How the Emergency spurred seismic shifts in Indian politics

Suddenly, the Indian State could not be trusted to protect civil liberties; it was instead a threat to civil liberties.

No other single event in Indian post-independence history has had more dramatic political consequences in the immediate term, and led to deeper structural political shifts in the long term, than the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi exactly fifty years ago.

Visitors at an exhibition organised to mark the 50th anniversary of the Emergency imposed in 1975 by then PM Indira Gandhi in New Delhi on June 25. (PTI)

The years between 1975 and 1977 altered the citizen-State relationship, created a new political culture, and triggered radically different political alignments.

The citizen-State dynamic

At a conceptual level, think of how the Indian State was seen for most part since