| AdminHistory | "Famine Tales" is based on the outcomes of the recently completed AHRC project "Famine and Dearth in India and Britain, 1550-1800", led by Professor 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. Using material from this publicly accessible database and the British Library's collections, the follow-on project "Famine Tales from India and Britain” enabled the modern re-appropriation and narration of selected episodes of early modern famine and dearth, to engage new audiences and participants from rural and urban creative industries, as well as 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.
The famine tales were painted and narrated by the 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 patachitrakars (scroll painters) of Naya performed the stories in villages and fairs in rural Bengal. The project culminated in exhibitions and performances in Calcutta, Exeter, and London, to display the work of both groups of artists, in parallel.
The narration, painting, and performance processes were documented in film, and made available in the projects video and photo collections. Exeter's Digital Humanities team and Jadavpur's School of Cultural Texts and Records, who collaborated on the original project, created high quality images of the scrolls and graphic work, which was displayed on the project website, along with introductory information, film documentation, and accounts and photographs of the performances and exhibitions. Jadavpur University Press published a book containing all illustrations, poems, and an introduction entitled 'Famine Tales from India and Britain: A Graphic Anthology' in Jan 2023
Project website at https://faminetales.exeter.ac.uk/about |