Dutch Indies Junction

The Indisch Knooppunt was initiated and implemented by KITLV together with the Indisch Wetenschappelijk Instituut (IWI). The plan came from the minds of Fried Fischer and Herman Bussemaker. Funding came from The Gesture. In 2001, Indisch organisations were surveyed about whether they have and/or know an archive and interviewed about their own genesis. This led to a digital research guide and an audio collection of interviews with Indian organisations. The objective was to write the genealogy of Indian organisations. The interviews were a combination of biographical interviews and interviews about the
organisation(s) the interviewees were involved with in the 1980s – 2005s, such as Monsoon, Indo TV, etc.

In 2014, the Indisch Knooppunt (the digital guide) was transferred to UB Leiden. They took the digital guide off the air at some point.

Themes include Indian organisations, genesis, genealogy, biography.

The collection is not yet accessible. In 2023, the collection will be transferred to UB Leiden.

During the commemoration of the end of the war in the Dutch East Indies in 1990, an Indonesian Dutchman threw an egg at Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers. The egg-thrower was outraged at the way the Dutch government ignored Dutch Indians. This ‘egg incident’ was one of the triggers for the emergence of a consultation between the Dutch government and the Dutch East Indies. It was also the beginning of a period when several Indian organisations flourished. At the same time, there were Indian organisations active that had been propagating Indian culture and identity since the 1950s. This book is about what advocates, cultural entrepreneurs, Indian media and many other organisations had to say about what was ‘Indian’ between 1980 and 2010.

‘A sharp yet nuanced analysis […]. The choice of organisations as the primary entry point to study the process of settlement is an essential addition to the literature in which the individual or rather the institutional level of analysis dominates.’