Tamils and Greater India: Some issues of connected histories

Abstract

The idea of connected histories has been in vogue for some time especially in the context of maritime history and linkages in the early modern period. A central and distinguishing feature of connected histories is to understand and contextualize movements and intersections of people, objects and ideas. In the nineteenth century, especially within the framework of empire, new modalities of migration and self-representation emerged to complicate the ideas of region and identity. One such mode of representation was the idea of Greater India that had multiple public manifestations. This article is an attempt to ask fresh questions mostly about the afterlife of the idea, of its deployment in journalistic practice and to investigate how and whether the Tamil experience in South East Asia was written into it in a meaningful and sustained way.