Suchergebnisse

1. Introduction / Babli Sinha -- 2. Tropical longing : the quest for India in the early twentieth-century Caribbean / Lisa Outar -- 3. A productive distance from the nation : Uday Shankar and the defining of Indian modern dance / Nilanjana Bhattacharjya -- 4. Transnational resistance and fictive truths : Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, Agnes Smedley and the Indian nationalist movement / Purnima Bose -- 5. Colonial encounters between India and Indonesia / Martin Ramstedt -- 6. Empire films and the dissemination of Americanism in colonial India / Babli Sinha -- 7. The eternal return and overcoming 'Cape Fear' : science, sensation, Superman and Hindu nationalism in recent Hindi cinema / Anustup Basu -- 8. Ur-national and secular mythologies : popular culture, nationalist historiography and strategic essentialism / Rini Bhattacharya Mehta -- 9. Visual culture and violence : inventing intimacy and citizenship in recent South Asian cinema / Kavita Daiya.

Abstract:
In this article I relate Indian revolutionaries Virendranath Chattopadhyaya's and Lala Har Dayal's experiences of exile in Sweden to recent attempts to reformulate perspectives on Indian anti-colonial protest. These attempts have in various ways focused on the global dimension of Indian anti-colonialism, showing how displaced Indian intellectuals and activists connected outside the Subcontinent, to labour for the freedom of India. While appreciating the need for a fresh approach to studies of anti-colonial movements, this article issues a note of caution. Several recent studies treat life in exile as one of connectivity and creativity. In fact, connectivity becomes so important for these studies that it is only when in conversation with others sharing their objective that the views of Indian activists are included. Yet, many exiles lived long periods nearly or actually disconnected from the movement of which they wished to form a part. Such moments of silence are wishfully glossed over in the emerging literature. By way of revisiting Har Dayal and Chattopadhyaya in Sweden, I suggest that periods of silence or disconnection are important, simply because they existed, and formed a decisive part of the reality of exile. By omitting them, one risks romanticising exile, and subjecting experiences of displacement to academic programmatic concerns, however noble the cause.