Mukhopadhyay, Rishika (2017) Charting ethnic violence through the lens of heritage: engaging with the Indo-Chinese population of Kolkata. Prace Ethnograficzne, 45 (2), 161–174. (doi:10.4467/22999558.PE.17.008.7903).
Abstract
The dominant imagination regarding heritage conservation conventionally validates a state produced idealisation of the past which often obscures the question of whose past is being represented (or not) through the state sanctioned discourse. To fi nd the answer of why this erasure of a certain section of the past takes place, this paper has looked into the question of violence and different forms in which it reshapes the discourse of representation. Engaging with the population of the Indo-Chinese community in Kolkata, this paper will see how violence has been produced and constituted, spatially and socially by the state which has forced them to leave the country. The focus of this study is the oldest Chinese neighbourhood in Kolkata, popularly known as Chinepada near Tirettia Bazar of central Kolkata. Chinese population who have migrated to India more than 200 years back have considered the city as home and contributed immensely to the cultural landscape of the city. At present, the once vibrant China Town, with its schools, temples, clubs and restaurants has degraded into a dilapidated shanty town with residents fighting hard to claim the right to the city. By connecting violence and injustice with the notion of politics of heritage conservation, this paper seeks to ask two questions. It questions how uneven geographies of power dictate the fates of communities and how state-produced violence reshapes public imagination regarding the constituents of heritage.
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