From Tryst to Tendulkar: The History of Independent India by Viswanathan Balaji

Author:Viswanathan, Balaji [Viswanathan, Balaji]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2014-12-24T18:30:00+00:00

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Chapter 9: The First Female Dictator

The President has proclaimed a state of emergency. This is nothing to panic about.

-- Indira Gandhi on All India Radio (July 2, 1975)

She [Indira] listened to them [my views] even when I was five years old.

-- Sanjay Gandhi

Politicians, like underwear, should be changed often, and for the same reasons.

-- A popular American saying

The Indian middle class has always had a strange fantasy for dictatorship. Controversial dictators like Hitler, Putin, and Mao have strong fans among different factions of urban India. Many sections of the middle class feel that India might have been better under a strong leader.

This sentiment is echoed by this poem by the Vice Chairman of the Delhi Development Authority, who lamented his inability to clean up the capital city, plagued by bureaucratic red tape. He dreamt of the creators of great cities like Paris and Washington D.C. and is sad that he cannot emulate them.

No Haussmann reborn

No Lutyens with a chance

Nor Corbusier with Nehru’s arms

I am a little fellow

An orphan of these streets

-- Jagmohan (Vice Chairman of the Delhi Development Authority)

In 1975, the Indian middle class would finally get a chance to see what a dictatorship was like. India elected the world's second ever female Prime Minister and made her into the first female dictator. Indian democracy faced its world test as Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed emergency, taking the country towards a path of dictatorship.

The 1970s were the saddest time for many democracies all over the world. Amidst high inflation, unemployment, and the Middle East crisis, democracies across the world grappled with plenty of existential crises. In the US, Nixon and Agnew were threatening the foundation of US democracy by outright rigging and corruption. Both the President and Vice President were forced to exit in a period of a couple of years.

Journalists all over the world penned the obvious end of Indian democracy - a complete anomaly. Among the largest nations by population, the USA was the only other democracy and it was an anomaly in itself. And among the poorest nations, none was a democracy. India was both poor and huge. It had no business being a democracy, its detractors derisively wrote.

Mahatma Gandhi brought India's freedom movement to the fore with his Satyagraha in Champaran in the eastern state of Bihar. Another Gandhian, Jayaprakash Narayan, would attempt the same from the same state. Will India survive as a democracy and escape the marauding chaos that was enveloping it?

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