On 25 June 1975, the prime minister Indira Gandhi declared Emergency, marking the beginning of one of the darkest periods of Indian democracy. During this period, the country witnessed censures on the press, forced sterilisation of over six million citizens, large-scale demolition of slums, mass arrests of political leaders, and an authoritarian regime that exercised excessive control over the country’s executive and judiciary. At the forefront of this subversion of public institutions and suppression of rights were Indira and her son, Sanjay, who personally oversaw the sterilisation programme. Yet, this period was also marked by the Indian business and intellectual elite eulogising the Gandhis despite the terror they wreaked upon the nation. In his first book, Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India, the journalist Kapil Satish Komireddi writes a critical political history of post-Independence India, and how decades of rule under a corrupt Congress establishment led to the rise of Narendra Modi and the Hindutva nation. Komireddi divided the book in two parts—“Antecedents” and “India under Modi”—to show how the actions of political leaders such as Indira, Sanjay and Rajiv Gandhi contributed to the Hindu nationalism currently prevailing in India. In the following excerpt, he discusses how the Emergency and Indira’s rule have often been falsely characterised as the “summit of Indian ‘socialism,’” and why that is far from the truth. “Socialism, like much else, was a meaningless catchword camouflaging the gangsterisation of Indian politics,” Komireddi writes. “Divide and rule, the doctrine imputed to the British by Indian nationalists, was now the animating philosophy of the party that succeeded them.” Read the excerpt here: caravanmagazine.in/politics/…