For those so-minded, the aftermath of an earthquake presents opportunities to intervene. Thus, in Gujarat, following the disaster of 2001, leaders were deposed, proletariats created, religious fundamentalism incubated, the state restructured, and industrial capitalism expanded exponentially.Rather than gazing in at those struggling in the ruins, as is commonplace in the literature, this book looks out from the affected region at those who came to intervene. Based on extensive research amid the dust and noise of reconstruction, the author focuses on the survivors and their interactions with death, history, and with those who came to use the shock of disaster to change the order of things. Edward Simpson takes us deep into the experience of surviving a ‘natural’ disaster. We see a society in mourning, further alienated by manufactured conditions of uncertainty and absurdity. We witness arguments about the past. What was important? What should be preserved? Was modernisation the cause of the disaster or the antidote?As people were putting things back together, they also knew that future earthquakes were inevitable. How did they learn to live with this terrible truth? How have people in other times and places come to terms with the promise of another earthquake, knowing that things will fall apart again? Acknowledgements Notes on the region Introduction Section 1: Chai wallahs and the carpetbagger Sublime Retrospective anatomy Aftermath epistemology Hyperbolic capitalism The carpetbagger Notes on ‘aftermath’ Section 2: Earthquake politics Regime change View from the east Borderlands (Re)birth of an icon Section 3: Villages 11. Village ‘adoption’ Service Jihadi, dog and secularist Building politics Integral humanism Section 4: The seven crows The place of Bhuj Where to start? Planners G numbers The unbearable intensity of reduction Section 5: The work of mourning Nostalgia History making Rituals of reconstruction Umashankar’s great escape Slow death Values of citizenship Section 6: Hope All is good? Explanation Inhabitation Section 7: Amnesia Shocks of colonialism Earthquake diaspora Nehru’s village (twice) Planning to forget Memory Afterword Notes References Index Key Features Rather than gazing in at those struggling in the ruins, as is commonplace in the literature, this book looks out from the affected region at those who came to intervene. It is the only ethnographic of the 2001 Gujarat earthquake, and it one of the very few extended case studies of a ‘natural’ disaster that provides an on-the-ground approach to understanding the social/political/economic/religious interests at play. It is a significant contribution to humanitarian literature and humanitarian ethnography. It contains several photographs and maps across the book to enrich the study.
Edward Simpson is Professor of Social Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He has published several works including Society and History of Gujarat since 1800: A Select Bibliography of the English and European Language Sources (2011) and co-edited The Idea of Gujarat: History, Ethnography and Text (2010).
