The second biannual seminar will be held on December 1st at St. Peter’s Campus, University of Sunderland.

Trajectories of Indian Independence: 1857, 1947, 2007

One-day Seminar

December 1st, 2007

St Peter’s Campus, University of Sunderland

Organised by the Northern Association of Postcolonial Studies

9-10: Registration

10-11 Dr Alex Tickell, (University of Portsmouth):

"Cawnpore and Colonial Charivari: Memorial and Counterinsurgency in Anglo-Indian Popular Culture".

11-11:30 coffee break

11:30-12:30 Dr Ananya Jahanara Kabir (Leeds University):

"Shared Anniversaries, Separate Histories? Post-1947 trajectories of Indian and Pakistani visual art."

12:30-2 –lunch

2-3  Professor Javed Majeed (Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London):

"1947 and Secularism’s Opportunity"

3-3:30 tea break

3:30-4:30

Roundtable with all the speakers and the audience.

4:30-6:30

Screening of Junoon (1978), dir. Shyam Benegal

Following the establishment of the East India Company in 1857, some Mughals, led by Sarfaraz Khan, decided to rebel against their British masters, killing many and forcing others to flee. Three women from the Labadoor family, Grandma, Mariam, and Ruth, seek shelter with a local money-lender, Lala Ramjimal, who would like to recover his money from the Labadoors and has a vested interest in their survival. But he is unable to keep their presence secret, and Javed Khan and his men storm into his home, and take the three women to Javed’s house. Under normal circumstances, these three would have been beheaded and Ramjimal and his family severely punished, but Javed would like to make Ruth his second wife. Miriam and Javed’s wife, Firdaus, strongly oppose this move, but Javed is clearly obsessed by Ruth’s beauty and nothing will deter him from marrying her. Then things get really complicated when Ruth starts having feelings for Javed, and the British seek retributionfor those killed by the Mughals.

7:00 conference dinner