Britain’s Legacy on the Indian Subcontinent (050662-SS 2025)
Section outline
-
Welcome to our course!We meet on Mondays from 4-6pm in GABF 04/413.
My office hours are on Mondays from 2-3pm in GB6/148, or alternatively by appointment.You may take the course either as a 'Seminar' or as an 'Übung', with different options available for earning the credit points.For more detailed information, see the documents below!-
Here you will find information on the final test and examples as well as a sample solution from a previous course.
-
Here you will find the requirements for the oral discussions and examples of theses to be submitted before the exam.
-
-
This is an alternative way to obtain credit points. At this conference, two papers will be presented that deal with the topic of India from a cultural studies perspective. Your task would be to attend the conference on the respective day (30 May) and write a response paper. You would need to register by 19 May. If you are interested, I will inform you in more detail about how such a response paper should look like. Of course, you could also just attend the conference out of interest or curiosity. There will be an interesting roundtable discussion for teachers on Saturday (31 May): ‘Teaching Postcolonial Studies in the English Classroom’; as well as a presentation by Roger Dale Jones on Friday (30 May): "Freedom for the Pike? Poverty and Capitalism in German EFL Schoolbooks"
The relevant papers are
Akshay Kumar: "Reimagining Postcolonialism: Ambedkar, Caste, and Capitalism in the Neoliberal Context"
Harald Pittel: "Structure of Feeling as a Mode of Resistance? Countering the Capitalist Crisis of Indian Cinema"
-
This is another alternative way to earn credit points. You would need to visit this exhibition and write a review with a particular focus on the section that deals with India and Asia more broadly. Additionally, I will include a couple of questions that should be integrated into your review.
-
Here you can find a comprehensibly written Introduction to Cultural Studies with all the basic terms and concepts you should know:
Butter, Michael. From Panem to the Pandemic: An Introduction to Cultural Studies. Narr Francke Attempto Verlag, 2023.
-
-
Please answer the following guiding questions while/after reading the obligatory text by Caroline Elkins:
- According to Elkins, what does Niall Ferguson represent?
- How does Elkins define "legalized lawlessness"?
- "Britain not only created civil conflicts but also left such conflicts in its wake." (p. 27) How does this quote relate to British rule in India? What is meant by "divide-and-rule" policies? Where do they have their historical origins?
- Please explain: "In many ways, Churchill epitomized the imperial soldier-cum-politician."
- "The Black Hole of Calcutta": What were the "cascading effects of this mythologized event"?
- Why is the Trial of Warren Hastings so important for the history of the British Empire?
- What are the paradoxes inherent in "liberal imperialism" according to Elkins?
-
-
Please inform yourselves about Tariq Ali's biography and his works.
- Please watch the Good Morning Britain discussion and explain how it can serve as an example of why another book on Churchill was deemed necessary, and what it reveals about the "Churchill cult". Ali's book is sometimes described as a polemic. What does this imply?
- In his book "Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World", Mike Davis writes:
"Thus the Radical journalist William Digby, principal chronicler of the 1876 Madras famine, prophesized on the eve of Queen Victoria’s death that when 'the part played by the British Empire in the nineteenth century is regarded by the historian fifty years hence, the unnecessary deaths of millions of Indians would be its principal and most notorious monument'." What bitter irony lies in this prophecy, and what role does Churchill play? - How would you explain to upper-secondary school pupils the British Empire’s — and particularly Winston Churchill’s — role in the famines that occurred in India during the British Raj?
- India was not the only colony devastated by famines under British rule. Which other colony’s trajectory was forever changed by a severe famine, and what parallels can you draw with the Indian case?
- What was the Holodomor and why could this be relevant to our course?
-
-
Please familiarize yourselves with who Norman Finkelstein is and his areas of research.
- Why is Finkelstein so interested in Gandhi? Another historical figure Finkelstein has studied in detail is Nat Turner. Why is that?
- Andreas Malm argues that “selective memory” distorts how we remember protest and resistance movements. Examples include the US civil rights movement, the anti‑Apartheid struggle in South Africa, the early‑20th‑century women’s suffrage movement in the UK and the anti‑colonial resistance to British rule in India. Please explain! What role does Gandhi play in this "selective memory"?
- Why is it significant — both from the perspective of the British Empire and from an Indian point of view — that "Indian independence [...] has not been desecrated with the label of revolution"?
- After reading Finkelstein’s booklet — which, in large part, consists of Gandhi’s own words — has your perception of Gandhi changed in any way?
-
-
The main purpose of this documentary is to convey some visual impressions.
-
Please watch the documentary and acquaint yourselves with Mike Davis’s book Planet of Slums. A PDF version is also freely available online, where you can use the search function to look up keywords (e.g., ‘British’, ‘India’).
- "Today's poor megacities - Nairobi, Lagos, Bombay, Dhaka, and so on - are stinking mountains of shit that would appall even the most hardened Victorians. (Except, perhaps, Rudyard Kipling, a connoisseur, who in The City of Dreadful Night happily distinguished the 'Big Calcutta Stink' from the unique pungencies of Bombay, Peshawar, and Benares.)" How would you describe Mike Davis's writing style, and how would you evaluate it?
- Please explain what Davis says about the role of the British Empire in the emergence of slums on the Indian subcontinent.
- Please describe, drawing on Mike Davis’s book and the documentary, what the typical daily life of slum residents (on the Indian subcontinent) looks like, what the most pressing problems they face are, and what additional hardships especially women and children have to endure.
- For me, perhaps the most depressing point of all in Davis’s book is the medical metaphor of the "late-capitalist triage of humanity"; what does this mean for India?
-
-
-
- Before reading the text, please come up with three questions you have regarding Britain’s withdrawal from and partition of India.
- After reading the text, please formulate three additional questions you would ask someone who has also read it. Does the text provide answers to your initial questions? If so, which answers does it provide?
- Please name at least one point or aspect of Britain's withdrawal from and partition of India, or an argument from the text, that you found unclear or difficult and would like explained in more detail.
- Churchill frequently condemned the decision to leave India by mid-1948 as a rushed and reckless retreat, which he dubbed 'Operation Scuttle': "The Government by their 14-month time limit have put an end to all prospect of Indian unity... How can one suppose that the thousand-year gulf which yawns between Muslim and Hindu will be bridged in 14 months?... How can we walk out of India in 14 months and leave behind us a war between 90 million Muslims and 200 million caste Hindus?... We must do our best in all circumstances... But, at least, let us not add - by shameful flight, by a premature, hurried scuttle - to the pangs of sorrow so many of us feel, the taint and smear of shame." This quote could, for instance, be used in a written test, but it could also provide the foundation for a possible thesis in a term paper or oral discussion, e.g.: "Much to Churchill’s dismay, Britain’s withdrawal from and partition of India can rightfully be labeled 'Operation Scuttle' and marks one of the most shameful chapters in the history of the British Empire." Please try to come up with your own 'working thesis'* regarding Britain’s withdrawal from and partition of India, and briefly explain your choice.
(*A preliminary statement or main idea that you plan to explore or argue in your paper or discussion. It doesn’t have to be perfect or final — it can change as you learn more and develop your ideas. Think of it as a starting point that would guide your research and writing.)
-
In this session, I will present a particular interpretation of Hindu nationalism as it currently manifests under Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party, and how the Kashmir conflict can be situated within that framework.
-
-
In this session, we will examine how traditional (and often disturbing) practices in India have shaped — and continue to shape — the regulation of the female body. For example:
sati (suttee; the ancient Hindu practice of a widow immolating herself on her husband's funeral pyre); ritual "purity" and "pollution" (e.g., temporary ritual impurity of menstruating women — presence believed to transmit ritual "pollution", removable only by elaborate "purification" rites); flesh trade and prostitution villages; female infanticide and sex‑selective abortions; the traditional dowry system; patrilineality and patrilocality; honour killings)
-
Please use the following texts to gain an overview of the topic and look for common threads and connections to what we’ve already discussed in the course!
-
-
In his viral speech, Shashi Tharoor argues that Britain does owe reparations to India. Explain why the italics are justified here, and - drawing on his arguments and what we’ve covered in this course - offer your own perspective.