Home movies chronicling end of Empire released online

A collection of almost 300 silent films, offering a unique glimpse of life in India and other parts of South Asia during the final days of the British Empire has been released online. The films were shot between 1911 and 1956 on 8 mm and 16 mm reel and cover an astonishing range of subjects of interest to social historians, visual anthropologists and school children. The collection is owned by the Centre of South Asian Studies in Cambridge and may be viewed for free at:
http://www.s-asian.cam.ac.uk/films.html

For a taster of the collection, see the University of Cambridge press release, 4th March 2009, which includes a presentation on YouTube, in which the Centre's Archivist, Dr Kevin Greenbank, and Film Archivist, Dr Annamaria Motrescu, talk about this unique collection.

The Quest for Zoroaster

Ursula Sims-Williams, (British Library, and Ancient India & Iran Trust) will be giving a lecture entitled: The Quest for Zoroaster : Thomas Hyde’s (d. 1703) manuscript collection, on Wednesday 10 March 2010, at 5.30 pm in the Morison Room, Cambridge University Library, West Road, Cambridge.

Friends of CUL £2.50, others £3.50. Junior members of the Cambridge University free entrance.

Digital oral history archive launched

Observant Times readers may have spotted two articles by Ben Hoyle on the digital archive of oral history recordings at the Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, on the 5th and 7th December 2009.

The archive includes over 300 interviews, ranging from 15 minutes to 8 hours long, some are with women, most are in English and date from the 1970s. They cover an enormous subject range - from the popularization of Hindi and question of Hindi as national language of India, to leprosy and surgical rebuilding, and from discussions about Gandhi, the civil disobedience and non-cooperation movements to mass migrations at Partition, to the life of tea planters and forest officers.

The archive is freely accessible over the internet and offers a fresh insight into events in India in the decades preceding Independence.

Our Winter Conference

Date for your diaries: Please keep Friday 19th February 2010 free for our SAALG winter conference, to be hosted by the Library and Museum of Freemasonry, Freemasons' Hall, Great Queen Street, London, WC2B 5AZ. The conference will include a tour of the Freemasons' Hall, a talk on Freemasonry in India by Archivist and Record Manager, Susan Snell, and an opportunity to view and discuss artefacts, photographs, and correspondence in their permanent collection with their museum curator and librarian.

Forthcoming publication

Martin Moir, former Head of the India Office Records, has written a novel entitled Not Exactly Shangri-la, which is due to be published by Rupa & Co. (New Delhi) in December.

Timothy, a diffident young British academic, and Huma, a feisty young woman from India, are two ‘foreign experts’ invited to Kalapur, a remote and apparently peaceful Himalayan country, to advise on the preservation and editing of an important monastic chronicle. But far from being a harmless academic project, they soon discover that the publication of the chronicle is being used by the authoritarian regime in Kalapur to suppress knowledge of a past that threatens its own legitimacy. Moreover, far from being peaceful, Kalapur turns out to be riven by a secret resistance movement led by guerrilla fighters known as the migos, named after the yetis or wildmen still believed to survive in the remoter parts of the country. Encouraged in their historical quest by a sympathetic but enigmatic local abbot, Huma and Timothy face some terrifying experiences before finally discovering what really happened in the recent past, and in the process deepening their own relationship.
At once adventure story, orientalist romance, psychological study and serious enquiry into different views of the past, Not exactly Shangri-la explores a fictional world that is deeply strange but strangely familiar, sinister yet funny.

NACIRA conference

"Expect the unexpected : hidden resources [on Asia] in the UK" - NACIRA's 2009 conference will take place at the Royal Asiatic Society on Tuesday 8th December 2009, with an excellent panel of speakers from the National Maritime Musuem, Victoria & Albert Museum, National Archives, and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Hidden histories of exploration

A major new exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) which offers a new perspective on the Society's Collections, highlighting the role of local inhabitants and intermediaries in the history of exploration.

http://hiddenhistories.rgs.org/


Exhibition Open: 10:00 - 17:00
Monday - Friday
15 October - 10 December 2009
Free Admission
Location: Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), Exhibition Road, London

Happy 1st Birthday Wellcome Library Blog

Congratulations to the Wellcome Library Blog on receiving 20,000 visits in its first year from people in 139 countries.

Written by Wellcome Library staff, this is an entertaining and informative blog for those interested in the Wellcome's amazing collection of medical history items. If you haven't had a chance to visit, why not do so on its first birthday?

(Photo credit: www.himetop.wikidot.com)

Royal Asiatic Society Lectures

These forthcoming lectures at the RAS are of South Asian interest:

Tradition, change and evolution: art and architecture in Sri Lanka (500 BC-1815 AD)
Dr. SinhaRaja Tammita-Delgoda.
5 Nov 2009, 6.00pm.

The Bibliotheca Malabarica: an eighteenth century Tamil library.
Dr. Will Sweetman.
10 Dec 2009, 6.00pm.

Lectures are held at the RAS, 14 Stephenson Way, London NW1 2HD.
Admission free, no need to book, all are welcome.

Maharaja

Maharaja: the Splendour of India's royal courts opened at the Victoria & Albert Museum on 10th October. The exhibition spans the period from the beginning of the 18th century to the mid-20th century, bringing together over 250 magnificent objects, many being lent from India’s royal collections for the first time.

The Widow Colony

Harpreet Kaur's film The Widow Colony, about the Sikh killings which occurred after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, is being shown in UK cinemas.
Click on the image above for screenings.

SAALG 81st conference, July 2009

SAALG had a successful and enjoyable summer conference at the Ancient India & Iran Trust in Cambridge (you can tell by our smiling faces...!)

Anglo Sikh Heritage Trail (ASHT) events, September

This September (3rd - 26th), join in, discover and enjoy the splendour and substance that underpins the heritage connecting the Sikhs and the British.
The Anglo Sikh Heritage Trail has since 2004 presented an annual series of unique events which highlight both the historical, and present connection between the Sikhs and Britain.

In this sixth year they will be presenting a whole month of unique lectures, workshops and exhibitions serving to inspire, inform and entertain.

This years events include an exclusive performance by Tigerstyle at the Tower of London, a gallery talk with internationally acclaimed artisits 'The Singh Twins', storytelling at the V & A and a unique series of lectures.

NACIRA seminar

The National Committee for Information Resources on Asia (NACIRA) - formerly NCOLR - will be holding a seminar on internet resources for Oriental studies on 16th and 17th September at Cambridge University Library.

Applications to:
John Moffett
Needham Research Institute
8 Sylvester Road
Cambridge
CB3 9AF

Email: nacira@edlis.org or call: 01223311545

EarlyTibet.com

At the 81st SAALG conference Sam van Schaik introduced us to his excellent blog. Sam has used the blog to disseminate his research notes whilst working on the International Dunhuang Project at the British Library.