Sixth OHAI Conference 2021

Crisis, Community and Oral History
organized by Oral History Association of India
in collaboration with Department of Humanities and Languages, Flame University, Pune

Crisis of any kind, be it human-made or natural, leaves deep impact on human kind. It often takes generations to recover from the impacts, if at all, and the scars remain deep. Floods, droughts and famines, earthquakes, tsunamis and pandemics, the tales of despair and resilience are told and recounted one generation after another. Similarly, crisis/es emerging out of displacement due to wars, communal and ethnic violence, developmental projects etc., leave tales for future generations to learn from. Compounding this, often an authoritarian state and rigid laws could also lead to crisis/es, particularly for marginalised sections of the societies be it the farmers, students, people belonging to minority communities, the tribals and the Dalits. Rigid social customs and segregation/discrimination based on caste, gender, class, ethnicity and religion could lead to crisis also. Narratives through oral histories can help us be aware of the multiple dimensions to crisis/es such as natural, human- induced, political and state induced, along with the coping mechanisms people adopted and the tales of struggles and perseverance of the people. Such narratives and oral histories can help to check such crisis/es and also help form coping mechanisms. With the country having faced multiple crises both pre- and post-independence, the sixth OHAI annual conference will reflect on “Crisis, Community and Oral History” through talks, presentations and invites relevant submissions on the topic.