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

Abstract

ABSTRACT Indian 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.