The Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad, hosted a book discussion on “50 Years of the Indian Emergency,” edited by Peter Ronald deSouza and Harsh Sethi. The event brought together experts, scholars, and students to explore the nuances of this defining moment in India’s democratic journey.
The book adopts a multi-disciplinary approach to understand this pivotal moment in India’s history and presents a comprehensive framework on how the Emergency shaped India’s democracy through political, historical, legal, economic, philosophical, experiential, and cultural perspectives. While positioning the Emergency within a historical narrative and conducting an extensive literature review, the book also discusses lesser-known aspects, such as poetry and letter exchanges.
The book primarily explores three key questions: why the Emergency was imposed, what happened during the Emergency, and when it was lifted. Notably, the book brings forth lesser-known perspectives, including the Dalit perspective on the Emergency. This rigorously researched volume establishes the 1975 episode as a negative standard against which we should continue to evaluate ourselves as a democratic state.
The discussion was chaired by Jyotirmaya Sharma from the Department of Political Science and featured insightful contributions from renowned historian and author Sumanta Banerjee, as well as Anagha Ingole and KK Kailash from the Department of Political Science.