From the 21st to the 22nd of March 2024, MIDA in coop­er­a­tion with the Max Weber Forum for South Asian Stud­ies, New Del­hi (MWF Del­hi) held two events in Delhi:

21.03.2024 — Public Lecture and Book Launch

Time: 15.00 — 20.00 hrs

Venue: India Inter­na­tion­al Cen­tre (IIC), New Delhi

1. Modern India in German Archives 1706–1989: Introduction to the MIDA research portal

After the wel­come adress deliv­ered by Sebas­t­ian Schwecke, direc­tor of the MWF Del­hi, and Kas­par Mey­er, Head of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Sec­tion, Ger­man Embassy New Del­hi, our col­leagues Heike Liebau, Anan­di­ta Baj­pai, and Nico Putz pre­sent­ed the MIDA research por­tal, dis­cussing func­tion­al­i­ties and under­ly­ing prin­ci­ples of the MIDA data­base, the MIDA online pub­li­ca­tion series Archival Reflex­i­con and The­mat­ic Resources, as well as the over­all pub­li­ca­tion strat­e­gy of the project.

Wel­come address deliv­ered by Sebas­t­ian Schwecke (l.)
and Kas­par Mey­er (r.)
Full House at the IIC

2. Book Launch: Nodes of Translation

The sec­ond part of this day’s event con­sist­ed of the book launch of Mar­tin Christof-Füch­sle and Razak Khan’s edit­ed vol­ume Nodes of Trans­la­tion — Intel­lec­tu­al His­to­ry between Mod­ern India and Ger­many, which result­ed from the con­fer­ence titled “Nodes of Trans­la­tion: Rethink­ing Mod­ern Intel­lec­tu­al His­to­ry between South Asia and Ger­many”. A par­tic­u­lar high­light of the day was the inter­ac­tion between Christof-Füch­sle, the edi­tor, and some of the con­trib­u­tors who were able to attend the event.

Mar­tin Christof-Füch­sle, one of the edi­tors of the vol­ume (r.), togeth­er with Heike Liebau, who chaired the session
(From left to right) Heike Liebau, Mar­tin Christof-Füch­sle, Anan­di­ta Baj­pai, and Nico Putz

22.03.2024 — Workshop

The fol­low­ing day, our MIDA team mates togeth­er with some col­leagues from the MWF Del­hi con­vened at the Lod­hi Hotel, New Del­hi, for a work­shop titled “India-Ger­many Entan­gle­ments: New Avenues in the Ger­man Archival Landscape”. 

Time: 10.00 — 20.00 hrs

Venue: The Lod­hi Hotel, New Delhi

Pro­gramme:

10:00 — 10:30

10:30 — 11:15

Reg­is­tra­tion with tea / coffee

The poten­tial of mis­sion­ary sources: Ben­jamin Schultze (1689–1860) and his lin­guis­tic stud­ies — Heike Liebau (Leib­niz-Zen­trum Mod­ern­er Ori­ent / MIDA)

11:30 — 12:15

War, diplo­ma­cy and mem­o­ry: British-Indi­an sol­dier­sw in Ger­man cap­tiv­i­ty dur­ing WWII - Van­dana Joshi (Del­hi Uni­ver­si­ty / MIDA Advi­so­ry Board)

12:30 — 13:15

Through the grape-vine? Recep­tion of Indi­an protest cul­ture amongst Ger­man left­ists, 1960s-70s - Nico Putz (Leib­niz-Zen­trum Mod­ern­er Ori­ent / MIDA / Leib­niz-Zen­trum für Zei­this­torische Forschung)

13:15 — 14:15

Lunch Break

14:15 — 15:15

Train­ing as polit­i­cal strat­e­gy: Nav­i­gat­ing post-colo­nial devel­op­ment pol­i­tics at an Indo-Ger­man joint ven­ture - Jose­fine Hoff­mann (Georg-August Uni­ver­sität Göt­tin­gen / MIDA)

15:15 — 16:15

Mate­r­i­al res­o­nances of inter­na­tion­al radio broad­cast­ers from the Cold War: Radio Berlin Inter­na­tion­al and Deutsche Welle in India, 1964–90 - Anan­di­ta Baj­pai (Leib­niz-Zen­trum Mod­ern­er Ori­ent / MIDA)

16:15 — 17:00

Final dis­cus­sions with tea / coffee