Join us for the conference, “Chronicling Unrealised Trajectories: The Plurality of Historical Experience in 1940s South Asia,” organized by the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard University in collaboration with Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies Delhi. This conference aims to question the hegemonic patterns of historical remembrance to underline the plurality of historical experiences that swept South Asia during the 1940s within a broader Asia-wide context. It approaches the last decade of colonial rule in the subcontinent as a catalytic moment in which those who lived through this period experienced and negotiated with contending unrealised alternate possibilities of mass movements that have been almost forgotten today. By moving the field of enquiry beyond partition and independence, the conference focuses on divergent currents of popular mobilisation that gave the subcontinent’s political climate a certain degree of plurality and fluidity. It asserts that examining these unrealised possibilities will demonstrate that South Asia’s history in the last decade of colonial rule and beyond was less inevitable and linear than often assumed.
Date: Friday, October 18, 2024
Time: 9:30 am – 4:30 pm IST / 12:00 am – 7:00 am EST / 6:00 am – 1:00 pm CET
Venue: Lecture Room 1, India International Center (Annex), New Delhi and on Zoom
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
Inaugural Address
9:30 to 10:00 am IST
• Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Harvard University
• Sebastian Schwecke, Head, Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies
Panel 1
10:00 am to 11:30 am IST
• Chair
Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Harvard University
• Speakers
○ Aniket De, Assistant Professor, University of California San Diego (joining virtually)
‘Beyond the Courtroom: The INA Trials and Vernacular Archives of Anticolonialism’
○ Sharmistha Saha, Assistant Professor, IIT Bombay
‘The Commune-ist Air: living the everyday in times of struggle – the case of the Indian People’s Theatre Association’s Central Squad’
Panel 2
11:45 am to 1:15 pm IST
• Chair
Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Harvard University
• Speakers
○ Nilanjana Sengupta, Author and Community Historian, Singapore
‘We are the Multitude: The Legacy of Subhas Chandra Bose in Southeast Asia’
○ Santosh Hasnu, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Hansraj College, University of Delhi
‘The cross-cultural connections enabled by WW II: A case study of British India & the Chinese Nationalist Government’
Panel 3
2:30 pm to 4:00 pm IST
• Chair
Ravi Ahuja, Professor, Centre for Modern Indian Studies, University of Gottingen (joining virtually)
• Speakers
○ Robert Rahman Raman, Mittal Institute India Fellow 2023 – 2024
‘Bombay on the Eve of the Independence (1946-47): Popular Solidarities and Cumulating Polarisation‘
○ Prerna Agrawal, Gerda Henkel Fellow at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies, Göttingen University (joining virtually)
‘Moments of Labor in the Late 1940s Calcutta‘
Vote of Thanks and Conclusion
4:00 pm to 4:30 pm IST
