Beyond the Archive: Recovering Voices of Freedom and Partition in India

Recorded October 22, 2019. This public lecture by Sucheta Mahajan,
Professor of History, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and
author of Independence and Partition: The Erosion of Colonial Power
in India (2000) is organised by Trinity Long Room Hub as part of
the Out of the Ashes Lecture Series. The lecture will be followed
by a conversation with Dr Anna Bryson (QUB). This lecture extends
the idea of ‘the archive’ beyond its traditional avatar to the
creation of an archive of testimonies around the independence and
partition of India. This involves a movement away from the confines
of the written archives, to the domain of oral history and to
recovery of the voices of ordinary people. The lecture considers
the nature of memory of the marginalized and memory work among
those who have been historically silenced. The process of
remembering and reinterpreting their pastends up being one of
empowering the oppressed.In the case of remembered histories of
violence and trauma, the challenge for the historian is to ensure
that memory work is not divisive, but can transcend the divide
between communities locked in conflict. About Anna Bryson Dr Anna
Bryson is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Law, working on two
ESRC funded projects - 'Apologies, Abuses and Dealing with the
Past' and 'Lawyers, Conflict and Transition'. She is the 2016
winner of the Vice-Chancellor's Research Impact Prize (postdoctoral
research category). Her research has developed along three closely
related lines: modern Irish history, socio-legal studies and
conflict transformation. She has considerable experience of
conducting interviews for social and historical investigation. The
Out of the Ashes lecture series is generously supported by Sean and
Sarah Reynolds. About the series Year 2 (2019–20) Destroying
considers a form of cultural atrocity now subject to international
war crimes prosecution—the deliberate targeting of cultural
heritage as a means to control social memory and to erase
identities. The programme includes a special panel event on the
Four Courts Blaze of 1922 organized in association with the Irish
National Committee of the Blue Shield. The basis for the Blue
Shield is the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural
Property and its additional first and second protocols, ratified by
Ireland in 2018. This three-year lecture series explores the theme
of cultural loss and recovery across the centuries, from the
destruction of the Library of Alexandria in antiquity to
contemporary acts of cultural loss and destruction. A panel of
world-leading experts reflects on how societies deal with cultural
trauma through reconstruction and commemoration, and on how the
international community should respond to cultural loss. The series
is global in scope, pan-historical and multi-disciplinary in
approach, and features a panel of international scholars and
practitioners of the highest calibre. See details of the full
series here
https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/whats-on/details/2018/out-of-the-ashes.php
Learn more at: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/