PMO-1 Prelude to the Emergency by B.N. Tandon

The Emergency and the Indian English Novel Memory, Culture and Politics Raita Merivirta First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Raita Merivirta The right of Raita Merivirta to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. She is the author of The Gun and Irish Politics: Examining National History in Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins (2009) and a co-editor of Frontiers of Screen History: Imagining European Borders in Cinema, 1945–2010 (2013). Raita Merivirta is a postdoctoral research fellow at the School of Languages and Translation Studies at the University of Turku, Finland. At a time when debates around freedom of speech and expression have become critical to literary and political discourses, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of English literature, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, media studies, political studies, sociology and history. The book explores the betrayal of the Nehruvian idea of India and democracy by Indira Gandhi and analyses the political and cultural amnesia among the general populace in the decades following the Emergency. The author reads works by Salman Rushdie, Shashi Tharoor, Nayantara Sahgal and Rohinton Mistry in conjunction with government white papers, political speeches, memoirs, biographies and history. It discusses the Emergency as an event that prompted the writing of several notable novels attempting to preserve the silenced and fading memory of its human rights violations and suspension of democracy. Ralph Crane, Professor of English, University of Tasmania, Australia This book examines the cultural trauma of the Indian Emergency through a reading of five seminal novels.

It persuaded me to rethink some of my ideas about a group of novels I thought I knew well.

THE EMERGENCY AND THE INDIAN ENGLISH NOVEL Raita Merivirta’s The Emergency and the Indian English Novel is a significant contribution to the study of Indian English fiction.

Table of contents : Cover Half Title Title Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgements 1 Introduction 2 Midnight’s Children: preserving memories for “the amnesiac nation” 3 Safeguarding democracy in The Great Indian Novel 4 Family ties: nepotism and corruption in Rich Like Us 5 The Repressive State Apparatus in Such a Long Journey and A Fine Balance 6 Conclusion Bibliography Index Citation preview

PMO-1 Prelude to the Emergency by B.N. Tandon