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

Abstract

This paper reflects on existing writing about the National Emergency in India that took place between 1975 and 1977. The birth of many social movements during the 1970s, including the women's movement, has been marked by certain default notions of the political that hail from that time, especially given the nature of the repressive power of those years. This paper seeks to reopen the all-too-legible understanding of power and politics that has become prominent and does so by reviewing some of the major writing on the National Emergency. Far from being a suppressed or silenced topic, what is noteworthy, when we look at the wide array of approaches among scholars concerned with the Emergency, is the extraordinary divergence in interpretations that have been put forward but which have hardly been discussed. Some have viewed the Emergency years as having been a relatively insignificant moment in post-independence history, others see it as an illustration of the specific nature of "Caesarist" power, while others have characterized it as being a "critical event," a "watershed" or even a time when progressive change could be initiated. Taken together, these views demand a rethinking of politics on the part of social movements that goes beyond a repressive notion of power.

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“…Thus, for WSM, the report became a site of both critique and participation in the working of the state, a double-edged sword, surprisingly untainted by the repressive arm of the state that sanctioned it for the UN's first world conference on women in Mexico (John 2014b). The crises of the legitimacy of the postcolonial state, and the 'crises of conscience' for the members of WSM affected by the findings of the report inspired the movement and its (middle-class) actors to participate and make concrete the 'dream' of the postcolonial nation to provide for its citizens and become the primary organ of governance.…”

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“…Paradoxically, this time of crisis is also seen to have been productive: it engendered a number of oppositional struggles (John, 1996, 2014b). Women were conspicuously mobilised into these as members of progressive organisations, as left-liberals and as autonomous feminist groups.…”

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“…5.For a more extended treatment of accounts of the Emergency and the place of women’s studies, see my essay John (2014b). …”