Alas, the latter is what we have come to. We have created a system in which feeding ourselves requires jobs and bank notes. We had probably thought this system would eliminate the need to go hunting each time we were hungry. It was created for our own convenience, but now it has trapped us. Jobs are hard to come by, as a consequence so are food and shelter. For those with an empty stomach, freedom is a lofty ideal. In the absence of bread, indeed freedom is easily forgotten. Our freedom is at the mercy of the government. If the government gets us our livelihood, even if it isn’t accompanied by freedom, democracy and other ideals like equality and fraternity, we are ready to accept it. The consequences of this miserable desperation are dangerous.
Lest we forget what happened: on 12 June 1975, the Allahabad High Court ruled that Indira Gandhi was guilty of election malpractice and that she would have to resign.14 Instead of resigning, Indira declared Emergency on the night of 25 June, just a few minutes before midnight. Before dawn the next day, police parties, acting on her orders, had her political opponents locked up in prison. Over the next thirty-six hours, India changed from a liberal democracy to a democracy that supported autocracy.15
Millions of Indians were outraged, but then they got used to it. There was press censorship, and so it was not very clear what was happening. Initially, public life began to improve visibly—government offices became more efficient, transportation began to run on time, factories became more productive. But soon, this short-lived efficiency declined. Disaster struck harder when the prime minister’s beloved son, Sanjay Gandhi, stepped in. Sanjay ruled with his coterie of sycophantic ministers who unflinchingly obeyed his every order.16
Meanwhile, the number of Indira’s political opponents in jail reached 1,00,000. Some of them were abused and tortured, while outside the jails every institution deteriorated.17 All public and private media organizations were forced to relay only government propaganda.18 Corruption became rampant. Ordinary people were arrested for no reason. Elections for Parliament and state governments were postponed, and in the meantime, Indira Gandhi was rewriting the nation’s laws since the Congress party, with a two-thirds majority in Parliament, had the mandate required to do so. When she felt an existing law was not appropriate, she got the President to issue special ordinances, thereby bypassing Parliament and ruling by decree.
Sanjay then had the preposterous idea of controlling India’s population by sterilizing the men of the country. Without consultation or planning, he immediately decreed that anyone with more than two children would be mandatorily sterilized, with no regard for age or marital status. The sterilizations were mostly done in makeshift and often extremely unhygienic conditions, and most cases were forced. Two thousand men died from the botched surgeries.19 In just one year of the emergency 8.3 million Indian men were sterilized and lost the right to be fathers.20 This order for compulsory sterilizations proved to be a death knell for Indira Gandhi’s government as it incited a mass electoral revolt across north India and led to her loss in the 1977 polls.
Despite this, many Indians feel that Indira’s authoritarian rule is what the country needs. They think it is the only medicine that would make things work here. They have forgotten the reign of terror during the Emergency, and believe that autocracy would have emerged a winner if it had not been for the excesses of the family planning programme. The perception is that Indira was the ‘strong’ leader India needed.
One of the most established Indologists of our times, under whose guidance I had the privilege of writing my master’s, and later doctoral, thesis at Sciences Po in Paris, Christophe Jaffrelot, has for the past thirty years painstakingly followed the ascent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Jaffrelot’s magnum opus, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, published in French in 1993 and in English three years later, was the earliest serious study that accurately predicted the rise of right-wing politics in India.21 In a riveting article, Jaffrelot points out that the styles of leadership represented by Modi and Indira Gandhi are very similar as they both epitomize two variants of populism.22 This also goes to show that populism can be injected into right-leaning politics as much as the left-leaning variety.
Jaffrelot says that first, both Modi and Indira attempt to equate themselves with the Indian nation. While Indira’s supporters claimed ‘India is Indira and Indira is India’, Modi’s slogans evoke the notion ‘I am the new India’. He quotes the work of political theoretician Ernesto Laclau23 to show that this behaviour is typical of populist rhetoric, which relies on empty signifiers.
Another similarity, Jaffrelot notes, is in the high ideals evoked by both leaders. ‘Both leaders relate to the people in the name of high ideals. While Indira Gandhi wanted to eradicate poverty, Narendra Modi resorted to demonetization to eradicate corruption. This decision could strike a moral chord among voters because of the extent to which they suffer from the curse of corruption. Its emotional impact was all the more significant as Prime Minister Modi congratulated Indian citizens for their national sacrifice, while they were suffering from his efforts to “clean” the country.’24
Jaffrelot points out, ‘The nationalist rhetoric goes with a rejection of pluralism and alternative power centres—since the populist is the nation, any opposition is necessarily illegitimate. The judiciary is seen as an obstacle to the expression of the people’s will. Students, academics, NGOs who protest in the street—like in Bihar
