Kristin Plys is the Associate Professor of Sociology and History at the University of Toronto. Most recently, she was the J. Clawson Mills Scholar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 2023-24. She has held visiting positions at the Georg-August-Universität-Göttingen in Germany, the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram, India, and the Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan. She is the author of Brewing Resistance: Indian Coffee House and the Emergency in Postcolonial India (2020), winner of the Global Sociology Book Award from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and co-author with Charles Lemert of Capitalism and its Uncertain Future (2022), which received honourable mention for the PEWS Immanuel Wallerstein Memorial Book Award. Combining pioneering sources from literature, visual culture, and politics, Kristin has published widely on capitalism, labour movements, dictatorship, and democracy in the Global South.
In this conversation with Kristin M. Plys, we delve deeply into the nature and quality of Indian democracy by examining the legacy and impact of its resistance movements. Plys’ recent book, Brewing Resistance (Cambridge University Press, 2020), studies the Indian Coffee House movement—a unique, worker-driven cooperative that flourished in the 1970s. This movement not only symbolized a shared space for political discourse but also became a hub for anti-authoritarian sentiment, especially during the turbulent years of the Emergency (1975-77), when democratic freedoms were severely curtailed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s government.
Plys discusses how the imposition of the Emergency, a period marked by mass censorship, arrests, and suspension of civil liberties, offers an opportunity to study the layered political landscape of India. The Indian Coffee House played a critical role in this setting, functioning as both a sanctuary for dissenters and a platform for organizing resistance against state repression. The Coffee House movement’s ties to anti-colonial labor struggles also shaped its legacy, as workers’ collectives organized within the Coffee House drew on earlier traditions of anti-imperialist and labor rights activism. These connections underscored a distinctive postcolonial narrative in which anti-colonial aspirations became entwined with the fight for labor rights, impacting political outcomes not only within India but also across the Global South, where similar struggles for autonomy and equity were underway.
The Emergency is particularly significant in the conversation, as it catalyzed a diverse range of voices and forced new actors onto the political stage. By examining these anti-establishment leftist movements, Plys offers a nuanced lens to understand both the ruptures and continuities in India’s democratic history. Ultimately, the dialogue not only reconsiders India’s democratic journey through the lens of resistance but also provides insights into the potential future paths of democracy in India and other postcolonial contexts, exploring how historical struggles inform contemporary democratic challenges and the broader political landscape of the region.
The interview was conducted by Anubha Anushree. Alina Young edited the podcast.
