India, June 16 -- June 25, 2025, will mark the 50th anniversary of one of the darkest chapters in India's history. A 21-month-long Emergency began that day, under which civil liberties were suspended, elections were cancelled, and the press was censored.

The immediate provocation was a high court judgment on June 12, 1975, that held then Prime Minister (PM) Indira Gandhi guilty of electoral malpractice. It set aside her election to the Lok Sabha in 1971. The judgment came at a time when a wide swathe of India's Opposition parties and civil society groups were agitating against the Indira-led Congress regime.

Slowing industrial growth, growing joblessness, and sky-high prices bred resentment against the ruling regime in the mid-1970s. Th...