Archive

Events organised by the research group "Modern Indian History:

2025
MODERN SOUTH ASIAN HISTORY RESEARCH SEMINAR, WiSe 2024-25
2024
MODERN SOUTH ASIAN HISTORY RESEARCH SEMINAR, SoSe 2024
2022
BOOK LAUNCH
MODERN SOUTH ASIAN HISTORY RESEARCH SEMINAR, SoSe 2022
MODERN SOUTH ASIAN HISTORY RESEARCH SEMINAR, WiSe 2022


MODERN SOUTH ASIAN HISTORY RESEARCH SEMINAR
Summersemester 2022

The research group seminar will be held in presence in room 2.112 (Waldweg 26, Altbau) and will also be accessible through zoom; the CeMIS Colloquium will be held in presence only in room 6.103 (Waldweg 26). All other events require registration. For further information: IndianHistory.CeMIS@sowi.uni-goettingen.de

Download PDF

Tuesday, 3 May, 4 pm – 6 pm
Michaela Dimmers (CeMIS): The Inner Workings of the Colonial Prison
Josefine Hofmann (CeMIS): Between Diplomacy and Business: Indo-German Training Collaborations (1950s-1989)

Wednesday, 4 May, 4:15 pm – 5:45 pm
(CeMIS COLLOQUIUM)
Pratyay Nath (Ashoka University, Sonipat): Animal Imperialism: Towards a Nonhuman History of the Mughal Empire

Tuesday, 31 May, 4 pm – 6 pm
Atem Lemtur (CeMIS): Guides and Sherpas: Racialising Indigenous Labour in the High Himalayas (1890s – 1930s)
Catharina Hänsel (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa/CeMIS): Wages and Working-Class Household Budgets in Ahmedabad

Tuesday, 7 June, 4 pm – 6 pm
Sumeet Mhaskar (OP Jindal Global University, Sonipat): The Unmaking of an Industrial Habitat: Joblessness, Displacement and the Crisis of Recognition Among Mumbai Mill Workers

Wednesday, 8 June, 4:15 pm – 5:45 pm
(CeMIS COLLOQUIUM)
Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay (IISER, Mohali/CeMIS): Streets in Motion: The Making of Infrastructure, Property and Political Culture in Twentieth-century Calcutta

Wednesday, 15 June, 4:15 pm – 5:45 pm
(CeMIS COLLOQUIUM)
Ahmad Azhar (IBA, Karachi): The Quest for Masterless Pedagogy: Lessons from the Pakistani Left’s Neo-Liberal Turn on the Question of Workers’ Education

16-18 June, International Workshop in honour of Ian J. Kerr (with Leibniz ZMO Berlin and Association of Indian Labour Historians)
The Time and Space of Railways: Markets, Work and Circulation in South Asia

Friday, 24 June, 4 pm – 6 pm
CeMIS History Book Launch
Rukmini Barua (Max Planck Institute of Human Development, Berlin): In the Shadow of the Mill. Transformation of Workers' Neighbourhoods in Ahmedabad, 1920s to 2000s (Cambridge: CUP).
Razak Khan (CeMIS Göttingen): Minority Pasts: Locality, Emotions and Belonging in Rampur (New Delhi: Oxford University Press).
Anna Sailer (CeMIS Göttingen): Workplace Relations in Colonial Bengal. The Jute Industry and Indian Labour 1870s-1930s (London: Bloomsbury).
Sebastian Schwecke (Max Weber Forum für Südasienstudien Delhi): Debt, Trust, and Reputation. Extra-legal Finance in Modern India (Cambridge: CUP).

Tuesday, 28 June, 4 pm – 6 pm
Kaustubh Mani Sengupta (Bankura University): History, Heritage, and the Colonial City: Claiming Calcutta in the Early Twentieth Century

Wednesday, 29 June, 4:15 pm – 5:45 pm (CeMIS COLLOQUIUM)
Samita Sen (Cambridge University): Interdisciplinarity and Intersectionality: Conversations in/with Gender Studies

7–9 July, International Workshop (MIDA)
Nodes of Translation: Rethinking Modern Intellectual History between South Asia and Germany

Tuesday, 12 July, 6 pm – 8 pm
Rahul Maganti (CeMIS): The Crisis of Capital Accumulation in Bombay through the Bombay Port: 1970's and 1980's
Sagnik Kar (ZMO Berlin/CeMIS): Time and delay: Gendered temporalities in Bengal in the late 19th and early 20th centuries

Wednesday, 13 July, 4:15 pm – 5:45 pm
(CeMIS COLLOQUIUM)
Amar Farooqi (Delhi University): The Macaulay Committee Report and the Making of the Colonial Bureaucracy

Wednesday, 20 July, 4:15 pm – 5:45 pm
(CeMIS COLLOQUIUM)
Kama Maclean (Heidelberg University): Presidential Processions and Rituals of Leadership


MODERN SOUTH ASIAN HISTORY BOOK LAUNCH
24 June 2022, 4 – 6 pm, Holbornsches Haus, Rote Straße 34, Göttingen

Download poster

At Göttingen’s Centre for Modern Indian Studies, the Modern Indian History Research Group has reasons to celebrate. In 2022, four historical monographs resulting from work conducted in the research group appeared with leading international publishers. At this book launch, these monographs will be introduced by four scholars who have collaborated or were associated with the History Research Group since its inception in 2009. The authors, too, will be present and have agreed to respond.
For further information: IndianHistory.CeMIS@sowi.uni-goettingen.de

Rukmini Barua (Max Planck Institute of Human Development, Berlin):
In the Shadow of the Mill. Transformation of Workers' Neighbourhoods in Ahmedabad, 1920s to 2000s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
Introduction: Jana Tschurenev (CeMIS Göttingen)

Razak Khan (CeMIS, Göttingen):
Minority Pasts: Locality, Emotions and Belonging in Rampur (New Delhi: Oxford University Press)
Introduction: Nitin Sinha (Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin

Anna Sailer (CeMIS, Göttingen):
Workplace Relations in Colonial Bengal. The Jute Industry and Indian Labour 1870s-1930s (London: Bloomsbury)
Introduction: Ritajyoti Bandhypodhyay (Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali)

Sebastian Schwecke (Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies, Delhi):
Debt, Trust, and Reputation. Extra-legal Finance in Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
Introduction: Aditya Sarkar (University of Warwick)


The Time and Space of Railways: Markets, Work and Circulation in South Asia
An International Workshop in Honour of Ian J. Kerr (1941 – 2020)
Göttingen, 16–18 June 2022

This workshop explores new directions of research into the social, economic, temporal, and spatial histories of South Asian railways. Professor Ian J. Kerr, the doyen of this field of research for many years, promoted an expansive approach to the writing of South Asian railway histories, which had been confined, in the latter decades of the 20th century, mainly to issues of capital investment and market integration. In the last two decades, this vision broadened with younger authors investigating social, cultural, and ecological consequences of railway construction and transport in late 19th- and early 20th-century South Asia as well as the impact of railways on South Asia’s circulatory regime at large. While pursuing Ian Kerr’s core interests in the economic and labour histories of the railways, this workshop also attempts to expand upon further lines of inquiry he formulated for crafting multi-perspectival histories of transport and infrastructure in South Asia. While the plurality of thematic approaches constitutes a major advance in South Asian railway historiography, which needs to be further developed, the present workshop will focus upon certain key issues of the temporal and spatial reorganization in South Asia and pursue related research questions in new directions.

A workshop by
Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS)
Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient Berlin
Association of Indian Labour Historians
M.S. Merian — R. Tagore International Centre for Advanced Studies "Metamorphoses of the Political" (ICAS:MP)

Please note that seats are limited and register at: IndianHistory.Cemis@sowi.uni-goettingen.de

Download Workshop Outline
Download Workshop Programme

16.06.2022:
3:30 to 4:45 pm: Opening Session
Short address by M. Kaye Kerr (emer. University of Winnipeg) and Nilufer Rahman (Winnipeg) – online
General introduction by Ravi Ahuja (CeMIS, University of Göttingen), followed by Introduction to the Ian J. Kerr Research Archives – Anna Sailer (CeMIS, University of Göttingen)

4.45 to 5.00 pm: 15 minutes break
5.00 to 6.30 pm:
Panel 1: Skill and Work on the Railways.
Discussant: Ravi Ahuja (CeMIS, University of Göttingen)

Amanda M. Lanzillo (Princeton University, online) – The Steam Engine as a Muslim Technology. Religion, Labour and the North Western State Railway
Lukas Rosenberg (CeMIS, University of Göttingen) – The Great Indian Peninsula Railway Workshops at Parel in the 1920s. Standardisation, Rationalisation and the Workforce

8 pm: Dinner

17.06.2022
9:00 to 10:30 am:
Panel 2: Politics of Railway Workers (I)
Discussant: Aditya Sarkar (University of Warwick)

Zaen Alkazi (Independent Researcher) – The Contours of Railway Labour Politics in Interwar Western India. The Great Indian Peninsular Railway Workers, c. 1920–40.
Norman Aselmeyer (University of Bremen) – Movable Labour: South Asian Workers and the Construction of the Uganda Railway

10:30 – 11.00 am: 30 minutes break

11:00 – 12.30 am:
Panel 3: Politics of Railway Workers (II)
Discussant: Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay (CeMIS, University of Göttingen)
Prerna Agarwal (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore) – India’s Long Emergency. The Postcolonial State, Labour and Crise
Mamatha Gandham (Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi) – Implications of the Policies to Privatise Indian Railways

12:30– 14:00 pm: Lunch break

14:00 – 16:15 pm:
Panel 4: Railways and Imaginations
Discussant: Nitin Sinha (ZMO, Berlin)

Purnachandra Naik (Nottingham Trent University) – The Engines of Dalit Mobility in Y. B. Satyanarayana’s My Father Baliah
Saumya Agarwal (Independent Researcher) – Paintings of Trains on the Walls of Rajasthani Havelis (1870–1940)
Swagatalakshmi Saha (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta) – Rail-Roads: Mapping Punctuality, Efficiency and Leisure in Colonial Bengal (1860s–1890s)

16:15 – 16.45 pm: 30 minutes break

16.45– 18:15 pm:
Panel 5: Railways and Urban Space (I)
Discussant: Ravi Ahuja (CeMIS, University of Göttingen).

Pushkar Sohoni (IISER, Pune, online) – The Impact of Railways on Market Halls in India.
Ritam Sengupta (ZMO, Berlin) – The Tramways as Urban Infrastructure in Colonial Calcutta, 1880s–1930s.

7:30 pm: Dinner

18.06.2022
9:00 – 10.30 am:
Panel 7: Railways and Urban Space (II)
Discussant: : Anna Sailer (CeMIS, University of Göttingen)

Kaustubh Mani Sengupta (Bankura University) – Railways and the Mofussil in Colonial and Postcolonial Bengal
Minerwa Tahir (ZMO, Berlin) – Karachi Harbour: Reconfiguration of Spatial Linkages

10.30 – 10.45 am: 15 minutes break

10.45 – 12.15 pm:
Panel 8: The Materiality of Railway Construction.
Discussant: Chitra Joshi (University of Delhi)

Anna Sailer (CeMIS, University of Göttingen) – Deploying the Forest. Railways and their Impact on Forests in Late 19th Century India
Saloni Verma (Shiv Nadar University) – Choosing Cement for the Hardinge Bridge: River Training by Railway Engineers and the Genesis of Portland Cement in the Landscape of South Asia

12.15 – 12.30 pm: 15 minutes break

12.30 – 13.30 pm: Round Table

13:30 pm: Lunch – Sandwiches


MODERN SOUTH ASIAN HISTORY RESEARCH SEMINAR
Wintersemester 2021/22

For events designated as “workshops” admission by invitation only.
Register for all other events to receive video link: IndianHistory.CeMIS@sowi.uni-goettingen.de

Download PDF

26.10.2021, 14.00 – 16.00: Project Design Workshop
Nitin Varma (Re:work, Humboldt University, Berlin): Servants and Citizens: Domestic Workers in Postcolonial India
Anna Sailer (CeMIS Göttingen): Woods into Timber. The Appropriation of Forests in Colonial India, c. 1850- 1914

02.11.2021, 14.00 – 16.00: Seminar
Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk & Aditi Dixit (Department of History, University of Utrecht): Supply of Labour during Early Industrialization. Agricultural Systems, Textile Factory Work and Gender in Japan and India, ca. 1880-1940

09.11.2021, 14.00 – 16.00: Dissertation Workshop
Robert Rahman Raman (CeMIS Göttingen): From Girangaon to 'Mini Pakistan': The Precarious Place of Working Muslims in Colonial Bombay

23.11.2021, 14.00 – 16.00: Dissertation Workshop
Svenja von Jan (CeMIS Göttingen): Non-Elite South Asian Migration to Hamburg and Antwerp in the Interwar Period
Rahul Maganti (CeMIS Göttingen): Labour Law as a Site of Class Conflict: The Case of Dock Workers in India, 1948 – 1997

30.11.2021, 14.00 – 16.00: Seminar
Sebastian Vollmer (CeMIS Göttingen): The Economic Effects of the English Parliamenary Enclosures

03.12.2021, 14.00 – 16.00: Seminar
Frank Perlin (Independent Researcher): That Neglected Aspect of the Neolithic Revolution. The Domestication of the Human Being as Primary Foundation of 'Surplus' Labour and 'Surplus' Value

07.12.2021, starts at 15.30:
Memorial Meeting for Ian J. Kerr (1941-2020) and Inauguration of Ian J. Kerr Indian Railway Collection at CeMIS

14.12.2021, 14.00 – 16.00: Project Design Workshop
Karuna Dietrich Wielenga (Azim Premji University, Bengaluru): Health and Labour in India: Intersections and Implications, 1935-2000
Jana Tschurenew (CeMIS Göttingen): Shared and Equal Parenting. A Global History, 1950s to the Present

21.12.2021, 14.00 – 17.30: Mini Workshop
‘Baithak’ with David Ludden (New York University): Spatiality, Mobility and Territoriality: Histories of the coastal environments around the Bay of Bengal and the Coromandel Coast

11.01.2022, 14.00 – 16.00: Dissertation Workshop
Rohan Mathews (CeMIS Göttingen): Informalised Labour, Fragmented Employment and Organising Construction Workers in Contemporary India
Saeed Ahmad (CeMIS Göttingen): Spaces, Conflicts and ‘Community' in Jangpura-Bhogal, Delhi


18.01.2022, 14.00 – 16.00: Dissertation Workshop
CANCELLED

25.01.2022, 14.00 – 16.00: Dissertation Workshop
Josefine Hoffmann (CeMIS Göttingen): Negotiating Vocational Training: Institutional Plans for Indo- German Projects, 1950s-1989
Catharina Hänsel (Scuola Normale Superiore Firenze/CeMIS Göttingen): Between ex gratia and Right—Bonus and Wages in Ahmedabad

01.02.2022, 14.00 – 16.00: Dissertation Workshop
Blessy Abraham (Delhi University/DAAD exchange student): Protection versus Preference: Behind the Scenes of the Indian Tariff Board, 1924-1928
Komal Chauhan (IIT Kanpur/DAAD exchange student): Microfinance, Caste and the Pandemic in Western UP

02.02.2022, 16.00 – 18.00 (Wednesday!): CeMIS Colloquium
Kama Maclean (South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg): Presidential Processions and Rituals of Leadership POSTPONED


09.02.2022, 16:15 – 17.45: MIDA Lecture
POSTPONED TO SUMMER SEMESTER 2022

10.-11.02.2022: MIDA International Conference
POSTPONED TO SUMMER SEMESTER 2022


MODERN SOUTH ASIAN HISTORY RESEARCH SEMINAR
Sommersemester 2021

If you are interested to join all or some sessions, please send an e-mail to:
anna.sailer-1@sowi.uni-goettingen.de
You will receive an invitation for this digital event

20.04.2021: 14.00 – 15.30
Razak Khan: Meat Eaters: Hunters, Hounds and Knives of Rampur
04.05.2021: 14.00 – 15.30
Arnaud Kaba: The making of the glass craft cousciousnesses in Firozabad

12.05.2021: 14.00 – 15.00
Tianying Ding: Bandung as a historical moment. India and China 1955

18.05.2021: 14.00 – 16.00
Frank Perlin: Anthropology of the Commodity II, and The Missing Discipline. A Neglected aspect of the Neolithic Revolution. The Domestication of the Human Animal as Foundation of Labour and Value

01.06.2021: 14:00 – 16:00
Project Presentation: Timely Histories: A Social History of Time in South Asia:
Nitin Sinha: South Asian Nights. A History
Ritam Sengupta: Timing Work in the North Indian countryside, c. 1800s-1900s
Samuel Wright: Early Modern temporalities: Time and culture in theory and practice
Sagnik Kar: Time and delay. Gendered temporalities in Bengal in the 19th and 20th centuries
Minerwa Tahir: Fixing the future. Money, morality and disability in colonial and postcolonial Karachi

19.06.2021: 10.00 – 15.30 (Saturday!)
PhD Workshop:
Camille Buat: Of Desh and Videsh: sketching a history of the ‘Hindustani’ labouring classes between Northern and Eastern India (20th century)
Nabhojeet Sen: Aspects of Social control and coercion in Governance: Maharashtra, 1720s- 1800
Vidhya Raveendranathan: Fabricating Labour in the port city of Madras c. 1780-1840
Robert Raman: Vocabulary of Class: Radical Rhetoric of the Left in 1920s Bombay

29.06.2021: 10.00 – 15.30
PhD Workshop:
Josefine Hoffmann: Exams, certificates and first-time employment in Indo-German vocational training collaborations, 1950-1989
Catharina Hänsel: The ‘Ahmedabad Experiment’ – Studies in Workplace Organisation and Industrial Relations
Atem Lemtur: Expedition photographs. Visualising labour in high altitude base-camps
Michaela Dimmers: Education, Skills, Training and Labour in Prisons of Colonial India


Book Launch and Discussion with Frank Perlin:
Frank Perlin: City Intelligible. A Philosophical and Historical Anthropology of Global Commodisation before Industrialisation.
A digital event on Zoom organised by the research group Modern Indian History at CeMIS on January 22nd, 2021 at 3 pm CET.
Panel: Frank Perlin, Jairus Banaji, Neeladri Bhattacharya, and Aditya Sarkar

Frank Perlin's City Intelligible is a thoroughgoing and profoundly original attempt to combine an empirical and historical anthropology with Kantian transcendental philosophy. Its subject-matter is the history of commoditization and commodity exchange prior to modern industrialization. The book delves into a diverse array of forms of evidence of such commoditization, and marshals them to make a case for the possibility of a universal - yet also irreducibly cultural - human nature underlying processes of human differentiation. As a philosophical treatment of empirical materials, City Intelligible marks an unprecedented attempt to conceptually reframe the ways in which we think about economic data. The discussion of the book will delve into both the philosophical stakes and the historical implications of Frank Perlin's endeavour.
Click here to register.
Contact: Anna Sailer

Another digital book launch with introductions and discussion will take place on February 5th, 2021, organized by the New York Center for Global Asia. Click here for more information and registration.



Events organised by the research group "Modern Indian History":

MODERN SOUTH ASIAN HISTORY RESEARCH SEMINAR

Winter Semester 2020-21

Download PDF

17.11.2020: 2.15 pm – 3.15 pm
Jana Tschurenev (CeMIS, Göttingen): Travelling pedagogical knowledge, rural pre-school education,
and the birth of the Anganwadi, 1920s-1970s

24.11.2020: 2.15 pm – 3.15 pm
Maria Pomohaci (CeMIS, Göttingen): Refuse collectors, night-soil removers, street sweepers:
Calcutta Corporation’s ‘scavengers’ and their work

01.12.2020: 2.15 pm – 3.15 pm
Camille Buat (CeMIS, Göttingen/Sciences-Po, Paris): A floating population? Trajectories of Hindustani
labour in colonial and post-colonial Eastern India

08.12.2020: 2.15 pm – 4.15 pm
Lukas Rosenberg (Seminar für Mittlere und Neuere Geschichte,Göttingen): The plague in Malang. Epidemic disease and labour relations in the Dutch East Indies, c. 1909-14
Marlene Seyfried (Institut für Soziologie, Göttingen): Concerning women: Work and family life during industrialisation

11.12.2020: 2.15 pm – 3.15 pm
Catharina Hänsel (CeMIS, Göttingen/Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa):“A relationship of father and sons" - The institutionalisation of wage negotiations in Ahmedabad

15.12.2020: 2.15 pm – 4.15 pm
Robert Rahman Raman (CeMIS, Göttingen): TBA
Zaen Alkazi (SOAS, London): Fauj, Paltan and Dal: Workers' Volunteer Corps and Class Struggle in Late Colonial Bombay, c. 1927-45

12.01.2021: 2.15 pm – 3.15 pm
Josefine Hoffmann (CeMIS, Göttingen): The endurance of skill: Training and career at the Bosch-MICO factory

15.01.2021: 2.15 pm – 4.15 pm
Round table discussion: Labour, migration and citizenship during the Covid-19 pandemic in India

19.01.2021: 2.15 pm – 3.15 pm
Reyazul Haque (Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin): A witness to history: Production of images of India in GDR newsreels

26.01.2021: 2.15 pm – 3.15 pm
Nabhojeet Sen (Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, Bonn): Coerced labour regime(s) in Western India: c. 1700-1818

02.02.2021: 2.15 pm – 3.15 pm
Atem Lemtur (CeMIS, Göttingen): Unpacking the expedition: Mountains as a place of work

09.02.2021: 2.15 pm – 4.15 pm
Karl Müller-Bahlke (Institut für Soziologie, Göttingen): Reproduction and the colonial state: The Bombay Labour Gazette in the 1920s
Rohan Mathews (Institut für Soziologie and CeMIS, Göttingen): Statute and case law: The predicament of labour law in India