Grand Tamasha

Christophe Jaffrelot on India’s First Dictatorship

Episode Summary

Christophe Jaffrelot joins Milan on the show this week to discuss why the Emergency was imposed, how it was imposed, and why—in the end—it was undone. Plus, the two talk about talk about parallels between the political power structure in India circa the late 1970s and today.

Episode Notes

Most people who work on India regularly refer to India as the world’s largest democracy and the most enduring democracy in the developing world. However, they often have to footnote such statements with the caveat that India experienced a twenty-one-month period of Emergency Rule in the late 1970s during which democracy was placed in cold storage.

A new book, India’s First Dictatorship--The Emergency 1975-1977, by Christophe Jaffrelot and Pratinav Anil breaks new ground in providing us with a comprehensive history and political analysis of this exceptional period. Christophe joins Milan on the show this week to discuss why the Emergency was imposed, how it was imposed, and why—in the end—it was undone. Plus, the two talk about talk about parallels between the political power structure in India circa the late 1970s and today.

Episode notes:

  1. Rohan Venkataramakrishnan, “Interview: Christophe Jaffrelot on understanding the Emergency and its relevance to Modi’s India,” Scroll.in
  2. Pratinav Anil, “The Myth of Congress Socialism,” Himal Southasian

Episode Transcription

Milan  00:11

Welcome to Grand Tamasha, a co-production of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Hindustan Times. I'm your host, Milan Vaishnav. 

 

Most of us who work on India often refer to the country as the world's largest democracy and the most enduring democracy in the developing world. However, we have to footnote such statements with the caveat that India experienced a 21-month period of emergency rule in the late 1970s in which democracy was placed in cold storage. A new book, India's First Dictatorship: The Emergency, 1975 to 1977, by Christophe Jaffrelot and Pratinav Anil, breaks new ground in providing us with a comprehensive history and political analysis of this exceptional period. The book grapples with why the Emergency was imposed, how it was imposed, and why, in the end, it was undone. Joining me to talk about the book's findings is Christophe Jaffrelot. Christophe is research director at CNRS at Sciences Po, a professor of Indian politics and sociology at the King's India Institute, and, of course, a non-resident fellow at Carnegie. I am pleased to welcome him back to the show. Christophe, good to see you. 

 

Christophe01:15

Good to see you, Milan. 

 

Milan  01:16

So, congratulations on what is an exceptional achievement in many, many ways. I want to get in very quickly to the substance, but before I do that, let me just ask you a bit about the history of this book, because it has a very long journey. You point out in the preface that you signed a contract with your publisher in the late 1990s to write a book on the Emergency. Life took various twists and turns; you published many books in between. Tell us a little bit about how the idea traveled from an idea in your head to execution. Along the way, you also have picked up a co-author, it seems.

 

Christophe01:55

Yes, exactly. This is indeed a very old project, and as you said, Michael Dwyer, the director of Hurst [Publishers] and my publisher for 25 years now, had commissioned me to write a book on the Emergency in the nineties, because I had just published with Hurst my first book, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, and I had discovered the role of the RSS and the JP movement before the Emergency. I was very much interested – there was no book on this period, no academic account of this period, the Emergency. So, we decided that we would do a book on this with Michael. But soon after, in 2000, my biography of Dr. Ambedkar was published, and then in 2005, India's Silent Revolution, on the rise of the OBCs in North India. Then I started to work on Pakistan and wrote The Pakistan Paradox – for Hurst, again. In fact, all these books were for Hurst. 

 

So, finally, two things happened and made me return to this project in the early 2010s,. When I was teaching with Sunil Khilnani at SAIS, Johns Hopkins, he gave me access to the Granville Austin papers, which comprised of the transcripts of the hearings of the Shah Commission, and these sources were very precious in almost every domain – from the Maruti story to the testimonies of particular prisoners of the regime, including the [Fernandes] brothers, for instance. That was the first factor for rejuvenating this project. And the second one was that one of my Sciences Po students, Pratinav Anil, was interested in working on these documents, which were massive. Pratinav has played a major role in the classification and digitization of these documents, which are now accessible online thanks to Stanford and Berkeley and accessible as hardcopies, so to speak – as archives – at Ashoka University. And, as you said, we became co-authors, because Pratinav is brilliant and very hardworking. And we did this book in three or four years, finally.

 

Milan  04:35

So, in the intervening period – that is, you had the idea way back in the nineties, it comes out several decades later – of course, other books had been published during that time on the Emergency. Just to name two off the top of my head, Coomi Kapoor's book called The Emergency; Gyan Prakash at Princeton has a more recent book called Emergency Chronicles. What, in your view, do you think was missing as you looked out at the larger literature? What was the kind of niche that you wanted to fill?

 

Christophe05:06

Well, I wanted to write a political science book, a book that would characterize the Emergency as a regime, and one that would also offer an explanation of the Emergency that could be used by non-Indian specialists as well. It's a case study that can fit in a comparative perspective. And also something, of course, that was needed was to use these Granville Austin papers that nobody had used before. That was, of course, very important. So, [we did it] for [both of] these two reasons, but the first one was, of course, the driving force: how could we characterize the emergency as a regime? And secondly, what made it possible? 

 

That was something I found interesting in the context of the mid-2010s, but by 2015, we saw authoritarianism staging a comeback, and somewhat propelled by similar forces of populism. So, to return to the first [question], the Indian experience or experiment with dictatorship was not only interesting from a historical point of view but from a political science point of view – this idea that authoritarianism is different from other kinds of regimes, and in contrast to post-coup or post-revolutionary forms of totalitarianism, it crystallizes only when it receives some support from other leaders beyond the rulers. And the Emergency is a very interesting case study for that because you see a very large array of supporters, from the communists to the corporate sector and, of course, the middle class that supported it as well. So, that was one of the reasons why it was not redundant, but a way to bring something new to the knowledge [with] some comparative perspective in mind.

 

Milan  07:36

One of the first questions the book tries to grapple with is, exactly what is the nature of the regime that the Emergency represents? And for our listeners who are not political scientists, I would venture to say that this is not merely an academic question: unless you understand the contours and the dynamics of the regime, you really can't understand how it came to be, what sustained it, and what eventually undid it in the end. You and your co-author reject the idea that the Emergency was a totalitarian regime, but you do find that it was an authoritarian regime, although not a very straightforward, linear one. In fact, one of the most interesting things you document is that the nature of the Emergency regime actually exhibits variation over time. So, as a political scientist, how would you characterize this particular “species,” if you will, of authoritarianism?

 

Christophe08:30

Well, we call it in chapter one a constitutional dictatorship, and I think that's the starting point. Because there is nothing illegal there. It is promulgated by the President of the Republic according to Article 352 of the Constitution; this promulgation is validated by the government, passed by Parliament; it goes to both houses. And, certainly, thousands of opponents are arrested, but key institutions continue to function. The Lok Sabha, the Rajya Sabha – the lower house, the upper house – hold their sessions with opposition MPs who have not resigned even after their term is over; these two houses pass laws, amend the Constitution. Parties and trade unions are not banned – politicians are behind bars in large numbers, trade unionists are behind bars in large numbers, but the parties and the unions are not banned. And the judiciary is unaffected – they continued to do their job. 

 

And nobody resists. I mean, few people resist, and none of them from these institutions. And the Supreme Court validates all the laws and the amendments to the Constitution reducing freedoms, including the famous habeas corpus case. So, it's a very specific kind of regime indeed. 

 

And you can, of course, not call it totalitarian, but even within the wide range of varieties of authoritarianism, it's a very specific kind of authoritarian regime, and in the book, we refer to the typology of authoritarian regimes that Juan Linz initiated and revisited till he died, in fact, because that's a very good guide for understanding the specificity of this regime. And the type that fits the best is “sultanism,” a political system where the leaders enjoy discretionary power with the help of cronies and thanks to a certain privatization of violence. So, the concentration of power in the hands of Mrs. Gandhi and her son Sanjay Gandhi plays a key role, in contrast to other authoritarian regimes, which would rely on a party, on an organization. Mrs. Gandhi had no organization behind her, she had to fall back on the bureaucracy – that was the only organization she could use. In fact, Sanjay, in particular, used bureaucrats like Jagmohan, the man in charge of urban planning in Delhi. But it's true that Sanjay also used, to some extent, a kind of private army, the Nehru brigade. But that was not as significant as what a proper vigilante group can be.

 

Milan  11:51

I just want to highlight something that you said that is truly remarkable, which is that there was nothing illegal in the institution of the Emergency. And that raises a larger point, which is that many of the laws and instruments that Indira Gandhi used during this period were laws already on the books. There were tools already in the toolbox, on the shelf, waiting to be used and waiting to be misused. In other words, there was a certain kind of continuity – and you point this out – between the earlier democratic regime and this new authoritarian regime. So, I guess the question it begs is, did Indira actually have to innovate at all when it comes to the kind of instrumentalities of governance?

 

Christophe12:37

In the conclusion of the book, we write that, indeed, to some extent, the Emergency is a case of more of the same rather than a break with the past. You're right: what is particularly interesting is to see that Mrs. Gandhi is using provisions that are there in the Constitution, like Article 352, or laws that had been passed before, like MISA, the famous Maintenance of Internal Security Act that was there before she had passed it in the early seventies, or the Defense of India rules – all these instruments were at their disposal. 

 

So, she did innovate in two ways. First of all, she radically transformed the Constitution, making the executive unaccountable to the judiciary and [thereby] contesting the fundamental structural thesis that was sacrosanct till then. And this is the legacy of the early seventies – of the populist repertoire that she adopted to fight the Supreme Court in the early seventies. In that sense, there is a lot of continuity. She did not want the judges to decide what was good for the people. The people had voted, and she didn't want to indulge in the “tyranny of the unelected” – this is a phrase by Arun Jaitley. The “tyranny of the unelected” is something that, of course, no populist is happy with. And suddenly, she uses state power in a radical way: more of the same in terms of sterilization, yes, [but] much more of the same, because certainly before there were campaigns of sterilization, but nothing of the magnitude of what India saw in '76. Same with slum clearances in the name of anti-encroachment drives and city beautification. The poor experienced that before, but never on such a scale. So, these are the two “innovations” that she introduced.

 

Milan  15:04

I want to ask you a question about ideology, because this is somewhere that I found myself actually reflecting on some misperceptions I had had. You argue that the ideological premises of the Emergency – Indira Gandhi famously launched this twenty-point program – were neither straightforward left-of-center socialism nor traditional right-wing conservatism as we understand it. The policies she rolled out, you argue, are consistent with a “populist authoritarianism” mixed with “corporatism.” And I think most of us use as a kind of shorthand that Indira doubled down on leftist policies, but the story isn't so simple, is it?

 

Christophe15:55

Like most populists, Mrs. Gandhi had a proper discourse, but her policies did not match this discourse that was enshrined in her twenty-points program. The twenty-points program was really schizophrenic, you know. You have half of these points in favor of the people and half of these points almost in favor of the owners of the factories where the poor are supposed to work. 

 

Now, the poor have not benefited much from Mrs. Gandhi's policies. And this is, I think, the landmark of populism. The populist is not for redistribution – the populist is much more for status quo. And in the case of land reform, she had promised much, and she did not deliver. She did deliver more than what she had done before the Emergency, but only slightly more. Similarly, the abolition of bonded labor did not materialize because there was no alternative to moneylenders. In fact, they did not try to create alternatives. Pranab Mukherjee was in charge of this, and Dr. Mukherjee did not act very quickly on that front. Similarly, house sites were not provided to many people. They were to some extent, but not as much as promised. So, you can't say the Emergency was pro-poor in any way. 

 

By contrast, the Emergency introduced a productivist discipline: strikes were banned, the number of workdays lost for that reason dropped dramatically, and in parallel, the bonus of 8% of the wages that Mrs. Gandhi herself had introduced in '71 was abolished. So, it's not a pro-poor system as much as a pro-business one – you can even say [that this is a] corporatist system, and this system is corporatist because the representation of class interest is delegitimized. Trade unions are not banned, but thousands of unions are behind bars, and unions have to fit into a new system of representation that is intended to promote class collaboration. Workers and businessmen are required to sit in the national apex body and to cooperate in formalizing the Indian economy… Really, you see how the real beneficiaries are not the poor, but those who make the poor work for them. And it is probably – if we look at the Emergency as this turning point – the moment when liberalization, or if you want, a supply-side-oriented kind of economic policy, is initiated for the first time in India.

 

Milan  19:08

Christophe, I want to ask you about a shift in the book between the years 1975 and 1976. In the latter year, Indira Gandhi's son, Sanjay Gandhi, emerges as a much more central protagonist, I guess we could say, in the story, where we see even more ruthlessness, even more centralization. Could you help us understand the shift from phase one to phase two? Was there a clear-cut point that delineated the two, or was it a kind of a gradual transition? How do we understand these two phases?

 

Christophe19:44

Well, there is no exact date for this transition. Sanjay was already very active before. He was very much there. The day the emergency was declared, in fact, he was the one who gave a ring to the chief ministers. He was the one who was also behind the sidelining of I.K. Gujral, who was sent as ambassador to the USSR because Sanjay thought he was not as good as V.C. Shukla as the information and broadcasting minister. So, Sanjay was there from day one, but he asserted himself and he developed a personal power structure gradually. 

 

And you can say that this new balance of power became very obvious when the Youth Congress had its convention in November ’76. November of ’76 is, in a way, the culmination of this rise of Sanjay, who had already for years built his primary power structure. He had appointed very close friends at important posts – Bansal became defense minister; Om Mehta was the [home minister]. And in fact, it's interesting: Sanjay[-appointed] ministers – Om Mehta, Pranab Mukherjee, younger ministers – were, in fact, much more effective than their seniors who had been appointed by Indira. 

 

So, you had this kind of parallel structure. But by November 29, 1976, you see that Mrs. Gandhi let him grow and acknowledged that Sanjay is very dynamic. The Youth Congress [perhaps was] at last the cadre-based party she was longing for – she wanted to transform the Congress Party into a cadre-based party as early as the early seventies, but that did not work. And she let him appoint at the helm of Youth Congress people who had no political culture. You can even say that there was a kind of lumpenization of the Youth Congress, and therefore of Congress. And many of these newcomers will stay – they will never leave Congress. Many of them are still here. 

 

So, Sanjay, in that sense, made quite a strong impact. ‘76 is definitely the year of Sanjay, and the moment when he asserted himself as the real power – at least, the real power behind [the Emergency].

 

Milan  22:52

Just as an aside, you highlight one of the things that I think is of particular interest to you and I, which is the criminalization of politics. This was an inflection point. Atul Kohli in his book talks about the rise of “Sanjay culture” – you talk about the lumpenization, the mainstreaming, as it were, of criminals, not just as players on the periphery, but very much as people who were given tickets to contest state and national elections, who were put in positions of authority. And, as you say, once they were in, they had no incentive to remove themselves.

 

One of the fascinating parts of the book – and I think it's sort of there in our minds sometimes, but you have actually gathered empirical data to sustain it – is this unevenness of the Emergency, where you point out that the very worst of the Emergency’s excesses were found where Sanjay and his small clique ruled supreme. That was in places like Haryana, Delhi, Western Uttar Pradesh; the further you traveled from the Capitol, the weaker the effects of the Emergency were – not entirely, but to a certain degree. Is this just about geographic proximity to the Center, or is there something else – politically or sociologically – going on that explains the unevenness? 

 

Christophe24:22

Well, it's a mixture of both, I think. Clearly, for Mrs. Gandhi and Sanjay to control Delhi and its periphery was a priority and was easier. Note that their network was not that dense, after all – they did not have a strong party apparatus to rely upon, for instance. But it's also a reflection of the structure of political power in India at that time. Congress remained very well entrenched in the Hindi belt, but weak beyond this middle region, and this weakness can be attributed to two different factors. One, there were strong opposition parties beyond the Hindi belt: Akali Dal, Congress (O) in Gujarat, CPI(M) in Kerala, DMK in Tamil Nadu. By the way, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat remained governed by non-Congress parties throughout the Emergency, which makes it even more baroque. 

 

Milan  25:35

And you highlight them as centers of the resistance, in a sense.

 

Christophe25:38

Definitely. Gujarat was, for instance, the place where the Baroda conspiracy case originated because it was a place where the opponents could find refuge. So, you had this explanation: yes, at the periphery, at least beyond the Hindi belt, you have opposition parties. But you also have Congress bosses who are still rather strong, and that's in a way a legacy of Nehru's Congress system, when you could not do [anything] but recognize strong party bosses at the state level. So, in Karnataka, for instance, Devaraj Urs was very much on his own, and therefore the Emergency was not the same. It was not at all marked by mass sterilization, the way it was up in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh.

 

Milan  26:44

I want to ask you a little bit about the factors that led into the Emergency, because I think a lot of the focus tends to be on two proximate forces. One is clearly the rise of a kind of oppositionist JP, Jayaprakash Narayan, movement. The second, of course, is this landmark Allahabad High Court judgment, which invalidated Mrs. Gandhi's election. You certainly give credence to both of these factors, although you argue that those are really proximate factors. But there are two deeper, perhaps more structural factors at work, right? So, one is clearly Mrs. Gandhi's own psychology and temperament. But the second, also – and I think this is very important is the de-institutionalization of the Congress Party and of the government more generally. What do these two factors add, do you think, to the kind of conventional narrative, which tends to focus much more on the proximate ones?

 

Christophe27:40

They add something very important, because when you have to explain something like the Emergency, immediate causes are not enough. You need to understand what made it possible, what makes the imposition of an authoritarian regime possible. And one major condition of possibility lay in the de-institutionalization of Congress, a process that started in the late sixties, in fact. During their rule, as I was saying, the Congress system relied on state party bosses who had a strong regional basis, and they were so strong that Nehru had to consult them all the time. In '69, the split resulted in the departure of many party bosses from the Congress, and the concentration of power in the hands of Mrs. Gandhi gained momentum after the '71 election. Then she was in a position to appoint “yes-men” as chief ministers and even as ministers [of parliament]. 

 

So, that was the turning point. Before the Emergency, you can say the conditions for the Emergency to take place were already in place, because when on the 25th of June 1975 she imposed the Emergency, she summons a cabinet meeting that will last 30 minutes, and in 30 minutes, nobody really objected. And Sanjay gives a phone call to the chief ministers, and none of them objected. They could not – they were the creatures of Mrs. Gandhi. So, you see how that makes it possible. It's not the root cause of the Emergency, but the fact that the party was now in the hands of a couple of leaders, that made it possible.

 

Milan  29:43

Of course, there was very little resistance from within the Congress. But one of the most disquieting findings of your book – even when you look at sections of the media, the judiciary, civil society, even the political opposition – is how so many people and institutions “crawled when they were merely asked to bend,” right? This is a phrase which has recently re-entered our lexicon given recent events in India. Now, obviously, part of this has to do with fear, intimidation, but you emphasize something different, which is beyond those factors: there was a shallowness of democratic culture. So, even when it comes to the Jana Sangh or the RSS and the various elements of the Sangh Parivar, they were not necessarily, you argue, straightforward defenders of democracy. Why not?

 

Christophe30:37

Well, in the case of the Sangh Parivar, this is not too difficult to explain. The kind of democracy that India had enshrined in its constitution in 1950 was not their cup of tea, and during the Emergency, they made it clear that to lift the ban on the RSS was their only priority, and Balasaheb Deoras, the RSS chief, wrote two letters to Mrs. Gandhi saying that RSS would support her if she lifted the ban. But other politicians were negotiating with her in parallel, including Charan Singh, and many MPs preferred to return their seats rather than fight the regime, even after their term was over, as I said – to the chagrin of the few committed ones, like Madhu Limaye, who said, “What the hell are you doing? You're just making this regime even more legitimate.” So, politicians indeed did not show such a deep commitment to democracy in many ways, except clear exceptions and remarkable exceptions. 

 

But beyond politicians, Supreme Court judges fell in line. Fali Nariman was the only lawyer who resigned. Few journalists resisted. Most of the people adjusted, in fact. This is the word: they *adjusted* to the new dispensation, and observers like Kuldip Nayar who had anticipated a revolt in the case of the imposition of any authoritarian regimes were taken aback because they could not make sense of this passivity. They thought the people would demonstrate en masse

 

So, yes, these can be seen as a reflection of the shallowness of democratic culture. This is what I'm working on these days, because that was the most striking discovery we made, and one of the explanations we suggest in the book has to do with what Dr. Ambedkar called “hero worship.” Hero worship makes it possible for citizens to obey. And I call this the “strong man syndrome” or the “strong woman syndrome.” Citizens are prepared – and maybe in India more prepared than in other societies – to accept the diktat of a leader provided he or she displayed charisma. And charisma is a very important notion here. I drew this from, of course, Max Weber's sociology, and in Weber's sociology, charisma is not necessarily based on virtuous deeds... It's defined as the quality of an individual who does extraordinary things, and Mrs. Gandhi had done things which were extraordinary. After all, she had broken Pakistan into two pieces, she had tested the first nuclear device, and she had imposed the Emergency. This is not good, but it's extraordinary, and people are mesmerized. So, you have this respect for the strong man or the strong woman. That has, probably, cultural roots, and that probably neutralizes some of the democratic culture.

 

Milan  34:25

You know, one of the biggest puzzles of this period is Mrs. Gandhi's decision to hold elections in 1977, thereby ending the Emergency period. Of course, we know the outcome of that election – the Congress was utterly routed by the Janata coalition – and you talk a little bit about the factors and the miscalculations that perhaps went into that. But, to me, the even bigger puzzle – and I understand that it's outside the timeline of this book – is why the voters, just a mere two years later, 1980, vote Mrs. Gandhi in the Congress back to power with a single party majority yet again after this Janata government collapses. Of course, this isn't a subject of the book, but I couldn't help but ask: given that you've thought about this period more than most, do you have a better understanding of how we might explain what would seem like a surprising result in 1980? You have the Emergency, you get kicked out, and then you get brought back in just two years later.

 

Christophe35:23

Well, I've not looked at the few opinion polls we may have to make sense of the 1980 elections, but some ethnographic studies are very telling and suggest, I would say, three explanations. 

 

First, for many people, the Emergency was just more of the same. Except mass sterilization, how different was life for slum dwellers, already victims of anti-encroachment drives, and for the landless peasants – who, by the way, might have received some more land than before during the Emergency? So, that's one explanation, and I think it's a very important aspect that we scholars tend to miss. Because those who have no voice, well, we never hear them. In that particular case, they might not have voted differently because in many cases, they might have not felt a substantial difference. 

 

But then there is another explanation that ethnographic studies [offer that is very interesting]. The victims, when they have suffered, [do not attribute] what happened during the Emergency to Mrs. Gandhi. Mrs. Gandhi is beyond accountability. Now, that's what you find in the book by Emma Tarlo, Unsettling Memories – she has interviewed people who had been victims of the Emergency fifteen to twenty years later, and none of them would consider that she was responsible for what happened. 

 

Now you have to go back to Vasily Grossman for understanding what it reflects in terms of erosion, and that's that the third explanation... [there was the belief that] India needs a strong leader – even if we have to suffer, we do have to rally around a strong leader. This is the strong woman syndrome again. Especially after the fiasco of the other party government, that a party could not stay together for more than two years – [people believed that] India needs a strong leader, and they give a weak government. We are back to this, I would say, psychological explanation that explains also why democratic culture may be shallow. And that reflects, I think, a deep sense of authority rooted in a sense of social hierarchy and patriarchy, and probably also a deep sense of vulnerability, especially among Hindus who have been described as [inaudible] by the British, who feel others, including neighbors, [are] reformers who may destabilize society. Authority is very important. So, [they feel that,] yes, she did the Emergency, but [it is better to] have someone who did the Emergency and can lead the country as a strong leader rather than a weak prime minister.

 

Milan  39:05

Well, I can't let you leave, Christophe, without asking you to reflect on the current period. Many scholars, including people like Pratap Bhanu Mehta and others, have argued that what India is currently experiencing is an undeclared Emergency. And without getting into the merits or demerits of this argument, I want to ask you if you could reflect for a moment on the guardrails protecting Indian democracy circa 2021. When you look back at the mid-1970s, you found that many of those guardrails, many of those institutions, many of those norms in fact were either non-existent or badly wanting. As you look out at the scene today, what is the state of India's democratic guardrails in your opinion? 

 

Christophe39:53

Well, there are many similarities so far as guardrails are concerned. Within the ruling party, the BJP, today power is also concentrated in the hands of two leaders. Many institutions are weak or will have been weakened, including the Election Commission, the CBI, the CBC, and of course, the Supreme Court. Laws protecting democracy have been diluted, including the RTI Act and the Whistleblowers Act, among others. Many representatives of the mainstream media have fallen in line for other reasons than censorship – you may also get similar results without censorship. And the role of money in politics is not regulated the way it should be in a proper democracy. Now, the electoral bonds are making the system even more opaque, for instance.

 

Milan  40:56

And here – just to interrupt you for a second – there is an analogue, which is Mrs. Gandhi's 1969 decision to ban corporate donations to political parties without using that opportunity to institute a system of public financing right, which essentially then de facto and de jure shoved political funding underground. So, it predated the Emergency, but it really helped to kick off this period of opaque political finance, which has only become more opaque.

 

Christophe41:26

Definitely. And, you know, the subtext is crony capitalism. And we are living in an era of crony capitalism again. Cronies are playing a major role, and they played a major role at that time, too – the role of K.K. Birla, among others, during the Emergency is a case in point. 

 

No, there are many similarities, indeed. And you can certainly say that the brand of sultanism that was there in the seventies is also there [today] to some extent. But there is still a major difference, I think, and it has to do with ideology – that the country's rulers today have an ideological project in mind. Mrs. Gandhi had no ideology, and her Emergency was atrocious but largely improvised. In contrast, today, the rulers want to transform India into Russia in the long term, and they are the tip of the iceberg – there is an organization that can sustain this new form of polity in the long run. And that's why I call this a statist project as much as a vigilante project: we have a brand of authoritarianism that aims at establishing a vigilante state that imposes a certain identity and a certain lifestyle on the citizens. In that sense, the categories of Juan Linz do not apply, because for Juan Linz, an authoritarian regime has no ideology. We have certainly another animal in the making in India today.

 

Milan  43:29

I'd like to just follow up on one thing, Christophe, before I let you go, which is that a lot of people look at the evolution of Indian politics in the party system and say we've now encountered a second dominant party system akin to the first dominant party system. Of course, under the Congress – where we had an apex leader in Indira Gandhi, and now we have an apex leader in Narendra Modi – many of the institutions today that we accuse of being weak – the judiciary, accountability institutions, even federalism – were undermined even then. So, what is really different? Is it just a reversion to the mean, as it were? If I'm understanding you right, you're arguing that while those similarities may hold, the difference is in ideology and therefore, I guess, the vision of the nation. Is that right? 

 

Christophe44:20

Yes. And that's why, for me, it's not so much a different party system, it's a different political system, because what is at stake is the Constitution of India. It's a different regime, it's not only a different political competition within the existing regime, and it makes a difference of kind, not of degree. This is something we will be in a better position to appreciate after five, ten, fifteen years, but already after six years – many countries change so quickly in six years. It is, I think, a reflection of not only the weaknesses of the guardrails, as we were saying, but the intensity of the mobilization and of the penetration of the state apparatus. So, it's a different republic, indeed, that is emerging.

 

Milan  45:28

So, Christophe, one last thing – this seems to be a perfect segue to plug your next book. Tell us about your forthcoming book on the contemporary moment, soon to be published by Princeton University Press. Could you just give us a quick 30-second preview?

 

Christophe45:43

Yes. There are three parts in this book. In fact, the first one is trying to understand how Modi could rise to power. What did he bring to the BJP that the BJP did not get before? So, it's a part that begins with the Gujarat years and ends with the 2014 elections. Then there is a part on the ethnic democracy that India is becoming with the promotion of Hinduism at the expense of secularism and the way minorities are at the receiving end. And the last part is on the transition from populism to authoritarianism, with, of course, the de-institutionalization of India as the main focus, and the 2019 elections as also an important moment making competition an uneven level playing field. And of course the story for me is the way the anti-CAA movement has been dealt with, and the plea of the minorities in a democracy that is not necessarily only a de facto ethnic democracy anymore but probably more and more a de jure ethnic democracy, with new laws transforming Muslims into second-class citizens. So, that's where I stop, but of course there will be a follow up.

 

Milan  47:46

Well, we hope that you will come back and talk about this next book, because of course it will be of great interest. But congratulations on this. My guest on the show this week has been Christophe Jaffrelot. He is the co-author with Pratinav Anil of the fascinating new book India's First Dictatorship: The Emergency, 1975 to 1977. I know that your forthcoming book has had a – maybe not equally long journey, but a very long journey. And congratulations. Those of us mere mortals wonder at your productivity and the amount of time you have in the day that you extract so much out of. But thank you for sharing a small bit of that time with us.

 

Christophe48:29

Thank you, Milan. Thanks a lot.