Sep 27 2025 to Sep 27 2025 6:30 p.m.

EVENT HAS ENDED

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

What happens when institutions bend, freedoms collapse, and silence rules? India once knew.

Five decades may have passed, but the Emergency remains a stark reminder of how swiftly freedoms can be curtailed. In those 21 months, prisons filled, the press was silenced, and democratic institutions bent under the weight of authoritarian rule. The questions it leaves behind are urgent: what does this episode tell us about the fragility of democracy, and what echoes of it persist today?

A new volume gathers reflections from scholars, writers, historians, journalists, and activists to probe this turbulent chapter and its continuing relevance. Joining the discussion are Peter Ronald de Souza, co-editor of the book, historian Janaki Nair, sociologist Chandan Gowda, and political scientist Rinku Lamba, in a conversation moderated by Thomas Abraham. 

A Q&A with the audience will follow.

Speakers

Peter Ronald deSouza
Author & Editor
Peter Ronald deSouza is one of India’s foremost thinkers on democracy and politics. Formerly Director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, and long associated with CSDS, he has written extensively on the challenges of democratic life. His works include In the Hall of Mirrors: Reflections on Indian Democracy and edited volumes such as Democratic Accommodations: Minorities in Contemporary India. Now an independent scholar, he continues to illuminate how power, dissent, and freedom shape India’s political journey.

Janaki Nair
Historian and Author
Janaki Nair is a historian whose work brings together law, labour, and the city in modern India. Until 2020 she taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University, producing landmark books like Women and Law in Colonial India, Miners and Millhands, and The Promise of the Metropolis, which won the New India Foundation Book Prize. Widely published and globally recognised, she has also served on editorial boards and policy commissions. With her historical eye, she shows how authority and resistance are written into the everyday lives of citizens.

Chandan Gowda
Professor and Dean, School of Liberal Arts, Vidyashilp University
Chandan Gowda is Professor and Dean, School of Liberal Arts, Vidyashilp University, Bengaluru. A book of his essays, Another India: Events, Memories, People (Simon and Schuster, India), was published last year.  Another book of his, Longing for an Elsewhere: Mysore and the Making of India’s Developmental State, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press (New York) early next year. At present, he is editing, The Greatest Kannada Short Stories Ever Told (Aleph) and Daredevil Mustafa (HarperCollins, India), a book of short stories by the Kannada writer, Purnachandra Tejasvi. He is a columnist with Deccan Herald.

Rinku Lamba
Associate Professor, NLSIU
Dr Rinku Lamba serves as associate professor of social science at the National Law School of India University in Bengaluru.  She was educated in Delhi, Oxford and Toronto.  She is a political theorist with research interests in studies of liberalism, multiculturalism and secularism.  She also has a strong interest in Indian political thought, especially with reference to the theme of religious diversity.  Prior to joining the NLSIU, she taught for over thirteen years in Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.  Her most recent publications have been on the political thought of Rabindranath Tagore and M G Ranade.  She is also a trained Dagarvani Dhrupad vocalist, and has given solo concerts at venues in Delhi, Bangalore, Varanasi, Jaipur and Paris.

Thomas Abraham
Author & Journalist
Thomas Abraham is a writer and science communicator whose books, Twenty-First Century Plague: The Story of SARS and Polio: The Odyssey of Eradication, trace how disease and politics intertwine. A journalist turned scholar, he brings a global lens to questions of state power, crisis, and public trust. Currently working on a book about the Covid-19 pandemic, he explores how moments of rupture reshape societies and test the boundaries of freedom.