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Research context
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Calcutta,
like most colonial and trading cities, has been shaped
by multiple migrations and is home to a wide range of
communities. Recognizing that ‘community in itself
has no primordial core and is always historically and
socially constructed in relation to other such enacted
groups’ (Hardgrove, 2004: 20-1), the proposed research
focuses on four communities, the relationships between
them, and their internal diversity, both within Calcutta
and after migration. By studying ‘diaspora cities’
as distinctive locations within ‘diaspora space’
(Brah, 1996), the research concentrates on four communities
that trace different migratory routes to, and indiegnous
roots within, Calcutta. Each of the communities forms
an important and distinctive – although not exclusive
– part of Calcutta as a diaspora city and the Calcuttan
diaspora in London, Toronto and Jerusalem. Both the Chinese
and Jewish communities trace their origins to the migration
of particular individuals in the late eighteenth century
(Oxfeld, 1993; Ray, 2001). Although the Anglo-Indian community
of mixed descent was ‘domiciled’ in India,
many of its members imagined themselves to be living in
an imperial diaspora with attachments to Britain as ‘fatherland’
and India as ‘motherland’ (Blunt, 2005). In
contrast, Brahmos form a Bengali religious minority with
its roots in Calcutta (Kopf, 1979).
Unlike research that concentrates on just one of these
communities (including Blunt, 2005, Berjeaut, 1999, Silliman,
2001, Ray, 2001, and Kopf, 1979), ‘Diaspora Cities’
will explore the relationships between different communities,
both within Calcutta and after migration. The research
will study certain sites and neighbourhoods within Calcutta
and elsewhere that are significant places of contact,
encounter and exchange. Since before Independence in Calcutta,
for example, Anglo-Indian and Chinese residents have lived
in Bow Barracks; Anglo-Indian, Chinese and Jewish children
have been educated at schools such as Loreto Entally;
and members of each community have lived alongside each
other in central neighbourhoods, eaten in Chinese restaurants,
and shopped at the Jewish bakery and confectionary, Nahoum’s,
in the New Market. The north London suburb of Golders
Green is an important site for worship and residence for
both Brahmo and Jewish Calcuttans, whilst many Anglo-Indian
residents in the south London suburbs of Wimbledon and
Croydon eat Chinese food at the Calcutta Notebook restaurant.
The Anglo-Indian community
The Brahmo community
The Chinese community
The Jewish community
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