1

INTRODUCTION

STATES OF EMERGENCY IN TWENTIETH CENTURY HARYANA

In 2015, Haryana declared a pension scheme for the „victims‟ of the Emergency. It

was declared that the people who participated in „anti-Emergency Movement‟ would be

honoured with a tamra patra (a special letter of honour and an identity card similar to one

issued to freedom-fighters of the Nationalist Movement) and pension benefits. This policy is

at par with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh‟s (RSS) narrative of the Emergency, which refers

to it as the „second freedom struggle‟.1 In the same year, the newspapers reported that

government offices were buying copies of a book titled तानाशाही से जूझता हररयाणा (Tanashahi

se Jhoojhta Haryana), written by Annapurna Sagar, originally published by the Rashtriya

Swayamsevak Sangh, Haryana Pradesh in 1978.2 The book, apart from a detailed account of

„non-violent‟ anti-Emergency satyagraha, provides a thorough list of the „detenues‟ during

the Emergency. The list was instrumental in identifying the claimants of the pension scheme.

The circulation of a particular narrative within the sphere of governance marked the

beginning of a process of standardization of the memory of the Emergency. In April 2018,

the government of Haryana finally notified the Shubhra Jyotsana pension scheme of rupees

10,000 per month against a claim of detention during the Emergency.

1
P. G. Sahasrabuddhe and Manikchandra Vajapeyi, The People Versus Emergency: A Saga of Struggle (New
Delhi: Suruchi Prakashan, 1991).
2
Annapurna Sagar, Tanashahi Se Joojhta Haryana: Ahimsak Kranti Ka Bhoomigat Sangharsh (Hindi) (RSS
Haryana Pradesh: Kautilya Prakashan, 1978). Dainik Bhaskar Hindi तानाशाही से जूझता हररयाणा तऱाशने में जुटी

सरकार Bhaskar News Network Aug 27, 2015, 02:10 AM (IST). Also, Jagaran ताम्रपत्र से सम्माननत होंगे

आपातकाऱ में जेऱ गए ऱोग Publish Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2015 01:09 AM (IST)
 2

On the other hand, an alternate memory of the Emergency period finds space in the

rhetoric of the political opposition in the country today. The memory of Emergency,

therefore, remains a contested arena. While addressing these gaps between these alternate and

conflicting narratives on the Emergency, this dissertation attempts to develop a framework of

doing a history of the „event‟ of the Emergency and understand how this event has shaped

and continues to shape the political and social life of the Indian democracy.

State of Emergency in India refers to a period of governance in which, upon a

declaration by the President of India, the normal constitutional order is altered in response to

a grave threat to the nation from internal or external sources. 3 The phrase Emergency period

mostly refers to the 21-month period between 25 June 1975 to March 1977, when on the

recommendation of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the President of India declared a state of

Emergency as a response to the threat posed by „internal disturbances‟ to the security of the

nation. The declaration resulted in suspensions of constitutional rights such as rights to free

speech and assembly, limited the powers of the judiciary, leading to press censorship,

banning of various political organizations and detention of opposition leaders. The term state

of exception is predominantly used in philosophical discussions where the extraordinary, the

exceptional, is seen in light of the norm; a demarcation which is a necessary precondition for

it to have a legal form. This more generic term is derived from the language of contemporary

debates on constitutionalism and attempts to present a bigger picture; historically and

epistemologically. In this view, „state of exception‟ is not that exceptional. Rather, it has a

history as old as the history of state itself.4

3
Part XVIII of the India Constitution provides for three kinds of emergencies i.e. national security emergencies
(as a result of internal or external threats), failures of constitutional machinery in the States (often referred as
President‟s Rule) and financial emergencies. Since the Constitution was adopted, Article 352 (national security
emergency) was evoked twice owing to external threats during 1962 war with China and during the 1971 war
with Pakistan and once due to internal security threats in 1975.
4
For instance, within Indian context, the ancient concept of Apad-Dharma (Dharma in times of emergency) is
traced in Dharmashastras and in Mahabharata which is based on a similar logic and ethics. Upinder Singh, A
History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century (Noida, India: Pearson,
2019), 291.
 3

This dissertation studies the particular „event‟ of Emergency 1975-1977 with a focus

on Haryana‟s experience of the same, while keeping in mind the multi-layered nature of the

concept of „state of exception‟. The state of Haryana came into existence in 1966, less than a

decade before the Emergency period, at a juncture when contradictions of Indian democracy

and post-colonial state increasingly became visible through the stagnant economy and

manifestations of populist and authoritarian tendencies of the state. During the Emergency

Haryana emerged as a major detention center for reasons such as its geographical proximity

to Delhi and Chief Minister Bansi Lal‟s pro-active participation in designing the Emergency

rule. Haryana became an active laboratory for social and political engineering during the

Emergency where tall national leaders were kept in large numbers. Thus, the dissertation

attempts a dual exercise of studying the event of Emergency in Haryana but also studying

Haryana through Emergency.

Such an exercise is relevant especially in contemporary times when the event of

Emergency is memorialised in specific ways within the realm of policy and beyond. This

memory of the Emergency has always been an arena of political conflict. The period is

remembered as „dark days‟ when Indian democracy was derailed (seen precisely as a result of

Indira Gandhi‟s political manoeuvres). But the elections of 1977 brought democracy back on

track, that is to say, the Emergency is seen in stark contrast with the period preceding and

following it. The constitutional crisis and failure of democracy is seen as an isolated

phenomenon, perhaps a black spot on the Indian democracy but nevertheless, disconnected

from the normal course of modern Indian history. The elections of 1980 which brought

Indira back to power was followed by, as Emma Tarlo‟s study demonstrates, state‟s attempt

to control the production of memory through distortions, suppression and silences. 5 The „dark

days‟ of the Emergency, from the perspective of the Indian state, were rather moments of

5
It must be remembered here that the copies of the only official Archive on Emergency i.e. the Shah
Commission of Inquiry‟s reports were literally withdrawn and disappeared from the public domain after
Congress came back to power in 1980. See Era Sezhiyan, Shah Commission Report: Lost and Regained (Aazhi
Publications, 2010). Also, Emma Tarlo, Unsettling Memories: Narratives of the Emergency in India (Delhi:
Permanent Black, 2003).
 4

forgetting rather than remembering. But recently, the Emergency has begun to be

remembered quite frequently, especially by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government

which came to power in 2014. The Indian state is no more hesitant in remembering the

Emergency, but it does so in specific ways. Emergency‟s relation to the Congress, its focus

on forgetting is well known. The dissertation takes up the task to record the relationship

between the Hindu-right in India and the Emergency which is increasingly referred to by the

former in recent times. Thus, it becomes important to understand the nature and magnitude of

anti-Emergency struggle in Haryana.

Literature Review

The central debate about the Emergency (1975-1977) revolves around the question:

how exceptional was the Emergency period? The debate was sparked by the remarks made in

one of the earliest academic works on the Emergency, In the name of Democracy: JP

movement and the Emergency(2003) by Bipan Chandra. He argues that Emergency was a

„watershed‟ period in India‟s history but it was not fascist or totalitarian, just a brief period of

„flirting with totalitarianism‟.6 Further, he adds that an authoritarian and totalitarian trend was

certainly present in the Emergency but its short-life i.e. Indira‟s decision to virtually revoke

the Emergency and to hold elections, her defeat and opposition‟s victory marked a „triumph‟

of Indian Democracy over the authoritarian and totalitarian tendencies and fascist potential.

Accordingly, “Emergency was a temporary departure from the normal trajectory of Indian

political development,” and “the democratic system in India not only survived the JP

movement and the Emergency, it emerged stronger.”7 Thus, for Chandra, lifting of the

Emergency and the elections of 1977 were defining moments in the history of modern India,

events as significant as 15 August 1947 and reflected India‟s strong commitment to

democracy. Emergency, therefore, was merely a „passing interlude in long march of Indian
6
Bipan Chandra, In The Name of Democracy: JP Movement And The Emergency (India: Penguin Books, 2003),
269.
7
Chandra, In the Name of Democracy, 271.
 5

democracy.‟8 For Chandra, Emergency was purely a political event, without a specific class

character or any direct link with the socio-economic processes of the time. Chandra‟s account

is a rich historiography of events since the „years of disillusionment‟ i.e. late 1960s and early

1970s until elections of 1977. But legal and political scholarship on emergency powers in

general and on the Emergency in particular point out towards radical continuities and, in fact,

strengthening of such powers in the post-Emergency period. Thus, what was earlier thought

as temporary, now achieved permanence.9 This view lies in stark contradiction with

Chandra‟s theory of Emergency and exposes its limitations.

Critical works such as Emergency Powers in Asia: Exploring the Limits of Legality

(2010) edited by Victor V. Ramraj and Arun K. Thiruvengadam, The State, Democracy and

Anti-Terror Laws in India (2007), Political Prisoners in India (1998) and other articles by

Ujjwal Kumar Singh, besides Anushka Singh‟s Sedition in Liberal Democracies (2018),

provide legal, theoretical and philosophical fodder for this dissertation. These works show

structural continuities in the Indian Constitution and in the use of emergency powers in India.

Collectively, these show how the Indian state increasingly depends on the use of emergency

powers and extraordinary laws despite amendments in the law to safeguard against the

misuse of state power. These works are also insightful in tracing the tactical shifts in the ways

the state exploits the emergency powers. In other words, following the backlash against the

Emergency, there was a strategic shift in the state‟s use of emergency powers and it was now

more careful and selective in the use of these emergency powers. Thus, in the aftermath of

Emergency extraordinary laws were directed at select locations and communities. Anushka

Singh demonstrates increasing use of laws of sedition against the Dalits of Haryana to

suppress their claims in the village common lands.

8
Ibid.
9
Ujjwal Kumar Singh, "State and Emerging Interlocking Systems: „Permanence of the Temporary," Economic
and Political Weekly 39, no. 2 (January 10-16, 2004).
 6

Emma Tarlo‟s work Unsettling Memories: Narratives of India’s Emergency (2003) is

an ethnographic account situated in a resettlement colony in Delhi. It demonstrates alternative

methods of doing Emergency‟s history. Her discussion on memory and state sponsored

„forgetting‟ of Emergency in its aftermath, reveals enriching lived experiences of people,

especially the poor who were displaced, rendered homeless and became victims of state

violence during the Emergency. Tarlo successfully demonstrates that how popular memory

predominantly associates sterilizations and slum demolitions with the Emergency period. Her

account of Family Planning Programme (FPP) efficiently records both the popular narratives

about the same and a reading of government archives against the grain and shows how

coercion within the family planning, which were termed „excesses‟ in the official reports,

actually pre-dated the Emergency period. Through her close reading of the archive i.e. Shah

Commission of Inquiry Reports and all kinds of literature on the Emergency which floated in

its aftermath and also „monuments of public memory‟ she critically analyses the process of

selective remembering and forgetting. With regard to this, the Emergency was not unique „in

India‟s pool of forgotten moments.‟10 Lastly, her work influenced a series of articles which

focused on the bio-politics of the FPP and fave attention to the gendered dimension of the

Emergency which remains absent from a large chunk of scholarship on Emergency. 11 These

frameworks are essential as entry points into the gendered nature of emergency and critique

the dominant view that demonstrates only men as victims of the FPP. 12 But these works also

fail to address the regional, cultural and social raw material which over-determined the

10
Emma Tarlo, Unsettling Memories: Narratives of the Emergency in India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003), 21.
11
See Hannah Johnson, "Questions of Ethics: How Family Planning Changed under Indira Gandhi‟s
Emergency," Waterloo Historical Review 8 (2016)., Gemma Scott, "„My Wife Had to Get Sterilised‟: Exploring
Women‟s Experiences of Sterilisation under the Emergency in India, 1975–1977," Contemporary South Asia 25,
no. 1 (February 28, 2017). And Rebecca Jane Williams, “Storming the Citadels of Poverty: Family Planning
under the Emergency in India, 1975–1977,” The Journal of Asian Studies, 73, no.2 (May 2014): 471-492.
12
For instance, Gemma Scott shows how in Maharashtra women were operated in large numbers and in fact
outnumbered men. Although in Haryana‟s case it was the opposite. Scott, “My Wife Had to Get Sterilised,” 3-4.
 7

specific ways in which FPP was implemented which varied across regions. Also, these works

fail to record long-term implication of the gendered nature of the FPP on gender relations of

different regions of India. For instance, in the case of Haryana, it was the women who bore

the burden of family planning operations in the post-Emergency period despite the fact that

female sterilization was then far more complicated procedure than male sterilization.

Gyan Prakash‟s latest work, Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and Democracy’s

Turning Point (2019) is a timely, updated, thorough historical account of the Emergency and

makes a significant contribution to the debate stated above. He argues that popular unrest and

the authoritarian turn within Indian democratic state was not unique and such a shift could be

seen in many countries of South Asia during the period. Accordingly, such a view, that the

constitutional crisis was an isolated phenomenon, „sequesters‟ the twenty-one months of the

Emergency from the period before and after.13 This kind of historiography is in itself an

effect of the Emergency discourse which not only defined the „exceptional‟ but also the

„normal‟. For Prakash, the Emergency was a turning point in the history of Indian democracy.

But he also points towards a „paradox ' i.e. „suspension of lawful rights by law‟ which is

rooted within the constitution itself. Such a potential continues in the afterlife which

Emergency enjoys i.e. in the contemporary period. While carefully studying the Constituent

Assembly Debates to locate the origins of extraordinary laws within the Indian Constitution,

he also engages with legal theories and philosophical debates on „State of Exception‟ from

around the globe.14 This allows him to demonstrate how Emergency was successful in

normalizing the use of, for instance, preventive detention beginning with the Janata Party

government and then upon Indira‟s coming back to power and subsequent enactment of
13
Gyan Prakash, Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and Democracy’s Turning Point (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2019), 8.
14
Prakash builds upon the theory of state of exception through works of Carl Schmitt, the German Nazi jurist
and the Italian philosopher Georgio Agamben which are crucial for my thesis. See Georgio Agamben, State of
Exception, trans. Kevin Attell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
 8

National Security Act in 1980 and extension of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act to

Punjab in 1983, and to Kashmir in 1990. The continuous use of laws of sedition, similarly,

meant that the Emergency was not a mere episode which ended and, on the contrary,

continues to enjoy an afterlife.

Arvind Rajagopal has studied Emergency in a number of his works but his

monograph The Emergency as Prehistory of the New Indian Middle Class (2011) is an

important work for it concentrates on class dynamics of the Emergency, a subject which is

often overlooked in many works on the Emergency. Rajagopal is critical of the view in which

the Emergency does not represent any fundamental change of the Indian state. For him, the

Emergency was a watershed period in the post-independence history. He demonstrates that it

marked the process of making of a new middle class which was the result of a shift in the

working of state in the post-Emergency period. He adds;

“The change meant a shift away from the Nehruvian focus on the economy as a

crucial arena of nation-building, involving labour as the key modality of citizenship.

Instead, culture and community became the categories that gained political salience in

the period of economic liberalization. The mass media was central to this redefinition

of the political, multiplying in size and reach, and acquiring market-sensitive forms of

address couched in the rhetoric of individual choice.” 15

Rajagopal studies mass media in order to uncover the value system which gave rise to

the new middle class which conversely shaped the former. This approach was helpful in

rejuvenating the interest in studying Emergency‟s relation with different classes and

eventually the political economy.

15
Arvind Rajagopal, "The Emergency as Prehistory of the New Indian Middle Class," Modern Asian Studies 45,
no. 05 (2011).
 9

Early commentary on political economy of the Emergency attempted to bust the myth

of the rhetoric of economic growth which was associated with it; that although it was

politically incorrect and violent, but was nevertheless beneficial for the economy. J.F.J

Toye‟s Economic Trends and Policies in India during the Emergency (1977) and Francine R.

Frankel‟s Compulsion and Social Change: Is Authoritarianism the Solution to India's

Economic Development Problems (1978) are examples of such scholarship. Toye argues that

Emergency was not the manifestation of any rupture in the existing coalition of socially

dominant classes and groups.16 Also, the figures that show economic growth during the

Emergency are merely „a number game‟; much of the improvements resulted from fortuitous

influences like better rainfall rather than from policy change.17 Frankel also argues against the

claims of economic growth due to policies during the Emergency; given that there was no

change, for instance, in the land relations which remained the „direct‟ obstacle to economic

growth. She argued that India‟s economic problems could not be solved through

authoritarianism and centralisation due to an absence of a transformative force from below.

According to these narratives the economic analysis of the Emergency has limited

relevance, as it did not imply any fundamental structural change in the short term. Rather it

was a political „event‟ and there were radical continuities in the way the economy was

organised. However, Chirashree Das Gupta‟s recent work, State and Capital in Independent

India: Institutions and Accumulation (2016) argues that Emergency marked a fundamental

change in the patterns of capital accumulation. The 1970s figure in her account as a period in

which there were important set of continuities as well as departures in the processes of

accumulation and the nature of state intervention.18 At a time of intensifying economic crisis,

argues Chirashree, the Indian state did not simply manage to push through decisive „reforms‟.

16
Rajagopal, “Emergency as Prehistory”, 314.
17
Ibid, 313.
18
Chirashree Das Gupta, State and Capital in Independent India: Institutions and Accumulations (New Delhi,
India: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 144.
 10

Instead, the state took recourse to a combination of policies to accommodate changes

necessary to facilitate the expansion of the structure of accumulation i.e. entailing

restructuring the institutional organization of capital covering „zones of intervention‟ and

„zones of non-intervention‟.19 The Emergency and the „despotic populism‟ of the 1970s is

seen as a part of this interventionist and centralizing tendency of the Indian state which is

caught in political contest by different segments of capitalists.20 Moreover, Das Gupta‟s book

has been extremely crucial in developing the framework to study political economy of the

Emergency in Haryana which is a main theme of the current thesis.

On Methodology, Sources and Organisation of the Chapters

While the memory of the Emergency is being increasingly revoked in recent times, it

still is an arena of contest.21 Nevertheless, the Emergency as a subject of study has found

enough space within academia across disciplines. A historical monograph on Emergency was

19
This was the period of expansion in state‟s role in enabling primary accumulation through guarantee of
intellectual property, interlocking of banking and industrial capital, protection of subsidies of import substitution
industrialization which covered the zone of intervention. The combination of regulation and deregulation is best
exemplified in the fact that public expenditure in rural areas during 1970s marked a departure from the earlier
period and the food pricing policy, fixing procurement prices for example takeover of wholesale trade in wheat
which became the first major direct intervention in trade and finally the intervention through technology led
model to increase agricultural productivity were the new zones of intervention which were combined with a
continuous policy of non-intervention in the rural areas within the agrarian land and property relations. Within
the industrial sector the zone of non-intervention implied „new‟ or „late‟ entrants into the preserve of big capital
and the emergence of small capitalists enabled by the policies that checked monopolies(Monopoly and
Restrictive Trade Practices Act 1970), legalization of process patents, deregulation by redrawing the list of state
owned industries in 1971, etc. Das Gupta, State and Capital in Independent India, 75, 93, 194-197, 211.
20
Ibid, 194.
21
Since the Hindu-Right has begun to project itself as the sole torchbearer of the anti-Emergency struggle , the
opposition, in an attempt to expose the RSS in particular, pointed out, for instance, that “[T]the RSS and its
flock in the BJP have no locus standi to make noises about Emergency. Its own leaders groveled before the
Congress dispensation to win reprieves from jail terms and have the ban lifted on their organization.” The main
source of this claim remains the letters sent by Sarsanghchalak Balasaheb Deoras to Indira Gandhi. See A.G.
Noorani, “RSS and Emergency”. Frontline. Unknown publication date. See “RSS led the unprecedented
movement against Emergency”. Organiser. June 25, 2019. Also see, Arvind Rajagopal, "Sangh's Role in the
Emergency," Economic and Political Weekly 38, no. 27 (July 5-11, 2003).
 11

published during the course of current thesis.22 It can be said that a broad conjuncture of

events during the Emergency period at the national level, for instance, JP movement, the

Allahabad High Court‟s ruling against Indira, detentions of political leaders, gagging of

press, demolitions and sterilizations, etc. have successfully been recorded, and a broad

consensus exists about the historiography of the Emergency period. The task taken up in the

current thesis is, therefore, two-fold: firstly, it is an exercise in developing frameworks and

alternative methodologies to study the „event‟ of Emergency in light of the ongoing

„processes‟ of state of exception, and secondly, to study the changes and continuities within

the state and society from the period preceding Emergency to the period following it.

The former is based on the contemporary concerns about the state of exception which,

within legal theory continues to pose itself as a legal problem, a „paradox‟ and therefore is

looked upon as a process.23 While no emergency has been declared in India since 1977,

political scientists and legal theorists demonstrate that what had been thought as an

extraordinary, temporary measure now has a degree of permanence. 24 In other words, while

the national Emergency was revoked in 1977, the extraordinary laws upon which it was based

have survived (with changed names and developed powers) within the legal mandate of the

country. Thus, the boundaries between „state of exception‟ and the „rule of law‟ can

increasingly be seen as blurring, highlighting the undeclared, „informal‟, „de facto‟ state of

22
Gyan Prakash, Emergency Chronicles.
23
The primary paradox about emergency powers is about its location, i.e. whether it is inside or outside of the
juridical order; whether it can have a legal form? As Gyan Prakash puts it, “[N]either completely juridical nor
completely political, the paradoxical suspension of lawful rights by law during the Emergency was „a state of
exception‟.” Prakash, 10. Also, Victor Vridar Ramraj, "Emergency Powers Paradox," in Emergency Powers in
Asia: Exploring the Limits of Legality, ed. Arun K. Thiruvengadam and Victor V. Ramraj (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2010), 21-55.
24
Ujjwal Kumar. Singh, The State, Democracy and Anti-terror Laws in India (New Delhi: Sage, 2007)., Victor.
V. Ramraj and Arun K. Thiruvengadam, eds., Emergency Powers in Asia: Exploring the Limits of Legality
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). And Anushka Singh, Sedition in Liberal Democracies (New
Delhi, India: Oxford University Press, 2018).
 12

emergency.25 Moreover, Georgio Agamben in his theory of State of Exception argues that

such a state maintains a „fictional‟ relationship with law.26 Addressing these issues, Chapter 1

„Layers of Emergency‟ attempts a theoretical understanding of the relationship between the

„event‟ of the Emergency and the broader processes of state of exception. It includes a

secondary reading of emergency powers in the Indian Constitution and the conjuncture of

events which influenced their inclusion in the Constitution. It also includes a discussion on

the relationship between state of emergency, violence and revolution. Latter section of

Chapter 1 studies how the doctrine of necessity and essentiality is central to emergency

interpretations. It analyses continuity and changes from the period before and after the

Emergency, in the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) of 1968 and ESMA 1981,

but also its regional enactment i.e. the Haryana ESMA of 1974. The Chapter also compares

extraordinary laws such as Preventive Detention Act (PDA) 1950, Maintenance of Internal

Security Act (MISA), 1971, etc. along with the preventive detention powers provided in

ESMA.

Much of historical and political scholarship on Emergency broadly foregrounds the

Emergency, and in effect traces its possibilities and causes in the JP movement, Bihar and

Gujarat students‟ movements, peasant movement in West Bengal, etc.27 Ravi Ahuja argues

how an authoritarian potential was always present in Indian democracy and continues to

regenerate itself. He identifies three such broad and heterogeneous sources of

authoritarianism in the Indian context: “first, a religio-nativist right-wing extremism,

25
Ramraj and Thiruvengadam, 2.
26
“In truth, the state of exception is neither external nor internal to the juridical order, and the problem of
defining it concerns precisely a threshold, or a zone of indifference, where inside and outside do not exclude
each other but rather blur with each other…..The essential task of a theory of state of exception is not simply to
clarify whether it has a juridical nature or not, but to define the meaning, place and modes of its relation to the
law.” Agamben, State of Exception, 23-51.
27
Bipan Chandra, “Years of Disillusionment,” in In The Name of Democracy, 12-33.
 13

secondly a „law-and-order‟ conservatism and thirdly the technocratic dirigisme of social

engineers and planners.”28 According to this framework, the inclusion of emergency powers

in the Constitution was the result of this law-and-order conservatism. This potential was

different from the extreme right but was often found in tactical alliance with the same,

especially in the period of crisis.29 The „event‟ of Emergency (as different from emergency

powers), as will be seen, was a moment when these two sources came in conflict with each

other.

Chapter 2 studies the interactions of these two sources of authoritarianism. First part

of the chapter studies the period beginning from the formation of state of Haryana in 1966 till

the Emergency period. It records how a narrative of „backwardness‟ preceded its formation,

and once formed it was followed by a narrative of Vikas (progress). This transition or rather a

leap marked a regeneration of Haryana‟s own version of authoritarian and anti-democratic

tendencies. It studies the development of institutions and state apparatuses since its

formation, such as the police and prisons, which were not only instrumental during the

Emergency regime, but were also used against pre-Emergency popular movements, protests

and strikes. The attempt is to compare the nature of violence in the pre-Emergency and later

period. It interrogates the nature of the „development‟ process in this period viz-a-viz new

class formations. Some key sources for this section are government reports from the year

1966 which analysed the state of Haryana in comparison with other sub-regions of Punjab

and put a case for its separation, primary data on institutions and infrastructure extracted from

Statistical Abstracts of various years, newspapers (local and national), Shah Commission of

Inquiry Report on the Emergency period, Government reports on Jail reforms, memoirs and

three oral accounts in relevant sections.

28
Ravi Ahuja, "Authoritarian Shadows: Indian Independence and the Problem of Democratisation," South Asia
Chronicle, February 2, 2018, 185.
29
Ahuja, Authoritarian Shadows, 190.
 14

Chapter 2 also explores the relation between the Hindu-Right (particularly the RSS)

and the Emergency in Haryana‟s context. Through a thorough reading of the two texts

published by RSS which narrate the story of Emergency and the Sangh‟s role in anti-

Emergency struggle, this section studies how Emergency was a watershed in RSS‟s own

history and marked a radical change in the nature and structure of the organization itself.30

Chapter 3 attempts to inquire the relationship between Capital and the Emergency.

The Emergency is a political event, primarily a result of political crisis in the immediate

sense, but the period cannot be seen as neutral to economic sphere. Moreover, the period

marks a reconfiguration of class relations and a change in the trajectories of class process.31

Through some case studies, this chapter attempts to record the changes and continuities in the

organisation of economy and circuits of capital accumulation from the period preceding and

following the Emergency. It records the change in the autonomy of the Indian state viz-viz

different segments of capital.

Chapter 3 studies some alternate emergency interpretations such as US Emergency

Food Aids to India which resulted in the “Green Revolution”, an essential subject of study for

any study on Haryana-Punjab region of the period just preceding the Emergency. Through

primary and secondary sources, it studies the politics and diplomacy behind such emergency

assessments and also the implications of such measures on, for instance, land relations in a

rural (but rapidly urbanizing) Haryana. The emergency assistance over the years is seen as

instrumental in the process of capital accumulation especially in agriculture and class

formation in the state of Haryana. It also studies different sections of capitalists such as

monopoly and the proto-capitalists, viz-a-viz the relative autonomy of the state and their

30
The first text narrates all-India story of Emergency and the second is based exclusively in Haryana. P. G.
Sahasrabuddhe and Manikchandra Vajapeyi, The People Versus Emergency: A Saga of Struggle (New Delhi:
Suruchi Prakashan, 1991) and Sagar, Tanashahi Se Joojhta Haryana.
31
Rajagopal, "Emergency as Prehistory”.
 15

changing relationship during the Emergency period through case studies from the Shah

Commission of Inquiry Report. The second half of the Chapter compares the growth and

records structural change in the economy in the pre-Emergency and post-Emergency period

by looking at the rate of growth or decline of major sectoral share in the state economy (State

Net Domestic Product). The data is collected through Statistical Abstracts and the Census of

Haryana for various years. It records a considerable shift in the sectoral growth trend from the

period before the Emergency to after, which is reflected in the rise of new capitalists. The

Chapter ends with a brief discussion on case studies of new capitalists such as Jindals in

Hisar during the 1970s and DLF in Gurgaon during the 1980s. The primary sources for this

chapter are bare Acts such as India Emergency Food Aid Act 1951, Monopoly and

Restrictive Trade Practices Act 1970 and the Haryana Urban Development Authority Act,

1977, newspapers, etc.

Chapter 4, Emergency, Population control and Gender, studies how concern about

population in the form of the Family Planning Program became a defining feature of the

Emergency period with a focus on Haryana. A fear of population is seen to give rise to

various sources of authoritarianism discussed above, namely, technocratic, law and order

conservatism and right-wing extremism. These are studied through sources such as the Shah

Commission of Inquiry‟s reports on the FPP in Haryana and the RSS‟s contemporary

publications. The major section of the Chapter traces the cultural history of Haryana through

colonial accounts, especially with regard to practices of birth control, its gender relations,

especially what is referred to as „militarised masculinity‟ of the region 32. These categories

become important not only to understand the violent confrontations between the FPP officials

and the police in the region during the Emergency but also to understand shifts in trends of

32
Prem Chowdhry, “Militarized Masculinities: Shaped and Reshaped in Colonial South-East Punjab,” Modern
Asian Studies, 47, no. 3, 2012: 713-750.
 16

the FPP in the post-Emergency period. A radical shift can be seen in the proportion of males

and females participating in the FPP from pre-Emergency to post-Emergency period. The

FPP during the Emergency is seen in light of adverse sex-ratio of the region and gave a thrust

to practices like female feoticide and sex determination, as soon as ultrasound and similar

technologies become available in the post-Emergency period. The Chapter primarily

underlines the implications of the FPP during the Emergency on the culture and gender

relations of Haryana, but also the pre-existing socio-cultural milieu which over-determined

the ways in which the FPP was run in the state.

Thus, the dissertation attempts to seek answers to the following questions: What was

the region specific experience of the Emergency? What does the history of the Emergency

1975-1977 informs us about the contemporary politics and social relations in India? Did

Haryana‟s socio-political milieu provide conditions of possibilities of the Emergency? What

kind of changes and continuities it entailed? How unique was the Emergency period within

the larger post-independence history of India?