Import Export: Cultural Transfer. India, Germany, Austria (review)

This book is the outcome of a project that was funded by the European Union – India Economic Cross Cultural Programme. The project was carried out by four organizations – the Werkleitz Gesellschaft (Halle), Majlis (Bombay), DeEgo (Vienna), and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin) – and it has brought together a large and varied group of scholars, artists, and activists in order to explore cultural relations between India and German-speaking Europe. The result is a fascinating mix of scholarly articles representing a number of disciplines related to cultural history and cultural studies, essays, descriptions of art and activist projects, interviews, and three documentary film essays contained in an included DVD. These contributions are tentatively organized into three sections headed “Moving Concepts,” “Moving Goods,” and “Moving People,” and the content of the book is doubled in an English-language section and a German-language section, so that all contributions are printed in their original language (English or German) and in translation into the respective other language. Both in its mix of contents and in its language policy, the book thus perfectly mirrors its subject matter of Indian-German cultural relations with its myriad facets and its many depths and shallows. Consequently, the quality of individual contributions is highly varied.

Many of the scholarly articles are useful, some are excellent. Mishka Sinha’s opening contribution provides a useful though not groundbreaking overview of the particular variant of Orientalism expressed in the German fascination with India in the nineteenth century. Christiane Hartnack’s outline of psychoanalysis in colonial India is interesting despite its brevity. Chetan Bhatt gives an excellent, complex reading of the strange connections that theories and ideologies of the “Aryan” forged between German and Indian culture. Alexandra Schneider’s two contributions to the volume, one on the links between cinema and tourism in German-Indian relations and one on the German and Swiss reception of Bollywood cinema, are well researched and well argued, as is another article on cinema, Meenakshi Shedde’s and Vinzenz Hediger’s reading of the image of India in the various versions of the German popular films Der Tiger von Eschnapur and Das indische Grabmal. Ranjit Hoskote’s exploration of four important figures in relations between India and Europe – Rabindranath Tagore, C. G. Jung, Jiddu Krishnamurti, and Agehananda Bharati alias Leopold Fischer – is informative and thought provoking. Urmila Goel provides fascinating insights into processes of identity formation and negotiation among the users of the website theinder.net, which is targeted towards second-generation South Asian Germans. Many of the other scholarly articles have a rather tenuous connection to the book’s express theme of relations between the Indian subcontinent and German-speaking Europe, though some of them are very good and interesting contributions from disciplines such as economics, history, sociology, visual studies, political science, and development studies.

What makes this book unique beyond the discussed scholarly contributions are the statements and materials provided by artists and activists. The descriptions and illustrations of visual art and theatre projects and the three film essays are vivid expressions of the intellectual and artistic currents flowing between the two cultural contexts.

In summary, the book represents a new and exciting path in examining intercultural relations. Not everything in the book is relevant or of high academic quality, but the majority of contributions are, and the overall effect of the book is to open and explore new disciplinary and interdisciplinary avenues for investigation of relations between the Indian subcontinent and German-speaking Europe. It is thus an important addition to the libraries of those who study these particular relations, and it makes for worthwhile reading (and viewing) for anyone interested in intercultural studies generally.