Confy @ JNU

“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.