“Thinking Freedom in Prison: Indira Gandhi’s Emergency, 1975-77” lecture by Gyan Prakash

On June 25, 1975, Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in India, suspending constitutional rights and rounding up her political opponents in midnight raids. In the twenty-one harrowing months that followed, her regime unleashed a brutal campaign of coercion and intimidation. Drawing on prison diaries and letters, Prakash examines how the imprisoned leaders thought about democracy and the phenomenology of the loss of freedom behind bars and argues that the political crisis in India formed part of a larger global moment during the late 1960s and the early 1970s when ruling regimes around the world faced upheavals from below.