By: Mushtaq Ul Haq Ahmad Sikander
The story of India’s journey after Independence is a tale of staggering potential and deep disappointment. The promise of democracy was quickly overshadowed by the slow entrenchment of dynasty, privilege, and detachment. The seeds of dynastic democracy were sown not merely through elections or political maneuvering but through a gradual normalization of inheritance in leadership, where power passed within a family as if by birthright. This transformation was not sudden—it grew quietly, nurtured by a ruling class that considered itself above the people it governed. As prominent journalist Tavleen Singh observes, “I believe that it is because India was let down by her ruling class that she failed to become the country she could have been… we brought up our children, as we had been, as foreigners in their own country. Fascinated by all things foreign and disdainful of all things India.” (P-xii) These lines resonate as both a lament and a warning. The alienation of the elite from the Indian ethos—its languages, literature, and wisdom—created a leadership that looked outward for validation and inward only to preserve power.
The decades that followed Independence tested what democracy meant in a young republic. For women, particularly in journalism, the 1970s were a time of exclusion and persistence. Newsrooms were bastions of male dominance, and those few women who dared to enter had to wrest credibility from an establishment that believed they did not belong. Yet, even as a handful of women broke through the glass ceiling, while the political climate around them grew darker. By the summer of 1975, the mood in India was bleak. “Every economic indicator told a bad story. Literacy was less than 50 per cent, infant mortality higher than in almost any other country, GDP growth so slow that it was mocked as the Hindu rate of growth. The richest Indians did without clean water and regular electricity. In Mrs Gandhi’s own neighborhood, long power cuts became the bane of burning hot summer nights.” (P-45) These were not just statistics; they were symptoms of a tired, disillusioned nation.
That exhaustion set the stage for the most authoritarian chapter in independent India’s history—the Emergency. When Indira Gandhi suspended civil liberties in 1975, it marked a moment when democracy’s spirit was bent to serve one individual’s survival. The press was silenced, opposition leaders imprisoned, and businessmen harassed through calculated tax raids meant to stifle funding for dissent. Fear became policy. The compulsory sterilization drive spearheaded by Sanjay Gandhi added a chilling dimension to this period. Under the guise of social reform, it turned into a campaign of coercion and humiliation. The poor, powerless to resist, bore the brunt of an experiment that stripped them of agency. Yet, despite these abuses, many continued to believe that Indira Gandhi could not be defeated. To most, the opposition seemed a disorganized amalgamation of political parties with no shared vision, united only by their opposition to her rule. The Emergency thus became a paradox—the consolidation of democratic institutions into dynastic control, enabled by public fear and political fragmentation.
When the Emergency finally ended, India emerged scarred but not yet healed. The years that followed saw new tensions rise, particularly in Punjab, where the state’s alienation from its people deepened. The situation reached its tragic peak in 1984 with Operation Blue Star, when the army entered the Golden Temple to flush out militants. What was intended as a restoration of order became a wound in the nation’s conscience. The fallout was swift and brutal: Indira Gandhi’s assassination by her Sikh bodyguards and the horrifying anti-Sikh riots that followed.
Into this vortex stepped Rajiv Gandhi—a reluctant politician thrust into history’s spotlight. His entry into politics after his brother’s death and then his mother’s reflected not ambition but inheritance. Yet neither Rajiv nor Sonia Gandhi had shown much interest in public life earlier. “It is true that none of the people in the circle in which the Gandhis moved had much interest in India’s problems either but I expected, perhaps wrongly, that having spent all her time in India in the prime minister’s home Sonia would have developed a deeper sense of social consciousness… But we failed and instead brought up our children, as we had been, as foreigners in their own country.” (P-138-139) The detachment persisted across generations, culminating in Rajiv’s administration—a curious mix of optimism and naivety.
Rajiv began his tenure as a symbol of modernity and change, promising efficiency and a break from the old order. Yet his tenure revealed the same distance from reality that had plagued his predecessors. Child starvation deaths during his period became grim reminders that beneath the rhetoric of modernization, poverty remained unaddressed. In international affairs, his inexperience often translated into puzzling decisions—one stark example being his recognition of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. “By a funny twist of fate I happened to be in the remote city of Laayoune on the Atlantic coast of Morocco in March that year when I heard on the BBC that elections had been announced in Kashmir… what had brought me to Morocco was the decision by Rajiv’s government to recognize the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic as a separate country… The country he recognized was what Morocco considers its southern provinces so King Hassan of Morocco was forced to break diplomatic relations with India.” (P-243-244) The diplomatic fallout was swift, but the deeper issue was symbolic—it revealed a government that seemed to act on impulse rather than insight.
Rajiv’s domestic missteps were equally consequential. His handling of communal tensions, his failure to read the growing undercurrents of nationalism, and his concessions to religious groups in the name of appeasement all left lasting scars. As the author reflects, “Rajiv’s policies as prime minister unleashed demons that should have died after the country was partitioned. An ugly, new form of Hindutva that became resurgent then would one day propel the BJP to a position that would make it the only national party in India capable of taking on the Congress.” (P-290) What had once been a party of national unity now found itself facing an ideological rival it had inadvertently empowered.
This narrative, ultimately, is not about individuals alone. It is about a system that allowed power to corrode institutions, about a society that too often mistook familiarity for reliability, and about the gradual erosion of accountability under the shadow of dynastic politics. The story told through these reflections is both intimate and national in scope—a reminder that leadership detached from heritage and empathy leads not to progress but to decline. India’s failure, as the author suggests, was not inevitable; it was perpetual. Each generation of leaders repeated the errors of the one before, reaffirming the truth that democracy, without self-reflection, easily becomes dynasty in disguise.
(M.H.A.Sikander is Writer-Activist based in Srinagar, Kashmir and can be reached at [email protected])