Book Reviews : CATHERINE A. ROBINSON, Tradition and Liberation: The Hindu Tradition in the Indian Women's Movement, Surrey, Curzon Press, 1999, pp. 230

Abstract

or on water. Autumn crime was different from winter crime. Besides, the incidence of crime was not necessarily greatest in regions of most acute scarcity. Reading this chapter, one feels that so much more work of this kind is waiting to be done. We also witness the working of the colonial system in its application of the rule of property. Property was so sacrosanct that its damage was regarded as more dastardly and culpable than murder! The 1837-38 famine was a landmark in that, for the first time, it witnessed a systematic attempt at famine relief on the part of the state. It was the alarming scale of crime and the almost total breakdown of law and order that necessitated this effort. Even as relief measures were being undertaken, there were fears of promoting indolence among the relief-seekers. Hence the idea was to provide only enough for the barest minimum of subsistence. There was also a reluctance to interfere with the ’natural’ functioning of the market. And yet changes were taking place. The new classifications of destitutes and paupers broke down traditional indigenous identities. Famine relief acted as a social leveller, much to the discomfiture of the traditional elites. Thus the colonial state was revealed in all its