Indian Traces in Oxford

Indian Traces in Oxford was an exhibition mounted in collaboration with the Bodleian Library, showcasing the remarkably wide range of textual and photographic traces or leavings of Indian students, activists, politicians, artists and others in the Bodleian special collections and College libraries, in the period 1870-1950. The exhibition opened with a half-day workshop, on 1 March 2010, in Convocation House, to be introduced by the acclaimed Indian novelist – and Oxford alumnus – Amitav Ghosh.\r\n\r\nIndian Traces at Oxford focuses in close detail on Indians' impact on Oxford University’s life and culture. Both the exhibition and the 1 March workshop considers the value and meaning of manuscript traces, how they reflect on the ways in which Indians and Britons interacted in the period, and how we are able to imagine the lives of these early Indian travellers to Oxford into these textual tracks and marks.