The Conscience Network

By: Sugata Srinivasaraju

Narrated by: Adwait Karambelkar

This is a parallel history of resistance to Indira Gandhi’s dictatorial rule between 1975 and 1977, when an internal emergency was proclaimed in India. The events here unfold entirely in the United States of America surrounded by the echoes of emergency action in India. The book has an intimate historiographic style and is narrated through the lives, actions and world views of chosen protagonists, who with perseverance and principle constructed a classic Gandhian movement.The book not only tracks political developments, ideological debates and sociocultural contexts of the time but also records how American pacifists, Quakers, civil rights activists, academics, authors, senators and Congressmen came together in solidarity to form a network of conscience to save India’s democracy. Amid this, a quiet thread in the book is the story of the Indian diaspora in the US that had just about begun staring at a horizon of influence.