Introduction

Abstract

Abstract The Introduction establishes the link between Emergencies past, present, and future by opening with a discussion of a prison diary written by Shanta Kumar, a politician from the Hindu right, who spent the Emergency under administrative detention. The prison memoir is an important Indian genre, one that is intimately tied to colonial rule and to the formation of a modern Indian national subject. Indeed, the diary repeats the same themes and motifs that populate colonial-era prison narratives, establishing Kumar—and his political party—within a long lineage of political prisoners in Indian colonial and postcolonial history, despite being their political opponent. The chapter shows that “genre” in this book extends beyond the literary to serve as an object of study, a way of thinking about periods of political crisis and their consequence, an organizing principle of analysis, and a mode of literary and political history. Complementing and problematizing prevailing theories of “states of exception,” the author’s analyses of the tension between crisis and continuity as a textual-political-cultural genre open new theoretical frameworks for thinking about emergencies.