The Conscience Network by Sugata Srinivasaraju

The Untold Story of India’s Emergency and the Global Resistance that Helped End It

New Delhi, 24th May 2025 – Penguin Random House is proud to announce the release of The Conscience Network by celebrated author and journalist Sugata Srinivasaraju. A groundbreaking exploration of India’s 1975–77 Emergency, focusing on the unexpected yet pivotal role played by the diaspora in resisting Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian rule. The book unfolds against the backdrop of a turbulent period in India’s history but shifts the narrative to the United States, where a coalition of pacifists, civil rights activists, and political leaders rallied in defence of Indian democracy.

Offers an untold story of the Indian diaspora in the US during this era, spotlighting their burgeoning influence and the personal connections that spurred international efforts to counteract the authoritarian regime. While much has been speculated about how global pressure influenced the eventual lifting of the Emergency, Srinivasaraju refrains from conjecture, focusing instead on a nuanced, factual recounting of the period.

What sets The Conscience Network apart is the author’s meticulous research, including access to personal papers and archival materials that have never before been examined. This rare material, both from India and overseas, provides a fresh perspective on a critical chapter in history.

Srinivasaraju’s literary style—known for its sharp intellect, elegant prose, and cultural depth—brings this important story to life with the same rigor and insight that have marked his previous acclaimed works.

About the book – The Conscience Network

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.

It is widely believed that one of the factors that pushed Indira Gandhi to end the Emergency in 1977 and call for a general election was international pressure. Being Jawaharlal Nehru’s daughter, it is said that she was sensitive to how she was being perceived overseas, and after a point, thought it was counterproductive to play dictator. However, this book does not get into such conjectures or presumptions but endeavours to paint a true and complex picture of the time.

The narrative here is fused with a diligent study of personal papers and archival material in India and overseas that had neither been accessed or assessed till now. This is yet another offering from an author whose books have been applauded for their uncommon insights, intellectual bandwidth and a fine literary style.

About the Author

Sugata Srinivasaraju is a bilingual journalist, author and columnist. He has editorially led some of the major print, television and digital news brands in the past. He has been a Chevening scholar in the UK, fellow of the Aspen Institute in the US and is currently a Homi Bhabha fellow.

Srinivasaraju’s books include Furrows in a Field: The Unexplored Life of H.D. Deve Gowda; Keeping Faith with the Mother Tongue: The Anxieties of a Local Culture; Pickles from Home: The Worlds of a Bilingual; and in Kannada, Kittale, Nerale, Perale: Avasarakke Yetukida Maatu Baraha, which won him the ViChi literary prize. His book Phoenix and Four Other Mime Plays won him the Karnataka Sahitya Academy’s translation prize.

Book Title: The Conscience Network 
Author: Sugata Srinivasaraju
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Available: Amazon