Aqsa Ashraf

Scotland’s role in India’s colonisation was immense, and postcolonial India has been deeply and negatively affected by Scotland’s colonialist interventions, particularly through policies of divide-and-rule, which have manifested in postcolonial communal strife. These developments are further complicated by the presence of a South Asian diaspora in Scotland, who are connected to a diverse, decolonial Scottish identity while retaining cultural and familial links with postcolonial South Asia. This PhD project, supervised at the University of St Andrews, examines the connections between Scottish colonial photography and the construction of communalism in India. The project aims to critically re-assess late-nineteenth century photographic sources, highlighting how communalist legacies affect colonised subjects and the South Asian diaspora in contemporary Scotland. The project will include an exhibition on Scottish Colonial Photography in relation to the diaspora from former British colonies in Scotland, broadening curatorial approaches to Scottish colonial photographic archives.

The primary questions this project will answer are:
1. How did Scottish colonialists compose, visualise and fix communal differences in India through architectural/ethnographic photography?
2. What is the experience of South Asians in Scotland, who are doubly marginalised by these archives and representations of postcolonial communal violence?
3. How can Scottish photographic archives be progressively reinterpreted, generating exhibitions addressing colonial photo-histories and their consequences on diasporic identity formation?

Therefore, this project’s multidisciplinary approach, encompassing Communal History, Colonial Photo-History and Museum Studies, aims to facilitate knowledge exchange about theoretically and practically addressing postcolonial Indian and Scottish marginality.