Department of History and Archaeology Approaches to Mobility: Thinking Through Space and Time

Inaugural Lecture by Dr. Nitin Sinha, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (Centre for Modern Oriental Studies), Berlin

Friday, 25 March 2022

Frontiers, Money, and Mobility

10:00 AM to 12:30 PM

Bikram Bora, Jawaharlal Nehru University: Into the Heart of Darkness: Mobility and Colonial Violence in Assam-Tibet Borderlands

Emil Manu Oommen, Shiv Nadar University: Syrian Christians and Finance in Twentieth-Century Kerala

Nilanjana Bhattacharjee, Jawaharlal Nehru University: A Referendum to Partition Sylhet: Situating Divided Bodies in a Liminal Geography (1947- 1960)

Priyanka Sharma, Jawaharlal Nehru University: ‘Frontier’ Pathans in the Imperial Capital: Deconstructing Colonial Representations and Responses to Pathan Moneylenders in New Delhi, 1911-1947

Discussant: Dr. Chinmay Tumbe, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad

Break 1:30 PM to 3:00 PM

Community Ties and Social Mobility

Vrishali Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai: Mapping Metaphor, Mimesis, and Metamorphosis in the Mobility of the Bhumihars in Colonial India

Cherene Aniyan, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras: Consumer (Non)Citizenship Regimes Among Indian Migrants to the Gulf

Discussant: Dr. Subhashim Goswami, Shiv Nadar University, Delhi NCR

Saturday, 26 March 2022

10:00 AM to 12:00 PM

Narratives of Mobility

Rohit Rajak, Shiv Nadar University: Friendship: A Comparative Study in the Ancient Indian Texts

Nitika Sharma, Jawaharlal Nehru University: Mobile Lives of Poets in the Persianate World
Vardan Ratan, Jawaharlal Nehru University: Understanding Kāśī Sacred Through Mobility Practices and Politics: Tenth to Twelfth Century A.D.

Discussant: Dr. Raziuddin Aquil, University of Delhi, Delhi

Break

1:00 PM to 3:00 PM

Practices of Mobility: Performativity

Ritu Yumnam, Shiv Nadar University: Ethnographic Explorations of Uttarakhandi Pahari-ness Through Young Women’s Mobilities

Sneha Haldar, Presidency University: Dance in Transnationalism: Constructing Diasporic Identities Through Indian Classical Dance

Yojak Tamang, Presidency University: The Mobile Community: Living at the Edges of the State

Discussant: Dr. Brahma Prakash, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi

Sunday, 27 March 2022

10:00 AM to 12:00 PM

Infrastructures of Mobility

Balbir Singh Aulakh, Tata Institute of Social Sciences: Locating Simultaneity and Spatial Re-organisation in Mumbai: Through Interlinkages of Politics, Sport and Land

Purbasha Das, Jawaharlal Nehru University: Mobility and Transport in Indian Cities: A Few Historical Reflections c.1900s-c.1960s

Saloni Verma, Shiv Nadar University: Concrete Foundations in Quicksand: Building the Hardinge Bridge on the Lower Ganges in the Early- Twentieth Century

Discussant: Dr. Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali

Break

1:00 PM to 4:30 PM

Mobility and the Environment

Jonmani Das, Jawaharlal Nehru University: Environment and Mobility in Frontier Spaces: Mughals and the Limits of Political Authority in the Seventeenth Century Brahmaputra Valley

Paro Tomar, Jawaharlal Nehru University: Networks of Circulation and the Thar Desert as a Connected Space: Thirteenth to Seventeenth Centuries C.E

Sampurna Das, University of Delhi: Making of the mobile floodplains/chars of Assam: Notes from colonial to post-colonial state

Saumya Pandey University of Ghent “Catastrophic” sand not water: Prognostic conceptualization of riverine sand as “problem”

Discussant: Dr. Debjani Bhattacharyya, University of Zurich