Cuts and continuities : caste-subaltern imaginations of the Bengal famine of 1943

This research explores how film practice, both
as methodology and outcome of the inquiry can be mobilised to
explore negotiated imaginations of the Bengal famine from a
caste-subaltern perspective?

The Bengal famine of 1943, in which nearly three million people
died, was man-made. A multitude of factors led to the famine,
including British colonial policies, war, hoarding and profiteering
by local elites and businesses, and existing faultlines of caste, class
and gender. In recent years, scholars have focused on scrutinising
the famine from an anti-colonial perspective. Still, a gap exists in
exploring the intersectionality of caste-related subalternities and
the famine. However, the immediate concern with filling this gap
is ethical-methodological: even from the lens of caste-subaltern
consciousness, how does one arrive at and share stories of the
famine, and can they ever be ‘recovered’ and ‘represented’? This
dilemma and tension animate this PhD in Artistic Practice.

Taking the Gramscian notion of subalterns as people/groups on
the margins of history, subaltern studies, especially in India, have
consistently focused on the need to write history from below.
On the one hand, scholars and historians have looked at archival
materials for erasures of subaltern history and foregrounded
them. On the other hand, they have mobilised methods such as
oral history to recuperate the subaltern histories. In a limited
sense, this research adheres to this tradition. It looks at existing
films on the Bengal famine and makes critical interventions in
them to foreground the caste question, and it also aims to create
‘new’ material through collaborative fieldwork-filming and
workshops. However, this PhD also departs from the tradition
as it is not a recuperative historical project. It focuses on the
creative, collaborative, and negotiated processes of imagining
and engaging with that history.

Through an iterative, collaborative and reflective film practice,
this research suggests that filmmaking can foreground subaltern
epistemologies and ontologies when it is not merely seen as
product-oriented but also as a knowledge activity. Moreover, it
can foreground an ethos of active and continuous negotiation
and enable the emergence of multiple, contested and layered
narratives. Lastly, this research proposes a shift away from
‘recovery’ and ‘representation’ of the ‘authentic’ caste-subaltern
experiences of the famine and toward negotiated imagination.

About the author: Ram Krishna Ranjan works at the intersection of
research, pedagogy and film practice and currently teaches in the
film program at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg.