ABSTRACT
In the specific context of Independent India, the Congress split of 1969 brought about a critical change in the nature of state-society relations. Mrs Gandhi effectively collapsed the party organisation into the government. Changes brought about by the split concerning the relationship between the president and the prime minister – continued later by Mrs Gandhi, arguably under the influence of P. N. Dhar and Haksar – further collapsed government institutions into the state. There was thus a concentration of power that had all the hallmarks of a new regime seeking to change the nature of the state and to alter the ways in which it sought to collaborate with and extract resources from dominant interests situated within society. This perception, widely held by the opposition after 1971, and at times deliberately and manipulatively used by the government, created an atmosphere of crisis, which many identified with the precursor to some form of fascism, or from the perspective of the BJS and the Grand Alliance, some form of communist coup. Yet such a strategy – to be exemplified by the Emergency itself – was incoherent, reactive to wider events and at times, almost random.
