Democracy in Retreat: Comparing the Emergency with Modi's India

The Wire

5 hours ago

Today, June 25, 2025, marks the 50th anniversary of the Emergency declared by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi – an unprecedented democratic rupture in India's republican history. Spanning from 1975 to 1977, the Emergency did not merely suspend democratic norms and undermine constitutionalism; it revealed, with brutal clarity, an authoritarian impulse cloaked in constitutional legality. While the immediate trigger was the invalidation of Gandhi's 1971 election by the Allahabad high court on charges of electoral malpractice, the broader political context – rising economic distress and growing social unrest in the late 1960s and early 1970s – set the stage.
Amid mounting protests and global condemnation, Gandhi eventually called for elections in 1977. She was decisively defeated, and India formally restored its democratic order. Yet, the political fabric of the nation had been irrevocably altered.
Half a century later, India confronts a different kind of crisis – what scholars and commentators increasingly describe as an 'undeclared emergency'. Unlike 1975, this moment is not marked by the formal suspension of rights, but by the slow, methodical erosion of constitutional values under the guise of electoral legitimacy.
Democratic backsliding in contemporary India
According to the 2025 reports by V-Dem and Freedom House, India is now classified as an 'electoral autocracy' and 'partly free', respectively. These sobering designations track the systematic democratic backsliding since 2014, coinciding with the rise of Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Among the chief causes: persecution of minorities, institutional subversion, weaponisation of legal tools against dissent, and an overt push toward Hindu nationalist ideology. These developments align with recent scholarly assessments that India is undergoing a constitutional crisis of unprecedented scale – less visible than 1975, but no less perilous.
Also read: Emergency: Declared Versus Undeclared
One of the most disturbing outcomes is the deepening communalisation of politics, often reflected in genocidal rhetoric targeting Muslims. Gregory Stanton, founder of Genocide Watch, has even warned that 'early signs of genocide are already visible in India'.
A comparative lens: 1975 and post-2014
The closest historical analogy remains the 1975 Emergency, when Gandhi declared emergency rule to protect her political survival. Through constitutional mechanisms, she suspended civil liberties, censored the press, and compromised institutional independence. Historian Gyan Prakash famously called it the 'lawful suspension of law'. Yet, it was an overt crisis – transparent in its declaration. In 1977, the Indian electorate responded decisively, voting Gandhi out of office and reaffirming the democratic spirit.
In contrast, the Modi era is more insidious. No formal declaration of Emergency has been made. Instead, institutions are being systematically hollowed out through autocratic legalism and bureaucratic capture. Judicial independence has weakened, dissent is criminalised, and laws are increasingly deployed as instruments of authoritarian control. What emerges is a parallel constitutional order – legally structured but ethically void.
Carl Schmitt's idea that "sovereign is he who decides on the exception" becomes alarmingly relevant. If Gandhi's Emergency was an extraordinary exception, Modi's governance normalises the exception itself – transforming it into a routine tool of rule. As philosopher Giorgio Agamben observes, the 'state of exception' collapses the boundary between legality and illegality. In today's India, that collapse feels almost complete.
Undermining the constitutional promise
Legal scholar Arvind Narrain argues that Modi's India represents 'a kind of State going beyond authoritarianism'. Political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot has warned of a creeping Hindu rashtra – where religious majoritarianism is intertwined with authoritarian governance. This vision is in direct contradiction to the constitutional ideals of pluralism, secularism and fraternity.
Reflecting on this decline, political theorist Pratap Bhanu Mehta – who once described India's 1950 democratic leap as 'a leap of faith for which there was no precedent in human history' – forces us to confront key questions: Why do democratic breakdowns recur in India? What sustains them? And what constitutional future do they portend?
From 1950 to the present: A democratic experiment under stress
India's democratic experiment was, from its inception, radically ambitious. At independence, global observers doubted its feasibility given its enormous diversity, social hierarchies and colonial inheritance. Yet, the Constitution granted universal adult franchise and reimagined colonial subjects as rights-bearing citizens.
Still, as B.R. Ambedkar warned, Indian democracy was built on undemocratic foundations. He called for the cultivation of constitutional morality, which remains elusive to this day. Over time, the post-independence dominance of the Congress system gave way to regional fragmentation, paving the way for populism and patronage – elements inimical to liberal democracy.
The populist fervour of the early 1970s culminated in the Emergency. Today, similar populist impulses – now turbocharged by digital platforms and mass communication – are being deployed by the Modi regime. But this time, they are rooted in a deeper ideological project, with wider and more lasting consequences.
Modi's India as autocratic legalism
Kim Lane Scheppele's concept of 'autocratic legalism' – developed in the context of Hungary – is instructive here. It describes how democratically elected leaders use legal instruments to implement illiberal goals. This includes capturing institutions, rewriting rules and co-opting civil society under the veneer of legality.
India under Modi fits this mould disturbingly well.
The reading down of Article 370, which revoked Jammu and Kashmir's special status, was executed without political consensus – circumventing federal norms central to Indian constitutionalism.
The Electoral Bonds Scheme, introduced under the pretext of campaign finance reform, has entrenched unprecedented opacity and disproportionately benefited the ruling party – while surviving years in judicial limbo, even if it is now struck down.
The Citizenship Amendment Act (2019) introduced religion as a criterion for citizenship for the first time in independent India. As political theorist Niraja Gopal Jayal notes, this move represents an attempt to redefine Indian citizenship along ethno-religious lines.
These are only illustrative examples. The broader trend reveals a calculated strategy: remaking the Indian state through democratic means to serve undemocratic ends.
The normalisation of the exception
What makes the present moment especially dangerous is not just the manipulation of the Constitution, but the entrenchment of impunity. Civil liberties are routinely violated. Laws like Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and sedition are invoked against students, activists and journalists. The 2019 amendment to UAPA allows the state to designate individuals as 'terrorists' without trial.
Legal scholar Nasser Hussain has shown how emergency laws, originally meant for exceptional circumstances, are now normalised as tools of everyday governance. Under Modi, this legal architecture of repression has expanded dramatically – undermining the very foundation of rule of law.
India is no longer drifting toward authoritarianism. It is institutionalising it.
A troubling trajectory
A comparative reflection on the 1975 Emergency and the post-2014 era reveals a troubling trajectory. Gandhi's authoritarianism was personal, visible and ultimately repudiated by the people. Modi's version is structural, ideological and – most dangerously – normalised by society.
This shift compels us to ask hard questions: Can democratic institutions endure without democratic values? Can a constitution survive when its spirit is steadily hollowed out?
On this solemn 50th anniversary of the Emergency, the question is not whether democracy is being threatened – but whether it is being slowly undone from within.
A strong and resilient democracy depends on a vigilant citizenry. The twin histories of declared and undeclared emergencies in India offer urgent lessons: democracy cannot be taken for granted. On this day, we must resolve – once again – to rescue democracy from the clutches of authoritarianism and restore it to its rightful path: rooted in constitutional values, nurtured by public accountability and sustained by collective vigilance.
Md Zeeshan Ahmad is a Delhi based lawyer.