Other leaders have seized power. Consider India’s 1975 “constitutional dictatorship.” How can we prevent it here?

My first trip to India was with an organization called the Lisle Fellowship.

Founded in 1936 by a couple of Methodist missionaries, it is still in existence. The purpose of the organization is, and has been from the beginning, to foster international and intercultural understanding and relationship.

My first three-week experience in India with Lisle was a whirlwind tour, including both urban and rural settings. We moved from one place to another so quickly it was difficult to develop relationships with our hosts and hostesses and my memories are foggy at best. But the country and culture was stimulating and challenging enough that I agreed to lead a group for Lisle the following year.

One summer India program followed another, and even when I parted ways with Lisle, I continued to lead groups on cultural immersion programs for several years; 13 years in India in all. Many of the programs were longer in length, so we could reside in one place for longer periods. Many were during winter school vacation, when we could avoid the heat.

And as I became primarily responsible for the content of the programs, we began to focus our Indian time more fully in Gandhian communities, where people were still deeply committed to Mahatma Gandhi’s understanding of nonviolent social change and his vision of what Martin Luther King would come to call the “beloved community.” For instance, no one was untouchable for Gandhi. 

In those summers, I met some amazing people, committed to a way of nonviolence in difficult circumstances. I’ve been recalling one trip in particular, as we find ourselves in similar governmental circumstances in this country.

Indira Gandhi was prime minister that summer and she had declared a national emergency.

Citing both internal and external threats to the country, she was given the authority to rule by decree, cancelling elections and suspending civil liberties. 

Her party had a large majority in Parliament and this third of their tripartite government fell into line behind her. She was given the power to imprison her political opponents and censor the press. More than 100,000 political opponents, protestors and journalists were imprisoned. 

She was taken to court by political opponents and for the first time in the history of the country, the prime minister spent five hours before a judge in the High Court. To no avail, the court system succumbed to her authoritarian reign.

Two significant memories of our time in India during the “emergency” remain. The first is visiting in a university community. I don’t recall the city but I do recall the faculty.

They were unable to answer questions about the emergency and its impact on their teaching. They were unable to speak freely and openly with our group, persons from outside, for fear they would be targeted by unknown spies and imprisoned with other university personnel. They attempted “no response” answers to our questions, much like our Republican members of Congress do today.

I recalled this experience as I read the story about the resignation of the president at the University of Virginia. Under pressure from the Trump Administration because of his resistance to dropping the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Program, he decided to leave his office. His response to his university community is worth quoting. 

“To make a long story short, I am inclined to fight for what I believe in, and I believe deeply in this university; but I cannot make a unilateral decision to fight the federal government in order to save my own job. To do so would not only be quixotic but appear selfish and self-centered to the hundreds of employees who would lose their jobs, the researchers who would lose their funding, and the hundreds of students who could lose financial aid or have their visas withheld.”

There do seem to be significant ways authoritarian governments are able to impact higher education. I saw it personally in India. We see it here today, not just at UVA, but at Columbia and Harvard and many others.

The other memory of that time of “emergency” in India was visiting one of those imprisoned. He was a longtime follower of Gandhi from Bombay. As a devout Hindu for whom cattle were sacred, he was especially opposed to the slaughter of cattle, which Indira had initiated; trading beef for Mideast oil. There were large protests in different parts of the country. At one, hundreds of protestors were killed.

My Gandhian prisoner chose a different form of protest, a “fast” to the death. As the fast entered a critical time and he was gathering the attention of the press and a large following, Indira asserted he was attempting suicide, hospitalized him and started to force-feed him. When that didn’t work, she ordered him imprisoned. 

I was able to visit him in prison. To my surprise, he came bounding into the visitors room with more energy than I had. This was some 40 days into his fast. I left that visit knowing in the flesh “man does not live by bread alone.” He quit the fast some 20 days later, convinced by friends he had done what he could and he had more to do and be. 

The time of “emergency” in India also impacted human bodies. In India, it was men’s bodies. A sterilization campaign began. For example, Kartar was a cobbler. Six policemen took him to their office, quizzed him about how many children he had, then forced him to be sterilized.

A peasant in Maharashtra, Shahu Ghalake, was taken for sterilization, although he tried to tell them he was already sterilized. 70-year-old Harijan, with bad eyesight and no teeth, was forcefully sterilized. And there were many, many more, sometimes with painful and/or fatal results.

The “emergency” in India convinced me a democracy is not immune from authoritarian rule. The country emerged from the time of Indira when public pressure forced a new election.

Can we learn from the experience of others? Can we resist and remove our would-be dictator?

Carl Kline of Brookings is a United Church of Christ clergyman and adjunct faculty member at the Mt. Marty College campus in Watertown. He is a founder and on the planning committee of the Brookings Interfaith Council, co-founder of Nonviolent Alternatives, a small not-for-profit that, for 15 years, provided intercultural experiences with Lakota/Dakota people in the Northern Plains and brought conflict resolution and peer mediation programs to schools around the region. He was one of the early participants in the development of Peace Brigades International. Kline can be reached at carl@satyagrahainstitute.org. This column originally appeared in the Brookings Register.

Photo: Indira Gandhi, public domain, wikimedia commons

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