Cinema and the Indian National Emergency: Histories and Afterlives
The Indian National Emergency of 1975 to 1977, saw the suspension of civil liberties, increasing censorship, and extra-judicial state control. It is recognised as one of the most tumultuous periods in the history of postcolonial India, and its socio-political consequences have been exhaustively studied. Despite this, the profound cinematic implications of this event have remained relatively unexplored.

This book examines the strained relationship between the state and the Indian film industry during this 21 month period of political upheaval. Each of the essays, written from a broad range of critical perspectives, consider the various modes of state suppression adopted, from increasing levels of film censorship to police surveillance of film productions and exhibitions.

Contributors analyse controversial films such as Aandhi (1975) and Nasbandi (1978), which were banned for the duration of the Emergency, and overtly political films such as Kissa Kursi Ka (1977), the prints of which were permanently confiscated owing to the film's criticisms of the state. They also consider the political and aesthetic dilemmas of state-sponsored films such as Ashadh Ka Ek Din (1971), which was made to be explicitly apolitical and came to be known as a key work of New Indian Cinema.

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Cinema and the Indian National Emergency: Histories and Afterlives
The Indian National Emergency of 1975 to 1977, saw the suspension of civil liberties, increasing censorship, and extra-judicial state control. It is recognised as one of the most tumultuous periods in the history of postcolonial India, and its socio-political consequences have been exhaustively studied. Despite this, the profound cinematic implications of this event have remained relatively unexplored.

This book examines the strained relationship between the state and the Indian film industry during this 21 month period of political upheaval. Each of the essays, written from a broad range of critical perspectives, consider the various modes of state suppression adopted, from increasing levels of film censorship to police surveillance of film productions and exhibitions.

Contributors analyse controversial films such as Aandhi (1975) and Nasbandi (1978), which were banned for the duration of the Emergency, and overtly political films such as Kissa Kursi Ka (1977), the prints of which were permanently confiscated owing to the film's criticisms of the state. They also consider the political and aesthetic dilemmas of state-sponsored films such as Ashadh Ka Ek Din (1971), which was made to be explicitly apolitical and came to be known as a key work of New Indian Cinema.

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Cinema and the Indian National Emergency: Histories and Afterlives

Cinema and the Indian National Emergency: Histories and Afterlives

Cinema and the Indian National Emergency: Histories and Afterlives

Cinema and the Indian National Emergency: Histories and Afterlives

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Overview

The Indian National Emergency of 1975 to 1977, saw the suspension of civil liberties, increasing censorship, and extra-judicial state control. It is recognised as one of the most tumultuous periods in the history of postcolonial India, and its socio-political consequences have been exhaustively studied. Despite this, the profound cinematic implications of this event have remained relatively unexplored.

This book examines the strained relationship between the state and the Indian film industry during this 21 month period of political upheaval. Each of the essays, written from a broad range of critical perspectives, consider the various modes of state suppression adopted, from increasing levels of film censorship to police surveillance of film productions and exhibitions.

Contributors analyse controversial films such as Aandhi (1975) and Nasbandi (1978), which were banned for the duration of the Emergency, and overtly political films such as Kissa Kursi Ka (1977), the prints of which were permanently confiscated owing to the film's criticisms of the state. They also consider the political and aesthetic dilemmas of state-sponsored films such as Ashadh Ka Ek Din (1971), which was made to be explicitly apolitical and came to be known as a key work of New Indian Cinema.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781350371132
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date: 07/24/2025
Series: World Cinema
Pages: 264
Product dimensions: 6.40(w) x 9.50(h) x 0.85(d)

About the Author

Lúcia Nagib is Professor of Film and Director of the Centre for Film Aesthetics and Cultures (CFAC) at the University of Reading. Her research has focused, among other subjects, on polycentric approaches to world cinema, new waves and new cinemas, cinematic realism and intermediality. She is the author of World Cinema and the Ethics of Realism (Continuum, 2011), Brazil on Screen: Cinema Novo, New Cinema, Utopia (I.B. Tauris, 2007), The Brazilian Film Revival: Interviews with 90 Filmmakers of the 90s (Editora 34, 2002), Born of the Ashes: The Auteur and the Individual in Oshima's Films (Edusp, 1995), Around the Japanese Nouvelle Vague (Editora da Unicamp, 1993) and Werner Herzog: Film as Reality (EstaçãoLiberdade, 1991). She is the editor of Impure Cinema: Intermedial and Intercultural Approaches to Film (with Anne Jerslev, 2013), Theorizing World Cinema (with Chris Perriam and Rajinder Dudrah, I.B. Tauris, 2011), Realism and the Audiovisual Media (with Cecília Mello, Palgrave, 2009), The New Brazilian Cinema (I.B. Tauris, 2003), Master Mizoguchi (Navegar, 1990) and Ozu (Marco Zero, 1990).

Parichay Patra is Assistant Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur, India. His research interests include transnational associations of cine-politics and the dictatorial regimes of the long 1960s.

Julian Ross is a University Lecturer at the Centre for the Arts in Society.

Dibyakusum Ray is Lecturer in English, Philosophy and Cultural Studies at the Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar, India. He is author of Postcolonial Indian City-Literature: Policy, Politics and Evolution (2022). He is head of the centrally funded project on the archiving of lost media elements during the Indian National Emergency, 1975-77, in collaboration with Royal Holloway College, UK.

Table of Contents

Contributors

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements
Foreword
Vinzenz Hediger

Introduction
Dibyakusum Ray & Parichay Patra

1. The Fear of Cinema
Ashish Rajadhyaksha

2. Not by Emergency Alone: An Unending Saga of Political Repression and Content Control
Someswar Bhowmik

3. State: A Patron and a Tyrant: Indian Film Society Movement in 'Emergency' Times
Amrit Gangar

4. The Emergency, FFC/NFDC, and New Cinema in India (1970s)
Sudha Tiwari

5. Between a Logo and a Memo: State-Sponsored Documentary Films During the Emergency
Ritika Kaushik

6. Memories and Mixed-Media: The Event and the Archive
Vinayak Das Gupta & Ananya Juneja

7. 'A Unique Indian Revolution': S. Sukhdev, the Films Division and the Emergency
Vikrant Dadawala

8. The Emergency and Its Media Afterlife
Ranjani Mazumdar

9. In Defense of a Not-So-Political Cinema
Parichay Patra

10. From 'dictatorship' to dictatorship: the dynamics of alien and 'legitimized' authoritarianism in 1980s popular Hindi films
Dibyakusum Ray

11. The Long 1970s: Anjan Dutt as Archive, Some Interfaces
Kaushik Bhaumik

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