Collective Memory and Productive Nostalgia: Anglo-Indian Homemaking at McCluskieganj

Abstract

Memory and nostalgia have attracted an increasing amount of critical interest in recent years. Whereas sites of memory often invoke, but also extend far beyond, spaces of home, nostalgia invokes home in its very meaning. And yet, whereas spatial narratives explore the sites and landscapes of memory, nostalgia is usually described in temporal terms rather than in spatial terms and is understood as a wider “desire for desire” [Stewart S, 1993 On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Duke University Press, Durham, NC), page 23] rather than as a desire for home. In this paper I show how memory and nostalgia informed the establishment and promotion of an Anglo-Indian homeland called McCluskieganj in Bihar in the 1930s. Homemaking at McCluskieganj was enacted in gendered and racialized ways that inscribed and yet erased the collective memory of mixed descent shared by its Anglo-Indian residents. Whereas an imperial lineage was imagined through the figure of a British forefather, an Indian maternal ancestor was more usually refigured as Mother India. In this paper I examine Anglo-Indian homemaking at McCluskieganj in terms of productive nostalgia. First, rather than a nostalgic desire for home being apolitical or confining, settlement at McCluskieganj showed its liberatory potential for Anglo-Indians. Second, rather than focus on nostalgia solely in narrative or the imagination, I show that productive nostalgia implies its embodiment and enactment in practice. Third, rather than nostalgia being seen in terms of loss, mourning, and the impossibility of return, productive nostalgia is oriented towards the present and the future as well as towards the past. Fourth, rather than focus on the temporality of home as a site of origin and an unattainable past, I show how productive nostalgia refocuses on the desire for both proximate homes and more distant homes. Anglo-Indian homemaking at McCluskieganj enacted a productive nostalgia that was oriented towards the present and future as well as towards the past, and revealed an attachment to both India and Britain as home.

Local history as productive nostalgia? Change, continuity and sense of place in rural England

“…Recently, however, a blanket derision of nostalgia has been challenged and more positive outcomes of nostalgic imaginings and practices explored. These more positive interpretations have been variously framed as 'productive' (Blunt, 2003), 'mobile' (Bonnett and Alexander, 2013) or 'counter' (Ladino 2004) nostalgias (see also Mah (2012) on 'living memory ' and Legg (2005) on 'counter-memory').…”

“…Focusing on the case of McCluskieganj, an Anglo-Indian settlement established in 1933, Blunt (2003) returns to nostalgia's linguistic origins as referring to a yearning for home -a kind of temporal homesickness -to explore how nostalgia does not only exist in narrative and imagination but can be embodied and enacted in social practice, thereby facilitating a productive process. The founders and settlers of McCluskieganj sought to create a 'homeland' where Anglo-Indians who lacked a sense of belonging within either the British or Indian communities could celebrate their Anglo-Indian identity and establish their own sense of home.…”

“…While not contesting the realities of such arguments, and the issues of social inequalities and exclusionary processes they raise, my aim in this paper is to provide nuance to this debate by suggesting the potential for an alternative, more positive, interpretation of local history practices that recognises their role in facilitating place attachment and acceptance of (rather than resistance to) change within a local context. This potential is explored through extending recent renderings of nostalgia as a positive and productive phenomenon (Blunt, 2003;Bonnett, 2015;DeSilvey, 2012;Legg, 2004; to the case of history and heritage practices at a local level. Evidence from qualitative research in an English village is used to demonstrate the role of these practices in providing a sense of continuity and stability amid a continuously changing locale through the reassertion of place identities and attachments.…”

Built Form and Culture: Italian Transnational Houses in Australia

“…Blunt [3], in his analysis of houses belonging to Anglo-Indians in McCluskieganj, Bihar, in the 1930s, highlights that this cultural group constructed and shaped their houses through nostalgic practice, where the house exposed a sort of attachment to both India and Britain. This means that the transnational house can be interpreted as a place of memory shaped through nostalgic practice whose purpose is to enhance a sense of familiarity.…”

“…The objective of this study is (1) to provide insight into the ways in which migrants shaped the physical environments of their host societies; (2) to help to bridge the significant gap between transnational houses and cross-cultural studies; (3) to capture the store of knowledge held by older Italian migrants, by their still standing artifacts before this knowledge is lost in time.…”