the Emergency

the Emergency, period of 21 months (June 1975–March 1977) in India during which emergency powers were applied across the country at the behest of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of the Indian National Congress (Congress Party). The Emergency has been widely condemned for its curtailment of civil liberties, arrests of Gandhi’s political opponents, and censorship of the press.

Constitutional provisions

The Constitution of India allows the president to declare a state of emergency on the advice of the prime minister and cabinet of ministers. Emergency powers have been applied thrice—the first two occasions during wartime—but only the third occasion is referred to as “the Emergency.” Until 1978 the constitution specified that emergency powers could be imposed in cases of “external aggression” or “internal disturbance.” The first condition was used to declare emergency in 1962, during India’s war with China, and again in 1971, during India’s war with Pakistan, which led to the creation of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan). In 1975 a state of emergency was declared on the grounds of “internal disturbance,” a term open to interpretation. In 1978, after the Emergency was lifted, the constitution was amended to substitute “armed rebellion” for “internal disturbance.”

Background

The Emergency was preceded by a period of political unrest and instability, centered on opposition to Gandhi’s prime ministership on grounds of alleged corruption. In 1969 she was expelled from the Congress Party by Morarji Desai and other veteran leaders after infighting. Two factions were formed: the Congress (O), led by Desai and the old guard, and the Congress (R), led by Gandhi. In the early 1970s socialist leaders Jayaprakash Narayan and George Fernandes organized strikes and protests against Gandhi and her government. Narayan transformed an existing students’ movement in the states of Gujarat and Bihar into an agitation against Gandhi’s rule. Known as the “JP movement”—Narayan was popularly known as JP—and the Sampoorna Kranti (Hindi: “Total Revolution”) movement, it opposed poor governance and corruption, first at the state level and then the national.

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In May 1974 Fernandes organized a strike of railway workers that immobilized the country’s train network for an unprecedented three weeks. Narayan, who was injured when police assaulted a crowd of protesters, addressed rallies and raised the slogan “Sinhasan khali karo, ke janata aati hai” (“Vacate the throne, for the people are coming”).

In June 1975 the High Court of Allahabad (now Prayagraj) ruled against Gandhi in an electoral fraud case filed by political leader Raj Narain, whom Gandhi had defeated in the 1971 general election. The court struck down Gandhi’s poll victory in the Rae Bareli constituency in Uttar Pradesh and required her to stay out of politics for six years. Gandhi appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court but did not receive a satisfactory response: she would be allowed to continue as prime minister, but the privileges she received as a member of parliament would be discontinued, and she would not be allowed to vote. Calls for her resignation became louder and more frequent.

Emergency declaration

On June 25, 1975, Pres. Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed declared a state of emergency throughout the country on Gandhi’s advice. Electricity was cut off to the Delhi neighborhood where most media houses were headquartered. No newspapers could be printed, and Indians received news of the Emergency the next morning on All India Radio. It was the beginning of months of severe censorship of the press, which was largely critical of Gandhi’s assumption of emergency powers, her policies, and the actions of her son Sanjay Gandhi, who was allegedly responsible for executing some of the Emergency’s worst excesses, such as forced sterilization.

Censorship extended to cultural depictions of the Emergency, and many films on the subject made at the time were banned by the government, including Aandhi (1975; “Storm”), Kissa Kursi Ka (1978; “Tale of a Throne”), and Nasbandi (1978; “Vasectomy”). The bans were revoked by later changes in regime. Sanjay Gandhi was later accused of destroying the prints of Kissa Kursi Ka, in which he was parodied. The film was reshot and released after the Emergency ended.

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Many new laws were enacted that limited personal freedoms. Preventive detention laws were used to jail Indira Gandhi’s opponents, among them Desai, Narain, Fernandes, and Narayan. Other jailed leaders included Charan Singh, Atal Bihari Vajpayee (who would later serve as prime minister), Lal Krishna Advani, and Mulayam Singh Yadav. With the opposition in jail, the constitution was amended to expand legislative powers and limit the judiciary’s authority. Under these changes the Emergency could not be subject to a judicial review and the prime minister’s election could not be challenged in court.

Gandhi also implemented several unpopular policies, including large-scale sterilization of poor men (some forced) as a form of population control (sterilization was an initiative spearheaded by her son Sanjay Gandhi). There was a widespread government crackdown on trade unions and workers’ rights, and building demolitions in Delhi displaced thousands. Police fired on civilian crowds on two occasions—at a demolition at Delhi’s Turkman Gate in April 1976 and an anti-sterilization protest in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, in October of the same year; the death toll is disputed, but it is clear that hundreds were killed.

The Emergency ends

The Emergency ended as unexpectedly as it had begun. In January 1977 Gandhi called for a new general election and released several imprisoned political figures. There was no apparent reason for her to have done so, but modern theories suggest that intelligence reports had predicted an electoral victory for her. As it was, she was soundly defeated by the Janata Party, an amalgam of opposition parties led by Desai, who became the first non-Congress prime minister. The Emergency was officially lifted on March 21, 1977, after votes were counted, although some consider that it had essentially ended when elections were announced. The Desai government subsequently amended the constitution to remove some of the language that had enabled the Emergency, including changing the provision of “internal disturbance” to “armed rebellion.”

In 2024 the Bharatiya Janata Party government headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi designated June 25, the anniversary of the declaration of the Emergency, as Samvidhaan Hatya Diwas (“Constitution Murder Day”).