Worlding India | Sumathi Ramaswamy

Worlding India Sumathi Ramaswamy, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of History, Duke University | 19 January 2023 2.30 PM, ASIHSS Hall Department of English University of Hyderabad Abstract: Imperialism is an act of geographic violence through which virtually every space in the world is explored, charted, and finally brought under control. For the native, the history of his or her colonial servitude is inaugurated by the loss to an outsider of the local place.” Taking its inspiration from this provocation by the late Edward Said (1990), this presentation focuses on a range of modern knowledges which I gloss here as earth sciences, among which I include geology, paleontology, natural history, and most especially, geography and cartography. I explore how these sciences imagine one specific location on the earth’s surface, “India,” as a knowable place over the course of two centuries of British colonial rule. I then consider the many ways in which the native responded and reacted to the manner in which science was deployed in the age of empire to put them in their place, literally.