Afterlives of Monuments

<p>South Asia is famous for its monuments past and present. Monuments have been created destroyed and rescued by competing communities and incoming empires in the making and re-making of history identity and memory. </p><p>This collection brings together an international cohort of senior scholars and younger researchers to examine the vast diversity of monuments (and conceptions of monuments) in South Asia from the 1850s to the present. The chapters investigate what constitutes a monument and interrogate the conditions for its survival demise or recycling. To explore the afterlives of monuments is to investigate how where when and why monuments have been remodelled re-sited destroyed defaced or abandoned. It is to investigate the theories of memory history and community as well as new forms of artistic practice and global media. As different South-Asian communities claim a stake in the making of national religious cultural and local identities and histories the status of monuments and debates about cultural memory have become increasingly urgent.</p><p>This book was published as a special issue of <em>South Asian Studies</em>.</p>