Sikh fighter pilots over Europe and Merlins in Afghanistan
The Times, 14 November, 2009
The British premiere of a documentary about British-trained Sikh fighter pilots of the First and Second World Wars is to be screened at the RAF Museum at Hendon, northwest London, on November 22. A seminar about the deployment of the Merlin helicopter in Afghanistan will be held at the same venue on March 10.
Diverse as they are, these two events illustrate what a small world of unexpected inter-relationships exists within the RAF. Both the first Sikh pilot, Flight Lieutenant Hardit Singh Malik, and the speaker at the seminar, Merlin pilot Squadron Leader Simon Reade from RAF Benson in Oxfordshire, are products of No 28 Squadron RAF. Reade is the squadron’s second-in-command.
Read full article: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/court_and_social/article6916305.ece
Lajpat Rai in USA 1914 -1919: Life and Work of a Political Exile
by Harish K. Puri
The five year long stay of Lajpat Rai in America (including a six month sojourn in Japan) was a period of an unanticipated exile contrived by conditions created by the World War. When he sailed from London for New York in November 1914, it was proposed to be a six month trip to collect material for a book on America. But he was not allowed to return to India until the end of 1919. The nature of his life and work in USA was shaped as much by the constraints and challenges in the American situation as by his priorities and the state of his mind. A contextual approach to the study of his work for the national cause of India in USA may be more appropriate for the present exploration.
Read full article: Puri lala lajpat rai
About the author: Harish K. Puri retired as Professor of Political Science and Chairman Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Chair, Guru Nanak Dev University. His research publications include seven books and over 120 research papers and popular articles. Noticeable among the books are Ghadar Movement, Ideology, Organization and Strategy; Terrorism in Punjab – Understanding Grass root Reality (co-authored); Social and Political Movements (edited) and many more.
The Chattri Memorial Service
Dedicated to the Indian soldiers who fought on the Western Front during the First World War.
South Asian Experiences of the World Wars: New Evidence and New Approaches
International Workshop, London, 26 May 2009
Venue: German Historical Institute, 17 Bloomsbury Square
Please see attached pdf for details: workshop-programme-09-05-26
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Making Britain Events
Inter-University Postcolonial Seminar Series: Spring 2009
Making Britain: South Asian Resistances, 1870–1950
This series of seminars co-ordinated by Dr Sumita Mukherjee and Dr Rehana Ahmed will be addressing various forms of resistance by South Asians in Britain during this period. It forms part of the regular series organised by the Open University Postcolonial Research Group in association with the Institute of English Studies
Venue: NG15 (North Block, Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E
Time: 17.30 – 19.00
Tuesday 27 January Anne Kershen ‘The Alien in the Aliens Act: Defining the Outsider’
Anne Kershen has been Director of the Centre for the Study of Migration at Queen Mary, University of London, since its foundation in 1995. Based in the Department of Politics, she is currently Director of the Masters in Migration and Masters in Migration and Law programmes. She has published widely, her most recent book being Strangers, Aliens and Asians: Huguenots, Jews and Bangladeshis in Spitalfields 1660–2000 (Routledge, 2005). She is currently researching the impact of post-accession migrants on communities with no history of previous immigrant settlement, her spatial focus being Shropshire.
Tuesday 3 February Jacqueline Jenkinson ‘The Role of South Asian Sailors in the 1919 Port Riots’
Jacqueline Jenkinson is Lecturer in History at Stirling University. Her two main research interests are the social history of medicine, on which she has written several books – the most recent being Scotland’s Health: 1919–1948 (Peter Lang, 2002) – and the history of minority ethnic populations in Britain. She has published several articles on the 1919 port riots; the most recent, on the riot in Glasgow, appeared in the journal Twentieth Century British History in January 2008. Her book on the riots, Black 1919: Riots, Racism and Resistance in Post-Colonial Britain, is published by Liverpool University Press in March 2009.
Tuesday 10 February Prabhjot Parmar ‘Strategies of Containment: Censorship and the Indian Soldiers in Britain During the First World War’
Prabhjot Parmar is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) postdoctoral fellow in the Department of English at Royal Holloway, University of London. Recovering the marginalized experiences of Indian soldiers who fought in the First World War, her postdoctoral project examines their letters as cultural artifacts within the context of war testimonies. She is the co-editor of When Your Voice Tastes Like Home: Immigrant Women Write and has published articles on the literary and cinematic representations of Partition. Currently she is teaching at the University of Western Ontario in Canada.
Tuesday 24 February Michèle Barrett ‘“Sending them Missing”: Race, Religion and the Imperial War Graves Commission’
Michèle Barrett is Professor of Modern Literary and Cultural Theory at Queen Mary, University of London. She is a noted social and cultural theorist, with expertise in ideology, aesthetics, gender, and post-structuralist ideas. Her recent work has focused on the literature and art of the First World War period. She has been awarded a Leverhulme Fellowship to study shell shock, and a British Academy grant to research the colonial politics of commemoration. Casualty Figures: Five Survivors of the First World War (Verso, 2008) is her most recent book.
All are welcome; booking is not required.
For further information visit, Making Britain: South Asian Visions of Home and Abroad, 1870-1950
http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/south-asians-making-britain/index.html
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