Prelude
Imagine! A glorious Indofuture world, an alternative future timeline where India has thrived and was never colonised! A world that speaks to the difficult issues of our actual present, with both utopian optimism and satirical critiques, while addressing the needs of this fictional future.
On the coast of Mumbai, where you would see the Gateway of India, a testimony to British colonialism, we have the Gateway to the World. Using advanced technology and the brilliance of its people, in this alternate future just a few years from now, India has crafted this Indian-inspired architectural marvel that transports people and goods anywhere in the world in the blink of an eye.
Fifty years on, in this alternate enlightened future, are you still finding strange hands groping you? Fear no more with A Saree Like Draupadi’s: a nano-fabric that self-replicates as it is unwound. Leave your worries of being manhandled behind. With A Saree Like Draupadi’s, the wearer will never be disrobed!
Looking forward thirty years, are you still not satisfied with your skin color? Here, in Skin Lab, anyone can choose how they look. Want to look more fair? You can, just use this simple device to pick your perfect tone and let the technicians do their work.
A few short decades later, India is exploring the stars. Indian ships are on the way to bring brave adventurers to new frontiers. Of course, some alien life may have to be displaced to make room. These difficult decisions have been made easier through a game! COLONIZR is here for the Indian public to have their say in choosing which aliens to keep and which to remove from the glorious new space territory.
Jumping ahead a century, we see a find of ancestral proportions! Ancient recordings stored in an archaic technology have been decoded by our brilliant scientists: what seems like a synergy of moving typography and a speech unheard for centuries. An ancient language has been reincarnated! Though none still alive understand what it means, this symphony of words and movements has enchanted a generation.
So, what does imagining an Indofuture or Indofuturism do?
For you and for Indian people everywhere? How does imagining a future help anyone or anything?
Manifesto
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Indofuturism is here to empower the Indian diaspora to respond to colonialism and address its continuing impacts in post-colonial times.
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Indofuturism calls for artists, designers, scholars, writers, technologists, creators of Indian descent to form a community of Indofuturists.
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The lens of Indofuturism imagines an alternative future for India without its inglorious colonial past, in order to help Indian people reorient their post-colonial, post-apocalyptic present.
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Indofuturism reclaims aspects of India’s pre-colonial culture that were lost through colonialism by reincarnating them in an Indofuture.
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Indofuturism highlights the pressing social conditions in contemporary India by critiquing prejudices prevalent within Indian communities.
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Alongside the idealistic ambitions found in other Postcolonial Futurisms (which it seeks inspiration from), Indofuturism offers its own unique characteristics, illustrated by critical and dark narratives that allow discursive interventions.
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Indofuturism refuses to recreate the fabled lived “Golden Bird” era, as this kind of a utopian depiction is not useful in addressing the social situations that beset the present-day reality of India.
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Indofuturism speaks to a diaspora that shares a relatively uniform cultural experience, creating room for a majority of Indian descendants that might be spread across the world to join in.
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Indofuturism is a heretofore under-explored space for Indofuturists to delve into, and give Indian people a face in the future.
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Indofuturism inspires a feeling of belongingness in any who are of Indian descent and sets the stage for these people to creatively engage with the potential of Indian culture.
