Fifty years ago, on June 25, India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, citing a threat to internal security, imposed an Emergency on the country. In the 21 months that followed, thousands of opposition leaders and activists were jailed, fundamental rights were suspended, media freedom was curtailed, and elections were cancelled. The Congress government under Gandhi ruled by decree during this period.
Unlike most post-colonial countries, which came under military rule or some form of dictatorship, within years of independence, India’s democracy survived the turbulent first two post-independence decades. That changed under Gandhi’s rule, when democracy was suspended. When Gandhi first became prime minister in 1966, political rivals derided her as a “goongi gudiya” or dumb doll. Within a few years, the then-Congress chief D. K. Barooah coined the slogan “India is Indira, Indira is India.” She was described as the “Empress of India” by the international media. Gandhi’s transformation was remarkable. The impact of her rule transformed India; its impact is felt to date.
In his book “Indira Gandhi and the Years that Transformed India” (Penguin Random House, 2025), author Srinath Raghavan details how Indira Gandhi, long before the imposition of the Emergency, had systematically acted to weaken the Congress Party and India’s democratic institutions and processes, paving the way for the imposition of an internal Emergency in June 2025. This was taken to its logical conclusion during the Emergency.
In an interview with The Diplomat’s South Asia editor, Raghavan said that although Indira Gandhi “did believe in the idea of popular sovereignty that underlies any democracy,” she was also of the view “that a leader’s legitimacy did not necessarily flow through institutional channels.”
Why is the Emergency often described as India’s “darkest hour”?
This was a period of avowed authoritarian rule, the only such interlude in the history of Indian democracy. Fundamental rights guaranteed by the Indian Constitution were suspended. There was a complete clampdown on the political opposition, with most of its leaders imprisoned. The parliament and the higher judiciary became rubber stamps for the government. The press was thoroughly censored, including being prevented from reporting on proceedings in parliament and the constitutional courts. Some 110,000 people were preventively detained with no recourse to legal processes. Coercive campaigns on population control and slum clearance were undertaken with utter impunity. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the Emergency is viewed as the darkest hour of Indian democracy.
Could you share how Indira Gandhi undermined India’s democratic institutions and processes during the Emergency?
Apart from the various things that I spoke about, the most sustained institutional damage was done by constitutional amendments passed during the Emergency. The most far-reaching of these was the 42nd Amendment in 1976. This had three main objectives. The first was to tilt the balance of institutional power steeply in favor of the executive and the parliament and against the judiciary. By the time the Emergency was imposed, this shift in institutional balance of power was already underway ,with Indira Gandhi’s move to supersede the senior judges and pack the Supreme Court with pliant, “committed” judges. The 42nd Amendment sought to entrench it by curtailing the powers of the constitutional courts to review laws passed by parliament.
Second, the amendment sought to strengthen the union (federal) government’s power vis-à-vis the states and fatally undermine the federal system. Finally, the amendment sought to shield the executive, especially the prime minister, from certain types of legal challenges. The upshot was a remarkable strengthening of executive power and the decimation of any checks and balances.
India already had an Emergency in place, one that was imposed during the 1971 war. Yet Indira Gandhi declared another on June 25, 1975. Why?
On June 12, 1975, the Allahabad High Court had voided Indira Gandhi’s election to parliament in 1971 on the grounds of electoral malpractice. The Supreme Court gave her a conditional stay, allowing her to carry on as prime minister but not to function as a member of parliament. This led to a demand by the opposition for her to resign immediately. With the opposition energized and her legitimacy dented, Indira Gandhi decided to declare an Emergency.
There was indeed an emergency already in place from the time of the 1971 war against Pakistan. She needed a new or additional internal Emergency in order to acquire fresh powers to crack down on the opposition. This is precisely what she did on June 25,1975. Interestingly, this idea of a second Emergency was first mooted in January 1975. At the time, Gandhi was concerned about the popular movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan against the Congress government in Bihar. This movement was swelled by ranks of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), which she regarded as a crypto-fascist and dangerous outfit.
Why do you term the Emergency a coup d’état?
Because the Emergency was declared under provisions of the Constitution (Article 352), it is often claimed that Indira Gandhi was acting lawfully. In fact, both the declaration of a second Emergency and the manner in which it was done (without written advice of the cabinet, etc.) were legally untenable. Rather, this move is reminiscent of the original idea of a coup d’état — not capture of power by the military, as we now regard it, but a “masterstroke of the state” whose key elements are secrecy and surprise.
You describe Gandhi’s mode of rule as Caesarist. Could you explain?
Caesarism refers to a style of politics in which the leader seeks directly to connect with the people, bypassing party structures or the parliament, and to rule by popular acclamation. The term came into circulation in the late 19th and early 20th century when electoral democracy went from being the privilege of a few to a system that encompassed the entire adult (at least male) population. With the advent of mass democracy, older parties struggled to operate as usual, leading to the rise of charismatic politicians who sought to win power and rule by popular acclamation. The concept of Caesarism was used by political thinkers across the spectrum – from Antonio Gramsci on the left to Max Weber in the center and Carl Schmitt on the right – to understand this new development. I found the concept useful to help explain Indira Gandhi’s mode of politics after she split the Congress party in 1969 – under similar circumstances of deepening democratic participation.
Did Gandhi believe in democracy?
She did believe in the idea of popular sovereignty that underlies any democracy, but also thought that a leader’s legitimacy did not necessarily flow through institutional channels. The procedural value of democracy did not seem to count for much with Indira Gandhi.
The Hindu nationalist Jana Sangh (the forerunner of the Bharatiya Janata Party) and its ideological mentor, the RSS, were important components of the JP movement that emerged against Gandhi’s growing authoritarian rule. What role did they play during the Emergency?
The RSS, as I said earlier, was an important target for Indira Gandhi, even before the Emergency. It was banned right at its outset. Many leaders and rank-and-file of the RSS went underground and Gandhi was well aware of it. Some of the top RSS leaders were imprisoned. The RSS supremo, Balasaheb Deoras, wrote a series of letters to the prime minister asking her to lift the ban and release their workers. She did not even acknowledge these letters. In late 1975, the RSS took part in two “Satyagrahas” against the Emergency and its cadres courted arrest. The RSS claims that some 35,000 volunteers went to jail, but the official figures suggest far fewer.
The Janata Party government, which came to power in the March 1977 election held after the Emergency was lifted, reversed several pernicious constitutional amendments made during the Emergency. Yet the Emergency’s impact on India lingers. How did it transform India?
The Janata government did undo the worst aspects of the damage done to the Constitution during the Emergency. Yet the institutional balance of power remained tilted towards the executive. What is more, the broader “rules of the game” that shape and sustain parliamentary democracy continued to be eroded.
For instance, after the defeat of the Congress Party and Indira Gandhi in the elections of March 1977, the Janata government dismissed the Congress governments in nine states, claiming that they had lost all legitimacy. The Supreme Court upheld this action on specious and political grounds. But what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. So, when Indira Gandhi returned to power in 1980, she dismissed all Janata Party governments in the states. And the Supreme Court upheld this too. In short, Indian democracy never fully recovered from the institutional and normative damage done by the Emergency.
Political commentators have drawn parallels between the authoritarianism of Gandhi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Your view?
Such claims about parallels don’t strike me as illuminating. In the first place, the Emergency regime was explicitly authoritarian – indeed, by its own account. There is no comparison between what happened then and what is happening now. Further, inasmuch as we may discern a parallel in the institutional balance of power between the executive and the rest, we should remember that this itself is a long-term consequence of what happened in the 1970s. Finally, the political economy of the 1970s, which was a very important dimension of the authoritarian turn taken then, is rather different from today. Instead of reading history for dubious parallels, we should use it to understand in what ways the present is different from the past.
Contrary to the generally held perception that Indira Gandhi displayed strong and decisive leadership and strategic clarity during the 1971 War, you write that “her handling of the developing situation was more tentative and improvisatory.”
I have previously written a book on the 1971 crisis, where I describe Indira Gandhi’s role and decision-making in much greater detail. The retrospective verdict on her handling of the crisis, which gained ground soon after the war, was that she was always clear and decisive about using force to liberate Bangladesh, and the only question was over the timing. In fact, the prime minister was more cautious and deliberate in the manner in which she chose to support the Bengali rebels.
This was not surprising. The international context was hardly favorable to India or Bangladesh. The United States was squarely behind the Pakistani military regime and the U.S.-China rapprochement also redounded to Pakistan’s advantage. By contrast, although India signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation with the Soviet Union, the Soviet leadership was hesitant to support any overt move towards war by India. Their stance changed only in November 1971. Indian war plans too did not clearly aim at capturing Dhaka. Rather, it was decided owing to the momentum of the military operations. That said, Indira Gandhi was bold and tenacious not just in choosing to go to war but in seeing it through to a decisive conclusion in the face of American threats.