Ruins, Airplanes and Aphasia: India in the Soviet Century

Wednesday, 08 October 2025 | 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. | Room 280N, Second Floor, York Lanes, Keele Campus, York University

Vikrant Dadawala (York University)

This talk is a retrospective meditation on the Indo-Soviet romance, focusing on the vast corpus of poems, travelogues, and memoirs that record the journeys of Indian muhājirīn, poets, and politicians to the world’s largest country. Working primarily with texts in Hindi or in translation, I outline the contours of an epic encounter unfolding over three waves or stages. How do we map the new expanses of time and space that the Soviet Union unlocked for Indians in the twentieth century? What dreams and nightmares did these northern journeys inspire?

Vikrant Dadawala is an Assistant Professor of English at York University. His research has appeared in South Asia, the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Safundi, and in various edited volumes. Vikrant also writes occasional essays on history and literature for The Point. Before moving to Canada, Vikrant was a Lecturer in History and Literature at Harvard University.

This is the second event in Demos, Democracy, Democratization: South Asia Lecture Series 2025–26. Learn more at this link.