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Indian Express
6 days ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
Srinath Raghavan at Idea Exchange: ‘Institutional rules of the game were considerably weakened even before the Emergency'
Historian Srinath Raghavan on the build-up to the Emergency, its transformative impact on Indian polity and the lessons that we should learn. The session was moderated by Chief of Political Bureau Manoj CG. Manoj CG: Fifty years ago, India had its first brush with authoritarian rule, what we call the Emergency. Looking at the long arc of Mrs Indira Gandhi's years as Prime Minister then, how do you see her shadow in 2025, be it on politics, her party – the Congress – institutions, nation and the concept of leadership? I wanted to situate her long stints in power and out of power from 1966 until her assassination. And the idea of doing that was to get away from the Emergency itself, which tends to be the focal point of discussions. Important things happened both before and after the Emergency, which I think left a longer imprint. When we say that Indira Gandhi did something, we tend to think of it as something done intentionally. As a historian, I think it's also useful to remember the consequences of what her actions were rather than simply the intentions behind them. It's important to understand what she accomplished. Three things have cast a long shadow on politics, democracy and our political economy. First, we went from a period of more or less one-party dominant rule under the Congress to one where the Congress became a dominant player, but in a much more competitive environment. The competitiveness of Indian democracy that we see from the fourth general elections — 1967 onwards — is a very important feature. That very competitiveness led to a disregard of rules, norms and procedures, which are as important as elections in structuring democracy. The Emergency is the most extreme and shocking example of that kind of disregard for the rules of electoral democracy. The second aspect is strengthening of the executive vis-a-vis the legislature and the judiciary. The Janata government did attempt to undo some of it but still the overall institutional balance of power remains tilted towards the executive. This is true even of coalition governments. Mrs Gandhi had an ability to make charismatic, Caesarist appeals directly to the electorate. So the function and role of the party system itself underwent a very significant change in her time. The party was no longer the instrument which aggregated people's preferences and revealed them during the elections. Rather, it supported the political appeal of the leader. A similar model of leadership, where the charisma of an older patriarch follows on to the next generation, is seen not only in national politics but also state politics. The third impact was on political economy. There was a somewhat unwilling and unwitting move towards liberalisation of the economy, which actually started from about 1975, even before the Emergency. That process was important because it put India on this long road towards liberalisation. Though I wouldn't give much credit to her on that. She left her own impression on the welfare economy instead. We saw targetted schemes aimed at particular groups because they came under certain thresholds. The poverty line, for instance, became the longest and the most important imprint. And it continues. Manoj CG: Do you think her decision to choose Sanjay Gandhi first, and the Congress party's decision to bring in Rajiv Gandhi after her killing, laid the template of dynastic politics in India? The Congress party that elected Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister in 1966 was a very different kind of an entity from what it became during her time. She, of course, broke that party quite consciously in 1969. But what she found much more difficult through the 1970s was the ability to reorganise the party in ways that could actually strengthen its machinery. So the move towards relying on her son, first, the younger one, Sanjay Gandhi and subsequently Rajiv Gandhi, comes out as a result of her inability really to institutionalise the party. Manoj CG: Do you think the Congress needs to break from Mrs Gandhi's legacy going forward? There is very little that we see by way of an alternative leadership. And even if we do, like Sharad Pawar or Mamata Banerjee, they walk out. No ambitious politician has a significant pathway to the party's top leadership, given the kind of a family holding structure that this party has come to acquire. It started under Mrs Gandhi and has now just gone on for so long that it is very difficult, even for Congressmen themselves, to conceive of an alternative. That will require a break with this model, which, I think, is both cognitively and practically quite difficult for most people in this party to conceive of and execute. On leader over party | Mrs Gandhi had an ability to make charismatic, Caesarist appeals directly to the electorate. So the function and role of the party system itself underwent a very significant change in her time What should be the legacy of Indira Gandhi that the Congress party should carry? What was both a source of her strength and weaknesses was that she was a very bold and tenacious leader. Splitting the Congress party, a party of the nationalist movement, in 1969 was a dramatic move. She did it again post-Emergency though the party was already truncated at that time. But during the 1971 Bangladesh war, she was initially hesitant, tentative, she assessed. But when she felt the time was ripe for a decisive move, she was willing to make it and even break taboos. For instance, the peace and friendship treaty with the then Soviet Union in August 1971 was a decisive move against non-alignment, a key aspect of the party's foreign policy orientation. If the Congress party could recover a fraction of her chutzpah and the willingness to gamble and try new things that she demonstrated, perhaps it would have been stronger. But for that, fundamental structural issues have to be addressed. Manoj CG: Was the Emergency a natural culmination of her authoritarian streak? We tend to focus on why Indira Gandhi did the Emergency. But an equally important question is, how was it possible for an Emergency to be declared? After all, you have a political system. It has all kinds of checks and balances supposedly. There are various institutions in play, there are various political forces at hand. Despite all of this, how was it possible for an authoritarian rule to be imposed? The parliamentary party has always a certain kind of a check on the executive. But Mrs Gandhi, by her willingness to break the party and then subsequently those spectacular electoral victories that she won, practically became the entire party. It was beholden to her rather than she in any way being controlled by it. The second thing was the strengthening of the executive vis-a-vis Parliament and then the judiciary. The supersession of judges in 1973 was a very important moment. So the institutional balance of power was already secreted to the executive by June 12, 1975. After the Allahabad High Court ruling of June 12, 1975, (which found Mrs Gandhi guilty of electoral malpractices and barred her from holding elected office for six years) Jayaprakash Narayan demanded that the Prime Minister should step down in response to a popular demand, even though the Supreme Court said that she had a conditional stay, that she could stay on in power. Indira Gandhi paid them in the same coin. By that time, all the institutional rules of the game were considerably weakened. Without that, it is actually difficult to imagine how the Emergency could have been imposed. Vikas Pathak: Did Indira Gandhi bring in a new normal where the leader was seen as strong enough to deliver what institutions, which are a maze of procedures, could not? Has that stuck to Indian democracy? That's a very accurate assessment. Soon after the imposition of the Emergency, she announced a 20-point programme for various kinds of economic development and social policies. While some things done during the Emergency, for instance, have not been attempted subsequently, the underlying template that you need a strong leader to deliver specific things for specific segments of Indian society remains. Vikas Pathak: Why did she decide to revoke the Emergency? From June 1976 onwards, various assessments were being prepared for the Prime Minister on the progress of the Emergency. Initially, there was a sense that the government was decisive about moving against labour unions. There was a move towards redistribution of land for Dalits and other groups. When she realised the diminishing returns of continuing with this regime, the unfavourable aspects of population control policies and sterilisation, and that it would be better to move towards elections, she withdrew. To Indira Gandhi, the Emergency was only an interlude. On Congress | If the Congress party could recover a fraction of her chutzpah and the kind of willingness to gamble and try new things that she demonstrated, perhaps it would have been stronger Ritika Chopra: What convinced you that the Emergency story was worth retelling? What archival discoveries surprised you? The reason I wanted to write this book was because of the new archival material that I came across while researching for another book on the creation of Bangladesh. I came across private papers of Mrs Gandhi's principal secretary PN Haksar and other people close to her. The Janata Party's own papers, which are available in Teen Murti, allowed me to look at her from her opponents' lens. So I wanted to situate her within the broader historical context of her times and how those contexts were changing quite dramatically. The period between the late 60s and the mid-80s was a period of turbulence across the world. If you look at the 1970s, democratic governments everywhere were on the rope. India is only an extreme example of what happened. Part of the reason for that was the global economic and energy crisis of that period. So I wanted this broad picture within which to situate her actions. Harish Damodaran: What was the difference between Indira Gandhi of the 60s (rupee devaluation), the 70s (bank nationalisation and welfare schemes) and the 80s (when she secured a $5.8 billion IMF loan despite US opposition)? The rupee devaluation attracted strong political opposition, including from her own party. Bank nationalisation is perhaps the single most important economic decision taken in independent India. One of the things we learnt from documents now available in the Prime Minister's Secretariat is that it's only after the banks were nationalised that she actually started asking people what to do with the machinery. A new fiscal monitoring machine was created. Similarly, we tend to think of the 1970s as this high period of the socialist face of Indira Gandhi's economic policymaking. I feel, however, that the socialist face was actually already at an end by 1974 or thereabouts just as global inflation and its effects were kicking in. Through the Emergency, what you see is a slow attempt at taking away various kinds of controls. What scholars talk about as a pro-business kind of a tilt in the 1980s is already in evidence from the mid-1970s. She took an IMF loan in 1980 but she also took one in 1974, which is why I think 1974 is the breaking point. If you look at the conditions of the 1974 IMF loan, there is a very strong anti-inflation package, including wage freezes. In fact, the 1980 loan offer is built on that model and came with a homegrown conditionality. This suggested that instead of the World Bank and financial institutions imposing conditions on India, we ourselves would roll out measures to address their concerns. Aakash Joshi: Did Mrs Gandhi's leadership destroy the Congress' institutional mechanism and internal democracy? Much of the illiberal tendencies in subsequent governments, be it on federalism, preventive detention or role of governors, are traced back to Mrs Gandhi. What's your assessment? Where Indira Gandhi failed entirely was that having broken the party, she could never find other means of reconstituting it. She tried various things. The Youth Congress was from time to time trumped up as this great solution to the problem of institutionalisation. Again, to give credit to the Youth Congress and even perhaps to Sanjay Gandhi, they did bring in a new set of leaders. Nevertheless, that was not an answer for having new institutional structures. I do not believe the Congress of the old variant could have continued on course either. Something would have changed irrespective of whether she came on or somebody else did. Also illiberal tendencies did not begin with Mrs Gandhi. Preventive detention has been a feature of statute books for pretty much the time that the Indian Constitution has existed. The Constitution itself actually provides for preventive detention, funnily enough, in those parts which talk about fundamental rights. But what changed under her was the kind of preventive detention laws that she brought about, like the Internal Security Act of 1975. The Janata government repealed the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) but brought in a new preventive detention law. On what enabled Emergency to happen | there is a much more collective responsibility that the entire Indian political elite of the time had. without that kind of collective abdication of the rules of the game, you would not have had a system which collapsed this way Similarly with the governors, I think no other Prime Minister or no government has used Article 356 (which mandates President's Rule) as much as Indira Gandhi did. That led to, especially in her final term, the whole Centre versus State kind of dynamic. Yes, she aggravated and accentuated many of the worst features of our legal political system but everything cannot be assumed to have originated from her. Rinku Ghosh: The Emergency has set a template that non-Congress parties now use to justify their actions in a tussle of whataboutery. What does this portend for future governments? What kind of lessons should we learn from this particular episode in our history? I say this fully conscious of the fact that history itself does not offer any lessons. It's only historians like me who tell what the lessons of history are, which is why we constantly disagree with each other. Rather we must ask , what was it that enabled the Emergency to happen? And when we ask ourselves that question, we understand that there is a much more collective responsibility that the entire Indian political elite of the time had for this disastrous turn that Indian politics took in 1975. Because without that kind of collective abdication of the rules of the game, in some ways, you would not have had a system which collapsed this way. If we believe that the rules of the game are of no consequence, then we are setting ourselves up for graver and more serious disasters. Deeptiman Tiwary: What actually hit Mrs Gandhi's popularity really badly, making her lose from her pocketborough in the elections that followed the Emergency, was forced sterilisation. Do you think the move that allowed the government to actually enter people's homes was a body blow? I don't think so. If you had a normal situation where fundamental rights were enforceable by courts, you could be pretty sure that people would immediately go to the courts and would have at least got a stay on some of what the government was trying to do. But the coercive drive was possible precisely because of the broader framework of authoritarianism within which the Emergency was happening. So I think that the coercive aspects of the sterilisation drive are only one dimension of the broader authoritarian turn that Indian politics had taken during this particular period.
Indian Express
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
Daily Briefing: India ups the ante
India's military response to the brutal terror attack in Pahalgam, which claimed 26 civilian lives, was expected. But in targeting pre-selected targets in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, India has upped the ante. The message is clear: India will not tolerate terrorism, and it won't hesitate to strike hard and far to root it out. Advance: This marks India's deepest incursion into Pakistani territory yet. In 2016, after the Uri attack, the Army went 3 km into PoK. In 2019, Balakot saw an airstrike 60 km across the Line of Control. Operation Sindoor pushed the envelope further, striking 150 km inside Pakistan. The operation also broke with tradition in one subtle but telling way: its name. Unlike past operations that carried militaristic overtones, Sindoor signals a thematic shift, one that alluded to the lives lost in the April 22 terror attack. Restraint: Notably, India avoided targeting Pakistani military assets. Instead, the nine sites struck were terror camps linked to groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, including one reportedly tied to the 2008 Mumbai attacks. For a detailed breakdown, read my colleague Deeptiman Tiwary's explainer. Zoom out: Though not immediate, India's response was calculated. The government strategically used the intervening two weeks to gather support from friends and foes, globally and internally. Even on Wednesday, India mounted a diplomatic outreach to major powers, including the US and China. While the US has offered assistance, China called for restraint on both sides. Zoom in: Unlike the strikes of 2016 and 2019, which saw political bickering, Operation Sindoor has broad political consensus. My colleague Manoj C G decodes the undertones of Opposition support and explains why it was different this time. Meanwhile, all political parties are set to gather today to discuss the operation. Congress has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to attend the meeting. The following 24-48 hours are key as India awaits a response from the Asim Munir-led Pakistan Army, if any. Pakistan has already escalated ceasefire violations along the LoC. At least 13 people, including a soldier and four children have been killed in cross-border shelling. Lastly, I leave you with these two must-read columns from our Opinion pages today. One, former finance minister of J&K, Haseeb A Drabu, writes how for the first time, a distinction has been made between the Kashmir issue and terrorism. He argues that in targeting terror camps, India has reframed it as a national security matter and not a Kashmir-specific issue. Two, a retired Indian ambassador, Jawed Ashraf, underscores the complex task ahead of upending the cycle of attacks from Pakistan and its proxies. Before you go… on a very different note, Indian skipper Rohit Sharma has announced his retirement from Tests. For most cricket enthusiasts, this was no surprise. After a damaging tour in Australia earlier this year, Rohit faced increased scrutiny over his form. Read Sriram Veera's well-written deep dive into what was Sharma's undoing.
Indian Express
03-05-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
Today in Politics: Convention in Imphal, shutdown in Kuki areas – Manipur groups to mark two years of ethnic conflict
Security has been tightened across Manipur as a precautionary measure ahead of the second anniversary of the start of the ethnic conflict in the state on May 3, 2023. The Coordinating Committee on Manipur Integrity (COCOMI), a Meitei social organisation, has called on the public to suspend all activities on May 3 and attend the Manipur People's Convention in the state capital of Imphal. The Kuki Students' Organisation (KSO) and Zomi Students' Federation (ZSF) have also called for a shutdown on May 3 in all Kuki-dominated areas. They also encouraged participation in the Indigenous Tribal Leaders' Forum's 'Separation Day' event at the Churachandpur district headquarters and called on people to hoist black flags at their residences as a mark of mourning. The Federation of Civil Society Organisations (FOCS) also announced that May 3 would be observed as a 'solemn day of remembrance and solidarity under the theme Bridging Divides for Shared Future'. More than 260 people have been killed and thousands rendered homeless in the ethnic violence between Imphal Valley-based Meiteis and adjoining hills-based Kuki-Zo groups since May 2023. After Chief Minister N Biren Singh, of the BJP -led state government, resigned in February this year, Manipur was placed under President's Rule. The state Assembly, which has a tenure till 2027, has been put under suspended animation. State Congress units react to caste census After the Centre on Wednesday announced that caste enumeration will be a part of the next population Census, the Congress has claimed the move is a vindication of its demand for a nationwide caste census, which has been the centerpiece of the party's social justice agenda for the past two years. However, the apprehension within Congress ranks is that, in one stroke, the BJP-led Centre may have taken away one of its crucial planks, as reported by Manoj C G. In fact, while announcing its decision on Wednesday to hold a caste census, the government slammed opposition parties for using it as a 'political tool'. Against this backdrop, several state Congress units are making a fresh push on the issue of a caste census as well as its long-running 'Samvidhan Bachao (Save the Constitution)' campaign. In Madhya Pradesh, state party chief Jitu Patwari said the Congress will hold programmes to sensitise people on the caste census issue from May 3 to 10, along with the Constitution campaign, as part of which rallies will be held in each district of the state. In Odisha, too, beginning on May 3, the party will hold district-level rallies as part of the Constitution campaign for a week. AIMIM rally in poll-bound Bihar While speaking on how the Centre should react to the Pahalgam terror attack, saying that 'decisive action' should be taken against Pakistan, AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi announced that his party AIMIM will contest the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections. Owaisi said the party has already declared its candidate for the Bahadurganj constituency and that he will address public meetings in Bihar on May 3 and 4. The AIMIM had seen moderate success in the 2020 Bihar Assembly elections, contesting 20 seats and winning five – all in Seemanchal, a region with a significant Muslim population. However, in 2022, the party suffered a major setback when all but one of its MLAs switched to the RJD, the state's main opposition party.
