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were active in the Naxalite movement in the early 1970s, 8 in women-dominated protests against rising prices in 1974 and various other people’ s movements since the 1950s. 9 If the Emergency was, as many contend, an important catalyst for the post-1977 eruption of the formal, contemporary women’ s movement, and if women were active in politics and protest prior to 1975, then how did individual or organised groups of women engage with the State of Emergency? My archival research could not answer this question. As with many other histories, women’ s voices were few and far between in these androcentric archives. Whilst I could trace aspects of women’ s pro-Emergency engagements in documentary evidence, such as the publications of the Congress Party’ s Women’ s Front, oral narratives were necessary to examine women’ s oppositional activity and their daily experiences under Emergency rule.
Unheard Voices?
Allesandro Portelli notes,‘ oral history started out primarily because we wanted to listen to those who had gone unheard.’ 10 For its unique capacity to do this, the method has long been embraced by feminist and women’ s history researchers, and those seeking to move away from histories of high politics and elite experiences. 11 One of my participants commented directly on the absence of women’ s voices from Emergency histories. Ranjana Kumari was studying for a Master’ s degree in political science at Jawaharlal Nehru University( JNU), Delhi, in 1975 and is now a well-known women’ s rights activist and head of Delhi’ s Centre for Social Research. 12 JNU campus, notorious for active student politics, played an important role in the anti-Emergency movement and Ranjana was active within this. In our discussion, she detailed her own experiences and commented broadly on women’ s participation. She asserted,‘ there were a lot of women who were very, very active. But of course they were all pushed aside post-Emergency.’ She further stated:‘ During the movement we were like equals, but not after the movement … so many of them, not even recognized, not even acknowledged, not even written about, it is sad … there was no recognition of women who
8 Mallarika Sinha Roy, Gender and Radical Politics in India: Magic Moments of Naxalbari( London: Routledge, 2010). 9 Nandita Gandhi,“ Masses of Women but where is the Movement?” in Subversive Women: Women’ s
Movements in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, ed. Saskia Wieringa( New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1997). See also Ilina Sen’ s edited collection A Space within the Struggle: Women’ s Participation in People’ s Movements( New Delhi, Kali for Women, 1990). 10 Allesandro Portelli, The Battle of Valle Giulia: Oral History and the Art of Dialogue( Wisconsin:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), 58. 11 Oral narratives and conversations facilitated this shift in scholarship on Emergency in Emma Tarlo’ s
work, as her use of conversations with Delhi residents alongside local authority archives allowed her to explore how the citizens experienced and negotiated the Emergency’ s coercive sterilisation drive. See Tarlo, Unsettling Memories. 12 A prolific NGO based in New Delhi, working towards gender equality and empowering women.