This thesis explores representations of anti-colonial resistance through two well-known historical episodes, the Great Rebellion of 1857 and the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre of 1919, in public heritage sites in Britain and India. Whilst each has a distinct memorial context, they represent broader themes of death, sacrifice and revenge in colonial histories, and demonstrate different forms of aphasia, most notably an inability to acknowledge the extent and impact of the violence inflicted and suffered by both sides within public heritage. Highlighting similarities and contradictions, a variety of sites of memory which represent the rebellion and massacre, including museums, landscapes, and monuments are analysed within a trans-national legacy of commemoration. Whilst this unites them, each is shaped by spatial, temporal, and financial context, making them distinct, with contradictions between and within Indian and British memorialisation. Moreover, their periodic transformation and embodiment of larger meanings are indicative of their ideological potency and capacity to serve political imperatives. This thesis argues, therefore, that whilst these heritage spaces do not represent a shared site of memory between Britain and India, as both nations have interpreted these events very differently, they are used to negotiate and articulate understandings of national identity, and therefore occupy a common discursive field. This argument challenges both Astrid Erll and Benjamin Zachariah’s scholarship, seeking to demonstrate that these spaces demonstrate present-day complex, changing and locally specific negotiations of the past, shaped simultaneously by visitor engagement and regional heritage geo-politics and by their role in articulations of national identity.
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)