"Exploring the Concept of Crisis in Modern Western India"

A Workshop Organized and Presented by Early Career Researchers
Supported by the Centre for Modern Indian Studies, University of Göttingen
13-16 January 2022

In recent decades, the concept of ‘crisis’ has assumed an importance in scholarship and become ubiquitous in media and popular discourse.
The Covid-19 pandemic has further posed important questions on a global scale about how we understand this concept. Given the diverse ways and contexts in which ‘crises’ manifest, how may we understand this broad, yet seemingly very tangible concept?

This workshop takes as its premise the contention that abstract concepts like ‘crisis’ become meaningful in specific contexts and will debate the concept’s usefulness as a conceptual lens through which to understand historical and contemporary phenomena. Western India - the geographical focus of this workshop - has often been framed by scholars as the subcontinental site of crisis par excellence. Descriptions of western India use the term ‘crisis’ to point to chronic, structural and seemingly intractable problems. For instance, the city of Mumbai is often described as exemplifying global, subcontinental and urban crises: of wealth inequality, often with reference to Dharavi, ‘South Asia’s largest slum’; of urban housing with the chronic shortage of decent housing; of industrial relations with its history of recurrent and large-scale strikes; or of caste relations with the historical legacy of Brahminism, the recurring ‘Maratha Question’, and the Non-Brahmin, Ambedkarite and Dalit Panther movements. In recent decades, Mumbai has also been characterised by the crisis of Indian federalism and Hindu nationalism with the Samyukta Maharashtra Movement and the rise of the Shiv Sena.

Given the complexities involved in conceptualising ‘crisis’, a deeper critical engagement with the concept as well as crises as experienced in the past and present in western India seems imperative for scholars working on the region. The workshop will address the following questions:

Analytical questions:

• What is a crisis?
  
• How does thinking of a moment/specific incident as a ‘crisis’ help or hinder our understanding of it?
  
• How do crises manifest in the social, economic and political, urban and rural, moral, cultural and psychological spheres and how do they relate to one another?
  
• Can there be a broader universally applicable concept of crisis if moments of crisis for some can be moments of opportunity for others? How do different social categories experience a moment of crisis?
  
• Are crises exceptional events, recurring patterns or long-term problems?
  
• Do crises have a timeline? Where does a crisis start and end? How do crises appear, develop, unfold and end?
  
• How can we measure the scale of a crisis? How do the scales of crises at international, national, regional and local levels interact?
  
• How do individuals and communities experience crises? Do their notions of historical possibility, expectation and perspective change?
  
• How do states and communities respond to crises?
  
• How and why are crises remembered, forgotten and recalled?
  

Region-specific questions:

• What are the specificities of crises unfolding in western India, in relation to other parts of South Asia and globally?
  
• How have analytical deployments of ‘crisis’ shaped the ways in which we understand the modern historical trajectory of western India?
  
• Does an understanding of the term ‘crisis’ in non-English languages spoken in western India (Marathi, Gujarati, Hindi, Urdu etc.) add to, or reveal other aspects of the concept?
  
• How has the historical memory of crises in the region impacted its historical and contemporary development?
  
• Given that urban centres such as Mumbai have been important for migrant workers from other regions in South Asia and beyond, how have the regional crises of western India evolved beyond its geographical confines?
  
• How have past crises shaped the contemporary social structure of modern western India with regards to caste, class and gender ties?
  

Registration:
If you would like to attend the workshop, please send an email to crisis.maharashtra@cemis.uni-goettingen.de

Organising Team:
Dr Mrunmayee Satam, Assistant Professor, Amity University, Mumbai.
Dr Rasika Ajotikar, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, SOAS, London.
Dr Zaen Alkazi, Independent Researcher, India.