Brewing Resistance
Indian Coffee House and the Emergency in Postcolonial India

This book is the first systematic study of the resistance movement against India's brief period of dictatorship during the 1970s.

Kristin Victoria Magistrelli Plys (Author)

9781108490528, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 29 October 2020

358 pages
23.6 x 15.9 x 2.6 cm, 0.6 kg

'This is a rich and informative historical account of an iconic institution, a space of dissent and debate that came into its own during the Emergency years in India. Plys tells a compelling tale and evokes distinct resonances without sacrificing a historian's rigorous craft. Written with admirable lucidity, Brewing Resistance is at once the story of a fabled coffeehouse and a narrative about the challenges and pitfalls that manifest themselves on a new nation's road to decolonisation.' Priyamvada Gopal, University of Cambridge

In 1947, decolonization promised a better life for India's peasants, workers, students, Dalits, and religious minorities. By the 1970s, however, this promise had not yet been realized. Various groups fought for the social justice but in response, Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi suspended the constitution, and with it, civil liberties. The hope of decolonization 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 movement against the Emergency as seen through New Delhi's Indian Coffee House based on newly uncovered evidence and oral histories with the men who led the movement against the Emergency.

Acknowledgements
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. Conclusions
Appendix 1. Photo insert
Appendix 2. Political parties during the Emergency
Appendix 3. Methodological appendix
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Political activism [JPW], Political parties [JPL], Political ideologies [JPF], Politics & government [JP], Social issues & processes [JFF], Society & social sciences [J]