September 18, 2010
Deciphering the Past
A professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, Sukeshi Kamra’s research interests are diverse and she enjoys studying topics that no other researcher has looked into before. One such example is her current project that focuses on communication materials in India that were used by the public to promote nationalism in the early 20thcentury.
This project develops out of a previous one, when she encountered literature that the British government had banned in India between 1907 and the 1940s. The list includes posters, pamphlets and articles of clothing on which people had printed slogans.
“The British government tried to arrest communication between Indians,” says Kamra. “This material can be found in 18 different languages, and is housed at libraries in Chicago, Delhi and London.”
By examining these materials, Kamra is trying to trace how a subjugated people deftly turned discourse into the ground of challenge to colonial authority.
“Government drew heavily on law to do its policing,” she says. “Yet, every time a law was amended or a new law added, the public found a new way to circumvent it. For example, when the public started to print nationalist poetry on cloth, the government responded with a new definition of (seditious libel) ‘text’.”
So far, Kamra has discovered that people in British India used the periodical press, as early as the 1870s, to produce a counter-history in which the emotional cost of colonization registers. In language that resonates with feelings of loss and mourning, as much as it delivers a devastating critique of colonial rule, Indians began the slow process of building a common cause.
“I am examining hundreds of archives,” she says. “As they say, once you disappear into the archives, you literally do disappear into them!”
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