Beatriz Martinez Saavedra
I am currently a PhD student in the Department of History at the University of Warwick. I studied my undergraduate degree in history in the National Autonomous University of México (UNAM) and later, an MA in Asian and African studies at El Colegio de México.
My research entitled, Communal crisis, national identity and historical imagination in western India delves into the nature and development of nationalist ideology in the western Indian state of Gujarat from the final quarter of the nineteenth century and during the first half of the twentieth century. The aim is to deconstruct the national discourses of some representative individual figures and groups -the Arya Samaj, K.M. Munshi, Vallabhbhai Patel, among others- in order to explore their premises in articulating a narrative of symbolic elaboration of nation which has indubitable repercussions in the political culture of Indian society nowadays.
In this sense, the research aspires not only at being a contribution to the academic debate on the formation of national consciousness in Gujarat in a crucial period, but also attempts to throw light on the motivations behind communal violence based on the circulation of stereotypes, portrayals and argumentative formations.
Supervisor: Prof. David Hardiman
Funding: Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (CONACYT)
Contact: B.Martinez-Saavedra@warwick.ac.uk
