How do borders and the people who inhabit them shape each other? How do local ideologies, identities and practices change, in dialogue with broader, structural events like changes in sovereignty and borders? This talk focuses on the Gambhira tradition of Malda (West Bengal) and Rajshahi (Bangladesh), a political theatre form under guises of religion and entertainment. After the Partition of India in 1947, this region was violently divided into two countries, creating new challenges for cultural and political accommodation. Drawing on both archival and ethnographic research, this special lecture aims to explore how tracking historical changes in a performative tradition can help us to gain keen insights into the checkered history of colonial and postcolonial nationalisms in the Indian subcontinent.
Date- 19th May, 2018