Great news! Our impact on a UNESCO World Heritage site!

Great news! A UNESCO world heritage site has now acted on our feedback and is taking corrective measures to present a global version of the history of the industrial revolution! So a project that began based on my own personal corrective of history, shared by some members of the Hindu Samaj, Sheffield, is beginning to have wider outcomes! Delighted! So next time you visit the world heritage sites of Derwent valley mills, you will see the outcome of our efforts in the interpretation boards in Cromford Mill – the first ever water powered spinning mill in the world! For the first time, India, the origin and home to the world’s oldest cotton industry will get a mention in a Cromford Mill interpretation panel!

This follows a promising talk by Michael Ledger, Education officer at Cromford Mill.

Chamu Kuppuswamy

BBC One Countryfile 6th July 2014

Part I

Helen Skelton: This beautiful landscape provides quiet sanctuary from the hustle and bustle of the towns and cities that flank it.

A third of Sheffield is actually in the Peak District, which makes it the only UK city to have a National Park within its boundaries.

[music]

Chamu Kuppuswamy:   I do a walk called Elephant in the Park walk.

HS: right

Chamu Kuppuswamy: This year it is on the 2^nd of August.

HS: When Chamu Kuppuswamy first moved to Sheffield she began looking for connections between the Peak District and the country of her birth, India. What were your first impressions of the Peak District then?

CK: oh, one of..wonderful countryside and I thought it was very very quiet, compared to cities I have lived in India, of course.

HS: And what about you in terms of your friends, your family and your culture – why did you think it was so important to find links with India?

CK: In some of these places kind of my memory was jogged of.. you know.. about having read something about India about this place. That kind of said well actually there must be a lot of different links that will be really interesting to find out in which case I can have my own sort of global interpretation of the National Park and that really sparked the whole thing off.

[music]

HS: One of the most exciting links that Chamu found was here in Millthorpe.

Edward Carpenter was one of the village’s former residents. Socialist, poet and philosopher, he had a fascination for Hinduism that led him on a life changing journey to India. So he was sort of a pioneer in that he went to India, he liked what he found about Hinduism and he brought it back here.

CK: Absolutely. He went to India because of all that he had heard about India. And he also visited a guru over there. So he really strengthened his knowledge of Hinduism.

[music]

HS: This is Carpenter’s former home in Millthorpe, where I am meeting Helen Smith. Fascinated by the life of Edward Carpenter, also known as the Saint in Sandals, she’s researched his life extensively for her Phd.

[music]

HS: Helen, these look intriguing! Tell me about these.

Helen Smith: They are, I think. I think people would have been very surprised when these appeared in this area in the 1890s. These sandals actually represent sort of Edward Carpenter’s relationship to India, and the things that he liked about India, things that he brought back from India. These sandlas representative of something that was freedom for him, freedom in terms of dress, and also the freedom of understanding that he found in India and brought back over to the Peaks with him.

HS: And this is something that people wanted him to sort of spread the word about.

HeSm: Yes, absolutely.

HS: I believe this is a letter from Gandhi.

HeSm: It is, yes. A little bit later on Carpenter had been working into the early 20^th century trying to spread these ideas. And that brought him to the attention of Gandhi and Gandhi’s circle. And Gandhi was very keen to write to Carpenter to ask him to sort of take his ideas out into Gandhi’s wider circle. And to spread the word even more. So that highlights its importance really, in sort of things like the Indian independence movement as well.

[Indian music]

HS: Carpenter’s connection to India flourished on his return home. His walks in the Peak District were now further inspired by ideas of Hinduism and soon it influenced his writing.

[Indian music background] [voice] You are not to differentiate yourself from nature. It is only under such conditions that the little mortal creature becomes gradually aware of what he is.

HS: But there is an even more colourful local character who brought these two cultures even closer together. Thomas Wardle was a silk dyer.

From 5000 miles away in the Peak District he made a breakthrough that changed the livelihood of Indian silk dyers bringing new vibrancy to previously near worthless fabric.

As expert dyer Glen is hoping to show us.

G: The fabric when it first come to him, it weren’t useful. When the silk is woven it goes through with gum so it doesn’t break.

HS: So when you say there was gum on it, they put that on to strengthen it?

G: strengthen it, so they could weave it

HS: So he found a way to get that gum off it and that it could take dye?

G: yeah, yeah. And what he did was he prepared the fabric with soap, alkali and then bleached the fabric, then he could get the range of shades he wanted to get like pink, lighter shades of blue and so on. If it wasn’t, we would be looking at dark greys, or browns or blacks or

HS: So initially people were looking at Indian tussur silk and saying, that is useless, that’s no good to me. And Thomas Wardle said.. ahn.ha..we can make this work.

G: Well, what he did was pretty remarkable really

HS: So Thomas Wardle has left a legacy among silk dyers, has he left a legacy in India?

CK: I think he absolutely has. He gave the Indian silk industry their new market , which is there were more and more people now who were interested in tussur silk.

HS: And Wardle found another use for tussur silk, producing a fabric called seal cloth, which became a huge success when used to make waterproofs. And where would the Peak District be without them?

Absolutely no need for waterproofs today. But what about the rest of the week – Countryfile Weather Forecast.

 

Part II                                     

Rugged moorlands, picturesque dales, the Peak District was Britain’s first National Park.

And one of our most accessible. Around 20 million people live within just an hour’s drive. 10 million people visit the Peak District each year. And it is surrounded by diverse northern towns and cities. But 1% of the people who come here are from ethnic minorities.

Earlier we met Chamu Kuppuswamy, she has discovered some surprising connections between the peaks and her native, India. In an area synonymous with the right to roam movement back in the 1930s, Chamu is at the forefront of a new kind of campaign – encouraging people from ethnic minorities to get out and enjoy what the area has to offer.

CK: This place is just amazing in terms of being actually able to walk in it, and actually get anywhere you want, and with the help of a map you are able to explore so much of the countryside, which for me was unprecedented.

HS: So walking and rambling isn’t something that you would have done in India?

CK: No, certainly not. I mean, we do a lot of walking but in cities, but nothing like in the countryside. The countryside is really offlimits. And there’s lots of dangers, hazards, and also there isn’t a map you could use. Therefore it is not somewhere you would naturally do to go for a walk.

HS: What do you think is stopping people from ethnic minorities coming out and enjoying the Peak District?

CK: A number of different factors. Information about the fact that there is access, and there is the right to roam in this area is one of the least known bits of information, I think, because National parks are looked at more as conservation areas, where people don’t actually inhabit. Because that’s the kind of Parks people encounter in India.

HS: So why do you think it is important for people to come out here?

CK: oh! I think, for anyone to come out into nature is really really great. I think you can experience the sort of tranquillity, and experience the sort of pleasure that you can’t get from any other activity.

[music]

HS: Once she was out and about, Chamu couldn’t get enough. You trained to be a ranger yourself. What do your parents back in India think of this strange sort of hobby of yours?

CK: First of all, they asked me- Is it safe? You know, if you go, do you actually patrol on your own?

Chamu’s regular walks reveal the links with her Indian heritage and are a great way of getting more people from ethnic minorities into the Peak District.

Debjani: I love cities, that on a nice day like this, I can be out in the Peak District.

Vithal Patel: My principle is the world is my school, and nature is my book. You learn lot of things from the nature really, lot of understanding through the nature.

Pragya: I guess I like everything about the Peak District. Its green, its peaceful, its calm and I am like pretty much into the flora. Everything I come here I find something new to look at.

[music]

HS: There is no end to Chamu’s passion for this area. Researching links with India, becoming a ranger, leading walks, and one more thing – dancing.

These ruins of a house from 500 years ago provide the perfect stage for Chamu’s performance.

Annapoorna Kuppuswamy sings – Sarasi jaakshulu jhalakha made ..with dancers bells sounding

HS: Chamu has written, choreographed and is now performing this dance, inspired by nature and her connection with the Peak District.

AK sings: Sarigha cheerulu mela

 

CK: the techniques are replete with inspiration from nature. This is the sort of first ever time we have actually done it together as a group outside. It is absolute fascinating, just walking up on the grass and feeling the stone over there, is a completely different experience to sort of being in a classroom where the surface is very different.

AK sings: ..tharuvu neekita

HS (whispering): I am going to going on a limb here, but I am pretty sure that this is the first time we have done Bharathanatyam, Indian dancing in the National Park on Countryfile. I think Tom Heap should do all his reports like this from now on!

AK sings: Sarasi jaakshulu…

With moves like this, it’s no wonder word seems to have gone around!

 

AK sings: tharuvu neekita joothus chuntuta dharma ..aaa…aaa.

Claps..

HS: From the John Craven School of Dancing.

John Craven: laughs

HS: That was impressive. Thank you. What a fantastic way of ending the show.

JC: It was wonderful, wasn’t it?

Transcribed by Chamu Kuppuswamy

How many can you count?

Did you know that just on a short walk, in areas that we explored as part of our project, there is all this biodiversity?

Did you know we had poisonous snakes in the Peak district – Well, not the King Cobra, but Britain’s only venomous snake is not far from Sheffield!

You can potentially see red deer, adders, brook lamprey, great crested newts, harvest mice, water vole and red breasted mergansers.

It is a naturalist and photographer’s paradise!

Chamu Kuppuswamy

How to walk the spiritual path? Literally!

Watch this fantastic film from our heritage project as it takes the long view of the ‘walks’ component of the project – starting from researching stories and preparing a route card to walking in the landscape and developing an enlightened view of nature that is summarised in Edward Carpenter’s own words.

Once we had completed our research, through reading of books and materials, and working with primary material from the Edward Carpenter Collection held in the Sheffield Archives, we had collected information that had played itself out in the landscape years ago. The walks component enabled us to play it out again in the landscape in our own way and bring new understandings about our shared heritage. We were building up on, picking up the threads from where Edward Carpenter left off. We were telling the story of his discovery and adventure into understanding the relationship between us and nature through Hinduism and with the help of rangers, enabling everyone to chart to their own journeys into the special landscape of the National Park to help understand and experience this relationship between human and nature.

In the final part of this short film, Shayast Panezai reads from ‘Adam’s Peak to Elephanta’ (page 178)-

“You are not to differentiate yourself from Nature. We have seen that the Guru Tilleinathan spoke of the operations of the external world as ” I,” having dismissed the sense of difference between himself and them. It is only under these, and such conditions as these, that the little mortal creature gradually becomes aware of What he is. This non-differentiation is the final deliverance. When it enters in the whole burden of absurd cares, anxieties, duties, motives, desires, fears, plans, purposes, preferences, etc., rolls off and lies like mere lumber on the ground. The winged spirit is free, and takes its flight. It passes through the veil of mortality and leaves that behind. Though I say this non-differentiation is the final deliverance (from the bonds of illusion) I do not say it is the final experience. Rather I should be inclined to think it is only the beginning of many experiences. As, in the history of man and the higher animals, the consciousness of self—the local self—has been the basis of an enormous mass of perceptions, intuitions, joys, sufferings, etc., incalculable and indescribable in multitudinousness and variety, so in the history of man and the angels will the consciousness of the cosmic and universal life—the true self underlying — become the basis of another and far vaster knowledge.”

This is the first of our short film releases on our project.

Ps: The route card sample shown here is not a Edward Carpenter route, prepared by volunteer ranger Mike Pupius. It is a silk route, which is another part of the project, and was prepared by another group that was charting out a silk route walk in the south western part of the Peak District National Park.

Chamu Kuppuswamy

Bernard, go to bed!

Filming in the National Park has got to be one of the unsurpassable pleasures in life!

Through the lens, one is able to communicate what we one sees, so effectively. Take this shot that I took, it tells a lot of what I saw that day in this landscape!

At Oaks Wood near Grindleford train station

It may not mean anything factually, but it made me think of rings and bands, and age of trees. Just right there, and perhaps to some of you viewing this, it reinforces the message as it did to me the value of national parks, of veteran trees, of ancient woodland and the Environment Act, and to me, my role as ranger.

Seeing through the lens or being viewed through a lens elicits various responses

‘Bernard go to bed’ said someone on the street!  BG02 BED

You guessed it right, it is a number plate that someone read out to us as we were set-up with a tripod on the lane, adjacent to the Church yard at Bakewell. Bizarre as it may seem, he told us what he saw in the street when he saw us looking through the lens! It may even have been his car, which I believe it was.

Divya Shankar filming at Bakewell

The red deer on Big Moor saw us alright, with our compact camera and SLR and tripods. As Divya said, if she were to have been walking around with her tripod placed more strategically, they might be coming towards her instead of going away from her 🙂 I believe red deer have been camera ready long before cameras came along. Even at this time of the year, when the stags are losing their antlers, and their manes are becoming less fluffier, their stylised gait, which buzzes around in my dancers head as kullukku nadai, makes them a magnet for the lens.

Divya Shankar on Big Moor

Red Deer on Big Moor

  It is a shame we didn’t catch the adders, I even tempted them by laying still on the bone dry heather and sun basking, in the hope that they would come join me. But I suppose they prefer the company of a tin sheet to that of an ignorant ranger 🙂

We always seem to land on our feet first when tumbling down the great space of weather uncertainty on our days out for this project. Our project must have started on a shubha muhurth (opportune or auspicious time to start) as some in the community say. It pleases everyone to go out on a bright fine day with blue skies and a light pleasant breeze, especially when such a day comes at the fag end of winter. Our filming days have caused least inconvenience to the filmmakers, with their steel framed cold-attracting tripods and endless minutes spent fingering little buttons out in the open, thanks in good measure to accurate mountain weather forecasts.

Divya Shankar filming Bakewell bridge

Spring blossoms in Baslow

Up near Lady Well Farm, Baslow

Lady Well Farm, Baslow

Talking of fingers, myself and the rangers did some finger-acting for the first time! Ah, there is no end to the possibilities and opportunities one can create through the lens. Through letters in archives and maps on walls, our fingers raced through routes and words, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, sometimes pointed, sometimes lain down.

We captured mood..

and mortality in the countryside.

Being indoors to talk about the National Park is frustrating if not excruciating. It didn’t work at all for at least one of us. It was magic when we returned outdoors!

Ranger Tom Lewis from Brunts Barn

Yet we endured, we spoke, we discussed, we reflected and talked, sitting at the Hatchery as the last recording session went well into the small hours. Pizza came to the rescue of some hungry hard working Phds and would-be Phds who came to talk about their experience of the project. Past midnight, and we became delusional 🙂 And we turned our lens on it, the result is..

Look whats hatched at The Hatchery!

We would really like to thank all those who put themselves through this ordeal – the rangers, the project participants, the red deer and everything else including the little beetle that I captured and released on Big Moor, a disturbing influence of Hidden Kingdoms!

Chamu Kuppuswamy

From 5000 views to 1.3 million listeners!

We are delighted that BBC radio 4 are doing an episode of ‘Open Country‘ on our project! Shooting is all set for the 10th of February and we are working with the producer to identify locations and work out logistics. The programme will be exploring two themes – silk and Edward Carpenter. This is also a great opportunity to set the scene to start another project on the silk route!

A design made from Indian Tussur silk by Sir Thomas Wardle’s wife Elizabeth Wardle

This is a great leap for us, from 5000 views to our blog as of January 2014 to a radio programme which has 1.3 million listeners. We are very much looking forward to sharing our views about promoting the use of the countryside and protecting it. It is our love for the countryside and nature that has kept us engaged in this project and we will be discussing how locally and internationally we have shaped the landscape, it’s economy and people.

Watch this space, we will be updating you about the date of the broadcast

Chamu Kuppuswamy

‘The planet ain’t half hot’: Seminar at Hindu Jewish Association, Manchester

The evening was around two talks presented by myself and Rabbi Natan Levy on the theme of environment. As the flyer for the event said ‘ Global warming and climate change is not a matter of debate for only politicians and scientists but also an important issue for the people of religious faith.’

Agriculture and trees, these were two key words from Rabbi Levy’s talk on the 21^st of November, 2013 at the Manchester Reform Synagogue. I wish I had taken some notes at the seminar so I could give you some detail on the talk that Rabbi Levy gave. It was superb and thought provoking. It definitely would not have gone down well with the agro industry or for that matter, the plant breeders. I made a mental note to discuss with my PhD student working on justice, sustainability and plant breeding to throw in an angle on whether even small farmer practices are really sustainable. How small should a small farmer be, in order to be sustainable? For these are the thoughts that Natan’s talk led me into. He took us down systematically through data and studies on some important events in the growth of civilisation and the impact of farming and populations on the environment, weaving them in with stories from Judaism. We should stop and think when we use technology, about its possible impact and take into account things we know we don’t know! We do think of the impact of technology, we use the precautionary principle; we do risk analysis, but is this how we should be doing it? How do we operate a wise system of decision making about uses of technology? The talk was by no means a call to revert to something primitive, but to rethink our current direction by asking some fundamental questions.

In my talk, I reflected on my experience working with community groups in National Parks, and presented some of my thoughts. If we want to do something for the environment, and I think we have a duty to do something for the environment (I can build an argument for it based on some fundamental Hindu precepts, but that’s for another blog post- I part presented an argument through Carpenter’s views, but just one slide, no detailed argument), I suggested that we needed to look deep into our thinking, and change some things fundamentally. Easier said than done! I do think, for such a fundamental rethink, we need to be re-educated. We need to seriously believe in alternative ways of spending our time, our money, our resources and our energy. Looking around to see what could foster that, I see tradition. So, my message for the evening was – Start learning something traditional. Learn a dance form, music, a language. You will be learning new methods, new skills, and new ways of doing things. But is not easy to do this, where do we find teachers with sufficient experience and knowledge?  Our public and private institutions have to support such teaching. Individuals, parents and teachers have a role to play in the choices we make in every event we put up, in every class we decide to go to, and in every endeavour of ours, for that matter!

Here’s a wonderful gesture from the Association – I think it is such a brilliant and thoughtful idea!

Here are my slides form the evening.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Chamu Kuppuswamy

Talking to other minority community groups

On Saturday, the 9th of November, I could have been at three places. Our Peak District Mosaic Group was having an end-of-walking-season meeting at Castleton village hall to catch up and take stock. We received an invitation from Chris Robinson, Learning and Discovery officer at Peak District National Park Authority to present our project to the public at the Festival of Social Science week event ‘Science in the National Park at Bakewell Townhall.

I received a rather late invitation to a closed workshop to present on different worldviews of nature, with participants from different backgrounds and involvement – especially with two groups of interest, the Sikh community and Native American Indians. I chose to go to London to this closed group meeting!

And here is my presentation for the meeting

My talk was well received and a number of ideas exchanged. Many interesting things came up during the presentations.

It was interesting to hear of the African initiative. Researchers, academics and policy makers in South Africa are developing an African Convention on Environmental Ethics. It says on their website that ‘The objectives of the Africa Conference are to deepen consultation on developing an African Convention on Environmental Ethics to promote Afro-centred and cultural specific approaches; to develop strategies of mobilising consensus, and to work in consensus with initiatives around the world for effective and interactive civil society ownership. The proposed themes for the Africa conference on environmental ethics include: Knowledge Systems; Governance and Justice; Science and Technology; Rural Development and Sustainable Livelihood; Communication, Language and Power Relations.’ http://www.ukzn.ac.za/news/2013/07/11/workshop-on-indigenous-knowledge-systems-and-environmental-ethics

   

It was also interesting to hear that UNESCO General Conference, some four years ago, in an unprecedented run of discussion, debated a global instrument on environmental values and failed to reach a conclusion on the matter, with some surprising votes against such a convention. India, China, Brazil, US, UK and others voted against the resolution. The reason extended was one of economic effect of such a treaty. Attention was drawn to the UNESCO report published from the Bangkok office in 2010 on how international law reflects certain cultural tendencies and values and whether this suits the needs of the 21st century. http://www.unescobkk.org/rushsap/ethics-and-climate-change/energyethics/eetwg1/

Another interesting reference was to a movement recalled as ‘Decolonising our Universities’. A bit of digging on this threw up some interesting conversations about global higher education and models of education. http://globalhighered.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/decolonising-our-universities-time-for-change/   This piece reminds me of something I came across a couple of years ago. It is a talk by Dr.Jacqueline Suthren Hirst ‘ What can Adi Shankara teach us about teaching?’ (Samkara’s Advaita Vedanta: A way of teaching (Routledge Curzon 2005)

http://globalhighered.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/decolonising-our-universities-another-world-is-desirable/ (Oh dear, look what we have done with our ranking tables!) A bit more digging gave me something to think about – ‘Multiversity’, not University!! (http://multiworldindia.org/) I don’t know what the word University means or whether it has any origins in anything connecting to uni, but just these two words seem to capture something in them.

The tendencies to call ideas as new because it is new to a certain group of people was raised, and noted that this precludes the possibility that these ideas already existed and there are probably other useful ideas that exist alongside too, which have not been discovered, and which could be important to the modern world for addressing our big problems. One of the organisers of the workshop is now involved in setting up of the first medical university on sovereign Native American land and he spoke about their Board, and about breaking stereotypes about minority groups. He spoke of rich tribes and Hard Rock Café! Looks like there are interesting times ahead! http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2006-12-07-seminole-tribe-triumph_x.htm

Chamu Kuppuswamy

‘Thinking Inter-culturally’ about the National Park

Lately, I have been thinking more about the objectives of the project. With all our planning and practical activities now out of the way, it is time to reflect and think about how the project has gone. It is not the end of the project yet but it is helpful to reflect on why we did the project, so that our input into the proposed film will be more considered and reflective. We have reached the final leg of the project and still have our sharing to do through the film and exhibition. The thinking though is to drop the idea of a full scale exhibition.

A thread has emerged from the first workshop in the project, through to where we stand now.  Dr. Cleall talked of ‘National amnesia’ about parts of Britain’s history, personified in colonial statesmen like Thomas Babbington Macaulay. The academic projects noted in an earlier blog raised similar issues, pointing to the ‘invisible’ Empire. I have come across another interesting concept which has a bearing on our understanding of the period in which our project is set. Professor Hobson from the Politics department at the University of Sheffield speaks of ‘Eurocentrism’ and I want to go into this concept in this blog and tell you how I find it exciting. So far, we have heard from historians, tracing a forgotten or hidden history, Professor Hobson talks about the politics behind the forgotten history.

What a great title he has for his talk – ‘Thinking Inter-culturally…………’

-and I think that’s what our project aims to promote, ‘inter-cultural thinking about the National Park and the environment’. I envisaged the Ganesha walk as a small step towards that end. It needs quite some elaboration to explain how, but I won’t go into that now.

Liberal internationalism is eurocentrism, constructed in the 18^th and 19^th century. Eurocentrism constructs a bipolar line of civilizational apartheid, between East and West. East and west are prised apart and a hierarchy formed. This brings to mind something I wrote in an earlier blog, a blog which featured the lascars or seafaring men from the 18^th century. Europe’s exceptionalism as a meta narrative of the period could go some way in explaining how and why lascar history has been neglected and lost. Amitav Ghosh, the Indian author laments the loss of lascar history, and his narrative is compelling. When the West and the East were prised apart, those from the East such as the lascars, that were in the West or associated with the West, might have been ignored because they didn’t fit the idea of the West of that time. In this hierarchy, the West was seen as the best, over the rest, the East was West’s inferior, opposite, other. West (in c18^th and 19^th) was proclaimed as civilised, rational because of its institutions, East’s institutions were irrational.

Europe centred visually in this map (Mercator projection)

Area map of the world, where the focus falls on Africa (Peters projection)

In his book, ‘The eastern origins of Western civilisation’ Hobson argues that without the rest, there would be no West. At every single turning point, from 800 onwards through the industrialisation, there was a huge amount of things borrowed from the East – ideas, institutions, technologies, without which the West would not have managed to modernise.

There are two forms of Eurocentrism. Anti –paternalist (anti-imperialist) and paternalist eurocentrism – which is imperialist. Much of liberal international theory (but not all of it) suffers from paternal eurocentrism.  Overlaid upon that is a tripartite metageography – three worlds of world politics. First world – West, i.e. Europe up to 1945 (civilised, liberal democratic institutions , liberalism capitalism, individualism, science,  second world oriental despotic states (oriental autocratic states) – uncivilised, waged war and supressed their own civil societies and then the third world savage societies- anarchic black holes,  hunter gather, sedentary economy.. no science, voodoo, magic. So, in summary, there existed the white West, yellow barbaric east (East Asia, Islamic world), black savage world (Africa, Australasia and Polynesia).

This metanarrative was then developed within the paternalist stream into imperialist politics. Anti-paternalists like Adam smith, Immanuel Kant didn’t do this, but anti-paternalists held the view that the others can develop, but needed the rational institutions – western civilising mission.  They had a Peter Pan-type metaphor – nice innocent people who wouldn’t grow up. This discourse does not imply a world of sovereign states, what we actually have is effectively western states accorded hyper sovereignty – the right, the legitimacy to intervene in inferior eastern societies which are stripped of sovereignty. They are not civilised, so they cannot be allowed the privilege of external non-intervention. Underlying this whole discourse is the notion that the West/ Europe rose to the top all by itself, by kind of logic of imminence. Modernisation and arrival of modernity was imminent within Europe’s social structure because Europe was exceptional. Max Weber, Karl Marx – West is a self-made global millionaire that got to the top because of its own exceptional institutions. John Rawls (civilised, outlaw, burdened societies) Robert cooper – famous Liberal (postmodern states – Europe; second world- Asia, pre-modern states) Next stage is to reconvene hyper sovereign western states and conditionally sovereign eastern states (after decolonisation), and this allows for humanitarian intervention.  What Hobson finds problematic about Eurocentrism is not simply the imperialist side of it all. It is actually the fundamental underlying assumption that the West knows what is best for the rest because the West got to the top all by itself through its exceptionalism and through its genius.

Hobson argues that if theories about the world are based on eurocentrism, we will end up with monological thinking.  Eurocentrism is all pervasive. Intercultural thinking cannot be intercultural if it is still cloaked in Eurocentric precepts, then it can’t be intercultural, it is monocultural. That’s why Hobson has problems with soft power, although it is infinitely preferable to hard power. He says – Until we have speaking going on from all sides, and listened to as autonomous agents, rather than people who must be seen but not heard. Then I just don’t think we will get any real intercultural thinking, what we’ll just get are more and more subtle versions of civilising missions rebranded in the latest sort of nice liberal sounding phrases, such as humanitarian mission.

Soft power is a really interesting concept. Soft power makes money, it underpins branding in our modern economy. It is a brand that people can buy into, its constituent parts are brands that can be sold. The product might be Chinese but brand Chinese doesn’t sell it. It needs the soft power of Clarks or Nike to sell it. Currently, there is a Parliamentary Select Committee conducting Hearings on soft power. Ian Birrell, speaking at the Inquiry into ‘Soft Power and the UK’s Influence’ before a Parliamentary Select Committee of the same name on the 29^th of July 2013 lists examples of soft power ‘I think that Britain has huge advantages worldwide in soft power. If you look at the obvious things like the English language being so dominant; if you look at things like our education links ; even if you look at newer things like music—I speak as the co-founder of Africa Express, a very successful project bringing together African and western musicians — and of course Premier League football, which is so dominant across Africa’  [http://www.parliament.uk/documents/lords-committees/soft-power-uk-influence/uc290713Ev7.pdf]  It will be absolutely interesting to study soft power in terms of what it is. Is there an element of Indian curry in UK’s soft power recipe? Should there be? Is there not?

At the end of the day, we need inter cultural thinking to solve today’s global problems, and that is the bottom line.

Professor Hobson says he hasn’t exactly worked out what inter cultural thinking is. It is indeed a challenge, there are no answers yet. I would like to venture that perhaps we have laid some foundations for thinking interculturally on the environment in this project. What I also think is that we have some ideas for what can be done in the future.

Strengthening culture should also be on our agenda as a matter of priority. Intercultural thinking comes only when both/all cultures know what they stand for. To preserve, not fossilise, to promote and not dilute, are absolute preconditions. Learning and teaching culture is an important activity for community and cultural centres. They should be discerning and committed to the teaching and learning of languages, source texts, practices etc that make up culture.

Behold the people who have developed that cultural voice… Rajiv Malhotra, Devdatt Patnaik , Jay Lakhani, Swami Dayananda, and there are others….. And on that note, I will end this post.

Chamu Kuppuswamy

Interesting research projects at the Universities of Nottingham & Warwick

Researchers are pursuing black and colonial histories in the countryside and asking some really interesting questions, many of which we would like to know the answers to! At the University of Nottingham, PI Dr. Susanne Seymour, along with Research fellow Lowri Jones are seeking to challenge conventional understandings of rural spaces and communities by considering the histories and legacies of slavery and colonialism in the British countryside, including evidence of Black lives and their integration into rural society.

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/isos/research/rural-legacies.aspx

Our expert historian from Sheffield wrote to us saying ‘It looks a really exciting project and is exploring all kinds of connections between Britain and the former British Empire, including those between Britain and India. There is one element of the project that I think might be of particular interest to you called ‘Global Textile Legacies in Rural Britain, 1600-1939’.

And she is right!

I read through the website and came across reports from two ‘public development workshops’, as they called it, from 2012. Speaking about the contested nature of such research/work,  Heather Smith from The National Trust had recounted the response to an article in their 2007 magazine edition on slavery connections. It was reported that the article ‘ elicited mixed responses, e.g. certain donor families didn’t want such connections to be made public; others thought that the NT were making a big issue out of a minor connection.’

It is worrying, to hear that influential people in our society still voice concerns and are not totally behind researching history, if that should be of interest to communities living in Britain today. It is even more worrying to think the impact such an attitude has/will have on other activities which need the active support of everyone, such as the research undertaken by our project and Dr.Seymour’s, and the public acceptance and enthusiasm for this type of research. In her presentation, Dr Seymour ‘addressed the potential for further exploring Black presences and the legacies of slavery and colonialism through less regarded sites of rural industry, agriculture and religion, e.g. textile mills, farmed estates, and churches. In doing so, Seymour raised the question of how best to approach historic linkages to slavery and colonialism in the UK countryside would a focus on particular sites also allow a consideration of embodied connections beyond a particular location?’

We are very interested in this work.

Dr. Divya Tolia-Kelly from Durham University put it all in context for me, in explaining her project co-curating an exhibition about Hadrian’s Wall as a space of migration and cultural diversity. In it, the report said, she had ‘emphasised the importance of using such historical materials to address the politics of race and multiculturalism today’. The same can be said of our project, which identifies the contributions made through Indian Thought and industry to the development of the English countryside during the British Raj, and how that knowledge can help communities in the 21^st century develop their sense of identity and shape their contributions to society and their workplace, and to meet the many challenges (including environmental) we face in modern Britain and in linked global places.

Some questions they were asking and discussing in a large group were interesting to me. Here they are

1.  What counts as ‘rural’ in terms of place and/or site?
2. By focusing on particular kinds of sites, do we risk a blindspot to complex networks, assemblage s etc?  How do you come to terms with the nexus of regional, national and transnational?

How to move forward?

1. What do we do with this material? Who is it for? Not just about black spots on a map we must recognise everyday contemporary connections that are meaningful today. NB politics of landscape and environment – issues of race and ethnicity in rural UK
2. An online database could help tap into the expertise already out there, i.e. local archives, local and family history groups, community projects, etc.

Reading through another report, a summary of the development workshops, my attention was caught by a reference to Cromford Mill, which we visited this summer (about which I had expressed mild criticism in my blog, because of their emphasis on the entrepreneurial aspects of the history, and minimal reference on the global heritage aspects). The workshops have had presentations ‘on the legacies of slavery and colonialism illustrated by examples from particular rural textile sites, e.g. mid Wales and Cromford Mill in the Derwent Valley, Derbyshire, a UNESCO World Heritage Site’. The report said that ‘these gave plenty of opportunity for group discussion through question and answer sessions. In doing so, we touched upon different kinds of more or less visible connections that can be traced through such sites’.

I agree with the conclusions of the workshop in that ‘we need to move away from narratives of heroes and villains, of ‘great men’ and ‘oppressed masses’ – instead a more nuanced and contextualised heritage interpretation is needed’. I would like to add to this by saying, we should also move away from laying emphasis on dealing with the ‘difficult’ narrative (referring to the practice of slavery, see report http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/isos/documents/development-workshops-report.pdf), and make space for dealing with what I would deem (in all my enthusiasm!) the ‘more difficult’ narrative of accepting positive contributions from colonial countries and their ideas – as a starting point for, as the report puts it, a more nuanced and contextualised heritage interpretation. Below is an example of a research question that could lead to a more nuanced and contextualised understanding of our natural heritage, that is the National Park. History tells us that protests by people, of which the Kinder Trespass was a landmark, led to the creation of National Parks. What if the influence was much more transnational? What if, given what we have discovered about Edward Carpenter, his activism, his progressive personality and his influence from Hinduism, would it be possible, that behind the scenes, or in the buried history of the setting up of the National Parks, Carpenter’s Hindu Self was instrumental?

I am not saying that this is the case, we need more research, but what I am saying is – What if it were the case? Would this be a ‘more difficult’ narrative to be presented to the ‘Peak Park Community’?  Would it lead to a hegemonic tendency to ignore this history?

The feedback from the workshops made interesting reading, the expectations of the participants shows that some of the questions we are asking are questions that others share with us, and hence this also gives me hope for the ‘more difficult’ narrative.

The report said that participants expected to gain from the workshop on the following themes/questions ‘Empire and textile trade: was there competition between colonies?; Production & export of raw cotton to Britain; How important was slavery & colonialism to the development and success of cotton industry in Britain?; Impact of histories of textile & slavery connections today; How to apply new knowledge about slavery connections in voluntary guiding work at textile mill; Attitudes in UK and overseas , including postcolonial.

The report orders the themes of discussion that emerged in the workshops according to the interest levels in these themes. It said ‘It was notable that working local class narratives (including the role of trade unions) featured often in group and especially in one to one conversations; slavery came in a second place and colonial links, especially with Asia (i.e. British India) were lower on the scale of discussion. The report observed that ‘This is quite surprising given the large Asian population in the Midlands. It also raises the question of why despite attempts to approach and involve BME communities in this workshop, their turnout was low. This may suggest that public (including BME) perceptions of heritage also need to be challenged (see The Invisible Empire by George Wemyss)’.

In my experience as MOSAIC community champion, I have found that within BME communities, the Asian- specifically Indian community in Sheffield is hard to reach, in comparison to other minorities. There are, of course, a number of differences in the profiles of these communities, all contributing to this trend as it is. I think we need to develop a different strategy/model to engage with the Indian community, one that is yet to be developed, but for which our project has given us some ideas.

I agree with the comment above that the public, including that of BME perceptions of heritage needs to be challenged, and the book by Georgie Wemyss is indeed a great one. It contains a chapter on Lascars, which is a very interesting topic, on which I have written a blog post.

The Hindu Samaj Heritage Group will be participating in a workshop being organised by the Nottingham group this month and we will report back on the discoveries we make and the discussions we have! So watch the space!

Another project that came into our view is Trading Eurasia and is based at the University of Warwick.

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/ghcc/eac/

The focus of this project is global trade, the bread and butter of international relations. It focusses on Asia between 1600 and 1830. It ‘seeks to understand Europe’s new challenge of Asia by charting the history of that first global shift between the pre-modern and modern worlds.’

Interestingly, the website says ‘That global agenda for historians has now extended far beyond those fundamental economic issues. History and social theory now focus on concepts of ‘connectedness’ or ‘cosmopolitanism’, of ‘entanglement’ and even ‘ecumenae’; in so doing we seek to identify and assess those connections that impacted on Europe’s and Asia’s cultures and development.’. In asking the big questions about the part played by mercantile trade with Asia in the origins of the Industrial Revolution, the project ‘moves the subject beyond the economics of trade flows and the politics of colonial domination to analyse the exchange of material culture and the transmission of knowledge, including that of skills, design and materials.’ The project questions methodology and challenges ‘the established divide between Europe and Asia in our history writing’.

What is interesting to us at Hindu Samaj, and would neatly link in with the research we have done, meagre as it might be, is the theme on ‘the technologies and industrial organization of Indian export ware, especially those areas of India’s fine chintzes, focussing on the Coromandel coast and Gujarat, as these were accessed through European factories in Madras, Negapatnam, Pondicherry, Tranquebar (Tarangambadi) and Surat’. This part of the project ‘will assess European writings and perceptions of these Asian production processes. There is a separate history of the ships, companies and trade which brought these goods to Europe. But this is a history also sub-divided among different European historiographies, maritime and colonial histories. We will connect up these histories to put together a more comprehensive view of how these goods were acquired, and the practices and customs by which they were distributed’.

It would be fascinating to see what comes out of the theme that proposes to research into the nodes of knowledge exchange, the factories mentioned above in the case of India and the auction houses and customs houses in London. During the course of project, we discovered that Sir Thomas Wardle could possibly have coproduced knowledge about Tussur silk, as he developed techniques in India – so here was a travelling researcher-entrepreneur!  The researchers on this project will also be exploring the ‘exchange of knowledge en route (on the merchant ships) through a number of individual experiences of East India Company and private traders’.

The project is organised as five different areas, and the investigators aim to produce a monograph or thesis on each of these themes. We will be eagerly awaiting at least two of these works!

The website contains an account of the many project activities. There is an oral history project on the Kachchh region in Gujarat on the crafts of the region. I found the bell makers and model ship makers interesting, unfortunately access to the interviews are denied, I don’t know if this deliberate or a glitch in the system.

We look forward to an opportunity to associate with the project, and wish them all the best!

Chamu Kuppuswamy