The Anti-Emergency Movement of the Indian Diaspora X-rayed
Fifty years after Indira Gandhi’s Emergency, the question of how power bends—or breaks—democracy refuses to fade. In “The Conscience Network: A Chronicle of Resistance to a Dictatorship”, Sugata Srinivasraju traces the Indian diaspora’s audacious fight against that authoritarian turn, showing how exiled voices rattled a seemingly immovable regime. Reviewer Arvindar Singh places this meticulously researched narrative in a contemporary frame, where the specter of concentrated power still shadows India’s politics. This is no nostalgic look back but a clear warning: dissent travels, networks endure, and vigilance remains the only lasting safeguard against the slow creep of autocracy—then, now, and for every generation ahead.
It has now been fifty years since the Internal Emergency was declared in June 1975, and this period lasted for nineteen months until January 1977. The Emergency, though eased earlier, was formally lifted on 21 March 1977 by Indira Gandhi’s lame-duck government after its crushing defeat to the Janata Party in the parliamentary elections. The Emergency was undoubtedly a dark period with fundamental rights suspended, and more than one lakh people were held under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA). This included political opponents, journalists, and dissenters of the regime. Having lived through that period in my teens, I can vouch for the fact that fear stalked the land then, day in and day out.
Journalist Sugata Srinivasraju’s volume explores a largely untold story: the Indian diaspora’s anti-Emergency movement, centered in the United States but reaching the United Kingdom and beyond, with a sharp focus on Indians for Democracy (IFD). By October 1976, as the Emergency dragged on, the New York Times observed, as Srinivasraju cited: “Slowly but perceptibly, the United States has become the main center of dissent against the authoritarian Indian government of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi… A growing number are affiliated with a loose organisation called Indians for Democracy.”
The author compares the Emergency to the Watergate scandal in the USA, which led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974. Public opinion felled Nixon ten months before India’s Emergency and likewise unseated Indira Gandhi in 1977, paving the way for Morarji Desai’s Janata government. The book offers a fascinating aside not directly tied to the diaspora’s anti-Emergency struggle. Srinivasraju recounts the story of Sirdar Jagjit Singh—better known as J.J. Singh—who built the diaspora networks that later empowered the IFD, having earlier played a pivotal role in the India League of America. Singh, close to both Jayaprakash Narayan and Indira Gandhi, corresponded with the Prime Minister in a bid to reconcile them—a revealing subplot in the run-up to the Emergency. The JP movement, spurred by the Allahabad High Court’s ruling that unseated Indira Gandhi for electoral malpractice, was among the sparks that ignited the Emergency.
J.J. Singh also voiced his disapproval of J.P. Narayan calling on the police and army not to obey “illegal orders”. Many people believe JP had exceeded his brief when he made these comments at many public meetings during the run-up to the Emergency. It is also known that Morarji Desai privately disapproved of it. Here, the veteran freedom fighter seemed on shaky ground: in a democracy, criticizing the government need not mean urging defiance within the armed forces.
Early in the campaign, Anand Kumar and S.R. Hiremath, two of the leading lights in the IFD, called on Noam Chomsky, the world-famous American academic and public intellectual who sympathised with their cause and had already written a letter to Indira Gandhi in this regard. Chomsky wrote of the Emergency: “Though I have read carefully the public statements of the representatives of the Government of India in the international press, I cannot believe that such measures are in any way justified.”
The bluff and bluster of T.N. Kaul, India’s Ambassador to the United States, comes in for sharp comments in the book. Kaul clearly exceeded his brief as a diplomat and became a propaganda agent for the government in power. The Ambassador even went to the extent of picking holes in the judgment of the Allahabad High Court, which had orders to disqualify Mrs. Gandhi from parliament. It was this order that triggered the draconian responses leading to the Emergency. To Kaul, civil disobedience applied only to foreign rulers, not elected governments—an extraordinary definition of democracy.
Lawyer and future Union Minister, Ram Jethmalani, joined the IFD in 1976, rallying support for the anti-Emergency campaign.
The IFD organised a ‘Satygraha March’ which began from the Independence Hall in Philadelphia on 22 September 1976 and concluded on 1 October at the UN Plaza in New York. Beforehand, the IFD sent the Prime Minister a memorandum announcing the march and offering to aid national reconstruction—if democracy was restored. It is doubtful if Indira Gandhi even read the missive in the atmosphere that prevailed at that time. Those who supported the march included Indira Gandhi`s first cousin, Nayantara Sahgal. The walk was inaugurated by Senator Eugene McCarthy, who was running as an Independent Candidate for the Presidency, and about a hundred people attended the event. Only five walkers covered the full 120-mile route, with others joining at intervals. The march ended at the UN Building, where the IFD mailed copies of its publication Indian Opinion to Indian officials. These were the times of the Emergency days, which may be difficult to comprehend now!
On 18 January 1977, Indira Gandhi made an unscheduled broadcast to the nation and announced elections in March. Before going on the air, she ordered the release of prominent politicians, including Morarji Desai, who was once Deputy Prime Minister in her cabinet. Movements like the one chronicled here may have added pressure, but Gandhi likely knew such autocracy could not last without dire consequences. The 1975 massacre of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family in Bangladesh may also have reminded her of the dictatorship’s inherent perils.
Srinivasraju’s well-researched volume vividly evokes the era and captures the Indian diaspora’s spirited resistance.
The Emergency has long been finished and done with. But is the Emergency mindset dead in India? Srinivasraju argues that the Emergency remains a “ready and default yardstick to gauge the complexities of today, and perhaps of the future too,” a view that invites debate. The Emergency mindset, many would say, remains alive. The eminent jurist Nani Palkhivala said in the context of the Emergency once, “What has happened before-can it happen again? The answer is – undoubtedly yes” (N.A. Palkhivala, Memories of the Emergency, The Indian Express, 25 June 1995). The nation would do well to remember: “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”
