{"id":473,"date":"2017-06-09T16:27:35","date_gmt":"2017-06-09T16:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ben-musgrave.co.uk\/?p=473"},"modified":"2017-06-09T16:30:04","modified_gmt":"2017-06-09T16:30:04","slug":"in-search-of-indigo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ben-musgrave.co.uk\/?p=473","title":{"rendered":"In search of Indigo"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>I\u2019ve been commissioned by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tara-arts.com\">Tara Arts<\/a> to write a play about the atrocities committed by British Indigo Planters in Bengal in the 19th century. The systematic cruelty, abuse of power, violence, and injustice was so severe that in 1860 the Indigo farmers \u00a0rose up in extraordinary protest against the planters, and ultimately forced \u00a0cultivation out of Bengal.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Funded by the Royal Society of Literature\u2019s Brookleaze Grant, I decided to travel to Bangladesh in order to find out about\u00a0the legacy of Indigo cultivation in in Bengal (specifically Bangladesh). I had an extraordinary trip, and discoverd some remarkable, and strange, and haunting things. I intend to write more about the trip in due course, but in the meantime here are some images from the trip.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"flexslider-wrapper\"><div class=\"flexslider\"><ul class=\"slides\"><li><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"904\" height=\"500\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ben-musgrave.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/2V1A5056-904x500.jpg\" class=\"slide-image\" alt=\"\" \/><div class=\"flex-caption\">In search of the Indigo plant (a legume), which - because of the taboo surrounding its tainted history, was not grown in Bengal for over a century. But the plant continued to grow as a weed on the sides of roads.<\/div><\/li><li><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"904\" height=\"500\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ben-musgrave.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/2V1A5119-904x500.jpg\" class=\"slide-image\" alt=\"\" \/><div class=\"flex-caption\">What ghosts remain in the eerie ruins of a Nil Kuthi, an Indigo plantation house?<\/div><\/li><li><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"799\" height=\"500\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ben-musgrave.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/CxiUgyJWgAA-zdj-1-799x500.jpg\" class=\"slide-image\" alt=\"\" \/><div class=\"flex-caption\">Terrible secrets, forgotten but not forgotten, in the ruined tanks by the mango trees.<\/div><\/li><li><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"904\" height=\"500\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ben-musgrave.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/2V1A4950-904x500.jpg\" class=\"slide-image\" alt=\"\" \/><div class=\"flex-caption\">But in Rangpur farmers are reclaiming this strange plant with a tainted history...<\/div><\/li><li><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"904\" height=\"500\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ben-musgrave.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/CxiXePqXEAAkcBN-904x500.jpg\" class=\"slide-image\" alt=\"\" \/><div class=\"flex-caption\">...And making something beautiful (at LIVING BLUE)<\/div><\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>At the end of August 2017 the play will be workshopped at the National Theatre Studio.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve been commissioned by Tara Arts to write a play about the atrocities committed by British Indigo Planters in Bengal in the 19th century. The systematic cruelty, abuse of power, violence, and injustice was so severe that in 1860 the Indigo farmers \u00a0rose up in extraordinary protest against the planters, and ultimately forced \u00a0cultivation out [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","content-columns-1"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ben-musgrave.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ben-musgrave.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ben-musgrave.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ben-musgrave.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ben-musgrave.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=473"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ben-musgrave.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":480,"href":"https:\/\/www.ben-musgrave.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions\/480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ben-musgrave.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ben-musgrave.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ben-musgrave.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}