Creeping but Uneasy Authoritarianism: India, 1975–6

Abstract

WHEN WESTERNERS FIND INDIANS BAFFLING AND EXASPERATING Indians have an explanation: it is because they bring an ‘either-or’ a proach to people who like to operate in terms of ‘both-and’, they see contraries and inconsistencies where Indians are aware only of complexity and compatibility. Without entering into a discussion of this as a general view, it is tempting to say that it could furnish an explanation of the curiously mixed and paradoxical character of the authoritarian regime which has been emer ing over the past eighteen months from that country's so-called ‘Emergency’. Tempting but less than convincing, for several reasons: the forms of authoritarianism in the world are already amply varied; it remains to be seen how far Mrs Gandhi's mixture is viable; above all, it is a mixture which looks and feels pretty strange to many Indians too.