“India and Ireland: Colonialism,
Nationalism And Modernity”
an international conference organized
by
Centre
for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University
with
support from the Irish Embassy, New Delhi
Partners: UGC Special Assistance
Programme,
India Habitat Centre, Sahitya
Akademi,
Samvad India Foundation
7 - 10 January, 2007
THEME
NOTE
In
colonized countries, internationalist perspectives of “brotherhood” and “commonality
of circumstance” were a regular practice. In nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century discourses of nationalism, cross-cultural identifications of
sodalities of the oppressed gave the particular challenges of a nationalist
movement a global significance, and sometimes, an ethical basis.
As we
know, such compacts and identifications across the globe allowed native
intellectuals to challenge the rhetoric of humanism and liberalism which
glossed colonial speech. Yet present-day theoreticians of culture and
revisionist historians have shown a wariness towards un-critical parallelisms
of ex-colonial countries. Such intellectual angles have questioned the frameworks
which easily navigate between settler communities like Ireland and non-settler colonies
like India.
However,
“India and Ireland” as a framework of cultural, political, social and
historical enquiry
gives rise to challenging questions which further portrays the multidimensional
nature of colonialist discourse, the diverse landscapes of nationalist
imaginations, and the complex answers provided by native intellectuality in the
face of growing modernity. Indeed, read contrapuntally, the problems of
cross-colonial identifications which have been highlighted in recent criticism
may only be the first step in recognizing the alternative codes of similarity
which guides the Indian and the Irish postcolonial and modern subject today.
Rich in
intercultural allusions, Irish and Indian discourses of identity intricately
weave the Celtic and the Oriental, the European and the Eastern, sometimes
seeking affiliation in precolonial and ancient history. The present conference
seeks to navigate these and other areas of Indo-Irish dialogue.
This
conference is multi-focal in its scope; however, the heterotopias of culture,
history, literature
and politics, are interconnected in their Indo-Irish relevancy. Under the
rubrics of “colonialism,” “nationalism” and “modernity” papers will be delivered
on specific authors like James Cousins, Rabindranath Tagore, W B Yeats, James
Joyce, and J G Farrell; on the missionization of Christianity in India and the
role of Irish religious orders in the subcontinent; on the role of sub-cultural
movements in nineteenth-century Europe like Theosophy; on Empire-induced
humanitarian crises like famines in the ex-colonies; and indeed, the conference
will seek to theorize such histories in the light of present-day Indo-Irish
negotiations.
By no
means is this the first congregation of academics which deals with Indian and
Irish histories in conjunction with each other. In 2004, the Centre for Irish
Studies in the National University of Ireland, Galway, held its fourth
conference on colonialism and specifically dedicated its theme to India and
Ireland. The conference was the first of its kind and helped to show the depth
of interconnections between the two countries. In 2006, a book entitled Ireland and India: Colonies,
Culture and Empire,
edited by Tadgh Foley and Maureen O’Connor, was published in Dublin with essays
from some participants of the Galway conference. The contents of this book
reveal once again the vibrancy of this inter-cultural context: the micropractices,
literary intertextuality and nationalistic cross-referentiality between India
and Ireland. The present conference will, undoubtedly, add further analyses to
this fast-growing field of Indo-Irish studies. The Foley and O’Connor book
complements Ireland
and India: Connections, Comparisons, Contrasts edited by Michael and Denis Holmes in
1997, the first publication on the theme. It is fitting that the present
conference takes place a decade later, a timeframe within which both India and
Ireland have undergone stupendous economic, demographic and social changes, and
which today may give us a proper hindsight to analyze the two countries and
their shared colonial heritage.
On his
first visit to India, the Irish Taoiseach, Mr. Bertie Ahern, spoke with fervour
and optimism
on the growing Indo-Irish relationship in the present century. 1 Indeed, as both countries show notable economic growth,
many Indians choose Ireland as their country of residence, while Ireland itself
shows interest in India. More Indian scholars who take a special interest in
Irish history and literature will soon supplement Indian medical and I.T. professionals
who are already working and trading with Ireland. In Ireland, as we have seen, academics
have already started identifying Indian history as a complementary corollary to
the Irish one. This conference, will therefore, discuss the challenges and the
fruitfulness of studying Irish literature and culture in India, and of Indian
literature and culture in Ireland.
Alternatively,
we will also discuss the possible futures of an Indo-Irish relationship along economic
lines. In many ways, there is no better place than New Delhi to place the
forthcoming discussions. The concentric circles that pin-point the centre of
the city, Connaught Place (recently renamed Rajiv Chowk), was the creation of
the British architects Edward Lutyens and Herbert Baker, and subliminally calls
to mind one of the provinces of Ireland (Connaught) and that problematic Irish
export of the empire to India called the “Connaught Rangers.” Cartographical
resonance, in this instance, reflects wider connotations.
Malcolm
Sen
University
College, Dublin
ABSTRACTS
AND BIONOTES OF RENOWNED PARTICIPANTS
Ashis
Nandy
“Modernity
and the Sense of Loss”
Dr.
Ashis Nandy is India’s leading social psychologist and public intellectual. His
many publications include The
Tao of Cricket- on Games of Destiny and the Destiny of Games, The Illegitimacy
of Nationalism, The Intimate Enemy, Loss and Recovery of Self Under
Colonialism, The Savage Freud and Other Essays The Savage Freud and Other
Essays. Former
Director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, he is
now ICSSR National Fellow. He is especially interested in post-coloniality and
construction of cultural identity. Prof. Nandy has not only written on Indian
political culture but has also analysed Oscar Wilde’s homosexuality in relation
to colonial paradigms of sexual politics.
Cauvery
Madhavan
Will
read from her work
An
acclaimed Indian novelist who lives in Ireland, Cauvery Madhavan is the author
of Paddy
Indian and The Uncoupling. Born and educated in India, Madhavan
attended ten schools as an army officer's daughter. She graduated with a First
in Economics from Stella Maris College, University of Madras, and then worked
in a variety of marketing jobs. She got her first taste of writing whilst
working at an ad agency. Cauvery married her childhood sweetheart, a newly
qualified doctor and moved to Ireland in 1987 arriving on St. Valentine's Day.
Despite the Irish weather she has been in love with the country ever since. A
keen cook, she now lives with her husband and three children in County Kildare.
Ganesh
N. Devy
“The
Indian Yeats”
Ganesh
Devy is a Professor at the Dhirabhai Ambani Institute of Information Technology
and Communications in Gandhinagar. He is a widely published author of books
like After
Amnesia: Tradition & Change in Indian Literary Criticism, 1992, Orient Longman; Rpt 1995, In Another Tongue, Peter Lang, 1992, Macmillan India, 1995,
Of Many
Heroes : An Essay on Literary Historiography, Orient Longman, 1997. He has won many awards including
the Katha Award for Translation, Central Sahitya Academi Award for After Amnesia, Gunther Sontheimer Award for Innovative
Cultural Work, SAARC Writers Foundation Award, Prince Claus Award (Netherlands),
Bhasha Bharati Award of CIIL, Maharashtra Rajya Sahitya-Sanskriti Mandal award.
He is the founder of Bhasha Research and Publications Centre and of the Adivasi
Academy, Tejgarh.
Gauri
Viswanathan
“Reconsidering
James Cousins'Internationalism”
Gauri
Viswanathan is a Professor in the Department of English and Comparative
Literature at Columbia University and is affiliated with the School of
International and Public Affairs. She is the author of Masks of Conquest: Literary
Study and British Rule in India (1989) and Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief
(1998), which won,
among other prizes, the 1999 James Russell Lowell Prize awarded by the Modern
Language Association of America.
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