Revisiting the Indian Emergency: Collective Memory and Political Narratives in English-language Dailies

Although the press is credited with writing the first draft of history, the relevance of the past to journalists as “purveyors of the present” remains less understood, particularly in the Global South. This article grapples with this problem by investigating the uses of the past to journalism. Building on scholarship from journalism and memory studies, I investigate the contemporary news media’s references to the Indian Emergency (1975–1977), in which the government instituted strict controls on freedom of speech and the press. Specifically, by drawing on the concept of “collective memory,” I analyze how mainstream English-language dailies constructed narratives about the Emergency during April-June 2024, a period encompassing the 2024 national election and the anniversary of the Emergency. Narrative analysis reveals two themes in coverage. First, narratives harked back to the Emergency to highlight the ruling government’s suppression of the press in contemporary India. Second, narratives projected the Emergency as a site where political debates and differences between the ruling and opposition parties were played out. This article argues that the narrative use of vernacular linguistic registers, particularly in English-language newswriting, constitutes an important feature of collective memory work and journalistic invocation of the past in this Global South context.