Two democracies and the echoes of tyranny

Yesterday, on July 4, the United States observed its Independence Day. A quarter of a millennium ago, the American people declared their resolve to live not under kings but under laws. They fought to build a government accountable to the people, not one that claimed to rule in their name. In their Declaration of Independence, the Founders wrote that “when a long train of abuses and usurpations” reveals a design to reduce the people “under absolute Despotism,” it is not only their right but also their duty to resist. In that tradition, a conservative Federal judge, Judge J. Michael Luttig marks the occasion with a solemn warning: the ideals of 1776 are not self-perpetuating. Judge Luttig’s modern “27 truths” remind Americans that self-government is not guaranteed by parchment or precedent. It must be defended daily, especially against those who seek to crown themselves in defiance of the Constitution. Tyranny, once foreign, now threatens from within. India’s democratic backsliding Luttig’s warning is not hyperbole. It is a reflection of global experience, including India’s democratic backsliding 50 years ago. India’s Emergency under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, on June 25, 1975, suspended civil liberties, censored the press, imprisoned over 1,00,000 citizens, and reduced Parliament and the courts to shadows of themselves. It did not come through violence or revolution. It came through law. Indira Gandhi claimed she was saving democracy. In fact, she was suffocating it. In his book, Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and Democracy’s Turning Point, historian Gyan Prakash exposed how democratic institutions can die not with a bang, but with a nod. There was no coup. No tanks. The Army Chief, General T.N. Raina, a fellow Kashmiri, was asked for his support, but he refused to get into the politics of the day — rightly so. Indira Gandhi did not openly defy the Constitution but exploited its weaknesses. After a court found her guilty of electoral fraud and barred her from office, she declared an “internal disturbance” and triggered Article 352 of the Indian Constitution. Overnight, dissent became treason. Rights became privileges. And power became personal. The real tragedy was not just what Indira Gandhi did. It was how effortlessly she did it. Judges, Ministers, civil servants, even journalists — people entrusted with guarding democracy — chose loyalty over law. The Supreme Court ruled that during the Emergency, even the right to life could be suspended. Only one judge, Justice H.R. Khanna, dissented. He was never appointed Chief Justice, punishment for his integrity. H.V. Kamath saw it coming. The former civil servant-turned-freedom fighter and member of India’s Constituent Assembly, he had almost pleaded that the Emergency’s provisions being embedded in the Constitution were too dangerous. In 1949, he compared India’s draft provisions to Germany’s Weimar Constitution, which Hitler had exploited to build his dictatorship. H.V. Kamath said, “First, the grand affirmation... and surmounting that edifice is the arch of the great negation.” He begged for checks and balances. He begged for the Constitution to protect future generations, but was ignored. When Indira Gandhi declared internal Emergency 26 years later, the mechanism H.V. Kamath had feared came to life. Dissenters were detained under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA), a preventive detention law. Police abducted students in broad daylight. Sanjay Gandhi, who was unelected and unaccountable, operated a parallel state, pushing brutal sterilisation campaigns and slum demolitions. Entire neighbourhoods in Delhi were razed. Protesters were shot. Families were displaced. Inmates were tortured. All of it was “legal”. None of it was democratic. When the Emergency ended in 1977, India voted Indira Gandhi out in a landslide. The Janata government passed the 44th Amendment to prevent such abuses from recurring. But the deeper damage to political culture, to institutions, to the idea that constitutionalism alone can protect democracy remains. India moved on, but never fully reckoned with how close it came to authoritarian collapse. Similar dynamics in the U.S. Which brings us back to the United States. The parallels are unmistakable. U.S. President Donald Trump has not declared an Emergency. He does not need to. He has a majority in both Houses of Congress and a 6-3 conservative majority in the Supreme Court, which legalises all his actions. He can weaponise the Justice Department to prosecute his opponents, threaten to strip immigrants of their citizenship and residency status, and even threaten to “terminate” parts of the Constitution. He seeks not to hold power, but to own it. As Judge Luttig notes, this is not reform. It is monarchy by another name. And just like in India, the institutions meant to stop him have mostly failed. Congress hesitated. Republicans enabled. Courts delayed. Media rationalised. Many shrugged, waited, and hoped someone else would act. In this way, guardrails do not just erode under outside pressure. They rot from within. Americans must confront a hard truth: the same dynamics that enabled the Emergency in India now threaten the American republic. As H.V. Kamath warned, Constitutions do not protect liberty on their own. They must be guarded by people with the courage to say no. If Congress (Parliament) refuses to assert its role; if courts bend under partisan pressure; if the press becomes passive; if law enforcement serves power instead of the public — then the law ceases to be king. And we begin the slow coronation of another. There is a historical irony here too deep to ignore. Years after Indira Gandhi imprisoned her opponents and suffocated the Constitution, her grandson, Rahul Gandhi, now brandishes that very Constitution as a talisman against rising authoritarianism in India. At protest rallies, he holds up Ambedkar’s book, invoking the very document Indira Gandhi once bent to her will. Where once the Constitution was used to silence dissent, it is now Rahul Gandhi’s weapon to preserve it. A call to be vigilant There is a lesson here that transcends families and nations: every generation must reclaim democracy for itself. The battles our forebears fought — against monarchy, against colonialism, against Emergency — are not relics. They are warnings. They are calls to vigilance. The Constitution is not an heirloom. It is a mandate. It must be re-defended, reinterpreted, and reaffirmed by each generation. It is easy to celebrate Independence Day with fireworks and fanfare. But the revolution was not a party. It was an act of resistance against arbitrary rule. Thomas Paine wrote, “Let the law be king”. Not presidents. Not parties. Not mobs. But the law. And only when the people demand it. We must resist the normalisation of revenge politics, the erosion of checks and balances, and the authoritarian cult of personality. Democracy is not just a system of rules. It is a culture of restraint. Of limits. Of humility before power. The Emergency in India failed because the people ultimately remembered what had been stolen from them. History never repeats exactly as it happened. But it does echo. The Emergency’s lesson is not that tyranny is foreign. It is that tyranny is familiar, legal and welcomed when institutions go hollow. Today, both India and America are democracies by form. But their futures depend on substance. On how citizens, courts, journalists, legislators and civil servants act when faced with leaders who believe they are above the law. The difference between a republic and a monarchy is not just procedure. It is accountability. When a king breaks the law, it becomes policy. When a President or Prime Minister does, it becomes a test. India failed that test in 1975. We cannot afford to fail it again. We must defend the law as if it were our crown. Because if we do not, someone else will wear it. And they will not take it off. Sanjay Hegde is a Senior Advocate designated by the Supreme Court of India