Networks of Refuge and Transnational Citizenship
Pragya Kaul (University of Michigan), “The Holocaust from the Indian Ocean”
New histories of Jewish refugees from Hitler’s Europe in the formerly colonized lands of European imperial states have opened room for discussion on the global reaches of the Holocaust. However, these histories have remained siloed within their national frameworks, obscuring the entanglements of the Jewish refugee question with the broader structures of interwar European imperial retrenchment and expansion. This paper instead reveals the entanglements of the Holocaust with the politics, geographies, and histories of Britain’s Indian Ocean Empire. It emphasizes the horizontal networks of imperial power that shaped Britain’s response to the Jewish refugee crisis of the 1930s. Using records from the National Archives of Britain, India, and Kenya, I examine British efforts to resettle German and Austrian refugee Jews in the “white highlands” of Kenya. I argue that within these networks, both British India and Indians emerge as major players determining Jewish refugee resettlement.

Vidura Jang Bahadur (Northwestern University), “Images, imaginaries and belonging: Transnational citizenship amongst the desi Chinese community”
This paper will explore how the memory of the internment of desi Chinese families between 1962 and 1967 by the Indian state, continues to inform the lives of members of the community in India and in the Indian diaspora in the United States and Canada. I analyze how memory, including the images that are “planted” in their bodies as a result of their lived experiences, inform how they imagine themselves and their place(s) in the communities they build across borders. I argue that images and image-making practices are critical to constructing an individual’s sense of place (Massey, 2008) and practices of citizenship. My two-decade long engagement with the desi Chinese community– as photographer and scholar–complicates the easy distinctions between citizen and non-citizen made by the Indian state during the border conflict between India and China in 1962. By examining documents in state archives and narratives of former internees, I make visible the complex “belongings” of the desi Chinese in India, United States and Canada. Citizenship in my project is understood not just as a legal status, but as an everyday practice through which individuals imagine and negotiate their place(s) in transnational contexts.
Date: 20 November 2024, 14:00
Venue: Zoom
Speakers: Pragya Kaul (Michigan), Vidura Jang Bahadur (Northwestern)
Organising department: Faculty of History
Organisers: Suchintan Das (Oxford), Sana Shah (Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: admin@oxfordtghs.com
Part of: Transnational & Global History Seminar
Booking required?: Recommended
Booking url: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcqcu2vqTkqEtVERVwUbCwcwfN-zUhqdK0H
Audience: Public
Editor: Suchintan Das