Telegeographies of Plantation Media: Malayan Imaginaries

Telegeographies of Plantation Media: Malayan Imaginaries studies media flows between South Asia and Southeast Asia—specifically, between India, Singapore, Malaysia and their shared colonial pasts. Focusing on the lifeworlds of South Indian labor transported to British Malaya and Singapore between 1850s to the 1920s under the indentured system and the colonial regime, Telegeographies examine image-making practices centered around plantation histories and how they have led to the Malaysian Indian community to be identified with a plantation-lineage. In doing so, this project tussles with questions of identity, belongingness and community formation as they appear in media forms, against the backdrop of globalization and the shifting ethnoscapes it engenders.