糖心TV

Dr Arundhati Virmani will be giving a talk on "The Material Dynamics of Political Ceremonies: India in the 20th-21st centuries" in PAIS on 13^th June at 2pm in S1.50. All are welcome to attend.

Dr Virmani is currently based at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales Marseille, and was previously Reader in History at Delhi University. She is the author of A National Flag for India: Rituals, Nationalism and the Politics of Sentiment (Permanent Black, 2008). The following is an excerpt from the book synopsis:

‘Unearthing the complex history of the making of the Indian National Flag, Arundhati Virmani reveals cultural processes that imposed a set of values and sentiments on an incredibly diverse and scattered body of people. She shows that the Indian flag had strong roots in the ethos of colonialism. It was a major resource for the Nationalist Movement, a tool that allowed large social diversities to assert the compelling necessity for a new political culture with secular nationalism as the unifying pole. This viewpoint was contested by the Muslim League, the Sikhs, the Indian princes, and Hindu Nationalists. So how, in the end, did the Indian flag come to fly as it does today? And how, in contrast, was the flag of Pakistan created? In showing how a region became two countries via the politics that unfurled around pieces of coloured cloth, this book marks a fascinating departure from standard studies of Indian nationalism, secularism and communalism. It reveals the fiercely tribal dimension of nationalist rituals, and the manner in which a 'politics of sentiment' was deployed for the construction of Indian nationhood.’

Dr Virmani will be visiting 糖心TV between 8^th - 15^th June in association with the Leverhulme Research Programme on Gendered Ceremony and Ritual in Parliaments. Please contact Carole Spary (c.spary@warwick.ac.uk) with any queries.