The Emergency (India)

For twenty-one months between June 1975 and March 1977, constitutional government in India was largely suspended under a state of emergency requested by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Elections were postponed, the press was censored, and over 100,000 opponents, journalists and dissenters were jailed, while campaigns of forced sterilisation and slum clearance caused widespread suffering. When Gandhi finally called elections, voters removed her party from power for the first time since independence.

Between 1967 and 1971 Indira Gandhi built up her personal control of government, splitting the Congress party in 1969 and winning a huge majority in 1971 on the slogan "Garibi Hatao", abolish poverty. Victory over Pakistan in December 1971, in the war that created Bangladesh (see the Bangladesh Liberation War), brought her to the height of her popularity. Her government clashed repeatedly with the Supreme Court, and she appointed a chief justice over the heads of three more senior judges who had ruled against her.

By 1974 the country was restless. Student protests toppled the government of Gujarat; in Bihar the veteran Gandhian socialist Jayaprakash Narayan, known as JP, called for "total revolution"; and a nationwide railway strike was harshly suppressed. Then, on 12 June 1975, the Allahabad High Court found the prime minister guilty of misusing government machinery in her 1971 campaign, voided her election and barred her from office for six years. On 24 June the Supreme Court allowed her to remain prime minister pending appeal. The next day JP told a mass rally in Delhi that police should refuse immoral orders, invoking the example of Mahatma Gandhi.

That night, shortly before midnight on 25 June 1975, President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed proclaimed an internal emergency on her advice, citing threats to the security of the state. The cabinet was told only the next morning. Within hours, electricity to major newspapers was cut and opposition leaders, including Narayan, Morarji Desai, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L. K. Advani, were under arrest. Organisations such as the RSS and Jamaat-e-Islami were banned.

The government could now rule by ordinance and amend the constitution at will. The 42nd Amendment of 1976 strengthened the executive at the expense of the courts, and elections were postponed. Official figures record nearly 35,000 arrests under the internal security law MISA and more than 75,000 under the emergency defence rules, counting criminal as well as political cases. Strikes were banned and wages frozen. The prime minister promoted a twenty-point economic programme, and prices initially fell after a strong harvest.

The prime minister's younger son, Sanjay Gandhi, wielded great informal power. From September 1976 a sterilisation drive, focused on vasectomy and driven by quotas, produced 8.3 million operations in 1976–1977, most of them reportedly forced. Slum demolitions displaced around 700,000 people in Delhi alone. How far Sanjay himself was responsible, rather than zealous officials, is still debated.

On 18 January 1977 Indira Gandhi unexpectedly called elections for March and freed some prisoners. Voting took place from 16 to 20 March. The Janata Party won 298 seats against Congress's 154, Gandhi lost her own seat to Raj Narain, and Morarji Desai became India's first non-Congress prime minister. The Emergency formally ended on 21 March 1977. Attempts to prosecute those responsible largely failed, and Gandhi returned to power in 1980. The period remains controversial. It had defenders at the time, including the industrialist J. R. D. Tata, while the Indian government now marks 25 June each year as "Murder of the Constitution Day".

Our 1960 and 1985 maps show the borders of India before and after the Emergency years.