Brewing resistance : Indian coffee house and the emergency in postcolonial India / Kristin Victoria Magistrelli Plys.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Plys, Kristin Victoria Magistrelli, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Indian Coffee House--Political activity--History--20th century.

Indian Coffee House.

Protest movements--India--History--20th century.

Protest movements.

Political participation--India--History--20th century.

Political participation.

Democracy--India--History--20th century.

Democracy.

History.

India--Politics and government--1975-1977.

India.

Politics and government.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

x, 350 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Summary:

"Decolonisation in 1947 promised a better life for India's peasants, workers, students, Dalits and religious minorities. However, social justice remained a distant dream even in the 1970s. These diverse groups fought and mobilised movements to achieve what was promised at independence, and in response, the ruling government under the leadership of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi suspended the Constitution, declared Emergency and, with it, curtailed civil liberties. The hope of decolonisation that had turned to disillusion in the postcolonial period quickly descended into a nightmare. In this book, Kristin Plys recounts the little-known story of the resistance movement against the Emergency that brewed in New Delhi's Indian Coffee House. Created by British plantation owners to weather the empire-wide export commodity surplus crisis of the 1930s, the Indian Coffee House was occupied by its workers in 1946, and eventually transformed into a cooperative as part of an anti-colonial and anti-capitalist workers' movement. By the 1970s, the Indian Coffee House became more than an economic intervention into the processes of capitalism and empire-it transformed into a radical space where politically and artistically driven intellectuals of various persuasions and viewpoints gathered to resist the Emergency. Based on newly uncovered evidence and oral histories of the people who mobilized the movement against the Emergency, this book fills a major lacuna in the sphere of academic writing on one of the most shocking and darkest chapters of India's democratic history"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: 1. Introduction

2. How Anti-Colonial Labour Movements Create Anti-Authoritarian Autonomous Zones

3. Indira Gandhi's Political Economy of Development

4. Social Movements of the 1970s

5. Emergency at Midnight

6. The Coffee House Movement

7. `Coffee House' Workers `Anti-Colonial Labour Movement'

8. Conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Plys, Kristin Victoria Magistrelli. Brewing resistance

ISBN:

9781108490528

1108490522

OCLC:

1154918531