Stirling Castle and the Indian Uprising of 1857
Atul V. Nair (University of Hyderabad) announces the recent publication of an article for Scroll.in enhanced by his trip to RSVP’s 2024 conference in Stirling, Scotland. He writes the following:
In June 2024, RSVP’s travel grant enabled me to travel from India to Scotland to present a paper at the RSVP conference hosted by the University of Stirling. Perhaps the best known landmark in Stirling is the Stirling Castle, which is home to the Regimental Museum of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, a regiment that was deployed across the British Empire.
In my article for Scroll.in, an independent Indian media outlet, I write about the exhibits on the Indian Uprising of 1857 (or the Sepoy Mutiny) in the Argylls Museum to reflect on the larger questions of how we remember Empire, conflict, and suffering. The Highlanders were involved in key episodes of the Uprising, such as the Siege of Lucknow. The museum exhibits, as material remnants of Empire, remain culturally and politically charged in the contemporary age of mass migration, displacement, and global conflict. I briefly explore how British museums are beginning to acknowledge the uncomfortable histories of slavery and imperialism.
As a researcher working on Victorian periodicals, I approach the contemporary implications of imperialism through literary texts such as Rudyard Kipling’s Kim (1901), which was serialised in McClure’s Magazine, and the Calcutta Review, a leading Anglo-Indian quarterly. From Kipling’s Kim to Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000), the Uprising/Mutiny continues to cast a shadow over British and Indian memories of their shared colonial pasts.
About the Author
Atul V. Nair is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English at the University of Hyderabad. He works on Anglo-Indian periodicals of the long nineteenth century. His work has appeared in the South Asian Review and is forthcoming in the Victorian Periodicals Review.
