ABSTRACT
This chapter derives from a larger project constructing a historical anthropology of entitlement and privilege, as bound to capital and class as well as gender and difference – in neoliberal and nationalist times, framed by plutocratic and populist temporalities. The exercise has assumed a particular shape in its present incarnation, also putting its own spin on disciplines of modernity as well as on emergent archives. After India gained Independence from colonial rule in 1947, a “mixed” economy was introduced in the following decade. In June 1975, in the midst of rising dissent, an economic crisis, and an adverse judicial verdict against her personal misuse of the official machinery, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of the Congress Party declared a state of national Emergency. Indira Gandhi lost the elections held after the Emergency in 1977, and remained out of power till 1979. Modern School has for long accepted a fair number of “merit scholars.”
