(NON)VIOLENT LIVES AND AFTERLIVES WORKING GROUP, GLOBAL ASIAS INITIATIVE AT RUTGERS
presents
Against the Crematorium: Materializing Hindu Space in Twentieth Century Calcutta
A talk by
SOHINI CHATTOPADHYAY
Department of History
Union College
NOVEMBER 25, 2025 TUESDAY
3-5 PM
ROOM 6051, ACADEMIC BUILDING
This talk considers the material practices of creating Hindu spaces in colonial Calcutta, through a cremation charity's movement against Calcutta's busy municipal crematorium that incinerated unclaimed, and pauper dead bodies which hospitals and morgues identified as Hindus. Established in 1926, the mechanical crematorium was a cost-effective alternative to traditional Hindu pyres, leveraging stigmatized caste labor. However, by 1932, a charity led by municipal councilors contested the crematorium, arguing that its technological process, its location away from the Hooghly River, and its use of Dalit labor was an affront to Hindu sensibilities. Through the rise of the charity and the decline of the crematoria, this talk opens up the question of ritual space, real estate and technology in the creation of a "Hindu" urban space, and joins longer conversation on material and caste practices of communal violence.
Sohini Chattopadhyay is Assistant Professor of History at Union College, Schenectady, New York. She received her PhD in History from Columbia University, and has an MA from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her current book project studies the intersections between Science and Technology Studies and South Asian labor and urban history through a comparative study of the crematorium in Bombay and Calcutta.