Dance, music and cultures of decolonisation in the Indian Diaspora: towards a pluralist reading

ABSTRACT

Decolonisation is a creative process, as well as a historical and political one. This article outlines key issues in researching the creative processes of decolonisation with reference to dance and music in the Indian Diaspora. It begins with Gandhi's ‘experiments with truth’, which first developed a political reach in the context of Indian indenture within the British Empire but left a fractured legacy in the decolonising era. Their conceptual import frames a discussion on participatory research, dialogic pedagogies and intellectual responsibility. The notion of dialogue contextualises examples of musical collaborations, as well as intellectual exchanges between Gandhi and two of his interlocutors: Ambedkar and Tolstoy. These shift discussion from an oppositional narrative of decolonisation towards more complex views of cultural and intellectual interactions in decolonising processes. The final section introduces the volume's case studies, which collectively encourage a pluralist reading of dance and music in the cultures of decolonisation.

KEYWORDS:

• Decolonisation
• Gandhi
• Indian Diaspora
• indenture
• pedagogy
• performance
• Ambedkar
• Tolstoy

Acknowledgements

I wish to express sincere thanks to Margaret Birley, organiser of the 2017 conference at the Horniman Museum, co-sponsored by the Royal Anthropological Institute, who invited me to give the keynote lecture. I am grateful to Barley Norton for kindly commenting on the ensuing volume as a whole and offering highly useful comments for its conceptual integration. I finalised it thanks to the inspiration I gained as a visiting research scholar at the Centre for the Study of the Indian Diaspora, University of Hyderabad directed by Ajaya K. Sahoo, to whom I am especially grateful for his interest and support at various stages of bringing this volume to fruition.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Tina K. Ramnarine is a musician, anthropologist and global cultural explorer. She has published widely on musical performance, politics and arts responses to global challenges. Her publications include the books Creating Their Own Space: The Development of an Indian-Caribbean Musical Tradition (2001), Ilmatar's Inspirations: Nationalism, Globalization, and the Changing Soundscapes of Finnish Folk Music (2003), Beautiful Cosmos: Performance and Belonging in the Caribbean Diaspora (2007), and the edited volumes Musical Performance in the Diaspora (2007) and Global Perspectives on Orchestras: Collective Creativity and Social Agency (2018). She co-edited We Mark Your Memory: Writing from the Descendants of Indenture (2018). She is Professor of Music at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Notes

1 This correspondence is available at, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Correspondence_between_Tolstoy_and_Gandhi (accessed 23 September 2018).