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Listening to those who have gone unheard: An Exploration of Women’ s Oral History
Gemma Scott( PhD History, Keele University)
Women are almost entirely absent from the historiography of India’ s period of internal Emergency( 1975-1977). This is reflected in the main archival materials that scholars have drawn on to analyse these events. Government documents, censored media, political party publications and other documentary evidence often contain only brief references to women’ s activities. My wider research seeks to address this gap and explore women’ s engagements with the State of Emergency, drawing on oral histories conducted with women involved in the underground resistance movement in Delhi and Mumbai( 2014). This paper reflects on my use of oral history within this research, using the notion that oral history’ s aim is to listen to‘ unheard voices’ as a starting point. Ultimately this paper argues that within this research, oral narratives do not only articulate unheard voices. They also fundamentally re-centre Emergency histories, bringing often marginalised aspects of political experiences, such as affective responses and private spaces, to the fore.
Keywords: Emergency, Oral History, Space, Affect & Resistance
Oral History, now an established methodology, has nonetheless generated fierce debates within the field. 1 By challenging established notions about historical sources and research, oral history’ s proliferation has prompted scholars to address issues around the reliability of memory, the power relations at stake within interviews and the relationships between history, politics and empowerment. Feminist oral historians have been particularly vocal in these debates. This paper explores some of the issues raised within this literature through a reflection of my own use of oral narratives to construct a history of women’ s experiences of India’ s period of Emergency( 1975-1977).
Indira Gandhi’ s Congress Government declared this Emergency in June 1975, in response to economic crises, corruption allegations and widespread agitations organised by an increasingly united political opposition. In the name of‘ law and order’ and to safeguard her government’ s position, Gandhi used the Emergency to impose numerous restrictions. Authorities imprisoned political leaders and other dissenters and detained them without trial, banned twenty-six‘ anti-national’ organisations, imposed press censorship and suspended elections. The government also used centralised Emergency powers to push a number of socio-economic programmes, such as vigorous slum clearances and coercive sterilisations, now perhaps the regime’ s most infamous aspects. When Gandhi unexpectedly called for elections in January 1977 hostility towards these measures was rife. Numerous opposition
1 For further discussion, see the latest edition of Robert Perks and Alastair Thompson’ s edited collection The Oral History Reader, 3 rd Edition( London: Routledge, 2015).