For the entire Indian Ocean region, the period between post-World War II decolonisation in the 1950s and the 1970s was characterised by vast political, cultural and economic changes. What do we know about Indian intellectual and literary cosmopolitanism in the Indian Ocean during this period? To answer this question, the EU-funded IATIO project will take the concept of ‘archipelagic imaginaries’ and apply an interdisciplinary methodology, combining tools and insights from history, literary criticism and cultural studies. It will draw from journals and the popular press, as well as works of fiction and selected case studies of material Indian Ocean sites of cosmopolitan encounters. The aim is to study the renewed investment in archipelagic theory and geocritical approaches.

The research shifts focus from teleological readings of Indian Ocean history and territorial perspective on postcolonial Indian culture, to a renewed investment in archipelagic theory and geocritical approaches. The temporal framework of the project ranges from around the time of the post-World War II decolonisation to the late 1970s, a period of far-reaching political, cultural and economic change for the entire Indian Ocean region. The project aims to advance a non-territorial epistemological framework for theorising postcolonial India through an investigation of the conceptual, imaginative and material Indian Ocean geographies inhabited by Indian intellectuals, writers and other cosmopolitan voices. It will do so by employing an interdisciplinary methodology that combines tools and insights from history, literary criticism and cultural studies, to engage in close reading of intellectual journals and the popular press, works of fiction, and selected case studies of material Indian Ocean sites of cosmopolitan encounters. The fellowship will be based at two leading academic institutions, King’s College London (UK) and the University of the Witwatersrand (ZA), and will create a substantial institutional link between KCL and Wits, with KCL emerging as a UK hub in the global academic Indian Ocean studies network.