![]() The challenge to democracy does not await us in a distant future. The new system that we now live under has a beginning, but no one is sure if it has an end. The Emergency had a beginning and was, at least on paper, required to have an end. Emergency needed a formal legal declaration. The Emergency was an exception to a norm what we now have is a different norm. The danger is not that we may face another Emergency, but that we are in the midst of a democracy capture. Our times may look better, but these may actually be worse than the Emergency. Under the Narendra Modi government we are not reliving the experience of 1975-77. “Undeclared Emergency” weaves an image of softer and invisible replay of the same experience. Thinking of the demise of democracy through the experience of Emergency lulls us into believing that suspension of democracy must take the same form every time. It invites us to ask the wrong questions: are we likely to see a repeat of Emergency? Are we already in an ‘undeclared Emergency’? Will the current government go for an Emergency-like suspension of fundamental rights, media censorship and jailing of opposition leaders? They use constitution and democracy to destroy bothĪt the same time, Emergency is a misleading prism for us today. Yet, it remains a source of inspiration.Īlso read: Legal autocrats are on the rise. This may have been a myth, because the real resistance was very feeble, nothing compared to the resistance offered by the pro-democracy movements in Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Millions of such small stories were woven with a handful of heroic tales of resistance against the Emergency to forge a collective memory that people rejected authoritarianism. That was the beginning of my interest in elections and involvement in politics. I wasn’t even 14 when I addressed my first election rally! I can never forget the vote counting day when I found myself in the middle of an electrifying crowd celebrating the defeat of Indira Gandhi. Finally, when elections were announced in 1977, the entire family contributed to the Janata Party campaign. In my small town, Sriganganagar (Rajasthan), I gave a passionate speech against the Emergency under the garb of a debating competition. We would tune in to BBC Hindi every evening to learn the truth about our country. The coming 19 months were going to be a period of political education for me, as my moderate, law-abiding father would find non-heroic ways of protesting against the Emergency, much to the horror of everyone around us. I was barely 12 then, more agitated about Gavaskar scoring 36 runs in 60 overs in the first World Cup than about Indira Gandhi’s insult to Jayaprakash Narayan. I recall my father’s grim face as he listened to Indira Gandhi’s radio broadcast on the morning of 26 June 1975 in our village Saharanwas in Rewari, Haryana). It is energising as the struggle against Indira Gandhi’s authoritarianism invokes powerful memories. ![]() The experience of India’s past brush with authoritarianism must be used to think about how democracies die.Įmergency is at once an energising and misleading prism to think about the state and the fate of our democracy. ![]() The 45 th anniversary of the imposition of Emergency must not be wasted on bashing dead villains or on silly nostalgia.
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