these skeins have become muscular narratives, like Hindutva (that, according to Kalpana Kannabiran emerged as a full-fledged force during the Emergency) while the fierce defence and support of civil rights honed by the Emergency by the likes of Justice V M Tarkunde has been supplanted by a grotesque form of nationalism that conflates the Indian nation with the Indian state. At the heart of the book is the unstated question: Despite all the pledges that an Emergency will never happen again, is India worse off today than it was when fundamental rights were suspended, freedom of speech was curtailed and the state could intrude in every aspect of a citizen’s life?