Archives of democracy: Technologies of witness in literatures on Indian democracy since 1975

This dissertation analyzes the transformation of the nationalist call for freedom in India into public deliberations on postcolonial democracy. By focusing on the impact of the political crisis emerging around the Indian state, in the wake of its decreasing legitimacy since the 1970s, the state's significance in shaping postcolonial culture is made evident. While the postcolonial condition in India has frequently been studied through imaginative renderings of nationalisms, in examining cultural responses to the state's centrality, I am compelled to cast my gaze on a different variety of forms in the annals of postcolonial letters.; This study heuristically constitutes an "archive of democracy" to represent the profusion of technologies and genres of witness: altogether, the lyrics of underground poetry, the drama of inquiry commissions and litigation, the narratives of novels, and the quotidian prose of journalism and official files, all formulate a basis for examining the querying of postcolonial freedom. The Emergency of 1975 was a significant event for the career of Indian democracy. Following extensive discussions in political theory, my study of postcoloniality follows this event through the aftermath of globalization to trace the changes in democratic discourse.; By applying the insights of political and social theories to this context of increasing democratization and decreasing state legitimacy, I map state and citizen usages of varying technologies of witness. The relay of postcolonial social imaginaries against the backdrop of Constitutional provisions for liberty, justice, equality and fraternity serves as a guiding framework. I argue that by reading the Indian Constitution as a fiction of the state, the legacies informing democratic practices and discourses are made manifest. These legacies include Gandhian satyagraha, Nehruvian statism, Ambedkarite syncretism and Naxalite ambush, and yield a new understanding of recent postcolonial formations such as the demand for state accountability. By detailing a range of texts (Emergency literature, court rulings in the post-Emergency period, citizen diaries etc.), I illuminate a new basis for resurrecting state legitimacy. These literatures read alongside social imaginaries show how the state shifts its public rationale from development to democracy.