TIMEHIST aims to write the history of time and temporal cultures in South Asia between the 1500s and the 1950s on a practice- and process-based approach to historical pasts. Covering this broad timespan under five modular units, the objective is to investigate and write the graded pasts of shifts and transformations that occurred within the temporal cultures of South Asia. In doing so, it departs from the usual approaches that focus either on the device (clock) or modern nation-state institutions such as army, school, factory, and office. Instead, while going beyond device-centrism, it puts ‘othered’ spaces of temporal practices such as field, farm, jungle, and river in the centre of the time’s history.

This five-year research project, headed by Dr. Nitin Sinha, started in January 2021. The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (ERC Consolidator Grant) under grant agreement No 866421.

The richness and the potential of the holdings of German archives on modern Indian history has been appreciated insufficiently so far. To the international community of historians of India, these resources can open up new research perspectives that have remained obstructed by an excessive fixation on British colonial archives. At the same time, innovative research questions can be generated for purposes of transnational historical comparison and for the historical analysis of "globalization" processes through an exploration of the modern history of German-Indian entanglements. Moreover, the resulting twofold widening of research perspectives creates new chances for a more intensive communication and cooperation between Indian and German traditions of historical inquiry - traditions that have taken cognizance of each other, so far, only to a very limited extent. Through the following initiatives the long-term project "Modern India in German Archives" aims to produce the necessary conditions for this substantial endeavour.