Famine Tales from India and Britain

"Famine Tales" is based on the outcomes of the recently completed AHRC project "Famine and Dearth in India and Britain, 1550-1800", led by Dr Ayesha Mukherjee (PI), University of Exeter, and Professor Amlan Das Gupta (Co-I), Jadavpur University, Calcutta, which created a searchable web-database containing c.750 texts in 10 languages, enabling exploration of the cultural histories of famine and dearth in early modern India and Britain: http://famineanddearth.exeter.ac.uk. Using material from this publicly accessible database and the British Library's collections, the follow-on project "Famine Tales from India and Britain" will enable the modern re-appropriation and narration of selected episodes of early modern famine and dearth, to engage new users and stakeholders from rural and urban creative industries, and audiences beyond academic communities in India and Britain. The intense and resonant stories of these famines past are relevant to communities afflicted by dearth today, and are worthy of dissemination to a wider public.
We aim to: create new, innovative impact activities to engage wider international audiences for the famine tales; facilitate the cross-cultural, comparative understanding of famine, dearth, and food security issues in India and Britain; directly impact the life and work of rural and urban creative artists in India, and enable them to reach out to international audiences and communicate their perspectives on poverty and famine; directly reach rural and urban audiences in India and Britain with stories of famines past; involve new partners and stakeholders in the shaping of impact; integrate new impact activities and outcomes into the key outputs of the original project.
The famine tales will be painted and narrated by traditional scroll painters and singers of Naya village in West Bengal, whose work has attracted international attention; and by new wave, urban graphic artists in Calcutta, known for their issue-based graphic novels and work with the Jadavpur University Press. Both groups are recognised for their vivid socio-political commentaries. The artists of Naya will perform the stories in villages and fairs in rural Bengal. The project will culminate in exhibitions and performances in Calcutta, Exeter, and London, to display the work of both groups of artists, in parallel. Their famine tales will be added to the web-database of the original project, to make the created narratives part of the textual and visual repository. The narration, painting, and performance processes will be documented in film. Exeter's Digital Humanities team and Jadavpur's School of Cultural Texts and Records, who collaborated on the original project, will create a linked website containing high quality images of the scrolls and graphic work, introductory information authored by PI and CIs, film documentation, and accounts and photographs of the performances and exhibitions held to disseminate these works. The project partner, the British Library, will support and enhance these outcomes in many ways throughout the project, including hosting talks and performances by the project team, curatorial advice, and collaborating on the digital outputs. Jadavpur University Press will publish a book containing all illustrations, poems, and an introduction. The original paintings and film archive will be preserved at Exeter and Jadavpur, with the British Library's expert advice.
We aim to publicly demonstrate the benefits of understanding, in cross-cultural terms, the historical heritage of famine, poverty, and food security, which are current, vitally important global concerns. We expect to engage a significant range and numbers of users, academic and non-academic, rural and urban communities as well as larger institutions in India and Britain, with international outreach. The change we are aiming to bring about is wider realisation that famines are not only a crisis of food availability but also constitute a crisis of culture.

Who might benefit from this research?

This follow-on project is designed to engage a wide range of beneficiaries, expanding our audience and users to include communities whom the outcomes of the original research project on Famine and Dearth could not reach without our new impact activities. The Famine Tales project team will work with and support a rural community of artists, and connect with their regular audience in rural and rapidly urbanising contexts. This audience consists of the inhabitants of Naya and surrounding villages and towns of West Bengal where the artists work and perform. The project will simultaneously work with cutting-edge artists in the modern metropolis of Calcutta, thus reaching urban audiences to whom this group speaks, particularly, the current generation of young people. Another group of beneficiaries are from the third sector, consisting of local NGOs, to which our Co-Is belong, who have been working for decades to address divisions between rural and urban economies that have a direct impact on food insecurity. As our activities develop, the project aims to reach larger NGOs such as the Right to Food campaign and policy makers. The exhibitions and joint activities with our project partner the British Library will bring to the British public a rare opportunity to engage with a unique community such as Naya and the innovative styles of modern Indian graphic art. The British Library and Asia House, where some of our events will be held, are well-known hubs for drawing a varied public audience - national and international - and are able to facilitate engagement with British and South Asian audiences in the UK.



How might they benefit from this research?

The artists of Naya constitute a community which subsists on earnings from their traditional creative work, and survive in an increasingly strained rural environment in India. They will benefit from this opportunity to communicate their perspectives on poverty and food insecurity to wider national and international communities. The artists of Naya work and perform in environments where the very issues the famine tales highlight are active problems encountered in everyday life. The core research informing this project and the tales thus speaks to the inhabitants of these environments in an immediate way, while our impact activities allow wider audiences to hear their voice. The graphic artists at Jadavpur University Press have developed their own versions of a contemporary art form which they use to address social, economic, and political issues affecting them. These concerns overlap with issues affecting rural areas, and the project creates a dialogue, using popular cultural forms, that can assist in addressing rural-urban divides, which many local and international NGOs in varied contexts have been working to bridge.
The events and outcomes of the project will benefit our project partner the British Library by adding to its public engagement programmes through a partnership that speaks to their collaborative and culturally diverse ethos. We have adopted varied means of dissemination (through exhibitions, performances, film documentation, and digital and print media) and our public activities will take place in different kinds of environments - from rural villages, markets and fairs, bustling cities like Calcutta and London, to smaller English cities like Exeter. The universities of Jadavpur and Exeter will assist with publicity and audience engagement. The film documentation, website, and blogs shared with the BL are designed to capture impact. The project was interactively designed by involving rural and urban communities in Bengal, as well as larger institutions with significant international outreach. Public audiences in both India and the UK will derive a fresh perspective and increased awareness of global food security through the opportunity this project provides to listen to famine tales from a culture other than their own.