Nationalising Ruins: Contested Identities of the Ruins of Gour and Pandua1

Abstract

Late19th-early 20th century Bengal witnessed a renewed interest on behalf of Bengali scholars, to engage with the ruins of Gour and Pandua, from what has on retrospect been regarded as a Nationalist perspective. These nationalist narratives were however communally pluralised in correspondence to the religiously informed politics of the period. Gour-Pandua soon became a site of communal contestation on account of its multiple pre-colonial identities: that of a Hindu capital till the reign of Lakshmanasena and of a Muslim capital thereafter. This paper intends to analyse the multiple imaginations such accounts develop, viewing the ruins as a site for legitimisation of Hindu and Muslim nationalist sentiments and delegitimisation of colonial rule