Indian Arrivals, 1870-1915: Networks of British Empire

Elleke Boehmer discusses her new book with Megan Robb, Faisal Devji
and Santanu Das Elleke Boehmer (Professor of World Literature in
English, University of Oxford) discusses her new book with Megan
Robb (Lecturer of Hindi and Urdu, Oriental Institute, and Junior
Research Fellow at New College, University of Oxford), Faisal Devji
(University Reader in Modern South Asian History, University of
Oxford) and Santanu Das (Reader of English Literature, Kings
College London). The discussion is introduced and chaired by
Professor James Belich (Beit Professor of Imperial and Commonwealth
History, University of Oxford). Elleke Boehmer's book "Indian
Arrivals 1870-1915: Networks of British Empire" explores the rich
and complicated landscape of intercultural contact between Indians
and Britons on British soil at the height of empire, as reflected
in a range of literary writing, including poetry and life-writing.
The book's four decade-based case studies, leading from 1870 and
the opening of the Suez Canal, to the first years of the Great War,
investigate from several different textual and cultural angles the
central place of India in the British metropolitan imagination at
this relatively early stage for Indian migration. Focusing on a
range of remarkable Indian 'arrivants' -- scholars, poets,
religious seekers, and political activists including Toru Dutt and
Sarojini Naidu, Mohandas Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore -- "Indian
Arrivals" examines the take-up in the metropolis of the influences
and ideas that accompanied their transcontinental movement,
including concepts of the west and of cultural decadence, of urban
modernity and of cosmopolitan exchange.