Mapping Memory Culture of 1942 Burma Exodus in Colin McPhedran’s White Butterflies and Dr. Krishnan Gurumurthy’s “Exodus from Burma, 1941
A Personal Account, Parts 1, 2 & 3”
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19219253 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Satabdi Sarmah (0009-0003-0456-8672, Tezpur University, corresponding author), Esther Daimari (0000-0003-0585-0787, Tezpur University) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-16 |
| Publication date | 2026-05-22 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | South Asian Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0275-9527 • E-ISSN: 2573-9476 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/02759527.2026.2673245 |
| OpenAlex | W7162079515 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 14 |
The literature of 1942 Exodus from Burma is representative of partisan historiography where the eulogy of colonial intervention often facilitates the erasure of intersectional inequities faced by the Anglo-Burmese and Indian refugees. This has precipitated the subversion of the historical agency of the heterogenous refugee communities; conflated their unique experiences into the framework of European survival tales; and rendered a superficial mediation of the underlying reality. To retrieve their historical silences and agency, the essay utilizes qualitative research methodology and theoretical frameworks of life-writing and cultural memory studies; and contends for an analysis of memory culture portrayed within their life-writings. While the memory culture of the exodus holds an overarching scope, the article validates the contention by highlighting how the represented dialectics of cognitive memory within the Anglo-Burmese life-narrative White Butterflies by Colin McPhedran, unveil the racialized divergence of Anglo-Burmese and Indian refugee experiences contrasting European survival arc. Similarly, by underscoring the medial memory in Exodus from Burma 1941: A Personal Account, Parts 1, 2 &3 written and posted by Dr. Krishnan Gurumurthy and Amitav Ghosh, the essay examines how the thematic and structural affordances of digital spaces retrieve the historical agency of the Indian refugees in the contemporary era.
Cultural memory · Forgetting · Period (music) · Relation (database) · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies · Indian History and Philosophy
Life-Writing, Cultural Memory, and Literary Studies
Mediated Memories in the Digital Age
A dual representation theory of posttraumatic stress disorder.
Between Truth, Legitimacy, and Legality in the Post-truth Era
Public History
On Collective Memory
Post-Truth
Obituary
The Limits of Life Writing
I do not envy you’
A Forgotten Long March
The 'Traditional' High Status of Women in Burma
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |