Cemeteries, Public Memory and Raj Nostalgia in Postcolonial Britain and India

This article examines how, and why, decaying colonial-era European graveyards in India became targeted for conservation starting in the 1970s by the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia (BACSA). Cemeteries serve as a barometer signaling how both ex-colonizers and the ex-colonized have assessed colonial spaces, artifacts, and empire more generally after decolonization. Alongside working to preserve graveyards and record tombstone inscriptions in the Indian subcontinent, BACSA members-many of whom count as "old India hands"-also helped make Raj nostalgia a recurring feature of British public culture in the late twentieth century. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]