23-06-2025
The Emergency and politics of the body
For the average Indian, it was through the tyranny of the dreaded nasbandi (sterilisation) camps that the worst consequences of the suspension of civil and political rights under the Emergency manifested itself in their everyday lives. In September 1976, India recorded over 1.7 million sterilisations, a figure that equalled the annual average for the 10 preceding years. By 1977, Sanjay Gandhi, the younger son of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and his bulldozer gang had overseen the conduct of more than 8 million sterilizations. The predominance accorded to forced sterilisation was intertwined with Sanjay Gandhi's growing influence. He needed to consolidate his hold on power within the Congress, family planning (and his other obsession, urban gentrification) became his preferred tools. In the process, he unleashed the worst form of State violence, stripping ordinary citizens of agency over their bodies. The political and administrative zeal to comply with Sanjay Gandhi and his bulldozer gang was shaped by the nature of power he wielded over regional leaders. (HT Photo)
Much has changed in India's approach to family planning since those dark Emergency years. However, 50 years on, Sanjay Gandhi's weaponisation of family planning and exertion of power over individual bodily rights afford important lessons for how we respond to demographic challenges in the contemporary moment. Above all, it serves as a critical reminder to be patient with democracy, for it is the only pathway for sustainable, socially just economic growth and development.
On the surface, Sanjay Gandhi's approach to family planning was not new. Malthusian worries had shadowed India's demographic debates long before independence and India became the first country in the world to launch a national family planning programme in 1952. And as Christophe Jaffrelot and Pratinav Anil argue in India's First Dictatorship: The Emergency, 1975-77, elements of eugenics, visible in the Emergency, undergirded these debates. 'Undesirable others' – minorities and lower castes – were the targets.
Coercive population control measures were introduced as necessary tools for 'modernisation' and 'development'. But it was only in the late 1960s that sterilisation acquired wide policy acceptance. On paper, India took a 'cafeteria approach' with sterilisation offered as one of many forms of family planning. In practice, however, sterilisation was prioritised. Targets were introduced and vasectomy camps, cash incentives, citizen motivators, and active coercion became acceptable methods to control India's 'population bomb'.
But like most policies, implementation waxed and waned. India's sterilisation drive peaked in 1972-3 with 3.1 million sterilisations, falling to just under a million the next year. What differentiated mass sterilisation during the Emergency from the past was the scale and aggressiveness with which it was pursued. International agencies from the World Bank to the United Nations played their part, financing what they called 'crash sterilisation'.
Sanjay Gandhi effectively leveraged Emergency conditions to direct political and administrative functionaries to use force and coercion with a vengeance. He bypassed the health ministry to directly hand out targets to states and used his powers to harass and intimidate regional leaders, bureaucrats and district administrators to comply. Over time, his tactics became almost necessary to feed the Emergency myth: That suspension of democracy and centralisation of power was necessary to ensure the 'trains run on time'. Eugenics, Jaffrelot and Anil, note were implicit in this framing in the targeting of Muslims and the poor.
The horror that unfolded has been widely chronicled. The political and administrative zeal to comply with Sanjay Gandhi and his bulldozer gang was shaped by the nature of power he wielded over regional leaders. Inevitably, Delhi and the Hindi heartland became Sanjay Gandhi's playground, with party leaders and willing bureaucrats jostling to curry favour. Family planning policy was now no longer about broader societal goals but a weapon for political power and control. In the process, individual citizens were effectively stripped of any agency over their bodies. From nudging railway commuters to getting vasectomies if caught ticketless by waiving paying fines, to threatening slum dwellers with eviction notices, denying government benefits and when needed enabling violent use of force, Gandhi's bulldozer gang zealously did all that was demanded of them to coerce the poorest and most vulnerable citizens into sterlisation camps thereby fulfilling the political myth of the Emergency. Those who sought to protect their dignity and individual agency by escaping the sterilisation net, lived in terror. As ethnographer Emma Tarlo notes in her account of the nasbandi tyranny in Delhi, for anyone who escaped, public spaces and civic institutions like hospitals, schools and government offices, were places to avoid. Unsurprisingly, in many parts of the country, fear led to violence.
Nasbandi was widely attributed to have contributed to Indira Gandhi's resounding electoral defeat. In a direct and tactile way, the ordinary Indian experienced the terror of the powers of the State over their bodies and they used democracy to reclaim control. Since that dark period, India's family planning policy, in tune with global trends, has evolved adopting a much more central focus on reproductive rights. Sterilisation, and associated policies like incentives and camps, continue to be part of the repertoire, indeed they often make headlines for medical negligence and death, but it no longer carries the zeal of the Emergency. The burden has now shifted to female sterilisation.
The Emergency was an illustration of how the body is used as a site for exerting State power. In the contemporary moment, loose remarks by politicians in South India telling women to 'have more children' as they navigate delimitation politics is a warning signal that population policy may once again be weaponised. Ironically, these very states offered India an alternative to the tyranny of nasbandi: A model embedded in economic growth, choice and reproductive rights. Democracy afforded the path to achieve population goals. Today's politicians would do well to heed to the message that Indians gave to Indira and Sanjay Gandhi in 1977.
Yamini Aiyar is senior visiting fellow, Brown University. The views expressed are personal.
