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Setting India's Democratic House in Order: Constitutional Amendments

AFTER AN EXTENSIVE STUDY of the Indian Emergency (1975-1977) I looked around for an exciting novel to read as light relief on my journey home. I chanced on The R Document by Irving Wallace, which was described on its jacket as "shockingly contemporary." So it indeed proved because it echoed alarmingly aspects of India's twenty month experience of dictatorship. "The R Document" was about a proposed 35th Amendment to the United States Constitution that could supersede the Bill of Rights in a situation of extreme internal emergency that might paralyze or threaten to destroy the country. The novel described the people who were against the amendment, the people who were for it because they genuinely thought it necessary to combat a breakdown of law and order, and the people who said they were for it for this reason but who were intending to use its provisions to subvert democracy. If I had read the book in 1974 rather than in 1977 I would have said that it was ingenious but implausible, but the comparisons with India's 42nd Amendment were close enough to make the plan for a U.S. takeover seem far less fictional. Of course the parallel should not be carried too far. American democracy is in no immediate danger. But the speed with which a well-established democracy could be dismantled should be a healthy reminder not to take freedoms for granted. An examination of the way oppressive legislation, ordinances, and style of government could be introduced and tolerated during, and in some cases before, the Emergency might help pinpoint danger areas. What has happened since to the laws and to the Constitution could provide pointers on the safeguards needed in democracies. A study of the Emergency reveals how step by step the Parliament, the press, and the judiciary were made either subservient to the Execu-