Decolonial Praxis/es of Solidarity in Indian Literary and Cultural Discourses on Social Movements

Decolonial Praxis of Solidarity

Former Fellow Dr Bharti Arora writes this guest blog about her latest publication, which emerges from a conference held at IASH in 2022, supported by our Susan Manning Workshop Fund.

 

A special section entitled “Decolonial Praxis/es of Solidarity in Indian Literary and Cultural Discourses on Social Movements” has been published by the Contemporary South Asia journal, based on a workshop that I organised at IASH during my stint as a Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow (January -April 2022). This workshop was supported by the Susan Manning Workshop Fund and sought to probe how South Asian literary and cultural discourses represent the making, unmaking, and remaking(s) of solidarity among citizen subjects, who agitate for their rights vis-à-vis the hegemonic discourses of the nation states. Based on the discussions and feedback that emerged out of the workshop, I collected articles that explored how literary and cultural narratives could reveal ways in which cognitive, volitional and intersubjective relationships forged among people across disparate contexts could lead to shared politics.

The introduction entitled “Decolonial praxis/es of solidarity in Indian literary and cultural discourses on social movements” highlights the connection between affective solidarities and social justice, and especially how an informed politics of solidarity is forged when ordinary people, located in their disparate caste/ class, religious, and gender positionalities learn to see that the cause of the so-called ‘others’ and their struggles are deeply entwined with one’s own transformation. It can be read here: https://doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2025.2451881

The articles probe alternative frames of reference for solidarity that emerged across events like the Partition of the Subcontinent in 1947, to the linguistic agitations in favour of Hindi language and systemic failure of the Naxalite movement in post-independence India; and to contesting the neocolonial episteme that constitutes the human body as necessarily able-bodied. Please find Someshwar Sati’s “Deformed bodies and the decolonial turn” here: https://doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2024.2436888

Haris Qadeer's paper “Subalternity and everyday solidarity in contemporary Indian short stories” dwells on the forging of affective alliances and dietary solidarities between Dalit and Muslim communities of India and how they could bridge differences across castes and communities, ushering in the moral feeling of hope. It can be read here: https://doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2024.2439894

I would like to thank IASH for providing an excellent opportunity to facilitate discussions on the said theme. Considering how pertinent it is to contest the colonial matrix of power and probe ways in which we re-forge the praxis of decolonisation, I aim to continue this discussion further at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies where I work as an AUFF Fellow (September 2024 to July 2026). I am organising an upcoming workshop on the theme of decolonisation in the global South, highlighting the entanglements of Danish colonial history and its implications for Greenland, Faroe Islands, and Ghana, among other themes. More details can be found here: Towards Re-forging the Praxis of Decolonisation: Perspectives from the Global South