Reading Material Reading Life: Bene Israel, Colonial Modernity and Jewish Marathi- English Print Culture in Bombay (1859-1930)

Key information

Date
Time
5:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Venue
Paul Webley Wing (Senate House)
Room
Wolfson Lecture Theatre

About this event

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED

CANCELLED

Madhu Singh

Abstract

In the mid- 18th century, a little-known community of Marathi-speaking Jews of India ,the Bene-Israel,  who had lived in isolation in Konkan region of Maharashtra for centuries, moved to Bombay for employment and educational opportunities offered by the British rule. Bombay had, by then, developed into a colonial metropolis with a bustling port city witnessing an unfolding of colonial modernity. They took up minor jobs as masons, carpenters, electricians and worked at shipyards leaving behind their traditional trade of oil-pressing. They also enlisted themselves into military services  as “Native Jew Caste” as evident in some 18th century writings by European observers. In 1796, the  first Bene Israel synagogue was built by Samaji Hassaji(or Samuel)Divekar (d.1797), a subedar in a British native regiment and benefactor of the community in Bombay.

In the nineteenth century, Bombay saw new technologies of mobility and communication, education, rational ideas and institutions with the newly founded vernacular press playing an important role in the public sphere. Besides other English and vernacular printers and publishers, several Jewish-owned publishing houses also operated in Bombay and Calcutta during this period. Besides, printing in Judeo-Arabic, these publishers printed several works in Marathi, English and Hebrew for the Bene Israel community of Bombay.

Given that the technologies of print are crucial hallmarks of modernity, the lecture will inquire into the Bene Israel’s engagement with colonialism and  modernity and its reflection in Jewish English-Marathi print culture, then a fledgling, self-conscious enterprise in the making. Taking into account, the literary/non-literary cultural material, the lecture will also highlight the motivations at play in authoring and editing these material.  Disseminated generally through lithography, they offer rich opportunities to engage historically and sociologically with the larger concerns of the community.

Biography

Madhu Singh is a professor at the Department of English and Modern European Languages, University of Lucknow, India. From a PhD in modern British poetry, she moved on to South Asian literary culture- to the works of Mahasweta Devi, Hindi/Urdu Progressive writers, Modernism in Hindi short fiction, Kabir’s mysticism, and to South Asian Colonial studies focusing on indigeneity, marginality and colonial representation. She has been associated with scholar G N Devy’s People’s Linguistic Survey of India and BHASHA for documenting the living and endangered languages, the De-notified tribes and the semi/nomadic communities of India. Her critical papers and translations have appeared in various Indian and US/UK academic journals such as JSL, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, Comparative Literature Studies, South Asian Review, Annual of Urdu Studies, Wasafiri and others. Her works in translation are: G N Devy’s book A Nomad called Thief (Orient Blackswan ) , Thirteen Years: A Naxalite Jail Diary (Navayana) and the Languages of Chhattisgarh(Orient Blackswan). Her latest work on Indian Jews, the English rendition of a Jewish novel Miss Samuel: Ek Yehudi Gatha (Hindi)-is scheduled to be out early next year from Speaking Tiger, New Delhi.

The event is free to attend but registration essential. Click here to register.

Organiser: SOAS South Asia Institute

Contact email: ssai@soas.ac.uk

Contact Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4390