In the nineteenth episode, I speak to Pratinav Anil, PhD Candidate, University of Oxford about his recently co-authored book (with Christophe Jaffrelot) India’s First Dictatorship: The Emergency, 1975–1977 published by Hurst in December 2020. The book examines Indira and Sanjay Gandhi's authoritarianism, Jayaprakash Narayan's muddled politics, how the RSS gained respectability, how the Indian state, business and labour adapted to the changes Indira Gandhi wrought, and the causes and end of the Emergency. The conversation begins by asking what Anil’s initial ideas were about the emergency before beginning the book and how that evolved through research and writing. Next, we cover different parts of the book including the political economy of the emergency, why they refer to the government as a 'constitutional dictatorship', Sanjay Gandhi’s catastrophic impact, the parallel power structure he created to wreak havoc and why he was not reined in earlier, the causes and spatial effects of the emergency or why the effects were sequestered to the Hindi heartbelt and why they think the Emergency was not a critical event but a continuation of oppressive policies imposed on the Indian public.
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