Belonging is a multifaceted concept. It goes beyond mere physical presence or legal status —it involves emotional attachment and a sense of acceptance and validation within a particular community or nation. In the context of India’s diverse landscape, belonging takes on added complexity. What exactly does it mean to feel like one belongs? Is the sense of belonging tied to language, ethnicity, religion, caste, socioeconomic class, or perhaps food habits? And why are we increasingly questioning who truly belongs in India? Has the rise of majoritarianism made it more challenging to define who belongs and who doesn’t?Furthermore, as societies evolve and undergo demographic shifts—through globalization, urbanization, internal displacements and forced migrations—how does the notion of belonging evolve? What roles do historical narratives, familial ties and personal experiences play? Besides, while we look at history to understand this complex idea, what about those whose overlooked stories do not even belong to our ‘official’ class histories—people who are Adivasi, Dalit, queer and/or differently abled, among others?
Venue: Delhi Public School, Coimbatore
Address: Vill. & P.O. Onapalayam,
Vadavalli-Thondamuthur Road
Coimbatore - 641 109
Speakers and Facilitators: Bela Bhatia, Priyanka Seshadri, Priyadarshini Vijaisri, Swapna Liddle, Sreyasi Chatterjee, Anwesha Sengupta, Nisha Abdulla, AltED––Anish Mukherjee, Elia Jameel.
Registrations open till 25th September, 2024
PROGRAMME SCHEDULE
Day 1
05.10.2024
7.40 to 8.40 a.m.
Registration
8.40 a.m.
Welcome Address: DPS Coimbatore
8.50 a.m.
Opening Address: Meena Megha Malhotra
9 – 10.15 a.m.
Keynote Address: Bela Bhatia
What does it feel to be a part, yet apart? To belong, but with uncertainty? A philosopher would perhaps argue that such is the nature of belonging, and yet it is to such pegs that the human being hangs on to, or hangs herself on—for life!
However, many live lives more uncertain than most. As India is becoming a land of opportunities, even to NRIs, some never left her shores––nor their wretchedness––behind. Many of them live and die in the by-lanes of non-existence, grappling with life. They are seen––perhaps every day––but remain unseen, often forgotten by history and commentary.
In India’s Forgotten Country, I have written about some of these people who do not seem to belong in the 'new India.' These people are on the margins tormented by social oppression, economic exploitation, and political marginalization. Amongst them are landless agricultural labourers, poor farmers, lonely widows, slum dwellers, minorities marked because of their religion, those who have been fighting for self-determination but have been forced to become Indians, and still others who used to belong, if not to India, then to a community of their own, but that community has been crushed in one way or the other as is the story of Adivasis of Bastar, who have a special place in this talk.
Bela Bhatia lives in Bastar, a predominantly tribal area of south Chhattisgarh, and works as an independent human rights lawyer, researcher and writer. After completing her post-graduation in social work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and securing a law degree from Gujarat University, Bela also pursued a doctorate in social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge. She began her professional journey as a full-time activist organizing labourers and marginal farmers in rural Gujarat.
Bela also spent two years doing peace and human rights work in Iraq and Palestine. She is the co-author (with others) of Unheard Voices: Iraqi Women on War and Sanctions; co-editor (with others) of War and Peace in the Gulf: Testimonies of the Gulf Peace Team and author of India’s Forgotten Country: A View from the Margins (Penguin, May 2024).
10.15 – 10.45 a.m.
Coffee break
10.45 – 12 p.m.
Memory, recognition and reconciliation: Cultivating the sense of belonging
Priyadarshini Vijaisri
Generally, in traditional and hierarchical societies the sense of belonging is fundamentally shaped by ascriptive identities which intersect with racial, religious, territorial and cultural identities. However, belonging is not a fixed or static state of being or identity. While contingent on historical events and processes the deep discord arising from the fault lines between the sense of belonging and unbelonging or alienation, gravely impinges on the contemporary. This complex phenomenon involves, among other factors, domination though processes of assimilation or othering, and is fraught with ambivalences and contestations which makes it a critical object of historical inquiry. However, it calls for a historicism that is robustly grounded in ethnography. Within this broad context is foregrounded the following question: What could possibly be the ex-untouchable children’s sense of belonging? An engagement with this primary question has deeper implications for rethinking pedagogy and the ethos of the basic building block of learning at the elementary level. At this level and through it can be addressed the crucial issues of recognition and reconciliation, learning from life experiences in concert with parallel histories of persecution and oppression from other parts of the world. Significantly, fostering a desirable sense of belonging entails cultivation of both a critical historical sense and a moral sense woven with creative and positive pedagogic practices and spaces.
Priyadarshini Vijaisri is a cultural historian at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.
12p.m. – 1.15 p.m.
Deconstructing The Idea of Belonging
Anwesha Sengupta
Belonging is both an everyday experience and a politically negotiated process. Where do we belong is often shaped by the multiple identities we inhabit. The meanings of identities, in turn, are historically constructed. So, belonging – as an experience and as legal/bureaucratic category – needs to be historically understood through the frameworks of nation, region, ascribed identities, cultures and processes such as colonialism and decolonization. Keeping this mind, I would like to interrogate the concept of belonging/ un-belonging through a discussion of the ‘First History Lessons’ books. Using the lens of intersectionality, these books have tried to understand (un)belonging as a layered process, experienced diversely by different people depending on their caste, religion, region, ethnicity, class and so on. The purpose is to inculcate empathy among the young readers towards the ‘other’.
Moreover, I would like to reflect on children’s responses to our books and how they perceive (un) belonging—as readers of our books as well as individuals, whose understandings are shaped by their curricula, family, and the media. I would like to draw attention towards the potential tensions between the writer and the reader of ‘First History Lessons’. Such tension, I argue, can offer sites of productive pedagogical experiments in history classrooms.
Anwesha Sengupta teaches history at the Institute of Development Studies Kolkata (IDSK). She did her PhD from CHS, JNU, in collaboration with CSDS. Her areas of interest include partition and decolonization, popular movements, migration and forced migration and border studies in the context of South Asia. She has published in Indian Economic and Social History Review, Economic and Political Weekly, South Asia Research, Anustup (Bengali) and in several edited volumes in both English and Bengali. She is also the coordinator of RLS-IDSK project ‘Revisiting the Craft of History Writing for Children’. Nine illustrated history books in Bangla (translated into English and Assamese) have been published as a part of this project. The books are meant for middle school children.
1.15 – 2.15 p.m.
Lunch
2.15 – 5.15 p.m.
Parallel Workshops
[FOR TEACHERS]
Re(membering) the Past and the Idea of Belonging: Using Oral History and Performative Storytelling as Historical Sources in the Classroom [GROUP A]
Sreyasi Chatterjee
People who feel that they belong somewhere feel more empowered and entitled and to belong somewhere one needs to feel connected with one’s community and its shared past. How we remember the past influences our identity, our sense of belonging and the way we see ourselves and those around us. This workshop will explore how memories can be confronted through the use of oral narratives and performative storytelling. These oral traditions are powerful tools often used by individuals and groups to tell their own stories and thus their use in the classroom will expose students to the power of seeing the past through multiple perspectives and would help them develop an inclusive understanding of history.
The workshop will be divided into three strands:
a) Exploring oral traditions as historical sources: introducing tools and strategies that will enable teachers to use these oral traditions in the teaching of history in the classroom, while also being aware of the limitations of these oral traditions as historical sources.
b) Exploring oral traditions as a research tool: using interview method, narrative analysis and content analysis as research tools in classroom project work.
c) Overcoming bias and maintaining value neutrality: to view oral traditions through a value neutral lens by overcoming the bias imposed by nostalgia.
Dr Sreyasi Chatterjee has a doctoral degree in Sociology. She is Assistant Professor, Head of Department of Sociology at Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis Mahavidyalaya, Kolkata. She has also been chosen as an Associate at the UGC Inter-University Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences (IUC), functioning at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. She has served as Assistant Professor and Head of the Department of the Human Development Department at J.D.Birla Institute, Kolkata and has taught Sociology and Social Cultural Anthropology at Modern High School for Girls, Kolkata. She has also taught Sociology at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels at Jadavpur University, Rabindra Bharati University and University of Kalyani. She has also served as external examiner of Sociology at St Xaviers’ College (Autonomous), Kolkata. She has published articles in academic journals and has presented academic papers at various national and international seminars and conferences.
Body Belonging [GROUP B]
Nisha Abdulla
Belonging is not just an idea for discussion; it is an experience and a memory that we carry in our bodies. How we experience belonging is tied to our relationship with power and our ability to engage with differences.
In this workshop, Nisha will use dramatized excerpts from wepushthesky, a solo play that she has written and is currently on tour with, to unpack cultural syncretism and food choices as practices that nurture belonging in the body.
Nisha Abdulla is a Theatre maker and Educator based out of Bangalore. She is the Artistic Director of Qabila, a collective that centers new writing and the dissenting imagination. She is also founder member of OffStream, a collective that makes and enables anti-caste creative projects and community.
[FOR STUDENTS]
Digital Media and our Sense of Belonging
Anish Mukherjee and Elia Jameel
‘Belonging’ is as much personal as it is public. Our sense of belonging overlaps and negotiates with many ideas and values—nationality, ethnicity, caste, gender, religion, region, language, urban/rural, food, fashion, etc. ‘Belonging’ could be a choice based on emotional connection, sense of security or even an ideological solidarity. It could also be enforced by social conventions and law.
In the current cultural landscape media-driven and media-dominated narratives are shaping the language of ‘identity’, ‘belonging’ and ‘the other’. The more we stay online the more the algorithm curates our relationship with people, things and space.
This workshop will show students how to dig deeper into the digital world to understand its role in building our sense of ‘Belonging’ as well as ‘Othering’.
Anish Mukherjee, Director AltED, has 14 years of experience in the education sector as an entrepreneur, curriculum developer, and fundraiser. Anish has a postgraduate degree in economics. His focus area is to lead the operation, the curriculum team, curating partnerships, and contributing to strategic initiatives. He is a recipient of the Founders Fellowship (Wipro Foundation), a graduate of the Gandhi Fellowship, and a winner of the IDEO reimagining education challenge, 2020.
Elia Jameel, Head of Implementation – AltED, holds a postgraduate degree in modern history and a bachelor's degree in Education. She has seven years of teaching experience, where she focused on history and social sciences. Her pedagogical interests involve integrating social sciences and 21st-century life skills. In AltED, she aims to employ innovative strategies to connect with students and educators.
Day 2
06.10.2024
9 – 10.15 a.m.
Heritage and Belonging
Swapna Liddle
Heritage has become an important part of the school curriculum. The scope of cultural heritage as a field is wide, and also open to being interpreted in varied ways. This session will discuss how heritage education can be creatively used to bring questions of belonging into the classroom.
Swapna Liddle is a historian by training, having done a PhD on 19th century Delhi. For many years she has also been closely involved in the movement to preserve historic sites and monuments, and is associated with the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH). She works to popularize history and the cause of heritage protection through her books, talks, heritage walks, and social and mainstream media. Her most recent books are Shahjahanabad: Mapping a Mughal City and Gardens of Delhi (co-authored).
10.15 – 10.45 a.m.
Coffee break
10.45 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Memory and the Idea of Belonging
Priyanka Seshadri
This talk presentation explores how historical memory plays a role in shaping ideas of belonging and unbelonging. The heritage industry makes use of emotional attachments to notions of nation and community to connect with its audience, but what are the consequences of these strategies? How can we imagine an approach to public history which critically examines memory instead of presenting it as unmediated? Priyanka will address these difficult questions in the context of memorializing Partition and histories of trauma and violence.
Priyanka Seshadri is an archivist at Azim Premji University. She has previously worked at several heritage organizations, including the Centre for Public History at the Srishti Manipal Institute of Design and the Partition Museum. She was involved in building an oral history archive for the Indian Museum, Kolkata, and in expanding the Partition Museum’s collection of material artefacts and oral histories. She also led the Partition Museum’s first international exhibition co-curated with Manchester Museum.
12 – 1 p.m.
Lunch break
[FOR TEACHERS]
Re(membering) the Past and the Idea of Belonging: Using Oral History and Performative Storytelling as Historical Sources in the Classroom [GROUP B]
Dr Sreyasi Chatterjee
Body Belonging [GROUP A]
Nisha Abdulla
[FOR STUDENTS]
Digital Media and our Sense of Belonging [Continued from the previous day]
Anish Mukherjee and Elia Jameel
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