Module description
This module will open up the worlds of ‘transoceanic Indians’: those who, under the scheme of ‘indentured labour’, were sent by ships from British and French colonies in India through the 19th and early 20th centuries to work on sugar plantations to places as far flung as the Caribbean, Fiji and islands in the Indian Ocean. Who were those who left? Did they choose to leave, or were they forced into a system that historians have called ‘a new system of slavery’? What did these Indians find when they arrived on distant islands after long and harrowing oceanic journeys What did they bring with them apart from memories, and what survived their transplantation? How do their descendants today think about the land which their ancestors left, and the lands they settled in and developed through their physical labour? What relationships did they develop with the descendants of African slaves they encountered in their new lives? How do those inter-racial relationships shape contemporary encounters between those of Indian and African descent in the ex-Plantation space? How do Indians from India look at transoceanic Indians? And how does the space of the imagination intervene within (and shape) the politics of memory?
These are some questions that the module will raise, and which you will learn to answer during the semester. Focusing on Mauritius and Pondicherry in the Indian Ocean, and Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana in the Caribbean, we will read fiction and poetry both by authors from these places and Indian authors now writing about them. We will also listen to music from both the islands, watch some films, and think about the dynamic relationship between the written word, rhythm and memory work. This is an opportunity to find what lies beyond the tourist beach in former sugar plantation islands!
Assessment details
1 x 1000 word critical review (15%) and 1 x 3000 word essay (85%)
Educational aims & objectives
This module will explore literary production by people of Indian origin whose ancestors left the shores of the Indian subcontinent during the period of colonial rule to create new diasporic communities in islands and coastal enclaves in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Educational aims include: encouraging students to reassess Indian culture as constructed through oceanic connections as much as a sense of belonging to, or springing from, a territorial heartland; to use those connections to reconceptualise histories of migration as networks connecting the Indian and Atlantic ocean worlds; to discover cultural, demographic, and political links between diasporic communities of African and Indian heritage and interpret these through theories of creolization; to learn about inter-imperial relations between French, British and other colonial powers operating in India; and to use literary reading methods to nuance historioriographic and socio-economic accounts of the big processes shaping global modernity.
Learning outcomes
A firm knowledge of histories of migration from colonial India to the Caribbean and sites in the Indian Ocean under the scheme of indentured labour, and of collaboration between different European powers operating within India.
A critical understanding of how literary writing in different genres, including song lyrics, autobiography, and fiction, can shape the way we think about global economic flows that depended on the migration of people during European colonialism.
The tools to read against the grain of standard narratives of national belonging, cultural authenticity, and intersubjective solidarities, by learning to interrogate representations of nation, gender, culture, religion, race, and class therein.
The ability to use literary and cultural theories (archipelagic theory, memory studies, postcolonial theory, creolization theory) to understand the manifestation of the above issues within a range of texts drawn from different geographical locations and develop an analytical understanding of Indian diasporic culture that can link locations in India, the Caribbean, the African continent, and the Indian Ocean.
Through the module, therefore, the students will refine their ability to collate, compare, and analyse diverse material, to write argumentative prose that synthesises material from diverse areas, and to transfer material from one area to illuminate another.
Teaching pattern
One 2-hour seminar, weekly