CHINA IN SUBALTERN INDIAN IMAGES

The presentation looks at Indian travel writings and explores intra-cultural encounters and the construction of knowledge about China at the beginning of the twentieth century. Kamal Sheel focuses on two Indian travellers, namely Thakur Gadadhar Singh (1869-1920) and Mahendu Lal Garg (1870-1942). Both writers were part of the native regiments under the British Army which was dispatched to China during 1899-1900 where they joined the Joint Foreign Expeditionary Force and fought the Boxers. Their writings demonstrate that modern subaltern Indian images of China were dominated by voluntaristic and populist impressions evincing cultural and brotherly affinities between the two, and as such overrode the colonial state’s agenda and westerners’ derisive and contemptuous description of Boxer China.

Kamal Sheel is Professor of Chinese Studies and former Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. He holds a Ph.D. in the field of Modern Chinese History from the University of Wisconsin - Madison, USA. His current research interest primarily lies in the area of social and intellectual history of China and cultural interaction and encounters in Asia with focus on India and China. His publications include Peasant Society and Marxist Intellectuals in China (Princeton 1989) and a  jointly edited volume India on the Silk Road (2009). He has recently finished a co-authored manuscript on ‘Thakur Gadadhar Singh: An Indian Subaltern’s account of the Boxer Rebellion’.

Time and place:

Wednesday 23 October 2013, 10:00-12:00
CBS, Dalghas Have 15, 2000 Frederiksberg, room DSØ52

Please sign up at arc.int@cbs.dk