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

'Brewing Resistance richly contributes to our understanding of “regime change” in the convoluted aftermath of colonial rule by tracing the unexpected role colonial practices and spaces play in the postcolonial state in the making of popular resistance. … In this precarious moment for social movements struggling for equality in India, the analysis of Brewing Resistance is useful to understand the emergency roots of the present political moment but also the possibilities that lie in the reclaiming of urban spaces for creating alternatives.' Yael Berda, American Journal of Sociology

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]