Sub-project of ICAS:MP TM1 History as a Political Category in collaboration with
Indra Sengupta, Former Head of Office/ Research Fellow, GHIL in collaboration with Neeladri Bhattacharya, Retired Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Since the 1980s India has witnessed a steady rise in influence of the forces of majoritarian Hindu nationalism (Hindutva), which have increasingly and successfully contested the post-Independence, Nehruvian ideal of a secular nation state. Notions of a Hindu past, already a part of anticolonial nationalist historiography, have played an important role such a reimagining of the nation. Such narratives, usually produced outside the domain of academic history, have often centred on built heritage sites (such as the well-known Babari-Mosque in Ayodhya) which are the subject of contesting claims of religious groups and of historical evidence. My project focuses on a site, Murshidabad, that lives on in national memory as the site of defeat of the local rulers of Bengal by the British, the beginning of colonial rule and hence a site of national humiliation. At the same time, the historic palaces, mosques and temples of its eighteenth-century rulers and rich merchant communities draw large numbers of local and regional tourists, in a celebration of regional cultural pride. In my research, I use a rich corpus of locally and cheaply produced historical travel guides to explore the ways in which local histories constitute the past, how they relate to grand conflicts about the nation, and how they enable us to understand popular imaginings of place, region and the nation. The project looks at both the content and the context of guidebooks and histories that circulate there: it looks at what kinds of narratives of the past are recounted, who writes and publishes these books, how they are financed, and who reads them. Such a site-based study will provide clues to the development of political attitudes and the formation of sectarian identities in small locales and regions that are far away from the political centre of the Indian nation.
The project is connected to two lines of research that I have been pursuing for several years: 1) it is an extension of my long term research interest in the politics of history and heritage in colonial and postcolonial India, which is the subject of a monograph that I am currently revising for publication. Unlike the book project, which focused chiefly on state policy and mainly used the colonial archive, the current research looks at popular conceptions of the past as evident from locally and cheaply produced historical tracts that have a limited regional circulation; 2) the project engages with the research question of the BMBF-funded Merian Centre ICAS: Metamorphoses of the Political (Module History as a Political Category, of which I am a member,) and examines how the production, circulation and reception of popular history is linked to a changing political sphere in contemporary India.
The project is a sub-project of ICAS:MP TM1 and is conducted jointly with Professor Neeladri Bhattacharya (New Delhi). Apart from my research, the project will produce a repository of texts we have collected, which are stored at the MWS India Branch Office. The collection will be digitised and published, with a detailed index, on ICAS:MP’s digital platforms.
Related Conference Presentations
‘Of places past: history and the political in locally produced travel guides in late 20th century India – a case study’, presented at Exploring the (Post-)Colonial Encounter. Performance, Material Agency, Violence. Workshop convened at University of Southampton, 11 September 2018
‘Reading history and the political in locally produced travel guides’, ICAS TM1 Workshop Selling history: tourist guides, bazaar histories, and the politics of the past. Some preliminary reflections, India International Centre, New Delhi, 17 March 2018
‘Travel guides and popular histories: a research agenda’, Workshop Thematic Module 1: History as a Political Category, M.S Merian-R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies ‘Metamorphoses of the Political’ (ICAS:MP), Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, 18 –19 April 2016
Related Workshop
Selling history: tourist guides, bazaar histories, and the politics of the past. Some preliminary reflections, ICAS:MP Workshop at the India International Centre, New Delhi, 17 March 2018