Gyan Prakash's book explains how the Emergency was allowed to happen

It is odd to find Narendra Modi's 2014 victory on page three of a book about the Emergency. But Prakash makes it work

When a book about the Emergency goes from quoting Jayaprakash Narayan on page one to talking about how Narendra Modi stoked “Hindu majoritarian resentments against minorities to ride to power” in 2014 on page three, the reader may be forgiven for wondering about the motives of the author. Gyan Prakash, the blurb tells us, is a professor of history at Princeton but, equally significantly, was a member of the Subaltern Studies Collective and even co-wrote the screenplay for the film Bombay Velvet. 

But such fears are misplaced. This is a significant and thoughtful book that, while faithfully retelling the events of