In the Shadow of the Mill: Deindustrialization, Urban Politics and Emotions in 20th Century Ahmedabad

Wednesday, 23 October 2024 | 14:00 to 16:30 EDT | Room 305, Third Floor, York Lanes, Keele Campus, York University 

With Rukmini Barua, Department of History, York University
Discussant: Raju Das, Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, York University

The 1980s marked a watershed moment in the history of the western Indian city of Ahmedabad. Mirroring processes elsewhere in India, the city’s textile industry collapsed. Over 100,000 workers lost their jobs and many more were affected by the closure of the composite textile mills. Caste and religious conflicts occurred with alarming regularity during this period, accompanied by a pervasive rise of right wing Hindu politics. This talk considers workers’ emotions around the coeval processes of deindustrialisation and casualization, focusing on three key aspects—first, the emotional dynamics associated with changes in the material conditions of life and workers’ engagement with the dominant Gandhian trade union, the Textile Labour Association; second, notions of workers’ ‘unity’; and finally, feelings of nostalgia associated with mill employment. Drawing on these three themes of investigation, I discuss the emotional repertoires that emerged with deindustrialisation and address their social and political implications.

Rukmini Barua is Assistant Professor of History at York University. Prior to this, Rukmini was a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for the History of Emotions, Max Planck Institute for Human Development. Her research examines questions at the intersection of urban politics, labour and emotions with a focus on colonial and postcolonial India.

This event is part of Demos, Democracy, Democratization: South Asia Lecture Series 2024–25.