The Department of English, Daulat Ram College, University of Delhi, under the aegis of Internal Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC), Daulat Ram College, invites papers for an International Conference on Modernism, India and the Colonial Gaze to be held in New Delhi, India, on February 1-2, 2024. 


Concept Note:


During the colonial period, ancient Indian texts were translated and interpreted to serve the interests of the colonial authorities and cater to a largely western intelligentsia. Existing discourses on the dissemination of knowledge suggest that Eastern, especially Indian literature and philosophy hit the western shores largely through the accounts of travellers, colonial administrators, missionaries, and most importantly, through the shipping of manuscripts. While tracing the trajectory of the transfer of Indic knowledge, Kathryn S. Freeman observes, “India’s ancient texts were received by the British with responses ranging from enthusiasm to horror, most often simultaneously.”[i] In the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, India acted as one of the major thrusts for cross-cultural literary/artistic exchanges, sometimes referentially, and at other times, explicitly. Subsequently, the modernist writer’s response to/representation of the Raj and its colonies sheds new light upon the dynamics between modernism and the colonial gaze. In effect, modernism as a literary and artistic movement also influenced a lot of Indian writers. Moreover, Indian writers like Rabindranath Tagore and Mulk Raj Anand (the latter being a part of the Bloomsbury group for a brief period) also initiated a new phase of creative confluence. Thus, the time period that is being taken up for scrutiny through the lens of literary and artistic works offers an opportunity to critically engage with modernist stalwarts, namely, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf and numerous others, and their individual take on India.

  The enigmatic presence of India in the western imagination is evident from the way her culture and indigenous knowledge were received by writers and scholars from different disciplines in the aforesaid period. The Irish national poet, W. B. Yeats, in his Per Amica Silentia Lunae, claims, “I have always sought to bring my mind close to the mind of Indian and Japanese poets.”[ii] His friend, George Russell (AE) was attracted to the wisdom embedded in Indian philosophy. The American poet T. S. Eliot took lessons in Sanskrit language at Harvard University to understand Indian philosophy and incorporated ideas from the Upanishad in his much celebrated poem, “The Waste Land.” The founder of modern linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure wrote his doctoral thesis on Sanskrit language. The Swiss psychoanalyst Carl G. Jung, after his India visit in 1930s, delved further into the vast reservoir of ancient Indian esoteric knowledge. The Irish indologist and historian, Vincent Arthur Smith worked extensively on the Indian history, society, culture, and art. In addition to this, writers like Rudyard Kipling and E. M. Foster portrayed India on the literary canvas with their own unique perceptions and aesthetic sensibilities.

  Indian thinkers, travellers and mystics (and/or their works and translations) travelling to the West and the birth of neo-spiritual societies at the turn of the century, namely the Theosophical Society, also played their part in relaying mystical and spiritual knowledge to the West. All this led to the creation of an interesting interface of exchange of ideas, however the flow of thoughts, concepts, philosophy, and knowledge was decidedly westwards.

  Decolonization, in its truest sense, necessitates a nuanced understanding of the politics of representation and translation. In contemporary times, East is no longer the East of the yesteryears, and the twain must meet for a fruitful discussion/discourse for a comprehensive understanding of our pasts and for tracing the trajectory of the exchange of ideas that shaped the literary and aesthetic sensibility of the early twentieth century.

  The proposed International Conference aims to critically engage with the Indian absent-presences, references and contours in modernist literature, art, and aesthetic sensibility from the vantage point of the colonial gaze, while also encouraging fresh perspectives on decolonizing of the gaze. One of the mainstays of the conference is new, multidisciplinary research which establishes traceable connections, and research which can be substantiated with proper citations and references. 

The following topics are suggestive. Proposed roundtable/paper/poster topics may include, but ought not to be limited to:

1.     Dissemination of Indian Knowledge and Philosophy in the early 20th Century

2.     India and Indian references in the Modernist Literature

3.     India and Early Psychoanalytical Studies in the West

4.     The Colonial Gaze and the development of Western Discourses

5.     Exoticisation and the Reinterpretation of the “Other”

6.     Understanding the Past through the lens of the Present

7.     India in Archives and Manuscripts

8.     Language and the Politics of Translation

9.     India, Europe, and Literary Historiography

10.   Artistic and Intellectual Hegemony

11.   Decolonizing the Colonial Gaze

12.   Mysticism and Neo-Spiritual Movements at the turn of the Century

13.   Modernism, Travel, and Dialogue

14.   Europe in Indian Literary and Artistic Imagination

15.   Indian Responses to Modernism

                                                                     

 

Note: The Conference Committee reserves the right to subject all the papers through a plagiarism check. Only complete papers will be shortlisted and sent the final invitation. The decision of the Conference Committee will be final and binding. 

Please send abstracts on the aforementioned topics or related themes in not more than 300-500 words, along with a brief biographical sketch to modernismindia24@gmail.com by September 7th, 2023.

Queries are to be sent to the conference convenor on drcenglish@dr.du.ac.in 

[i] Freeman, Kathryn S. “‘Beyond the stretch of labouring thought sublime’: Romanticism, post-colonial theory and the Transmission of Sanskrit texts.” Orientalism Transposed the Impact of the Colonies on British Culture Eds. Julie F. Codell and Dianne Sachko Macleod. Routledge, 2018. p. 141.

[ii] W. B. Yeats: Later Essays. Ed. William H. O’Donnell. Vol. V. Scribner, 1994. The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats. p. 16.