Animating British Bangladeshi Memory

The British Bangladeshi diaspora is located at a complex intersection in postcolonial Britain. It not only embodies the unfolding legacy of the erstwhile colonial empire but is also a critical site of contemporary debates around race, religion, and nation. Using an innovative interdisciplinary approach combining key concepts from memory studies, diaspora studies, and arts-based methodologies, this book locates how ’hidden’ histories of colonialism, Partition, migration, and settlement, are implicated in the community’s negotiations of the meanings of being British, Bangladeshi, and Muslim. Mapping key shifts in the temporal and spatial locations of three generations of British Bangladeshis through a diasporic memory ecologies framework, the book analyses how multidirectional anti-colonial and anti-racist memories are gradually forgotten as young British Bangladeshis increasingly mobilise a pan-Islamic identity framework to resist racialisation and alienation. Importantly, through varied case studies, it locates how reanimating mnemonic linkages across these intergenerational ecologies through creative memory work can help understand and negotiate the present-day realities of the postcolonial migrant condition in the UK.

Diwas Bisht, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK.