Delhi Diary

At various times in 2015—the 40th anniversary of the Emergency—various worthies in the Narendra Modi government found it necessary, in a way that would have interested Sigmund Freud, to remind the country that there was no likelihood of a similar misadventure. These claims, coming on the heels of L.K. Advani’s remarks that “forces that can crush democracy are stronger”, were supposed to serve as a reassurance that the political imp­ulses that drove the BJP were different from those of the Congress. That a party born in the womb of Indira Gandhi’s most oppressive years was mindful of life and liberty. That its leaders who went to jail fighting for the right to speak and publish freely were alive to the aspirations of the smartphone generation. That changes in law and technology had made it impossible to go down the sad path on which India hurtled along for 21...