Maia Ramnath - Decolonizing Anarchism.pdf - Libcom

Echoes and Intersections I 211
Such assumptions were irreparably damaged when
then Prime Minister Gandhi declared the Emergency period
of dictatorship in 1975. Aimed ostensibly at stabilization,
law, and order under threat from the militant Left, but
in reality a move to shore up her slipping political control
against charges of ethical violations, the Emergency made
explicit the government's dictatorial, repressive nature. To
some radical critics, this was no aberration-not a state of
exception, but rather a state revealing its true face. In Partha
Chatterjee's words (echoing Ranajit Guha's well-known
formulation ofIndian nationalism), there was now truly
dominance without hegemony-that is, no component of
consent, but only force. Recalling his leftist student days
in the early 1970s, Chatterjee says, "The phenomenon we
were always concerned with was the fundamentally authoritarian
character of the postcolonial state. Why did it have
to be authoritarian in this way, if in fact the national movement
was what it claimed to be, which was a movement of
the people against an authoritarian, colonial state ?"5
The Emergency period was reversed in 1977, but
the untaveling of the Nehruvian consensus could not
be halted. During the 1980s, the territorial integrity of
the nation seemed liable to fragment in multiple directions.
Meanwhile-a foreshadowing of the liberalization
to come-India accepted its first International Monetary
Fund loan in 1981. These loans increased along with their
structural adjustment demands throughout the decade.
After the cold war, the developing/ decolonizing societies
of Asia, Africa, and Latin America had to readjust. India
lost the Soviet Union as ally and military patron. With the