26.01.2023
Dr. Anwesha Roy: Feeding into Partition? The Bengal Famine of 1943 and the Carving of Communal Identities

Recent scholarship around partition has opened up the need for a longue durée approach in order to understand the tremendous and horrific violence that has characterised Partition. This talk takes the audience back to 1943, the year that saw the start of the most devastating famine that Bengal had ever seen. We shall analyse the nature of societal dislocation in Bengal – how the constant exposure to death, disease and hunger created a ‘brutalization of consciousness’, at the same time creating a complete dependence on relief measures. An analysis of the nature of complexities of relief/rehabilitation is then drawn up to show how communal politics inserted itself deep into the relief process. The famine, hence, became a crucial juncture in the 1940s, which consolidated community-based mobilizations not only by organised political parties, but also by various ‘volunteer’ organizations like the Hindu Mission. This was also the time, when, under the pretext of relief, these volunteer groups were able to consolidate their slogan of ‘Hindu Unity’ amongst the Depressed Classes. Communal politics around everyday relief measures irrevocably turned community identities into communalised ones, eventually feeding into the horrific violence of 1947.

This talk will take place on Zoom.
Registration: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUrc-mhrD8oGtKjND_L52YSrZlisL_tnL9c

02.02.2023
Dr. Pippa Virdee: From Silences to Virtual Memories: Partition History in the Digital Age

There has been a surge in Partition Studies in recent years that illuminates the changing relationship between how we speak and write about History, amplified by the digital age and social media. A key element in this has been the role of the South Asian diaspora and organisations and institutions based in the Global north, which have enabled the scalingup of these initiatives. This talk attempts to firstly contextualise this development, then offer a critique and thereby attempt to complicate these historiographical developments. At the heart of this surge has been the use of oral history that initially opened up the academe, inside-out, and has now blurred the lines between academic and public history. In the process though, the question which histories remain hidden and which come to the fore, has been rather reinforced, given the structural inequalities that are exhibited in the collection, documentation and dissemination of oral accounts.

This talk will take place on Zoom.
Registration: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUrc-mhrD8oGtKjND_L52YSrZlisL_tnL9c

09.02.2023

Dr. Janam Mukherjee: First Sparks: The Calcutta Riots of 1946

The Calcutta riots of August 1946 have received very little historical attention, despite being a seminal eruption of Hindu/Muslim violence at the end of colonial rule in South Asia. The violence that took place in Calcutta, beginning on August 16th, in many ways set the mold for the annihilating communal violence associated with the partition of the sub-continent in 1947. Indeed, the violence in Calcutta directly influenced reprisal pogroms, first in Noakhali, and then in Bihar, even by the End of 1946. What historical scholarship has been produced on the Calcutta riots has mostly focused through the narrow lens of communalism, criminality and policing. When one looks at the violence that rocked Calcutta in August of 1946 through an even slightly more broad-angled lens, However, it can be seen that the larger historical context is one defined by war, hunger, scarcity of all kinds, gross overcrowding in Calcutta, and a logic of “belonging” forged in the crucible of famine. In this presentation I will attempt to Sketch this wider context, and locate the Calcutta riots from within an expanded trajectory of structural violence, displacement, qualified belonging and contested urban space. While the Calcutta riots must of course be understood as communal, they also must be understood in the much more complex context of the times in which they occurred.

This talk will take place on Zoom.
Registration: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUrc-mhrD8oGtKjND_L52YSrZlisL_tnL9c