Periodic Reporting for period 1 - IATIO (India and the Indian Ocean in the Early Decolonial Period: Archipelagic Imaginaries, 1950s-1970s)
Reporting period: 2021-06-01 to 2023-05-31
The project IATIO mobilises the concept of ‘archipelagic imaginaries’ to examine Indian intellectual and literary cosmopolitanism in the Indian Ocean during the 1950s-1970s. The research shifts focus from teleological readings of Indian Ocean history and territorial perspective on postcolonial Indian culture, to a renewed investment in archipelagic theory and geocritical approaches. The temporal framework of the project ranges from around the time of the post-World War II decolonisation to the late 1970s, a period of far-reaching political, cultural and economic change for the entire Indian Ocean region. The project aims to advance a non-territorial epistemological framework for theorising postcolonial India through an investigation of the conceptual, imaginative and material Indian Ocean geographies inhabited by Indian intellectuals, writers and other cosmopolitan voices. The objectives of the project are: (i) to investigate the mental maps and shifting meanings of the Indian Ocean as articulated by Indian intellectuals, activists and other voices speaking to experiences of Indian Ocean cosmopolitanism(s); (ii) to establish how these archipelagic imaginaries seeped into the literary geographies of the early decolonial period, when the main arts and cultural institutions of the country were set up and a nationalist agenda was yoked to anglophone cultural production; (iii) to delineate the nodal points triangulated with the Oceanic space, and trace the actual trajectories of texts and individuals across local and transnational scales. These will be reached by employing an interdisciplinary methodology that combines tools and insights from history, literary criticism and cultural studies. The first objective entails a reconstruction of the conceptual geographies of the Indian Ocean as thematised and negotiated in major intellectual journals and in the popular press by key figures of postcolonial cultural imagination in the two decades after the independence of India. The second objective involves a reassessment of canonical and non-canonical Indian fiction in light of the narrative potential of archipelagic imaginaries and of individual writers’ experience in the Indian Ocean. The third objective is based on the production of a few case studies examining the material geographies that, regardless of their peripherality with respect to the political centre of gravity of the Indian nation, had a significant purchase on the conceptual and imaginative geographies of Indian writers and intellectuals and constituted the material nodes of ‘archipelagic India’.
At the beginning of the outgoing phase, the researcher worked towards the formulation of the key concepts that inform the project, in particular “archipelagic India”, “archipelagic memory” and “Indian Ocean quotidian”. Library-based activities during this period included in-depth reading and synthetising of archipelagic theory from the Caribbean and the Pacific. Next, the researcher examined a series of publication projects commissioned under the auspices of the Afro-Asian Writers’ Association, such as the journal Lotus: Afro-Asian Writings, to identify a series of Indian and Indian Ocean writers whose politics or poetics would speak to the challenge of thinking India ‘archipelagically’. Relying on archival research in India and the Indian Ocean region, the words and actions of selected thinkers and policymakers engaging with the Indian Ocean as a significant geography were studied, e.g. Jawaharlal Nehru, K.M. Panikkar, and Basdeo Bissoondoyal. An archipelagic approach was devised, one that would shift the vantage point from the periphery to the centre, foregrounding the perspective of island spaces and proceeding inwards from there to the Indian subcontinent along concentric circles of national belonging. Accordingly, the research started in Mauritius and continued in Pondicherry, two regions connected by an earlier colonial history and by continuing linguistic affinities which endow them with a standpoint on national developments that are eccentric, not only geographically but also epistemologically. During fieldwork, a series of periodicals were analysed, from whose pages an intense intellectual effort of ‘world-making’ emerged, veered towards the administrative, geopolitical or ideological rapprochement of Mauritius and India between 1947 and 1968. Archival research was also focused on the analysis of Mauritian writers of Indian origin and their fictional works, and on the genre of literary anthologies. Research visits were also useful towards the production of a few case studies examining the material geographies that, regardless of their peripherality with respect to the political centre of gravity of the Indian nation, had a significant purchase on the conceptual and imaginative geographies of Indian writers and intellectuals and constituted the material nodes of ‘archipelagic India’. In Mauritius, the research focused on selected memorial sites and literary representations of plantation lives in Western Indian Ocean islands; in India, a series of location in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka that will enable a reading of R.K. Narayan’s Indian Ocean fictional geographies against the metaphorical representation of India as an urban-rural archipelagic continuum.
The major dissemination and communication achievements of the outgoing phase were: the organisation of the online seminar series "Archipelagic Indias", hosted in collaboration with the King's India Institute (2021-2023); the co-organisation of the webinar "Conceptualising Archipelagic Memory" (1 February 2022); the co-organisation of the international interdisciplinary conference "Archipelagic Memory: Intersecting Geographies, Histories and Disciplines" (2-4 August 2022); the submission for peer-review of two co-edited special issue, one focused on Afro-Asian Archives, the other one on Archipelagic Memory and Indian Ocean Literatures; and work towards the publication of a co-edited book on Indian literature and island and archipelagic theory.
The major dissemination and communication achievements of the outgoing phase were: the organisation of the online seminar series "Archipelagic Indias", hosted in collaboration with the King's India Institute (2021-2023); the co-organisation of the webinar "Conceptualising Archipelagic Memory" (1 February 2022); the co-organisation of the international interdisciplinary conference "Archipelagic Memory: Intersecting Geographies, Histories and Disciplines" (2-4 August 2022); the submission for peer-review of two co-edited special issue, one focused on Afro-Asian Archives, the other one on Archipelagic Memory and Indian Ocean Literatures; and work towards the publication of a co-edited book on Indian literature and island and archipelagic theory.
The project is creating new high-quality research pivoted on an innovative conceptual and methodological framework that distils theoretical insights from the Caribbean and the Pacific to de-emphasise nation-centric approaches for apprehending Indian postcolonial culture and foreground affiliative multilingual networks in the Indian Ocean. The interest generated during the outgoing phase has been ample and sustained, with engagement by scholars of South Asia and the Indian Ocean region (reached via the organisation of project dissemination events in person and online), the general public (mainly reached via social media platforms like YouTube), and policy makers (e.g. representative of UN specialised agencies and international political and education foundations attending and supporting the organisation of project events).
Expected results by project end are: the organisation of a second project conference; the publication of the co-edited volume on Indian literature and island and archipelagic theory; the submission of a monograph proposal and peer-reviewed articles.
Expected results by project end are: the organisation of a second project conference; the publication of the co-edited volume on Indian literature and island and archipelagic theory; the submission of a monograph proposal and peer-reviewed articles.