Lecture | LIAS Lunch Talk Series
Class Battles from Indian Circus: Tales of Labour
- Date
- Wednesday 27 March 2024
- Time
- Serie
- LIAS Lunch Talk Series
- Address
-
Matthias de Vrieshof
Matthias de Vrieshof 1-4
2311 BZ Leiden - Room
- Vrieshof 3 / 1.04 (Verbarium)
Abstract
Indian circus industry figures in the common sense as a place of extreme exploitation with dangerous working conditions, wretched living conditions and miserable wages. But if one looks at the history of labour unions in India, we would hardly find a circus workers’ union. This talk will explore the exciting class battles between the circus management and workers through various narratives gleaned from interviews, personal memorabilia and publications including notices, booklets and the mouthpiece publications of the worker’s unions and owner’s organizations.
About the speaker
Dr Nisha Poyyaprath Rayaroth is a historian from South India and has recently joined International Institute for Asian Studies, Netherlands on a research fellowship. Her book, Jumbos and Jumping Devils: A Social History of Indian Circus was published with Oxford University Press in 2020. She has formerly been a Fulbright-Nehru fellow with Yale University, a Mellon-SSRC Transregional research fellow with Centre for Indian Studies in Africa, University of the Witwatersrand and a Writing fellow with Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study in South Africa. She holds a PhD in History from the University of Delhi.