In the previous unit, prompted by the question ‘What is India?’, we looked at the object of our enquiry from three different angles: the personal (subjective), the political (collective), and the local (spatial). Not surprisingly, it became quickly apparent that while we share certain common ideas and feelings regarding India, it also means different things to different people depending on their personal, socioeconomic, and spatial location. In this unit, we will examine India through yet another perspective, one that is considered often alongside space—Time. The anchoring question that this unit raises for us to engage with is: what does India look when viewed through different conceptions and registers of time?

 

As with the first unit, this exploration will complicate our common-sensical understanding of the idea of India and of who is an Indian. It will compel us to reckon with what is at stake for both the idea and the identity when viewed through different registers of time. In the three weeks that are devoted to this exploration, we will view the world, and India in the world, through three conceptual lenses that bring very different scales and chronologies of the past into view: mythic time, deep time, and historical time. 

 

By the end of this unit, you will have a basic understanding of the geological, geographical, and biospheric make-up of the Indian subcontinent; when and how this part of the world was originally peopled by our species; the ‘prestige’ and purpose of origin myths; the historical chronology of India and why it looks the way it does today. At the conceptual level, you will become familiar with different ways of analyzing times past and the importance of ‘origins’ and ‘zero-points’ in timelines and calendars.

 

The assessment for this unit will be a take-home essay. The prompt for the essay will differ from section to section in terms of its specifics. But, generally, they will all be framed to test for both conceptual understanding and topical information with respect to the ground covered in the unit.