History, Memory and Memorabilia: Kamala Dasgupta and the Politics of Remembering Revolutionary Bengal

Abstract

This paper examines the interplay between memory, history, nationalism, and visual cultures by focussing on a framed photograph of a revolver gifted to Kamala Dasgupta’s family by the Calcutta (Now Kolkata) police after Indian independence. Once used in an attempted assassination during the anti-colonial struggle, the revolver has become an anomaly in the nation’s collective memory–a ‘floating signifier’ with an unfixed meaning. Analysing the photograph as a media spectacle and a symbol within national myths, I argue that it disrupts linear narratives of progress that dominate nationalist historiography. The article shows how Kamala’s act of procuring the revolver has been overshadowed by her comrade Bina Das’s violent act. Drawing on theories of the spectacle, national temporality, and subaltern studies, I illustrate the selective commemoration of revolutionary violence in India. The research in this paper demonstrates how precarious and subaltern histories such as Kamala’s can destabilise established national narratives and pluralise temporal orders of the nation.