Memory Studies in India
Texts and Contexts
Published on 8. May 2025
Book
Hardback
380 pages
978-90-04-72248-4 (ISBN)
Description
This pioneering volume marks a significant contribution to memory studies in India, offering an in-depth exploration of how collective and individual memories shape and reshape identities, narratives, and historical knowledge. By addressing a diverse array of topics-from forgotten events, massacres, and monuments to public spaces and food rituals-across various epochs, the essays in this collection bring new insights into India's complex cultural history. With contributions from scholars across different stages of their academic careers, this volume not only enriches the field of memory studies but also paves the way for future research in India and beyond.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Leiden
Netherlands
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 155 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
703 gr
ISBN-13
978-90-04-72248-4 (9789004722484)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Avishek Parui is Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Studies, IIT Madras and Associate Fellow of
the UK Higher Education Academy. He researches in memory studies, masculinity studies, and medical humanities. He is the
author of Postmodern Literatures (Orient Blackswan 2018) and Culture and the Literary: Matter, Metaphor, Memory (Rowman
& Littlefield 2022).
Merin Simi Raj is Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Studies, IIT Madras. Her research areas are
memory studies, digital humanities, and Anglo-Indian studies. She is the co-editor of Anglo-Indian Identity: Past and Present,
in India and the Diaspora (Palgrave Macmillan 2021).
The editors are faculty coordinators of the Centre for Memory Studies, IIT Madras and founding chairpersons of the Indian
Network for Memory Studies (INMS). They developed MemoryBytes, the first Augmented Reality (AR)-based mobile application
using the intersection of memory studies and digital humanities.
the UK Higher Education Academy. He researches in memory studies, masculinity studies, and medical humanities. He is the
author of Postmodern Literatures (Orient Blackswan 2018) and Culture and the Literary: Matter, Metaphor, Memory (Rowman
& Littlefield 2022).
Merin Simi Raj is Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Studies, IIT Madras. Her research areas are
memory studies, digital humanities, and Anglo-Indian studies. She is the co-editor of Anglo-Indian Identity: Past and Present,
in India and the Diaspora (Palgrave Macmillan 2021).
The editors are faculty coordinators of the Centre for Memory Studies, IIT Madras and founding chairpersons of the Indian
Network for Memory Studies (INMS). They developed MemoryBytes, the first Augmented Reality (AR)-based mobile application
using the intersection of memory studies and digital humanities.
Content
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
?Avishek Parui and Merin Simi Raj
PART 1: Memory-Sites, Materiality, and Identities
1 Remembering Bhima Koregaon: Contesting Historical Memories around Memorial Buildings
?Aswathy Krishnan
2 Memorials and Memory: A Material Turn
?Neha Khetrapal
3 Mapping Old Tales and New Trails: A Peripatetic Account of Chandni Chowk
?Mohit Abrol
4 Food, Identity and Purity in the Indian Jewish Community before and after Migration: An Analysis based on Jewish Life Narratives
?Shiji Mariam Varghese
5 The Eating of the Lotos: Food and Forgetting in the Dangs
?Susan Vivien George
6 Revisiting Partition Memories of the Bannu Community: Remembrance Through the Gurudwara Shahidane Gujarat Train
?Prachi Ratra, Anjali Gera Roy, and Seema Singh
7 Britain's Anglo-Indian Associations-Help or Hindrance?
?Rochelle Almeida
8 Enabling Memory and Renegotiating Identity: a Study of the Goan poskim
?Rochelle Ann Fernandes
PART 2: Memories, Histories, and Events
9 Framing Memories of Colonial Violence: Tracing Shifts in Narratives of the Bengal Famine
?Bhagyashri V.
10 Constructing the Ontology of Food Narratives during the Bengal Famine 1943 through Post-Memory Practices
?Rituparna Mukherjee and Juthika Biswakarma
11 Peace, Paradise, and Paradox: Analysing the Politics of History and Memory in Kashmir
?Sana Shah
12 Memory of a Massacre: Ecological Preservation and the Marichjhapi Debacle
?Pratiti Roy
13 Mnemohistorical Reading of the Past: Conceptualizing Memory-Scape and Historical Time
?Sumallya Mukhopadhyay
PART 3: Narratives, Reconstructions, and Representations
14 Stories at a Site of Fratricidal Violence: Cultural Memory and Trauma in Arupa Patangia Kalita's "Bir Daimalur Sadhu"
?Jayashree Borah
15 Remembering Partition: Postmemory and Gendered Representation of Bodily Entities in Shauna Singh Baldwin's What the Body Remembers
?Samyukthah A
16 Representation of Memory and Trauma in Manto
?Nishat Haider
17 Kalki's Ponniyin Selvan: Tamil Modernity, Revivalism and the Popular Historical Novel
?Catherine Shilpa X.
18 Marginalized Memories in Hagiographies of Martyrs: Historical Sensibilities in the Vernacular Literatures of the Malabar Muslims
?Muhammad Niyas
19 "Displacement as an Escape Mechanism": Traumatic Memory and Identity Formation in Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine
?Shrimoyee Chattopadhyay
20 Remembering the Tebhaga Movement in Mahasweta Devi's Quest Novels Swechasainik and Bandobasti
?Somrwita Ghosh
21 Detecting Memory, Creating Pasts: Historical Memory in Crime Fiction
?Vaibhav Iype Parel
Index
Introduction
?Avishek Parui and Merin Simi Raj
PART 1: Memory-Sites, Materiality, and Identities
1 Remembering Bhima Koregaon: Contesting Historical Memories around Memorial Buildings
?Aswathy Krishnan
2 Memorials and Memory: A Material Turn
?Neha Khetrapal
3 Mapping Old Tales and New Trails: A Peripatetic Account of Chandni Chowk
?Mohit Abrol
4 Food, Identity and Purity in the Indian Jewish Community before and after Migration: An Analysis based on Jewish Life Narratives
?Shiji Mariam Varghese
5 The Eating of the Lotos: Food and Forgetting in the Dangs
?Susan Vivien George
6 Revisiting Partition Memories of the Bannu Community: Remembrance Through the Gurudwara Shahidane Gujarat Train
?Prachi Ratra, Anjali Gera Roy, and Seema Singh
7 Britain's Anglo-Indian Associations-Help or Hindrance?
?Rochelle Almeida
8 Enabling Memory and Renegotiating Identity: a Study of the Goan poskim
?Rochelle Ann Fernandes
PART 2: Memories, Histories, and Events
9 Framing Memories of Colonial Violence: Tracing Shifts in Narratives of the Bengal Famine
?Bhagyashri V.
10 Constructing the Ontology of Food Narratives during the Bengal Famine 1943 through Post-Memory Practices
?Rituparna Mukherjee and Juthika Biswakarma
11 Peace, Paradise, and Paradox: Analysing the Politics of History and Memory in Kashmir
?Sana Shah
12 Memory of a Massacre: Ecological Preservation and the Marichjhapi Debacle
?Pratiti Roy
13 Mnemohistorical Reading of the Past: Conceptualizing Memory-Scape and Historical Time
?Sumallya Mukhopadhyay
PART 3: Narratives, Reconstructions, and Representations
14 Stories at a Site of Fratricidal Violence: Cultural Memory and Trauma in Arupa Patangia Kalita's "Bir Daimalur Sadhu"
?Jayashree Borah
15 Remembering Partition: Postmemory and Gendered Representation of Bodily Entities in Shauna Singh Baldwin's What the Body Remembers
?Samyukthah A
16 Representation of Memory and Trauma in Manto
?Nishat Haider
17 Kalki's Ponniyin Selvan: Tamil Modernity, Revivalism and the Popular Historical Novel
?Catherine Shilpa X.
18 Marginalized Memories in Hagiographies of Martyrs: Historical Sensibilities in the Vernacular Literatures of the Malabar Muslims
?Muhammad Niyas
19 "Displacement as an Escape Mechanism": Traumatic Memory and Identity Formation in Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine
?Shrimoyee Chattopadhyay
20 Remembering the Tebhaga Movement in Mahasweta Devi's Quest Novels Swechasainik and Bandobasti
?Somrwita Ghosh
21 Detecting Memory, Creating Pasts: Historical Memory in Crime Fiction
?Vaibhav Iype Parel
Index