'Unspeakable cruelty': Shashi Tharoor writes on 'indelible scar' of Emergency, recalls Sanjay Gandhi’s role

Tharoor says how on June 25, 1975, India awoke to a new reality.

Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said that the state of emergency imposed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi 50 years ago showed how the erosion of freedom often happens.

In his opinion piece published by Project Syndicate, the Congress leader described how on June 25, 1975, India awoke to a new reality. “Prime Minister Indira Gandhi insisted that the draconian measures were necessary: only a state of emergency could combat internal disorder and external threats, and bring discipline and efficiency to a chaotic country,” he wrote.

According to him, the judiciary buckled under immense pressure to back the move, with the Supreme Court even upholding the suspension of habeas corpus and citizens’ fundamental right to liberty. “Journalists, activists, and opposition leaders found themselves behind bars. The broad constitutional transgressions enabled a horrifying litany of human-rights abuses. Torture in detention and extrajudicial killings – though less publicized at the time – were dark realities for those who dared to defy the regime,” he said.

He also pointed out how the quest for “discipline” and “order” often translated into unspeakable cruelty, “exemplified by the forced vasectomy campaigns led by Gandhi’s son, Sanjay, and concentrated in poorer and rural areas, where coercion and violence were used to meet arbitrary targets”. Tharoor said slum demolitions, carried out with ruthless efficiency in urban centers like New Delhi, rendered thousands homeless, with little to no concern for their welfare.

The Congress leader also wrote that these acts were later downplayed as unfortunate excesses. “Though the judiciary eventually found its spine, its initial faltering would not quickly be forgotten. And the period’s “excesses” caused deep and lasting harm to countless lives, leaving a legacy of trauma and mistrust in affected communities – which they demonstrated by overwhelmingly voting Gandhi and her party out of power in the first free elections after the Emergency was lifted, in March 1977,” he said.

According to Tharoor, the 50th anniversary of the declaration of the Emergency – which comes at a time of deep polarisation and challenges to democratic norms in many countries – is an occasion for historical reflection and introspection. “It reminded us that a government can lose its moral compass and sense of accountability to the people it purports to serve. And it showed how the erosion of freedom often happens: subtly at first, with the chipping away of seemingly minor liberties in the name of virtuous-sounding causes, until “family planning” and “urban renewal” become forced sterilisations and arbitrary home demolitions,” he wrote.

The Congress leader also listed three lessons learned from the Emergency. “First, freedom of information and an independent press are of paramount importance… Second, democracies depend on an independent judiciary able and willing to serve as a bulwark against executive overreach… The third lesson – perhaps the most pertinent in our current political climate – is that an overweening executive, backed by a legislative majority, can pose a grave danger to democracy, especially when that executive is convinced of its own infallibility and impatient with the checks and balances that are essential to democratic systems,” wrote Tharoor.

He also said that India of today is “not the India of 1975”. “We are a more confident, more prosperous, and, in many ways, a more robust democracy. Yet the lessons of the Emergency remain alarmingly relevant. The temptation to centralise power, to silence critics, and to bypass constitutional safeguards can emerge in many forms, often cloaked in the rhetoric of national interest or stability,” he said.

However, according to Tharoor, India should not merely remember the Emergency as a dark chapter in the nation’s history. “Let it be a constant reminder to people everywhere that democracy cannot be taken for granted; it is a precious inheritance that must be constantly nurtured and fiercely defended,” he said.