NEW DELHI, July 1 -- I slept on a cot outside my room in Rama Krishna Puram in New Delhi. As usual, I waited for the newspaper boy to deliver The Patriot and the Indian Express, which I subscribed to, to get up. I could not stay in bed for long as the rays of the sun had started hitting my face.

I woke up and put the cot back in the room. My "landlord," a Goan who stayed in the adjoining room, told me that an Emergency had been imposed on the country, and all the top Opposition leaders had been arrested.

I did not have a telephone or a radio receiver to check the veracity of what I had heard. I understood that the newspapers were not distributed because of the new development. I did not know what the term Emergency meant, though Prime M...