Remembering Air India

Chandrima Chakraborty is Associate Professor in the Department of English and Cultural Studies and University Scholar at McMaster University. She has published extensively on nationalism, masculinity, and cultural memory, with a focus on South Asia and the South Asian diaspora. Publications include, Masculinity, Asceticism, Hinduism: Past and Present Imaginings of India (2011), Mapping South Asian Masculinities: Men and Political Crises (2015), a feature section on the Air India bombings in Topia (2012), and a double special issue, “Translated Worlds: History, Disapora, South Asia” in Postcolonial Text (2015). Her SSHRC-funded research project, The Unfinished Past: Turbans in an Age of Terror, examines the cultural ramifications of post-9/11 violence against South Asian communities in North America. She co-organized an international conference on the Air India tragedy in 2016 and she is conducting interviews with Air India families to learn more about memories of the Air India Flight 182 tragedy and its aftermath for her research project, “A Study of the Afterlives of the 1985 Air India Bombings.” Amber Dean is Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Her first book, Remembering Vancouver’s Disappeared Women: Settler Colonialism and the Difficulty of Inheritance (2015), offers a critical analysis of the public representations, memorials, and activist strategies that brought the story of Vancouver’s disappeared women to a wider public. In addition to publishing work on the topic of Air India, she has also published several journal articles and book chapters on artistic and (counter)memorial responses to murdered or missing women from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and on gentrification in Edmonton, Hamilton, and Vancouver. With Vancouver writer Anne Stone, she has guest edited a special issue of West Coast Line on representations of murdered or missing women, and she has contributed chapters to several edited books, including Reconciling Canada: Critical Perspectives on the Culture of Redress. Angela Failler is Canada Research Chair in Culture and Public Memory, and Associate Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Winnipeg.

Acknowledgements

The Art of Public Mourning / An Introduction // CHANDRIMA CHAKRABORTY, AMBER DEAN & ANGELA FAILLER

Remembering in Relation
Remembering in Relation: The Air India and Komagata Maru Disasters // AMBER DEAN
On the Shores of the Irish Sea // UMA PARAMESWARAN
The Ever After of Ashwin Rao (excerpt) // PADMA VISWANATHAN
Remembering across Place and Time: The Komagata Maru and Air India // RITA KAUR DHAMOON

A Nation Outside of History
From Foreign to Canadian: Air India and the Ongoing Denial of Racism // MAYA SESHIA
The Impact of Systemic Racism on Canada’s Pre-Bombing Threat Assessment and Post-Bombing Response to the Air India Bombings // SHERENE H . RAZACK
Courtroom 1 from the Flight 182 Series // DEON VENTER
In the Vestibule of the Nation // SHERENE H . RAZACK

The Political Apology
Politics of (Im)moderation: The Production of South Asian Identities in the Canadian Apology for Air India Flight // CASSEL BUSSE
Statement by the Prime Minister of Canada at the Commemoration Ceremony for the 25th Anniversary of the Air India Flight 182 Atrocity // PRIME MINISTER OF CANADA
The Canadian Government’s Apology to the Victims and Families of Air India Flight 182 // KAREN SHARMA

Creative Archive
Mediating Memories of the 1985 Air India Bombings: A Critical Dance with Lata Pada’s Revealed by Fire // ELAN MARCHINKO
Revealed by Fire: Artist Statement // LATA PADA
An Invocation Dance for Lata // UMA PARAMESWARAN
An Ethics of Remembering: Air India 182 and Its Creative Archive // TERE SAHUBEL

Personal Loss, Collective Grief
Model Mourning, Multiculturalism, and the Air India Tragedy // CHANDRIMA CHAKRABORTY
The Management of Grief // BHARATI MUKHERJEE
Desperately Seeking Helen: Film Synopsis // EISHA MARJARA
air india, unsent / letters from the archive // RENÉE SAROJINI SAKLIKAR
“Courting Aphasia, We Travel” // SUVIR KAUL

Contributors
Index