Author: Emma Tarlo
Publisher: Permanent Black
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 235
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8178240661
Description
This richly detailed ethnographic work tells the story of modern India's period of deepest civil unrest. It fills a significant gap in the recent political history of India and sheds light on a period many would rather forget.
In 1975 Indira Gandhi declared the infamous 'Emergency' which gave her the power to silence opposition through arrests and censorship, and to introduce a programme of reform which included draconian campaigns of slum clearance and family planning. In Delhi, access to basic civic amenities now became dependent on the production of a sterilization certificate. For many of the city's poorest inhabitants, whose homes had been demolished, the choice was between sterilization and homelessness.
Unsettling Memories provides a gripping analysis of how state oppression was orchestrated and experienced in India's capital during the Emergency. Using personal narratives and previously unstudied archival material, it traces the process by which policies were subverted at the local level trough a combination of violence, trickery, and market forces.
Emma Tarlo's documentation and analysis of the relationship between state archives and lived experience is methodologically innovative, charting new ground for anthropologist, historians and political scientists who are concerned with the role of the state in everyday life.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Glossary
Abbreviations
INTRODUCTION
The ethnography of events
The anthropology of the state
Location
Voice and Image
FORGETTING AND REMEMBERING THE EMERGENCY
Teen Murti Bhavan
Stepping into the future: the official narrative of the Emergency
Anatomizing the past: the post-Emergency counter narrative
1 Safdarjung Road
In search of memories
Fragments of the past for the future
PAPER TRUTHS
A first glimpse at the files
The language of family planning
VOICES FROM THE DUST
Victims and victimizers: the case of Plot H68
TALKING ABOUT THE EMERGENCY: SOME INITIAL CONVERSATIONS
Locating the Emergency
Narratives of resettlement
THE FORCIBLE DEAL
The right to work
The right to civil amenities
The right to a home
Family and Community negotiations
Towards an ethnography of the sterilized
THE VICTIMS TURNED AGENTS
The functioning of the market
An ethnography of the motivator
HEROES, HEROINES, VILLAINS: SUBALTERN PERCEPTIONS?
Entangled narratives
Bibliography
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS
Themes
Memories of the Emergency
Welcome: Urban Plans, Urban Realities
Family Planning: An Ongoing Saga
Unsettled Lives
The Changing Face of Indira Gandhi