‘The Conscience Network’ by Sugata Srinivasaraju chronicles a diasporic protest against Emergency

It is a curious fact of our politico-intellectual life that the authoritarian moments in democratic systems generally receive much greater attention than democratic moments in authoritarian systems. In the great contest between democracy and authoritarianism, democracy has come to be seen as the norm, and authoritarianism as a deviation from the norm. The imposition of Emergency during 1975-77 is clearly one such moment.

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‘The Conscience Network’ gives us a flavour of this conjuncture in Indian politics. It is primarily not the story of the Emergency, nor one of the great resistance against it. It has chosen one slice from the larger story of the Emergency. It tells the story of some Indians living in America who took upon themselves the responsibility of waging an ethical struggle in the US against the excesses of the Emergency.

India in the 1970s had begun its retreat from the exalted heights of the 1950s and ’60s. The hangover of the freedom struggle had begun to fade away. The protagonists of the book, however, still carried the idealism of the previous decades. They nurtured ideas of returning to India and participating in the struggles for social emancipation. They knew that the existence of democracy was virtually a pre-condition for any such struggle. Even the struggle for democracy needed a democratic space, not available in an authoritarian regime. Their patriotism was also wounded by the negative image India acquired in the West because of the Emergency.

In the western press, the democratic interlude of the 1950s and ’60s was seen as an aberration. They did not see India as capable of acquiring and nurturing democracy with the help of its own political-ideological resources. The imposition of Emergency simply enabled them to declare that the dream run of democracy was over. India, as per this view, was not very different from other Third World countries that had gained independence after the Second World War. The protagonists of the book — Anand Kumar, SR Hiremath and Ravi Chopra, among others — were perturbed by this projection of India and wanted to tell the world, Americans in particular, that it was not democracy but the Emergency that was an aberration.

America in the 1970s was in a great ferment, politically and intellectually. The Vietnam War had shaken up important segments of American society. The Watergate scandal had tumbled out of the cupboards of American politics. The movements for civil rights had gathered momentum. Martin Luther King had done enough to stir the conscience of white Americans. It seemed that the America of the ’60s was in a rebellion against America of the ’50s. In spite of all its insularity and ethno-centricism, the political landscape of America in the ’70s was very conducive for an ethical struggle of outside Indians against the violation of the rights of their fellow Indians, in India. The 1960s had created enough moral space in American society to encourage and support such a struggle.

Anand Kumar, SR Hiremath and Ravi Chopra knew this and made good use of it in their protest. They got together and set up an organisation, Indians for Democracy (IFD). It was decided to keep the IFD ideologically flexible. There were efforts both from the Right and the Left to pull it closer to them. The Left wingers in particular wanted to project it as a revolutionary struggle. But the leaders of the IFD were too committed to the basic orientation of the national movement to allow the appropriation of their struggle either towards the Left or the Right direction. They visited universities, conducted lecture tours, got in touch with the civil society activists and trade union leaders of America. They also made good use of the American press.

The IFD fashioned its struggle like a satyagraha, a moral-ethical endeavour to reach out to the minds and hearts of the people in the interests of justice and liberty. The leaders of the IFD were fully aware that even a mild civil libertarian movement — the kind they had launched in the US — was not possible in India. Theirs was a surrogate struggle, a substitute to the struggle that should have been launched in India. The book tells the story of this struggle along with the life stories of its main protagonists.

There is, however, a complex and subtle sub-script in the book. It oscillates between a laudable anti-authoritarianism and a visceral anti-Congressism. Often the two categories collapse into each other. This is perhaps inevitable while discussing the Emergency. But the distinctions between the two begin to show up when there are references to other authoritarian moments in Indian politics, which are unmistakably treated with kid gloves. All authoritarianisms are considered as bad. But some deserve special condemnation while others can simply be sociologised!

The significance of the IFD movement lay not so much in what it achieved but in the earnestness with which its leaders pursued their goal. They dared and dreamt and thus kept the utopia alive. History need not always be about the grand and the spectacular. It can be equally instructive in small and brief episodes.

— The reviewer is a Visiting Faculty at BM Munjal University, Manesar