An Invigorating Stay at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies
By Victor A. van Bijlert
For six months, starting from September 1998, I had the opportunity to work at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies at Copenhagen. I was the first Nordic-Netherlands research fellow from the Netherlands. These fellowships are the fruit of the strategic alliance between the NIAS and the IIAS, Leiden. The project on which I worked at the NIAS is called 'Empowering the Hindu Mind: Cultural Politics in Bengal, 1880-1910', forming part of a larger project 'Competing Modernities in South Asia'. Both projects are multi-disciplinary approaches to a broadly historical understanding of Indian nationalism, with a special emphasis on the anticolonial struggle. The project on colonial Bengal envisages a new interpretation of the little researched shift from cultural nationalism to nationalist terrorism and the Hindu religious motivations of terrorism which took place between 1880 and 1908.In order to discuss ethics and motivation in Bengali, Hindu, middle-class culture, I participated as co-convener with convener William Radice in the Bengal Studies Panel of the 15th European Conference on Modern South Asia, held in Prague, September 1998. In November 1998 I participated in the 5th seminar on Europe and Asia, held at the business school of the University of Poitiers. In January 1999 I visited the India Office Library at the British Library (beautiful new premises), London, and the South Asian Archives at Cambridge. In the latter I consulted personal archives of British CID officers who had worked in Bengal at the beginning of the twentieth century. At the India Office Library I was able to have a look at different materials from the archives of former British India. I consulted, among other documents, the lengthy personal memoirs of Sir Charles Tegart, the head of the intelligence branch of the police in Calcutta. It was Tegart who had had to deal with early nationalist terrorism in Bengal. He and his superior, Sir David Petrie, played an important role later in MI5.
The perusal of the CID material enables me to interpret Indian anticolonial terrorism from different angles. After all, the CID was the major opponent of the terrorist nationalists. The latest spin-off from this research is my paper on Bankim Chandra's sucessful creation in 1880 of an Indian national icon in the anthem "Bande Mataram". This paper was read at the 33d annual Bengal Studies conference, 2-4 April 1999. This year the Bengal Studies conference was hosted by Fayetteville State University. NIAS and the IIAS kindly consented to subsidize my participation. The NIAS provides a very congenial atmosphere for a scholarly exchange of views. This is largely due to the fact that the researchers at NIAS study many different Asian countries, although the emphasis lies on East and Southeast Asia. NIAS researchers have their backgrounds either in the social sciences, history, or the humanities and often combine these disciplines creatively. The NIAS enthusiastically encourages multi-disciplinarity. That this approach bears fruit can be seen from the numerous NIAS publications that come out every year.
While working at the NIAS, it is very common to hear the scholars and permanent staff discuss a wide range of topics with each other. Often an exhilarating exchange of views takes place while everybody is seated around the famous NIAS table, drinking morning coffee, taking lunch, or having afternoon coffee. The informal work-culture requires that all who sit around the table do communicate. I am probably not divulging a big trade-secret of NIAS when I say that its table fulfils an important managerial task: it promotes creativeness and communicative skills and prevents festering cold conflicts. Those who have stayed with the NIAS are always considered members of the NIAS family for life.