“The Political Life of Memory” examines the representation of Birsa Munda’s political life, memory politics and the making of anti-colonialism in contemporary Jharkhand. It offers contrasting features of political imaginations deployed in developing memorial landscapes. The framing of Birsa in the heroic narrative through a grand scale of memorialisation, often in the form of the built environment, curates a selective version. This isolates the scope of elaborating his political ideas outside the confines of atypical historical records and their relevance in the contemporary context. This book argues that everyday politics through affective sites such as memorials and statues produce political visions, emotions and opportunities. It shows how such symbolic sites are often strategically placed and politically motivated to inscribe ideologies. This process outlines how the state and Adivasis use memory as a political tool to lay claims to the past of the Birsa movement.
Dr. Ranjan’s presentation of the book is followed by comments from Dr. Subir Sinha, Dr. Rashmi Varma, and Dr. Kenneth Bo Nielsen.
This event is in-person only. Online participation is not possible.
Speakers
Rahul Ranjan is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet). Currently he is working on a collaborative project titled ‘Riverine Rights: Exploring the Currents and Consequences of Legal Innovations on the Rights of Rivers’.
Rashmi Varma is reader in English and literary studies at the University of Warwick.
Subir Sinha is reader in the theory and politics of development at the School of Oriental and African Studies.
Kenneth Bo Nielsen is associate professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo and one of the leaders of the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies