Public Lecture - Professor Clare Anderson, University of Leicester

'Empire, War and Nation in the Bay of Bengal: History and Commemoration in

India and the Andaman Islands'

How has resistance against the British Empire been commemorated in the Andaman Islands (a Union Territory of the Republic of India) since Independence in 1947? In this public lecture, Professor Clare Anderson will discuss how India has created a national history of the struggle for Independence, in ways that have not always been smooth or uncontested. The Andamans were what might be called an extreme manifestation of Empire: during the period 1858-1940 they were a penal colony for Indian and Burmese convicts. The Islands were also the only part of what is now the Republic of India to have been occupied by the Japanese during the Second World War. The history of the Islands as a penal colony and as an occupied territory has had enduring effects in terms of how the struggle against Empire has been and is still commemorated, both in the Islands and in mainland India.

Professor Anderson's talk promises to illuminate the close relationship between the making of history and the making of the nation in post-colonial India, exploring the tangible role which, despite being geographically peripheral to the mainland, the Andamans have played.

This event is taking place in the Viridor Theatre at the SS Great Britain.