Periodic Reporting for period 2 - IATIO (India and the Indian Ocean in the Early Decolonial Period: Archipelagic Imaginaries, 1950s-1970s)
Période du rapport: 2023-06-01 au 2024-05-31
The project IATIO mobilises the concept of ‘archipelagic imaginaries’ to examine Indian intellectual and literary investment in the Indian Ocean region during the 1950s-1970s. The research shifts focus from teleological readings of Indian Ocean history and territorial perspective on postcolonial Indian culture, to advance a non-territorial epistemological framework for theorising postcolonial India through 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 1970s, a period of far-reaching political, cultural and economic change for the entire Indian Ocean region. By tracking the ideas, imaginings and movements of a group of intellectuals, writers, and a host of other agents – statespeople, journalists, magazines, and even navy ships –, IATIO tells a story of how India looked at the Indian Ocean region in the mid-twentieth century, and how communities in the Indian Ocean looked back at India.
To tell this story, the project employed an interdisciplinary methodology that combines tools and insights from history, literary criticism and cultural studies, and proceeded along three interrelated research strands, each focused on a different set of figures and primary sources. The first strand entails a reconstruction of the conceptual geographies of India and the Indian Ocean as thematised and negotiated in journals and magazines by key figures of postcolonial cultural imagination as well as lesser-known intellectuals. The second strand involves a reassessment of now-canonical Indian fiction in light of the narrative potential of archipelagic imaginaries and of individual writers’ experience in the Indian Ocean. The third strand is based on the production of a few case studies on sites that, regardless of their peripherality with respect to the political centre of gravity of the Indian nation, constituted the material nodes of ‘archipelagic India’.
The project has achieved three primary objectives, corresponding to the research strands outlined above: investigating ideas and meanings of the Indian Ocean articulated by a range of Indian intellectuals and policymakers; establishing how these archipelagic imaginaries seeped into the literary geographies of the early decolonial period; identifying a number of nodal points triangulated with the Oceanic space, and tracing the movements of texts and individuals across local and transnational scales.
To tell this story, the project employed an interdisciplinary methodology that combines tools and insights from history, literary criticism and cultural studies, and proceeded along three interrelated research strands, each focused on a different set of figures and primary sources. The first strand entails a reconstruction of the conceptual geographies of India and the Indian Ocean as thematised and negotiated in journals and magazines by key figures of postcolonial cultural imagination as well as lesser-known intellectuals. The second strand involves a reassessment of now-canonical Indian fiction in light of the narrative potential of archipelagic imaginaries and of individual writers’ experience in the Indian Ocean. The third strand is based on the production of a few case studies on sites that, regardless of their peripherality with respect to the political centre of gravity of the Indian nation, constituted the material nodes of ‘archipelagic India’.
The project has achieved three primary objectives, corresponding to the research strands outlined above: investigating ideas and meanings of the Indian Ocean articulated by a range of Indian intellectuals and policymakers; establishing how these archipelagic imaginaries seeped into the literary geographies of the early decolonial period; identifying a number of nodal points triangulated with the Oceanic space, and tracing the movements of texts and individuals across local and transnational scales.
At the start of the project, work was focused on the formulation of the key concepts that inform the three research strands, in particular “archipelagic India”, “archipelagic memory” and “Indian Ocean quotidian”. An archipelagic approach to research was devised, shifting the vantage point from the periphery to the centre, thus foregrounding the perspective of island spaces and proceeding inwards from there to the Indian subcontinent along concentric circles of national belonging. Accordingly, archival 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.
Across all strands, work has involved research into a series of periodicals from Pondicherry, Mauritius and the Indian Ocean region from whose pages an intense intellectual effort of ‘world-making’ emerged, veered towards the geopolitical, ideological or cultural rapprochement of different Indian Ocean regions between 1947 and the early 1970s. Archival research was also focused on the analysis of works by writers from India or of Indian origin whose politics or poetics speak to the challenge of thinking India ‘archipelagically’, and on the genre of literary anthologies.
Research visits were useful towards the production of a few case studies examining places 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 locations in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka that have enabled a reading of R.K. Narayan’s Indian Ocean fictional geographies against the metaphorical representation of India as an urban-rural archipelagic continuum; in Indonesia, the sites of the Bandung 1955 conference.
In addition to the project publications (listed under Results) and a series of presentations at academic seminars and international conferences, findings have been disseminated to the scientific community and communicated to the larger public through a series of activities, including the seminar series "Archipelagic Indias" (2021-2024, partly available on YouTube); the webinar "Conceptualising Archipelagic Memory" (01/02/2022, available on YouTube); the international conference "Archipelagic Memory: Intersecting Geographies, Histories and Disciplines" (Mauritius, 2-4 August 2022); the event "Writing and imagining history: Narrating the Indian Ocean world", with writer Amitav Ghosh (London, 28 November 2024).
Across all strands, work has involved research into a series of periodicals from Pondicherry, Mauritius and the Indian Ocean region from whose pages an intense intellectual effort of ‘world-making’ emerged, veered towards the geopolitical, ideological or cultural rapprochement of different Indian Ocean regions between 1947 and the early 1970s. Archival research was also focused on the analysis of works by writers from India or of Indian origin whose politics or poetics speak to the challenge of thinking India ‘archipelagically’, and on the genre of literary anthologies.
Research visits were useful towards the production of a few case studies examining places 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 locations in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka that have enabled a reading of R.K. Narayan’s Indian Ocean fictional geographies against the metaphorical representation of India as an urban-rural archipelagic continuum; in Indonesia, the sites of the Bandung 1955 conference.
In addition to the project publications (listed under Results) and a series of presentations at academic seminars and international conferences, findings have been disseminated to the scientific community and communicated to the larger public through a series of activities, including the seminar series "Archipelagic Indias" (2021-2024, partly available on YouTube); the webinar "Conceptualising Archipelagic Memory" (01/02/2022, available on YouTube); the international conference "Archipelagic Memory: Intersecting Geographies, Histories and Disciplines" (Mauritius, 2-4 August 2022); the event "Writing and imagining history: Narrating the Indian Ocean world", with writer Amitav Ghosh (London, 28 November 2024).
The project was conceived as a means to advance 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. In this, the project was successful beyond expectations, as evidenced by the ample and sustained interest it generated, especially around the key concept of “archipelagic memory” and the relationship between archipelagic theory and India (as well as Asia as a whole). Its results have reached a large community of international scholars of South Asia and the Indian Ocean region, the general public, and policy makers. It has also presented an opportunity for the beneficiary and partner university to strengthen relationships with each other and other institutions, and to mobilise the respective community of scholars working on Indian Ocean-related projects.
Finally, the project has significantly improved my career opportunities, expanded my network of colleagues and contacts, and broadened the scope and vision of my research and teaching. In addition to the dissemination and communication outputs outlined above, it has enabled me to start work on other forthcoming publications – two peer-reviewed journal articles and one co-edited book of essays on Archipelagic Asia – and to develop two separate but interconnected book projects, provisionally titled The Reluctant Geographer: R.K. Narayan and the World of Malgudi, and Fragments of India: India’s Archipelagic Entanglements in the Indian Ocean, 1940s-1960s. These volumes will be completed over the coming years and will make a significant contribution to our understanding of how postcolonial India engaged with national identities, regional interests, and global concerns during the Cold War era as seen through the prism of literary discourse and production.
Finally, the project has significantly improved my career opportunities, expanded my network of colleagues and contacts, and broadened the scope and vision of my research and teaching. In addition to the dissemination and communication outputs outlined above, it has enabled me to start work on other forthcoming publications – two peer-reviewed journal articles and one co-edited book of essays on Archipelagic Asia – and to develop two separate but interconnected book projects, provisionally titled The Reluctant Geographer: R.K. Narayan and the World of Malgudi, and Fragments of India: India’s Archipelagic Entanglements in the Indian Ocean, 1940s-1960s. These volumes will be completed over the coming years and will make a significant contribution to our understanding of how postcolonial India engaged with national identities, regional interests, and global concerns during the Cold War era as seen through the prism of literary discourse and production.