Cambridge to use rare India films in teaching

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A horse-cart passes in front of the Queen Victoria Memorial in Kolkata.

The University of Cambridge has announced plans to develop a new teaching resource using a unique collection of films made in India during the final decades of British rule.
The university’s Centre of South Asian Studies houses a remarkable archive of almost 500 colonial amateur films, out of which 300 have already been digitised.
It is now planning to create a series of short documentaries and a supporting web resource to make this material available to students, media, other historians and anyone with an interest in the British Raj, university sources said.
Dr Kevin Greenbank, the Centre’s archivist, will launch a fundraising bid for the project at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi on Monday.
The project aims to give people a deeper and more informed perspective on the history of the Empire, its legacy in the subcontinent, and current debates about multiculturalism in Britain.
The archive comprises colonial amateur films — effectively home movies — spanning the period from the 1910s to the 1960s.
It includes harrowing scenes shot during the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan, images of armies of labourers working railways and dams, and a vast array of other snapshots of everyday life during the last years of the British Raj.
Most the films, which come from over 70 different private collections, were released online for free in their original unedited form last year, following a long and meticulous project to digitise them from original 8mm and 16mm reels, many of which had become too delicate to use.
Now the Centre hopes to use them to create a series of short documentaries tailored to suit the history curriculum that can function as classroom teaching aids both in the UK and abroad.
After years of relative neglect, the story of British rule in India is re-emerging on Britain’s national school curriculum.
Greenbank said, “It is a story we should not just discuss at school, but in wider society as a whole. The current British view of countries like India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka or Bangladesh emphasises specific aspects of those societies; the cultural and social details that strike us as different and, sometimes, exotic.”
He added, “These films offer a more investigative perspective on how these countries emerged in the twentieth century, and why so many people from that part of the world emigrated to Britain.
“By understanding that historical relationship we can replace a rather jaundiced view with an account of shared history and shared presence.”
The Centre hopes to raise about £200,000 to enable the project to go ahead.
With this, it is anticipated that it will be able to produce and distribute a series of short documentaries, both online and on DVDs, covering major themes illustrated across the entire film archive.
Such themes include the machinery of Empire, the way in which British and Indian people perceived one another, the railways and other infrastructures that were introduced under British rule, and the experiences of the many women who had to adjust to life in India at the brisk pace of their husbands’ careers.
Greenbak said: “We hope that this will be just as relevant to people on the Indian subcontinent as it is to people from Britain.
“It sheds light, for example, on the lives of Indian Hindus and Pakistani Muslims, on their shared heritage and the context of their separation now. It shows how today’s multicultural communities relate to their past.”