Monuments as Archives: Bhima Koregaon and the rethinking of caste and secularism in post-colonial India (1818-2018)

Abstract

My research proposes to move forward from this perspective by focusing on objects of cultural heritage and using them as archives to explore the intertwining between historical processes and the formation, contestation and consolidation of shared narratives of the past, their material embodiment in public space and their potential to foster collective mobilisation. From this point of view, monuments become an archive that serves not only to examine past events and their memory in the present, but also to interrogate broader dynamics directly related to the meaning and functioning of the nation-state. The shifting meanings and values of the past, embodied in monuments and cultural artefacts, directly challenge the agency of certain actors in the production of politically charged memories of the past: the first set of issues I wish to address revolves around two fundamental questions: what past? And, whose past? Through an insight into one of my cases studies, the colonial monument at Bhima Koregaon, near Pune, I will show how the narratives and counternarratives that consolidate and change around a specific place of memory over time are revealing of how founding principles of the state, like for instance ideas of community and the nation, secularism and equality, found embodiment or were contested in public memory, collective action and representations of the past.