Performance and the Culture of Nationalism

Sarvani Gooptu is Professor of Asian Literary and Cultural Studies at Netaji Institute for Asian Studies, Kolkata, India. Her main areas of research are nationalism and culture in Asia. Among her publications are three books: The Actress in the Public Theatres of Calcutta (2015), The Music of Nationhood: Dwijendralal Roy of Bengal (2018), which received the Hiralal Award for Best Woman Historian at Indian History Congress 2019, and Knowing Asia, Being Asian, Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism in Bengali Periodicals 1860–1940 (2021) as well as two co-edited volumes. She is passionate about music and regularly performs in music programmes. Mimasha Pandit is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Mankar College, Purba Bardhaman, West Bengal, India. Her main areas of research are the history of ideas and their performance in the wider public sphere in colonial Bengal. Her PhD dissertation was published in 2019, titled Performing Nationhood:The Emotional Roots of Swadeshi Nationhood in Bengal, 1905–1912. Recently, she has contributed to Itihaaser Bitarka, Bitarker Itihaas (published in 2022) as well as to Transcultural Humanities in South Asia (2022), edited by Waseem Anwar and Nousheen Yousuf.

Notes on Contributors

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Performing Nation, Nationalising Performance

I: Framing Parameters of Narrative/National/Lived Experience

A: South Asia



Framing Martyrdom as Cultural Performance in Bengali Revolutionary Nationalism

Shukla Sanyal



The Making of the Audience in Colonial Bengal Theatre

Sunetra Mitra



Indian Nationalism Embodied Through Dance

Amita Dutt



Shifting Hues in a City’s Culture Traced through the 88 keys of a Piano

Subha Das Mollick

B: Rhizomatic Pattern: East & Southeast Asia



The Politics of Cultural Intimacies in Asia: Writing about Dramatic Performances

in East and South East Asia in Twentieth Century Bengali Literary Journals

Sarvani Gooptu

II: Small Voices of Alterity

A: South Asia



Remembering and Encountering Death Collectively: Practice and Performance in the ‘Khawhar Hla’ (Songs for the Dead) among the Zo Christians in North Eastern India.

Anup Shekhar Chakraborty



Identity through Substraction: K-Pop Fans from North East India Create a New Identity of their Own

Sabik Pandit

8. The Formula of the Film and the Performance into Modernity

Susmita Dasgupta

B: Rhizomatic Pattern: Central Asia

9. Pains and Pangs of Post-Soviet Nationhood: Experiences of Tajikistan through the Pastiches of Celluloid Representation

Nandini Bhattacharya

III: Spectacularity, Mythification& Ritualistic Understanding/Countering of National Identity

A: South Asia

10. The Work of Art, The Mirror of Time: Theatre, Actress and the Audience in the Nineteenth Century

Mausumi Mukhopadhyay

11. Ram Ke Naam: Sloganeering/Othering Identity in Ramjanmabhoomi Movement

Mimasha Pandit

12. The Sword Unsheathed: 19th Century Bengal and A Postmodern Reading of Utpal Dutt’s Tiner Tolowar (The Tin Sword).

Purna Chowdhury

B: Rhizomatic Pattern: Southeast Asia

13. Identity through Reiteration: Myth, Memory, Magic in Tess Uriza Holthe’s When the Elephants Dance

Dipanjan Chatterjee

Index