Cuttack Exhibition

The Making of a Provincial Agrarian and Industrial Fair, 1898-1903

Abstract

Cuttack Exhibition: The Making of a Provincial Agrarian and Industrial Fair, 1898-1903

 Colonial British officials, native aristocracy, and middleclass intelligentsia came together to host an agricultural and industrial exhibition in the town of Cuttack in 1898. The event was a success. It garnered good public support, and the organizers felt encouraged to turn it into an annual event. It continued to be held under the name of Cuttack Exhibition till the year 1903. Thereafter, it became part of a larger political movement in Odisha known as the Utkal Sammilani. The Sammilani began in the December of 1903, and continued to host an exhibition of agricultural and industrial produce in its annual sessions. The paper seeks to offer a short cultural history of the Cuttack Exhibition from its inception in 1898 to its merger with the Utkal Sammilani in 1903. It argues that the exhibition created a desire for a specific kind of discursive prose among the reading public of the town. This prose mobilized a language that reflected on the necessity of co-operation between the diverse layers of the local social body. The exhibition also led to the formation of public debates about moral taste. If puritanical aversion towards theatrical shows, dances and sports was on the one side of the debate, sentimental affection for local traditions of performance stood on the other. The paper shows how the participation of both European and Indian women in the event, as organizers as well as consumers, rendered respectability a crucial component of the exhibition experience. Lastly, the paper also shows how the exhibition served to construct a sense of the local that was deeply in dialogue with developments unfolding elsewhere in India.