State of Emergency

“Dictatorship in India” is a pamphlet published in 1976 by the U.S. Socialist Workers Party, at the time a Trotskyist organization in political solidarity with the Fourth International. The pamphlet deals with Indira Gandhi's State of Emergency in India, which lasted from 1975 to 1977. Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister and the leader of the Congress Party, the dominant party. India has been a parliamentary democracy since independence, but in 1975 Indira Gandhi's government responded to massive protests and electoral defeats by a “self-coup”, suspending the constitution and ordering mass arrests of opposition leaders, the banning of strikes, etc.

The SWP and their co-thinkers in India, the Communist League, were extremely pessimistic about the prospects. The pamphlet argues that India will become a dictatorship permanently and that the resistance of the working class is crushed. The Communist League advances a program of democratic and basic economic demands against the Emergency, rather than the revolutionary sloganeering typical of Trotskyist groups. Since Indira Gandhi had a leftist and populist image, large portions of the articles are devoted to exposing her as a servant of the Indian bourgeoisie, and her “20 point program” as a sham (the program sounded left-wing). The SWP attacks the Communist Party of India (CPI), which supported Ms Gandhi and the Emergency. The CPI took its cues from the Soviet Union, which had friendly relations with India due to Cold War line-ups. Since many right-wing organizations (including Hindu nationalists) participated in the protests against Indira Gandhi's government, it was easy for the CPI to portray the Emergency as a blow against “reaction” or “fascism”.

On two points, “Dictatorship in India” is somewhat surprising. It contains an article by one Mary Tyler, a British woman who was arrested in India in 1970, accused of being a “Naxalite” (a Maoist insurgent). She was imprisoned without trial for five years, until international pressure secured her release. Her article deals with the dismal conditions in Indian prisons. However, since the SWP opposed the Naxalites, I wonder why this piece was included at all? Second, the SWP uses the common but absurd argument that China is better than India “since nobody starves in China”, an argument which overlooks the 30 million dead under the Great Leap Forward! This is surprising since the SWP opposed Mao's regime, regarding it as Stalinist.

Today, “Dictatorship in India” is probably of limited interest only, and the pamphlet is no longer distributed by SWP's publishing arm Pathfinder. Still, if you are an advanced student of modern Indian history, I suppose this might be interesting to read…