Social Space, Ideas and Practice: Urban India, 1940-1970

Presenter:

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Abstract

Focusing on the visitors of the India Coffee House (ICH), an all-India chain launched in 1936, this paper seeks to underline the significance of transcultural intellectual exchanges in the new urban space for the formation of individual and group ideologies from the 1930s to the 1960s. In cities where ICH was located, the place became a hub of resident and visiting intellectuals engaging in informal conversions over everything under the sun. Who visited the space and what did they think about the space? In what ways were their engagement with the space transcultural, and how did the process impact their lifeworld?

Right from the interwar period, the foundation of the Communist Party of India, the Progressive Writers’ Association, to Indian Peoples Theatre Association, the Hungry Generation movement and the Naxalite Movement of the 1960s, politico-cultural activities on behalf of urban intellectuals in India resulted from an intensive engagement with similar movements in the West. ICH provided the space where they interacted with other, and often helped shaping their career. The paper argues that not only that the middle class visiting the India Coffee House and were products of direct or indirect cross-cultural intellectual exchanges, they celebrated such exchanges. While the import of literature from the West implied that the English educated Indian middle class was familiar with the ideas and works of of Western philosophers, specialists and writers, many of these intellectuals had come in touch with Western ideas during their study abroad. A consideration of these exchanges is necessary to understand the socio-cultural history of urban India during the period.