In Sep­tem­ber 2024, the ZMO research unit Rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the Past in coop­er­a­tion with MIDA (Mod­ern India in Ger­man Archives, 1706–1989) and the Leib­niz Col­lab­o­ra­tive Excel­lence Project CRAFTE (Craft­ing Entan­gle­ments: Afro-Asian Pasts of the Glob­al Cold War) orga­nized a two-day work­shop with the title “Per­spec­tives on Mod­ern Indi­an His­to­ry through the Lens of Ger­man Archives”.

Abstract

The rich­ness and the poten­tial of the hold­ings of Ger­man archives on mod­ern Indi­an his­to­ry has been appre­ci­at­ed insuf­fi­cient­ly so far. To the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty of his­to­ri­ans of India, these resources can open up new research per­spec­tives that have remained obstruct­ed by an exces­sive fix­a­tion on British colo­nial archives. At the same time, inno­v­a­tive research ques­tions can be gen­er­at­ed for pur­pos­es of transna­tion­al his­tor­i­cal com­par­i­son and for the his­tor­i­cal analy­sis of “glob­al­iza­tion” process­es through an explo­ration of the mod­ern his­to­ry of Ger­man-Indi­an entanglements.

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Report

The objec­tive of this work­shop was to crit­i­cal­ly dis­cuss method­olog­i­cal and con­cep­tu­al approach­es towards the his­to­ry of mod­ern India on the basis of select­ed sources held in Ger­man archives. In doing so, we were con­cerned with some key issues that accom­pa­nied the MIDA project through­out its course. Among these were entan­gle­ments and dis­en­tan­gle­ments of Ger­man-speak­ing and Indi­an actors in the past, the entan­gled archives that emerged of those Indo-Ger­man con­nec­tions and the log­ic of the archive. How do we con­front colo­nial archives, and what do Ger­man archives tell us about the agency of his­tor­i­cal actors from India and beyond? 

The work­shop organ­is­ers and edi­tors of the forth­com­ing vol­ume, Anan­di­ta Baj­pai, Heike Liebau and Nico Putz invit­ed pre­vi­ous MIDA Archival Reflex­i­con authors to select one or two spe­cif­ic sources which were used in their Reflex­i­con arti­cles, dis­cuss them in-depth and present a crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion of the sources in light of how they con­tribute towards writ­ing his­to­ries of India-Ger­many entan­gle­ments. The sources cho­sen by the par­tic­i­pants ranged from tex­tu­al doc­u­ments from the archives (ego doc­u­ments, bureau­crat­ic doc­u­ments, etc. etc.), visu­al sources such as pho­tographs or paint­ings, to videos, and audi­tive sources such as a sound record­ing. We would like to thank all authors and guests for their con­tri­bu­tions and look for­ward to new insights and fur­ther exchanges!

The con­fer­ence par­tic­i­pants pose for a group pho­to in front of the entry to the ZMO’s Mit­tel­bau. © MIDA

Con­tact
Dr. Anan­di­ta Baj­pai (ZMO Berlin) anandita.bajpai[at]zmo.de

Dr. Heike Liebau (ZMO Berlin) heike.liebau[at]zmo.de

Nico Putz (ZZF Berlin) nico.putz[at]zzf-potsdam.de