Brewing Resistance Indian Coffee House and the Emergency in Postcolonial India

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.

Kristin Plys is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Her work analyzes the historical trajectory of global capitalism as seen from working class and anti-colonial movements in the Global South. She works in multiple languages – French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Hindi, and Urdu.