When the Powerpolis Paused: Representations of Political Trauma of Indian Emergency in Delhi Calm

Abstract

ABSTRACTIndian emergency is a period that is often counted among the dark days of post-Independent Indian history. Apart from the repeal of fundamental rights, this period also witnessed an autocratic rule by state-aided machinery that mostly affected the underprivileged sections. While censorship prevented narratives of these twenty-one months, literature took up the task of producing counter-narratives of common man’s experiences like slum demolition, mass arrests, curfew and vasectomy. Political trauma related to the period is two-fold; the first one being the trauma of abandonment and second one being the trauma of revelation. The current study proposes to analyze how Vishwajyoti Ghosh’s graphic novel sketches the political trauma of Emergency in Delhi. Referring to Delhi as the Powerpolis and Indira Gandhi as Mother Moon, Ghosh has employed a number of techniques to narrate the tale of silence. With flex boards, newspapers, and slogans lining up the pages, this tale in sepia presents the reader with a rather disturbing version of emergency through the eyes of a group of young activists. The study focuses on Ghosh’s character selection, narrative techniques, caricatures to understand the dynamics of representation and how Ghosh’s choice of graphic medium aptly conveys the trauma of state-aided oppression during times of emergency. Jenny Edkins’ idea of the trauma of betrayal will also be employed to analyze how the autocratic regime destabilized the Indian ideal of a democratic nation. Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsNikhitha Mary MathewNikhitha Mary Mathew is a research scholar enrolled with the Humanities and Social Sciences department of IIT Roorkee, India. Her broad research area is Indian emergency literature. She aims at exploring the role of literature in speaking against dominant narratives and producing counter-histories. Theories from memory studies and trauma are the key pillars build up the critical outline of her research.Smita JhaSmita Jha is currently working as Professor of English, Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee. She has published more than 65 papers in refereed Journals of literature and a number of books like Manohar Malgonkar’s Narrative Style (Bloomsbury, 2020) and E.M. Forster as Biographer (Notion Press, 2020). She has received various prestigious fellowships like the Indo-Canadian Shastri Fellowship. Her research interest includes Indian Writing in English, Commonwealth Literature, Diasporic literature, Medical Humanities, Linguistics & ELT, Postcolonial writings, Contemporary Literary theories and Gender and Cultural Studies.