Indira Gandhi's Emergency in India

On the night of June 25 to 26, 1975, India's government declared a national Emergency, and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ruled by decree for the next 21 months. The government suspended civil liberties, arrested opposition leaders including Jayaprakash Narayan and Morarji Desai, and censored the press. More than 100,000 people were detained without trial. Parliament's term was extended, and the 42nd Amendment, passed in 1976, enlarged the powers of the central government.¹³

The trigger was a crisis of legitimacy. On June 12 the Allahabad High Court found Gandhi guilty of electoral malpractice in her 1971 campaign and barred her from office. At the same time a mass movement led by Narayan, driven by inflation, unemployment and corruption, was calling on the police and army to disobey illegal orders. Gandhi's government used Article 352 of the 1950 Constitution, which allows an emergency in the face of internal disturbance, to turn an election dispute into a suspension of democracy. President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed signed the proclamation at her request.²

The Emergency brought forced sterilization drives, led by her son Sanjay Gandhi, which sterilized millions of men, and slum demolitions in Delhi. Newspapers printed blank editorial columns in protest before the censors tightened their grip. In January 1977 Gandhi unexpectedly called an election. In March the voters turned out her Congress party for the first time since independence, and she lost her own seat. The new Janata government under Morarji Desai repealed many of the Emergency's changes, and the period is remembered as India's darkest test of democracy.¹²³⁴