A Note from The Localized History Project: This exhibit was generously donated to us by Jia Dixit, Sangam Bhati, and Sayuri Govender, students at Columbia University as a part of their South Asian Diasporas Class. The text below is unedited and unchanged and represents their viewpoints and analysis. The ideal way to interact with this exhibit is to follow their StoryMap on tab 1: otherwise, a written out walking tour can be found on tabs 2-19.
For decades, Columbia University has functioned as a location of elite higher education amidst the “subaltern” university of the greater Harlem area surrounding it– bringing to light a fascinating history on the intellectual life inside and outside of its gates.
Columbia has a long history of advocacy, activism, and famous academics studying and teaching in its classrooms. Yet, this history is also the result of a vexed relationship with the Harlem neighborhood, as sometimes the University embraces it, and others closes itself off.
Many South Asian scholars cite the university as a place of significant intellectual development and opportunity, especially in advancing their own anti-caste and anti-colonial advocacy. The work of these South Asian academics in the U.S must also be discussed in conjunction with the historical context of the racial justice movements going on in and around the university at the time. Intellectual thought on the South Asian diaspora is a byproduct of larger movements by Black intellectuals, as well as significant changes to academia at Columbia. As we trace the lineages of the South Asian diaspora at the university, we ensure that it is placed within this context of the “inside and outside” teachings of Columbia.
The entrance of major South Asian scholars and politicians—specifcally B.R Ambedkar, a representative of the broader shifts in the population of South Asian students—makes clear how the University played a crucial role in fundamental works of South Asian thought. In the early 1900s Columbia also began to admit international students in large volumes for the first time. Students at the time had the ability to be influenced by the cultural renaissance and blooming civil rights movement–especially with the creation of the NAACP and the prominence of critical race scholars like W.E.B DuBois. This was a period of intense cultural upheaval and intellectual fermentation that also directly coincided with neighboring working-class South Asian communities within Harlem.
It is important to both acknowledge the immense history here and the power of the academic world in allowing for significant contributions to South Asian history, and how Columbia functioned as an actor that both embraced and shut off intellectual thought in the world outside its own gates.