Centre for Writing & Communication

History has its heroes and villains, and one of the arch villains of Indian history has been Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb. We all love to hate him. He is blamed for and is representative of practically everything we hate about Mughal India or 'Muslim rule' as we popularly and incorrectly remember it. There is a long list of 'good' people he has killed: his elder brother, Dara Shukoh, who was a sufi and of creative mind, Sikh Guru Teg Bahadur, Maratha leader Sambhaji, Sufis like Sarmad; reimposed the jaziya, demolished temples and forced Hindus to convert to Islam. He is considered a symbol of oppression and tyranny. So, what was so wrong about renaming Aurangzeb Road after the 'much-loved people's President', APJ Abdul Kalam? Firstly, the commonly accepted notion that Aurangzeb was a religious fanatic who oppressed the Hindus is a myth. This idea is part of a larger notion of history, albeit an incorrect one – that with the coming of Mohammad Ghori ((Turkish invasions), began the 'Muslim' rule in Indian sub-continent. And that this rule was characterised by oppression of Hindus and destruction of temples. The rulers are believed to be driven by religious zeal and hatred for Hindus. There is little historical evidence to support such an argument, however, the fiction of Hindu oppression in medieval India continues to guide Hindu right wing politics. Such a notion of history divides the past into Hindu, Muslim, and British periods, based on the assumption that personalities and actions of individuals (great men) determined history. And the chief factor determining their personality was religion. This approach to history has long been discarded by scholarship as an inadequate way of understanding complex social processes. We now study Aurangzeb or any other historical personality, in their larger milieu, their actions being shaped by the context and vice versa. Moreover, when Muslim tyranny is invoked, we often forget that all monarchies are oppressive systems. Wars were regularly fought among competing powers through all times in history, and the leaders of these competing groups could often be of the same religion. Similarly, rulers of different religion (and indeed, 'opposing' religions, by today's popular view) would often collaborate for political gains. This is most evident in the relations between Mughals and Marathas, and Mughals and Sikhs chiefs.

Panel organised by Kanika Singh, Ashoka University

for The Fifth Biennial Conference of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies (ACHS), 26¬-30 August 2020, University College London, UK

Conference info: https://achs2020london.com/submissions/

Scholars and practitioners interested in participating in the panel may please submit a title and abstract (max. 250 words) with a short bio-note to [email protected] by 30 September 2019. The deadline for the submitting a curated panel on the conference website is 15 October 2019. Submissions welcome from those located in different countries of South Asia and/or working on museums in these countries.

This chapter shares the experiments about writing, pedagogy, inclusion and diversity through the work of the Centre for Writing and Communication (CWC) at Ashoka University, India. Set up in the year 2014 in a new, liberal arts institution, CWC’s work is integral to the pedagogical vision of Ashoka which emphasises critical thinking and participatory and democratic teaching-learning practices. I discuss CWC’s work and vision as seen in the composition of the centre, its intervention in the curriculum through writing courses, tutoring at undergraduate level, English language support, creative programmes, and the potential for writing centres to contribute further to higher education in India.

This article examines the changing importance, in Sikh history, of Baghel Singh, a Sikh military commander in eighteenth-century Punjab, and the significance of the most recent events commemorating him in Delhi—the Fateh Diwas. The Fateh Diwas was a spectacular event organized for the first time in 2014 at the Red Fort in Delhi, by the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD; Badal)-led Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee. It celebrated the conquest of Delhi by the Sikhs and the unfurling of the Sikh flag on the Red Fort by Baghel Singh. This claim is significant for its timing, symbolism and the historical legacy it seeks to remember. This representation of Baghel Singh also appears in modern paintings on Sikh history which are widely reproduced in popular spheres and also constitute the display in Sikh museums. A comparison of this particular representation of Baghel Singh with that in the nineteenth-century text, Sri Gur Panth Prakash by Ratan Singh Bhangu, is useful in understanding how Baghel Singh’s role has changed in Sikh history and how is it being deployed in contemporary heritage politics.

doi: 10.1177/0257643020956625

Republished in Punjabi Centuries: Histories of Punjab, ed. Anshu Malhotra. Orient BlackSwan, 304–34 (2024, Orient BlackSwan)

This course offers a social history of the institution of the museum in South Asia, and critically examines the politics of representation through it. Here, museums are considered as a tool of cultural and political domination through knowledge production and the creation of authoritative pasts. We explore the history of museums in the context of colonial rule, the rise of independent nation-states, and the heritage and identity politics of contemporary South Asia. How did museums emerge in South Asia? What are the different museum forms in the region? Who is making them, why and when? What is their notion of heritage and whose heritage do they represent? A history of museums in South Asia is especially interesting as the region has a history, simultaneously, of a shared culture and of competing interests among its constituting national and social groups. We discuss examples of museums from Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, and examine the dynamic ways in which politics, identity, religion, history and heritage interact in the institution of the museum.

A look at posters, slogans at the protest sites of the farmers' movement in Delhi - on the completion of its 6 months.

https://thewire.in/rights/farmers-protest-farm-laws-art-celebrations-singhu-ghazipur-tikri

Hindi version: https://trolleytimes.com/2021/07/06/icons-of-defiance-hindi/

My article on the Bhai Mati Das Museum, Sisganj Gurdwara, Delhi as part of the project 'Gods' Collections' which looks at museum-like collections at places of worship.

https://www.godscollections.org/case-studies/bhai-mati-das-museum-sisganj-gurdwara-delhi

A number of Sikh museums have been built in independent India, commissioned both by the government and religious organisations. Sikh museums are unusual: their display consists of modern history paintings depicting scenes from the Sikh past rather than historical artefacts. These paintings are ubiquitous in popular visual culture. The key questions examined in this paper are: when, why and by whom are Sikh museums created; the significance of the museum’s presence in popular culture; the notion of heritage in these museums; and their role in contemporary India. A study of Sikh museums is valuable in understanding the museum as an institution, and its influence on the heritage politics of contemporary India.

This paper looks at two memorials built in India to commemorate Sikh victims of the violent events of June 1984 and November 1984. Gurdwara Yaadgaar Shaheedan (Gurdwara Martyrs’ Memorial) was built in the Golden Temple complex, Amritsar in 2013 and the Wall of Truth: Sikh Genocide Memorial was inaugurated in Gurdwara Rakabganj, New Delhi in 2017. While both memorials commemorate related events and are built by the same group of people, they differ completely in the choice of nomenclature, design and even the justification given for their creation. This paper discusses the differences between these memorials and their relevance in the memorial politics of contemporary India.

This book emerges from the work of the Centre for Writing and Communication, Ashoka University. The essays in this volume offer a range of perspectives ranging from an ideological vision for inclusive pedagogy, critically analyzing policy and disciplinary discourses, to individual experiments in syllabi-making and classroom interaction. The contributors to this volume are young scholars and teachers coming from different disciplines.

https://amzn.in/d/gjgrkYS

One of the latest additions to the law and literature scholarship, the book explores how normative masculinity in the nineteenth century England and France came under pressure with the rise of homosexual representations in the fiction of the time, whose authors and publishers were brought to trial.