Prisms of Past: A Study of History-Culture Interface in Colonial and Postcolonial India
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This paper examines the interface between history and culture in colonial and postcolonial India by treating literary expression, memory, the body, and popular-cultural forms as alternative sites of historical knowledge. It begins from the premise that mainstream historiography has often privileged official, elite, and written records while marginal or embodied experiences have survived through literature, oral memory, bodily trauma, cartoons, film, music, and song. Drawing on memory studies, postcolonial and feminist historiography, phenomenology, and cultural studies, the paper analyses how individual and collective memory are socially constituted and how cultural forms contest dominant narratives. Particular attention is given to bodily memory and Partition narratives, followed by a discussion of cartoons, film, and music as historically meaningful cultural records. The paper argues that cultural expression does not replace documentary history; rather, it expands the archive by revealing affect, public attitudes, lived experience, and suppressed perspectives that official records frequently fail to preserve.
Author: Das, Debabrata
Institution: Rabindra Bharati University
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7214021971