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The 50th anniversary of the promulgation of the Emergency falls later this month. I have written about that dark period in our history in my book, India after Gandhi. I may also direct the interested reader to books on the subject by, among other scholars, Emma Tarlo, Gyan Prakash, Christophe Jaffrelot and Pratinav Anil and, most recently, Sugata Srinivasaraju.

In this column, however, I wish to share some personal memories of how, as a young college student in Delhi, I experienced the Emergency at the time.

In May 1975, I completed my first year as an undergraduate at St Stephen’s College, and returned home to Dehradun for the holidays. The Emergency was proclaimed during the vacations. When I returned to the university campus in the third week of July, I wasn’t thinking much – if at all – of what Indira Gandhi’s incarceration of her opponents had to do with the present or future of my country.

This was because I was, at the age of 17, largely concerned with securing my place in my college’s cricket team. And my friends in St Stephen’s were likewise utterly non-political.

This indifference to politics was actively encouraged by the college administration. The elections for posts in the Delhi University Students Union were...