Indira Gandhi

The cautionary entry. In 1975, after a court voided her election, Indira Gandhi declared a state of Emergency: elections were suspended, opponents jailed, the press censored and a forced sterilisation drive carried out. When she called elections in 1977, voters threw her out in a landslide. The lasting effect is the opposite of what she intended: the Janata government's 44th Amendment made it much harder to declare an emergency, and the period remains a touchstone in Indian arguments about civil liberties.