Fifty Years After the Emergency, India’s Democracy Is Dying in a Leadership Vacuum

June 26, 2025, is the 50th anniversary of the infamous Emergency. As the anniversary year dawned in 2024, the top honchos of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who are the beneficiaries of that dark era, went ballistic. 

While addressing the media at the Parliament House complex on the first day of the first session of the 18th Lok Sabha on June 25, Modi said,"Today is a day to pay homage to all those great men and women who resisted the Emergency. The #DarkDaysOfEmergency reminds us of how the Congress Party subverted basic freedoms and trampled over the Constitution of India, which every Indian respects greatly…. Just to cling on to power, the then Congress Government disregarded every democratic principle and made the nation into a jail. Any person who disagreed with Congress was tortured and harassed…." 

Other BJP leaders joined the band wagon. Anchoring his attack on the Emergency, Union home minister Amit Shah accused the arrogant and autocratic Congress government of "killing" democracy by suspending all kinds of civil rights in the country for 21 months for the sake of power of one family. 

This was followed by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla leading the charge and moving a resolution condemning the Emergency. "The Emergency had destroyed the lives of so many citizens of India, so many people had died. This House strongly condemns the decision to impose Emergency in 1975. We appreciate the determination of all those people who opposed the Emergency, fought and fulfilled the responsibility of protecting India's democracy…We also believe that our young generation must know about this dark chapter of democracy,” Birla said. Prime Minister Modi strongly endorsed this action of the Speaker and continued this onslaught in the Rajya Sabha. 

Not to be left out, President Draupadi Murmu also chipped in while addressing a joint sitting of Parliament in New Delhi on June 27. "Emergency was the biggest and darkest chapter of the direct attack on the Constitution. The entire country plunged into chaos during the Emergency, but the nation was victorious against such unconstitutional powers… Every attempt to tarnish our democracy should be condemned by all..." 

Without any regret or remorse on the manner in which they have been ravaging it for the past decade, the ruling dispensation claimed sole and absolute proprietorship of ‘democracy’. 

The Congress and the INDIA bloc retaliated and with questions on Modi’s own neo-Emergency, which they claimed was far worse. According to them, the Emergency was done and dusted with and it was futile to talk about it after half-a-century. Instead, the focus should be on the strangulation and evisceration of institutions today, they said. 

The ruling establishment responded by declaring June 25 as ‘Samvidhaan Hatya Diwas’ (Murder of Constitution Day) to ‘pay tribute to all those who suffered and fought against the gross abuse of power during the period of emergency, and to recommit the people of India to not support in any manner such gross abuse of power in future.’  

If the Modi government was serious about democracy and the Constitution, it would have eschewed an emergency mode of governance. This is not the case, as can be seen from their fascist track record of governance. 

The declaration of the Samvidhaan Hatya Diwas was a flagrant act of theft. It was a theft of the memory of a people’s movement against the Emergency by the forces which are perpetuating an undeclared emergency.  

This is an Orwellian conclusion by those who, in the guise of saving the Constitution, are killing it by a thousand cuts. 

The ruling establishment has been ruthlessly flogging ‘Emergency’ not merely with the intention to project themselves as defenders of democracy, but also to create a “vipaksh-mukht-Bharat” (opposition-free-India) by discrediting the Congress. 

A brief recap: India’s nascent democracy collapsed on the intervening night of June 25 and 26, 1975, when the then President of India signed a four-line proclamation, virtually on command from the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi: “In exercise of the powers conferred by clause (1) of Article 352 of the Constitution, I, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, President of India, by this Proclamation declare that a grave emergency exists whereby the security of India is threatened by internal disturbances.” This extinguished democracy and citizen’s fundamental rights at least temporarily.                                              

This extinction of democracy in the country brought about an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation between Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Narayan, popularly known as JP. While the former was the epitome of power and pelf, the later abjured all desire for power, but wielded immense moral authority. By the time the confrontation ended in March 1977, JP had won with India regaining its Democracy. 

Though I had not known Indira Gandhi personally, she was my prime minister and I know of her association with Emergency. I had also communicated with the Prime Minister’s Office and had accessed the “Emergency Papers” through the Right to Information Act. 

As for JP, I knew him personally and interacted with him closely during the most adverse period of his life when he, in poor health at the age of 73, was a prisoner of the Emergency regime in independent India, for which he fought and sacrificed everything.

As District Magistrate of Chandigarh and ‘custodian of JP in jai’, I have experienced the true JP, his fight against Emergency and how he restored democracy in India.

It is in this context what eminent jurist Nani Palkhiwala wrote in her book, We the People, becomes relevant: “Since public memory is so alarmingly short, let us reiterate our gratitude to the men who suffered in diverse ways and whose sacrifices made the restoration of freedom possible. The first name that springs to anyone’s mind is that of Jayaprakash Narayan. Not since the time of Gandhiji has moral force--personified by a frail invalid--triumphed so spectacularly over the forces of evil. He changed decisively the course of history. One life transformed the destiny of 620 million. His epoch-making work must be carried on and the process of public education must never cease. Others will have to propagate the great values which Jayaprakash has taught the nation--a lesson our people may not always remember but which they will never wholly forget.” 

One life changed the course of history and transformed the destiny of 620 million people from ‘autocracy to democracy’. That was in 1977. Now, in 2025, almost half a century down the line, the number has more than doubled. 

But where is democracy, for the triumph of which, JP sacrificed his everything? Where is the destiny of 1.4 billion people heading towards? 

The fact is that in 50 years, India’s democracy has swung between two extremes – from two years of the ‘darkest period’ to ten-plus years of the ‘deep-dark period.’ Masters and minions of both eras are claiming themselves as ‘defenders of democracy’. But the question is: Are they? The answer is an emphatic no. 

India gained independence on August 15, 1947. This freedom ushered in democracy which was meant to give opportunity to the common people  – the peasants and workers of India – to fight and end poverty, ignorance and disease. It was an opportunity to build up a prosperous, progressive nation and to create social, economic and political institutions that ensured justice and fullness of life to everyone. India’s democracy, which had two lives, wasis a gift of patriots like Mahatma Gandhi and JP. 

These are the opening words of the Constitution of India: “We, the People of India having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic and to secure to all its citizens Justice, social, economic and political; Liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; Equity of status and of opportunity and to promote among them all fraternity assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation….do hereby adopt, enact and give to ourselves this constitution.”

Sadly, in neo-Emergency, these primary objectives of independent India are being mangled. Justice has become inaccessible, distant, costly and purchasable. Liberty is being ravaged as if it does not exist. Equity is evaporating with the government abandoning the ‘welfare state’ and opting for ‘corporate state’. Fraternity is being murdered through hate, intolerance and polarisation. The dignity of the individual is under severe assault. 

Bengal’s great savant Rabindranath Tagore wrote this in 1910: 

“Where the mind is without fear and the head held high;  Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;  Where words come out from the depth of truth;  Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;  Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;  Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action;  Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.”

Around the same time, the Tamil revolutionary poet Subramanya Bharati said: 

“I have no fear over anything; Even if the whole world is against me, I have no fear over anything; Even if anyone thinks bad about me and annoys me I have no fear over anything;  Even if I have to beg for my living I have no fear over anything;.. Even if I lose all what I wanted I have no fear over anything; Even if my friend feeds me with poison I have no fear over anything;.. Even if the sky above falls on my head I have no fear over anything.” 

These powerful and fearless voices were raised at the height of British imperial rule, when we were subjects of a monarchy without fundamental or any other rights. Now, we are citizens of a democracy with all fundamental and other rights. Yet, we do not enjoy the gifts of such ‘powerful and fearless’ minds. This, in essence, is the outcome of the model of ‘governance by fear’ seen during both Emergencies, official and unofficial.

However, India today is bestirred with new urges. There is a desperate attempt to find a way out. The old value system has collapsed, but an intense search is on the establishment of new morality in politics and public life. Go out anywhere and you will hear hundreds of questions about why things have gone so wrong and what is the way out.

There is, at the moment, no leadership for this gathering because at every stage ‘leadership’ is being quelled. The government crushes it; political parties suffocate it; judiciary mocks it; media flogs it and civil society ignores it. What is worse, academic institutions nip it in the bud with colleges and universities almost extinguishing student leadership.

Political parties are the worst culprits. Most of them are debilitated and devalued in the eyes of the populace. Devoid of passion and compassion, with power and pelf as the sole motive, political parties choke and burn out bold, dynamic youth before they emerge as leaders. 

Only the mediocre survive –  with their talent for cowardice, sycophancy and fawning – and become ‘leaders.’  This extreme paucity of ‘true leadership’ has cost India dearly.

Nevertheless, in the prevailing darkness of neo-Emergency, fearless individuals of courage and conviction move about like figures in silhouette. This is the twilight when they should regroup themselves for the task at hand. Soon, the sun shall arrive and identify them, and among them shall be seen new leaders with new messages and enriched genuine patriotism – a new resolve to save our democracy from dying.

M.G. Devasahayam had a ring-side view of the Emergency. He is the author of Emergency and Neo-Emergency: Who will defend Democracy.

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