Distinguished scholars from the United States and abroad concluded a two-day conference at UCLA’s Fowler Museum on the Armenian diaspora in India, Asbarez reports.
The lecture series, aptly entitled “Armeno-Indica Four Centuries of Togetherness and Familiarity” was originally scheduled to occur in 2021 to mark the bicentenary of the establishment of the Armenian College in Kolkata India, but was postponed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sponsors of the collaborative meeting included the Fowler Museum, the Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History, The Promise Armenian Institute UCLA, the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies, USC Dornsife Institute of Armenian Studies, and the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research.
Scholars from the United States and abroad participated in the lecture series, which perused the cultural identity of the Armenians in India, including: Trade, Law, and Go-Betweens, Language and Literary Revival, Armenian Historiography and Print Culture, History in the Present on day one; Monuments, Patronage, and Indo-Persianate Identities; The Historical Imagination and the Circulation of Revolutionary Ideas in Late 18th Century South India on day two.
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, distinguished Professor of History and Irving & Jean Stone Chair in Social Sciences at UCLA, delivered the keynote lecture on “Armenians in the Mughal Surat, Rethinking Communities, Collaboration, and Conflict.”
The event detailed the identity of the Armenians as maritime traders and community builders from the time of the European colonial expansion to the present-day.
