The Emergency as Prehistory of the New Indian Middle Class

Abstract

Recent accounts of the National Emergency of 1975–1977 concur that the deviations it represented, while genuine, did not represent any fundamental change on the part of the Indian state, and that the period offers little distinct insight on the post-independence period as a whole. This paper seeks to argue, to the contrary, that the Emergency was a watershed in post-independence history. With its ban on dissent and suspension of constitutional rights, the Emergency sought to suppress all political disturbances to governance. By doing so, it forefronted the problems of postcolonial politics in at least three respects. First, the Emergency demonstrated that coercion was inextricably combined with consent in state-led development. Second, this led to a heavy reliance on practices of communication to redefine coercion and to stage popular consent. Third, in the process, the boundaries of the political were reinforced, emphasizing the friend/enemy difference fundamental to politics. Governance in the aftermath of the Emergency placed an overt reliance on consent over coercion, but in ways that are themselves significant. Categories of culture and community, and related forms of social distinction, gained in importance over earlier developmental distinctions premised on an authoritarian relationship between state and the people. The change meant a shift away from the Nehruvian focus on the economy as the crucial arena of nation-building, involving labour as the key modality of citizenship. Instead, culture and community became the categories that gained political salience in the period of economic liberalization. The mass media were central to this redefinition of the political, multiplying in size and reach, and acquiring market-sensitive forms of address couched in the rhetoric of individual choice. These events, I suggest, are critical to understanding the formation of the new middle class in India, as a category that increasingly defines itself through cultural and consumerist forms of identity, and is less identified with the state.

Storming the Citadels of Poverty: Family Planning under the Emergency in India, 1975–1977

“…In 1971, Gandhi won a large majority in a midterm national election with a radical manifesto encapsulated by the slogan garibi hatao (Rajagopal 2011(Rajagopal , 1011. In 1971, Gandhi won a large majority in a midterm national election with a radical manifesto encapsulated by the slogan garibi hatao (Rajagopal 2011(Rajagopal , 1011.…”

The Emergency in India: some reflections on the legibility of the political

“…(Rajagopal 2011) In a recent article positioning itself against the existing scholarship, Arvind Rajagopal has argued that the profound role of the Emergency in bringing the nation from a phase of state-led development to the present era of neo-liberalism has been quite decisively missed out (Rajagopal 2011). His explicit focus is on what he calls the New Indian Middle Class.…”

“…It showed the limits of the state's capacity to govern without actively and continuously seeking and winning popular consent … The complementary era of market liberalization, involving new arguments pertaining to the economy.., highlighted the relatively autonomous domain of public opinion as an emergent second layer of the state that was, however, not distinguishable as the state. (Rajagopal 2011(Rajagopal , 1012 There is much in Rajagopal's ambitiously formulated claims that needs more careful attention. He is certainly not as alone as he might think he is in making them.…”

An Indian summer: Corruption, class, and the Lokpal protests

“…The place and role of labor in defining the nature of political contestation shifted, too: the state becoming generally unwilling to ''entertain labour as a meaningful interlocutor in industrial relations and in economic development'' and labor itself beginning to trade rights for cash benefits (Rajagopal, 2011(Rajagopal, : 1040(Rajagopal, -1041. Communal contestations, on the other hand, increased post-emergency, signaling the importance of ''religious identity as the new salient category where consent was increasingly sought and contested'' (1043).…”

“…The very terms of national discourse shifted thus from a Nehruvian emphasis on ''the economy as the crucial arena of nation-building, involving labour as a key modality of citizenship,'' to one in which ''culture and community became the categories that gained political salience'' (1005; Reddy, 2006;van der Veer, 1994). If the Indian middle class had formerly operated ''under the hegemony of the state,'' it now became ''increasingly assertive, but disenchanted with erstwhile forms of politics,'' emerging as ''the humble hero of national development, but lacking in privilege and deserving of assistance'' (Rajagopal, 2011(Rajagopal, : 1010(Rajagopal, -1011.…”