INDIA AND EUROPE IN THE PAST AND THE PRESENT: IMAGES AND REPRESENTATIONS
INDIA AND EUROPE IN THE PAST AND THE PRESENT: IMAGES AND REPRESENTATIONS

Summary/Abstract: India is an ancient land, a land that has been home to many. It is steeped in myth and has no “trace” of “attestable history” before the 13th century. It is also a many times colonized land that has experienced/suffered hegemonising social intrusions due to expropriations of the land and territory of its indigenous peoples. It is a country that has had its map drawn many times over with the imperial British Modern European Coloniser finally partitioning it. This land is known for its diversity. Its peoples speak many languages, practice different cultures, cultures that are exuded due to inhabiting differential terrains that makes it also a traveller’s paradise. A reading of the history of this ancient land in the times we indwelled- in and are indwelling-in reads no different from the lines that begin Dickens’s opus, “A Tale of Two Cities”, containing within it India’s success story as well as India’s strife, voices that sang and continue to sing in euphoria as well as voices screaming silent shrieks of disgruntled masses of a time past, a time present, discordant. The questions that need to be answered are as to “how may one privilege the future when the past is unavailable, erased, or available only as nostalgia, myth, and mere memory? When the present impinges on the past in particular ideological ways? When destinies are tied irresistibly to a colonial centre, Europe in general and Britain in particular? The paper will be an exploration of some of these questions.

• Details
• Contents