Dates: December 21–22.12.2018.
Location: Department of South Asian Studies, Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Invalidenstrasse 118, 10115 Berlin
II Floor, Room 217
Introduction:
The German Democratic Republic (GDR) was officially recognized by the Indian state in 1972. In the absence of official diplomatic relations prior to recognition, however, the Trade Representations, established in 1956, became the ‘official mouthpiece’ of the GDR in India. Almost parallel to the increasing role played by the Trade Representations in furthering political, economic and cultural relations between the two countries was the emergence of numerous Indo-GDR Friendship Societies across different parts of India. In the field of cultural relations especially, entanglements came to be intensified through a myriad of media like theatre, art, film, documentaries, music, radio etc. The diverse activities of the Friendship Societies, university intellectuals, diplomats, theatre playwrights and filmmakers– with actors from both sides of the spectrum– produced a vibrant atmosphere of entanglements which were at the interface of both political and cultural diplomacy.
Though these entanglements have been researched individually from various directions [1], and through the lens of multiple tropes, they have rarely received systematic academic attention within the ambit of an overarching framework. This is especially because historiography on the larger subject of India-GDR relations is also largely scattered and scanty. This workshop seeks to unpack the domain of “doing” cultural politics by actors from India and the German Democratic Republic during the Cold War years.
Whereas the German term Kulturpolitik suggests the formalized ambit of state-led entanglements and soft power, the politics of culture reflects how such politics of ‘doing’ culture percolates the everyday life of public sphere(s), whereby entanglements acquire their own afterlives beyond the formalised sphere of state politics. It will focus, on the one hand, on how the GDR was re-presented for an Indian audience and how India came to be projected and consumed as an object of interest in the GDR. On the other, but more importantly so, it aims to trace the life trajectories of individuals, literary works and objects that were at the cusp of intense individual exchanges. Such histories, embedded in complex relationships among actors from both the countries, also call for a reading beyond the limited and limiting vocabulary of “propaganda politics”. The workshop will look at multiple sites of “doing culture” that actively contributed to producing an interface between state-led cultural entanglements, cultural diplomacy, participatory democracy and the politics of resistance. Art, literature, political thought, theatre, film, radio then become pertinent as spaces of collaboration that open a hitherto less explored archive of friendship.
Rather than projecting India as the passive play-field of Cold War “propaganda”, the objective is to elucidate how actors from India, who were at the heart of these entanglements, were active and mutual co-shapers of these relations. Papers will contribute to a nuanced reading of the compelling Cold War contexts, though without rendering India solely as the “object” and receiver of Cold War block politics.
How did mutual presences get materialised in the eclectic field of “culture”? How can we trace entanglements by diverting our gaze to the content of the medium, but also the materiality of the very medium and the inter-crossing lives of the actors from both the sides? What do these entanglements tell us about the field of cultural politics and the politics of culture in a Cold War context? How do these entanglements open the possibilities of tracing transnational ties? The workshop’s main objective is to bring together diverse sites of entanglements under one overarching theoretical and thematic focus and therein contribute to historiography on India-GDR relations.
Though these entanglements have been researched individually from various directions1, and through the lens of multiple tropes, they have rarely received systematic academic attention within the ambit of an overarching framework. This is especially because historiography on the larger subject of India-GDR relations is also largely scattered and scanty. This workshop seeks to unpack the domain of “doing” cultural politics by actors from India and the German Democratic Republic during the Cold War years.
Rather than projecting India as the passive play-field of Cold War “propaganda”, the objective is to elucidate how actors from India, who were at the heart of these entanglements, were active and mutual co-shapers of these relations. Papers will contribute to a nuanced reading of the compelling Cold War contexts, though without rendering India solely as the “object” and receiver of Cold War block politics.
How did mutual presences get materialised in the eclectic field of “culture”? How can we trace entanglements by diverting our gaze to the content of the medium, but also the materiality of the very medium and the inter-crossing lives of the actors from both the sides? What do these entanglements tell us about the field of cultural politics and the politics of culture in a Cold War context? How do these entanglements open the possibilities of tracing transnational ties? The workshop’s main objective is to bring together diverse sites of entanglements under one overarching theoretical and thematic focus and therein contribute to historiography on India-GDR relations.
[1] Attempts to trace the nature of some of these intertwined trajectories come primarily from Theatre Studies, Film Studies, Arts and Aesthetics, Literary Studies, historiography on universities and Cold War Studies, but rarely have they informed a systematic historiography on India-GDR relations beyond the realm of diplomatic history.Workshop Programme
Day 1 (21.12.2018)
| 09:30 – 09:45 | Welcome and Introduction |
| 09:45 – 11:30 | Chair: Joachim Oesterheld Travel Writing on India in the GDR: Between Cultural Diplomacy and Popular Education Brecht in Marathi: Cold War and the emergence of Culture as ‘Problem’ |
| 11:30 – 11:45 | Coffee/Tea Break |
| 11:45 – 13:30 | Chair: Anandita Bajpai Critical Pedagogy in the Theatre Studio: The Practice of Fritz Bennewitz Collaborative Dialogues across the Theatrical Public Spheres: ‘Invincible Vietnam’ in Calcutta and Rostock, 1967 |
| 13:30 – 14:30 | Lunch |
| 14:30 – 16:15 | Chair: Heike Liebau (Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient) Socialist Germany and India: Entanglements in Cartography and Architecture 1949–1989 The Sound of Friendship: Warm Wavelengths of Radio Berlin International in India during the Cold War Years |
| 16:15 – 16:30 | Coffee/Tea Break |
| 16:30 – 18:15 | Chair: Michael Mann India at The Leipzig Documentary Film Festival A Witness to History: Production of Images of India in GDR Newsreels |
| 18:30 | Conference Dinner |
Day 2 (22.12.2018)
| 10:00 – 11:45 | Chair: Anandita Bajpai The Notion of ‘Expressivity’ in the Art Collectives of India: The Realists and The Radical Painters and Sculptors’ Association Matrices of Exchange: Politics of Cultural Exchange and Modernist Printmaking in India. |
| 11:45 – 12:00 | Coffee Break |
| 12:00 – 13:00 | Wrap Up/Final Discussion |
Please find detailed information about this workshop and the programme here.