Literature & Spoken Word Community | Southbank Centre

Jayachandran Palazhy on a sense of Indian Nationhood:

“It need not be geographical or national. It’s subscribing to an idea of a particular existence”.

Alchemy was launched last night with a blessing from Southbank Centre Artist in Residence Gauri Sharma-Tripathi. It was a fitting opening to a festival that has spirituality at it’s heart. And spirituality is a subject that came up in the first of the British Council debates that are featured the festival. India: Global Powerhouse? was the question. A panel of artists and commentators discussed whether India was the new America, what India’s position in the world is given it’s growing economic influence, rising levels of education and a growing middle class.

One of the most interesting talking points for me was identity. Jude Kelly introduced the question of how does Indian nationhood work, how is it sustained? The panelists debated whether a country with such a large and diverse population of age, language and religions, feels national identity as a reality, or whether their is existence based more on a local, state identity.

I think it’s a question that speaks particularly strongly to Britain today. With the parilamentary election annouced for May 6th, no doubt the political campaigning of large and smaller parties will make much of our British identity, values of respect, decency and hard-work. These are big, powerhouse type messages used to bring a sense of unity, they are broad brush strokes to capture imagination. However, they often lack a day to day translation that people can understand. So the question remains strong as ever. What is British identity? How does it work? The diversity of India and the UK are very different and unique cases. And the two nations need to be asking the same questions that require complex responses rather than fixed answers. Fingers crossed, festivals like Alchemy give space and context for those conversations to be had.

Filed under: Alchemy 2010