南アジア研究センター・セミナー：Dr. Ashok Malhotra (Queen’s University Belfast), ‘Imperial Science, the Organic Movement and the Path to Shangri-La, 1905-1969’
南アジア研究センター・セミナー：Dr. Ashok Malhotra (Queen’s University Belfast), ‘Imperial Science, the Organic Movement and the Path to Shangri-La, 1905-1969’
日時/ Date：2025年7月10日（木曜日）18:30-20:00/ 10 July 2025 (Thursday) 18:30-20:00
場所/ Venue：東京大学駒場Iキャンパス14号館4階407号室（ハイフレックス）/ Room 407, 4th Floor, Bldg No.14, Komaba Campus, The University of Tokyo/ Zoom*
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報告者/ Speaker： Dr. Ashok Malhotra (Queen’s University Belfast), ‘Imperial Science, the Organic Movement and the Path to Shangri-La, 1905-1969’
要旨/ Abstract:
This paper investigates the scientific studies undertaken in the 1920s in British India by Dr Robert McCarrison and Albert Howard and the ways in which this research was adapted in Britain and the US. Whilst scholars such as Gregory Barton and Philip Conford have noted how the work of these two scientists was deployed by the Organic movements which emerged in Britain and the US in their campaigns against industrialized farming and chemical fertilisers, they have not demonstrated the ways in which the Indian context initially shaped this research. They have also not discussed which aspects of McCarrison’s and Howard’s research was utilized or alternatively discarded by British and North American organic advocates.
In contrast, my paper demonstrates the ways in which imperial agendas and colonial stereotyping shaped McCarrison’s dietary research at his laboratories, in Tamil Nadu, and Howard’s development of the Indore Composting Process, in Madhya Pradesh. I highlight the contributions of Indian scientists, Indian princes and philanthropists in influencing the research cultures of these institutes. Crucially, I then demonstrate how the research that was carried out by these two figures was selectively interpreted by emerging organic farming advocates in Britain and the US to advocate for agricultural methods which involved returning organic matter to the soil and rejecting chemical fertilizers. My paper discusses how organic advocates in Britain and the US deployed the Hunzas, a community in British India (later Pakistan), as an example of a “tribe” whose supposed health and vigour could be ascribed to the holistic farming techniques and diets. I conclude by demonstrating how US travel writers in the 1950s and 1960s, to advance their own personal agendas, represented Hunza as a “Shangri La” where the inhabitants lived blissfully long and contented lives.
共催：環インド洋地域研究プロジェクト東京大学拠点（TINDOWS）、東京外国語大学南アジア研究センター