BACSA's new website has a few uses too many; the organisation has one prospective vulnerability
by Dr. Piyush Mathur
Earlier in April, the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia (yes, there is an association like that) launched a new website that is sure to get it greater attention, and from a wider range of interested parties. Built by one Hertfordshire-based Indigo Tree, the website expertly manifests the association’s meticulous programme; and allows one to track its on-the-ground activities as well as meetings and lectures (via notes, writeups, and photographs). Above all, the website signals the association’s renewed commitment to its work through a fast unfolding technological universe; and if not for the heavy cloud of COVID-19 that has recently settled over India—and is ominously expanding around the rest of South Asia—its launch would have received mentions in the mainstream English-language media of that region anyway.
For those unaware, the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia (BACSA) tracks down, conserves, and preserves the graves of those Britons and other European individuals who died in South Asia through AD 1600-1947; it also archives associated records including ‘inscriptions on the graves.’ Founded in 1977 by Theon Wilkinson, a Member of the British Empire (MBE), the association depends mainly on donations—but its new website includes a virtual shop where one could purchase cemetery record books; postcards; ties; and a (hitherto) small range of monographs from colonial times in India. One could also download The BACSA Manual: A Practical Handbook for The Care of Old Tombs and Cemeteries in South Asia (Authored by Dr. Neeta Das, a Kolkata-based conservation architect, this document is available on the website in Bangla, Hindi, Urdu, and English.)
An implicit indictment
Although BACSA would not quite put it that way (and not publicly anyway), its sheer existence is some sort of an indictment of many a government. The website points out, for example, that no government agency exists anywhere ‘to look after the graves of’ the multitudinous Europeans who died in South Asia during the colonial-British era. And while the British government left this responsibility in 1949 to the South Asian ‘countries’ Christian congregations’ (under their governments’ assurances), the graveyards and graves from those times mostly continued to deteriorate and be forgotten. But for BACSA’s intervention, that would have continued to be the case.
As it stands, the sincere pursuit of its objectives has evidently turned BACSA—a quaint organization from the very beginning—into a node of considerable emotional and intellectual interaction; (post)colonial, genealogical, and religious vibes; and research and publications of historical value. The foregoing features altogether give a unique colouration to BACSA: Consider, for instance, the fact that its new website’s virtual shop states that the record books and monographs up for sale could otherwise also be accessed at any ‘UK copyright librarie’ (notice the Middle English spelling used there for library)—or its employment of the old spelling, Bahrein, for Bahrain in an excerpt I have indented further below.
The Chowkidar
The association has also nurtured, since its foundation, a biannual journal—Chowkidar—dedicated to publishing relevant narratives and findings. Charmingly, this journal is still being edited by its founding editor, Rosie Llewellyn-Jones: a historian! On the new website, curious readers and researchers could look up clean copies of all the past editions of this journal in the portable document format (pdf). Quasi-formal, these editions also comprise an excellent history of the association itself.
As for what this journal publishes, take a look at this blurb from the website:
Anything that is interesting and connected, even if tenuously, to graves and cemeteries in South Asia is within the journal’s remit. We cover everywhere that the East India Company set its foot and where its servants died and were buried. From ports en route to India, like St. Helena; to electric telegraph stations in the Middle East (Bahrein); to small British consular posts (Jeddah) and right around the globe to the Treaty Ports of China, there will be graves. And Chowkidar wants to know about them and will publish lively stories about them.
And unlike many reputed academic journals of today, Chowkidar is classically reassuring—for the above blurb in fact ends with the following sentence: ‘Do not worry if you have problems putting pen to paper – we can edit what you send us into entertaining and factual copy.’
The road ahead
But to the extent that BACSA has invited greater attention to itself via this new website, it should also prepare itself for some fair or unfair scrutiny in the future. Some scrutiny might of course come its way in regard to its internal functioning and funding (not that there is any indication yet that there is any dysfunction). But on another, perhaps deeper, level, the association’s sheer raison d'être—taking care of the Europeans’ graves and graveyards in South Asia—could be perceived by some South Asians as an extension of colonial exclusivism itself. Under circumstances, BACSA could thus be vulnerable to more than sheer criticism—to certain kinds of hostilities on the South Asian ground.
With that in mind, it should be advisable for BACSA to introduce a bit of a clearer distance (in its public presentations—say its web pages)—between its focus on work that is tied to the colonial period and an apparent nostalgia for the colonial times themselves. The point is, South Asians most likely would wish to see, at least to some extent, that type of distancing in BACSA’s overall profile. Another way to say it would be suggest that the association would reduce its vulnerability to any kind of circumstantial hostility on the South Asian grounds if it makes it a point to express a distance between its work-related ethnic-cum-period focus—restoration/protection of European graves dated to AD 1600-1947—and any adulation for the colonial times themselves.
There is yet another way for BACSA to prepare itself for greater exposure here on out: Via its website, it could choose to reach out to South Asians in relevant geographical areas in some of their main languages other than English; in South Asia itself, it could also make intermittent field presentations to local people in those languages ahead of or around any restoration work. This might be a good way to connect directly with those who would actually work on the restoration sites—and with local researchers/academics as well; in this regard, the association’s availing of The BACSA Manual in Bangla, Hindi, and Urdu was/is a step in the right direction (except that the ‘web covers’ of these documents are currently presented in English only).
Reference: https://www.bacsa.org.uk/
A Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow 2011-2012, Dr. Piyush Mathur is the author of Technological Forms and Ecological Communication: A Theoretical Heuristic (Lexington Books, 2017). His other academic publications could be accessed here. If you wish to contact him, let us know here.