Pub Date : 2003-12-01DOI: 10.1177/001946460304000408
Sasheej Hegde
While Wickremesekera emphasises European perceptions, he differentiates himself somewhat from scholars of Orientalism (including Edward Said and Ronald Inden) who stressed how Europeans constructed Indian difference based on European-centred cultural concerns. For Wickremesekera, there were ’genuine differences’ (p. 183) between the two military cultures. Further, while Wickremesekera also invokes scholars who highlight dialogue, continuities and collaboration between Indians and Britons (including Irschick and C.A. Bayly), he himself mainly emphasises 3ritish attitudes, with few direct Indian voices. For example, he measures the essential desires of Indian sepoys by the issues they mutinied
{"title":"Book Reviews : PARTHA CHATTERJEE and ANJAN GHOSH, eds, History and the Present, Delhi, Perman ent Black, 2002, pp.273","authors":"Sasheej Hegde","doi":"10.1177/001946460304000408","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460304000408","url":null,"abstract":"While Wickremesekera emphasises European perceptions, he differentiates himself somewhat from scholars of Orientalism (including Edward Said and Ronald Inden) who stressed how Europeans constructed Indian difference based on European-centred cultural concerns. For Wickremesekera, there were ’genuine differences’ (p. 183) between the two military cultures. Further, while Wickremesekera also invokes scholars who highlight dialogue, continuities and collaboration between Indians and Britons (including Irschick and C.A. Bayly), he himself mainly emphasises 3ritish attitudes, with few direct Indian voices. For example, he measures the essential desires of Indian sepoys by the issues they mutinied","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2003-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88812959","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2003-12-01DOI: 10.1177/001946460304000409
A. Mukhopadhyay
drive which drowns any social system in chaos if not regulated-has been made before by psychoanalytical history. Ray unfortunately relies primarily on Freud when he conflates the social regulation of the human sexual urges and the subsequent transubstantiation of this basic drive into expressed and unexpressed emotions that may be enunciated, involuntarily spilled, or explosively ejected in private or public domains. Ray’s exposition on the way in which emotions undergird the two constituting factors at the base of all social systems-gender and class-is thought-provoking. He rightly holds that status and power, not just simplistic economic determinism, define class as a fundamental category. From the complex variations of class interlocking with caste across the Indian subcontinent, Ray detaches the region-specific social hierarchy prevalent in Bengal and attempts to locate emotions within this matrix. This conjoining of the manner of emotional locution in both public and private spaces to the caste structure with its unique ordering of sexual relations, its negotiations with hierarchical power structures, and the creation of space for the sexual exploitation of the lower castes by the higher castes, has not been attempted as a serious intellectual exercise before this.
{"title":"Book Reviews : RAJAT KANTA RAY, Exploring Emotional History: Gender, Mentality and Literature in the Indian Awakening, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 333","authors":"A. Mukhopadhyay","doi":"10.1177/001946460304000409","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460304000409","url":null,"abstract":"drive which drowns any social system in chaos if not regulated-has been made before by psychoanalytical history. Ray unfortunately relies primarily on Freud when he conflates the social regulation of the human sexual urges and the subsequent transubstantiation of this basic drive into expressed and unexpressed emotions that may be enunciated, involuntarily spilled, or explosively ejected in private or public domains. Ray’s exposition on the way in which emotions undergird the two constituting factors at the base of all social systems-gender and class-is thought-provoking. He rightly holds that status and power, not just simplistic economic determinism, define class as a fundamental category. From the complex variations of class interlocking with caste across the Indian subcontinent, Ray detaches the region-specific social hierarchy prevalent in Bengal and attempts to locate emotions within this matrix. This conjoining of the manner of emotional locution in both public and private spaces to the caste structure with its unique ordering of sexual relations, its negotiations with hierarchical power structures, and the creation of space for the sexual exploitation of the lower castes by the higher castes, has not been attempted as a serious intellectual exercise before this.","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2003-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80033005","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2003-12-01DOI: 10.1177/001946460304000410
K.M. Shrimali
two fundamental social categories. Unfortunately, Ray’s exclusive reliance on Tarashankar Bandopadhyay’s depiction of the complex inter-connectivity between land, labour and status in rural Bengal automatically puts a brake on his attempt to reveal a wider theme of emotional patterns characterising the bhaclrcclok and the chotalog. So speculative a set of investigations based on purely literary sources cannot fall into neat formulations. Ray, emerging more as a perspicacious literary critic than a conventional historian, seeks to ground his critical approach within a selective choice of texts, which leaves a suspicion that different texts would have hampered the free flow of his main argument: that nineteenth-century Bengali literature, though recast in a different mould, had thematic and emotional continuities with its pre-colonial past. Few will dispute the indigenous twist to the fiction erupting in colonial Bengal. Some will agree to the existence of an emotional
{"title":"Book Reviews : KIRIT K. SHAH, The Problem of Identity: Women in Early Indian Inscriptions, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 194","authors":"K.M. Shrimali","doi":"10.1177/001946460304000410","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460304000410","url":null,"abstract":"two fundamental social categories. Unfortunately, Ray’s exclusive reliance on Tarashankar Bandopadhyay’s depiction of the complex inter-connectivity between land, labour and status in rural Bengal automatically puts a brake on his attempt to reveal a wider theme of emotional patterns characterising the bhaclrcclok and the chotalog. So speculative a set of investigations based on purely literary sources cannot fall into neat formulations. Ray, emerging more as a perspicacious literary critic than a conventional historian, seeks to ground his critical approach within a selective choice of texts, which leaves a suspicion that different texts would have hampered the free flow of his main argument: that nineteenth-century Bengali literature, though recast in a different mould, had thematic and emotional continuities with its pre-colonial past. Few will dispute the indigenous twist to the fiction erupting in colonial Bengal. Some will agree to the existence of an emotional","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2003-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73982291","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2003-12-01DOI: 10.1177/001946460304000402
V. Saravanan
The article attempts to highlight the colonial commercial forest policy vis-à-vis tribal private forests in the Kalrayan hills of Salem and Baramahal region of Madras Presidency during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (1792-1881). Further, it analyses the different strategies employed by the colonial government to encroach upon private forests, dis regarding the traditional rights of the tribals. It concludes that the British administration intruded into tribal areas merely to bring the abundant forest resources under its sole control to further commercial interests, and not to protect them from the contractors or preserve the environment.
{"title":"Colonial commercial forest policy and tribal private forests in Madras Presidency: 1792-1881","authors":"V. Saravanan","doi":"10.1177/001946460304000402","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460304000402","url":null,"abstract":"The article attempts to highlight the colonial commercial forest policy vis-à-vis tribal private forests in the Kalrayan hills of Salem and Baramahal region of Madras Presidency during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (1792-1881). Further, it analyses the different strategies employed by the colonial government to encroach upon private forests, dis regarding the traditional rights of the tribals. It concludes that the British administration intruded into tribal areas merely to bring the abundant forest resources under its sole control to further commercial interests, and not to protect them from the contractors or preserve the environment.","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2003-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83192617","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2003-10-01DOI: 10.1177/001946460304000307
Gautam Chakravarty
sources indicate that they had some impact on the organisation of commercial manufacture in the period covered by the book. Textile artisans, especially those producing high-value fabrics, apparently settled often in palaiyams, that is, the fortified strongholds of palaiyakkarar. Elsewhere, we find that palaiyakkarar were also concerned with protecting property and were the agents of a regional penal regime. One would have to look closely at quotidian practices of domination not only of regional but also of local south Indian authorities in order to reconstruct ancien regime state attitudes towards labour. The results of such enquiries may well disappoint the seekers of ’pre-colonial innocence’. The good news is, however, that there is much scope for further research on the ’transition to a colonial
{"title":"Book Reviews : KATHLEEN TAYLOR, Sir John Woodroffe, Tantra and Bengal: 'An Indian Soul in a European Body', Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2001, pp. 319","authors":"Gautam Chakravarty","doi":"10.1177/001946460304000307","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460304000307","url":null,"abstract":"sources indicate that they had some impact on the organisation of commercial manufacture in the period covered by the book. Textile artisans, especially those producing high-value fabrics, apparently settled often in palaiyams, that is, the fortified strongholds of palaiyakkarar. Elsewhere, we find that palaiyakkarar were also concerned with protecting property and were the agents of a regional penal regime. One would have to look closely at quotidian practices of domination not only of regional but also of local south Indian authorities in order to reconstruct ancien regime state attitudes towards labour. The results of such enquiries may well disappoint the seekers of ’pre-colonial innocence’. The good news is, however, that there is much scope for further research on the ’transition to a colonial","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2003-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/001946460304000307","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64785814","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2003-10-01DOI: 10.1177/001946460304000303
D. Kooiman
In the interaction between Indian princes and British political officers, ceremonial played a prominent part, especially in forms of salutation and seating arrangements. Hence, the question of a British Resident, quoted in the title of this article, on the proper ceremonial at a Maharaja's visit. The Political Departmentfelt convinced that ceremonial, 'a bit of bunting' in Lord Lytton's patronising words, met a deeply felt oriental need for pomp and circumstance. Some officers, however, acknowledged that in princely states, the maintenance of regal splendour could be more important than sound administration. Similar shades of opinion can be found among social scientists studying court ceremonial. Is ceremonial the hand- maiden of political power or is it rather the other way round?
{"title":"Meeting at the threshold, at the edge of the carpet or somewhere in between? Questions of ceremonial in princely India","authors":"D. Kooiman","doi":"10.1177/001946460304000303","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460304000303","url":null,"abstract":"In the interaction between Indian princes and British political officers, ceremonial played a prominent part, especially in forms of salutation and seating arrangements. Hence, the question of a British Resident, quoted in the title of this article, on the proper ceremonial at a Maharaja's visit. The Political Departmentfelt convinced that ceremonial, 'a bit of bunting' in Lord Lytton's patronising words, met a deeply felt oriental need for pomp and circumstance. Some officers, however, acknowledged that in princely states, the maintenance of regal splendour could be more important than sound administration. Similar shades of opinion can be found among social scientists studying court ceremonial. Is ceremonial the hand- maiden of political power or is it rather the other way round?","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2003-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/001946460304000303","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64785685","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2003-10-01DOI: 10.1177/001946460304000304
S. Blackburn
Drawing on field recordings and recent scholarship on social memory, this article analyses colonial contacts and oral histories in Arunachal Pradesh, in northeast India. It argues that, despite its geographic and cultural isolation, Arunachal did not escape the armed conflict that dominated relations between tribes and external authorities during the colonial period. Two events and their causes are examined: the first visit by a British official to a tribe in 1897; and the raid on a military outpost by tribesmen in 1948. Comparing written histories and documents with local stories about these events, the author demonstrates the need for oral histories.
{"title":"Colonial contact in the 'hidden land': Oral history among the Apatanis of Arunachal Pradesh","authors":"S. Blackburn","doi":"10.1177/001946460304000304","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460304000304","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on field recordings and recent scholarship on social memory, this article analyses colonial contacts and oral histories in Arunachal Pradesh, in northeast India. It argues that, despite its geographic and cultural isolation, Arunachal did not escape the armed conflict that dominated relations between tribes and external authorities during the colonial period. Two events and their causes are examined: the first visit by a British official to a tribe in 1897; and the raid on a military outpost by tribesmen in 1948. Comparing written histories and documents with local stories about these events, the author demonstrates the need for oral histories.","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2003-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/001946460304000304","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64785697","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2003-10-01DOI: 10.1177/001946460304000305
Janaki Nair
{"title":"Book Reviews : NANDINI GOOPTU, The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early Twentieth Century India. Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. xxiii + 464","authors":"Janaki Nair","doi":"10.1177/001946460304000305","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460304000305","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2003-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/001946460304000305","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64785742","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2003-10-01DOI: 10.1177/001946460304000301
H. Tieken
The reconstruction of the early history of Tamilnadu has been based mainly on the so- called Cankam poetry. This poetry is generally taken to provide descriptions of Tamilnadu by contemporary poets during the period before the rise of the Pallavas and the introduction of Sanskrit culture in the South. However, the argument is basically circular, that is to say, Cankam poetry is dated before the Pallavas because it does not mention the Pallavas and describes a purely indigenous culture which is hardly touched by Sanskrit culture. In the present article it will be argued that Cankam poetry does not describe a contemporary soci ety or the poets' own culture, but a society from the past, or life in small, primitive villages which are far removed from the poets' own cosmopolitan milieu. This means that Cankam poetry is to be dated after the period it describes. On closer consideration, we appear to be dealing with certain literary genres borrowed from the North Indian Kâvya tradition, more in particular with compositions which are typically not written in Sanskrit but in Prâkrit or Apabhramśa. In Cankam literature, the regional Tamil language has been assigned the role of a Prâkrit. This use of Tamil we otherwise meet in the inscriptions of the Pântiyas of the eighth or ninth century and only in the inscriptions of that dynasty. This suggests that Cankam poetry was composed by the same poets who were responsible for the Velvikudi and Dalavaypuram inscriptions of the Pântiyas. As such, it is no longer possible to use this poetry for the reconstruction of the early history of Tamilnadu. On the other hand, Cankam poetry does supply interesting material for the study of the cultural politics of a newly arisen regional dynasty in eighth-century South India.
{"title":"Old Tamil Cahkam literature and the so-called Cankam period","authors":"H. Tieken","doi":"10.1177/001946460304000301","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460304000301","url":null,"abstract":"The reconstruction of the early history of Tamilnadu has been based mainly on the so- called Cankam poetry. This poetry is generally taken to provide descriptions of Tamilnadu by contemporary poets during the period before the rise of the Pallavas and the introduction of Sanskrit culture in the South. However, the argument is basically circular, that is to say, Cankam poetry is dated before the Pallavas because it does not mention the Pallavas and describes a purely indigenous culture which is hardly touched by Sanskrit culture. In the present article it will be argued that Cankam poetry does not describe a contemporary soci ety or the poets' own culture, but a society from the past, or life in small, primitive villages which are far removed from the poets' own cosmopolitan milieu. This means that Cankam poetry is to be dated after the period it describes. On closer consideration, we appear to be dealing with certain literary genres borrowed from the North Indian Kâvya tradition, more in particular with compositions which are typically not written in Sanskrit but in Prâkrit or Apabhramśa. In Cankam literature, the regional Tamil language has been assigned the role of a Prâkrit. This use of Tamil we otherwise meet in the inscriptions of the Pântiyas of the eighth or ninth century and only in the inscriptions of that dynasty. This suggests that Cankam poetry was composed by the same poets who were responsible for the Velvikudi and Dalavaypuram inscriptions of the Pântiyas. As such, it is no longer possible to use this poetry for the reconstruction of the early history of Tamilnadu. On the other hand, Cankam poetry does supply interesting material for the study of the cultural politics of a newly arisen regional dynasty in eighth-century South India.","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2003-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/001946460304000301","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64785641","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2003-10-01DOI: 10.1177/001946460304000302
Awadhendra Sharan
This article seeks to unpack the administrative and knowledge practices through which the community of Depressed Classes/Scheduled Castes was delineated in colonial Bihar. It does so by examining both the distinctions that were posed between Untouchables and the upper castes, and between them and the Criminal Tribes. Four fields are examined with respect to the marking of these boundaries-social/religious, law and order, education, and political representation. This article argues that right through the colonial period, there remained a great deal of ambiguity about how to distinguish lower castes from tribes, unclean castes from Untouchables and these from the Depressed Classes, ambiguities that were consequent upon the particular enumerative exercise being undertaken.
{"title":"From caste to category: Colonial knowledge practices and the Depressed/Scheduled Castes of Bihar","authors":"Awadhendra Sharan","doi":"10.1177/001946460304000302","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460304000302","url":null,"abstract":"This article seeks to unpack the administrative and knowledge practices through which the community of Depressed Classes/Scheduled Castes was delineated in colonial Bihar. It does so by examining both the distinctions that were posed between Untouchables and the upper castes, and between them and the Criminal Tribes. Four fields are examined with respect to the marking of these boundaries-social/religious, law and order, education, and political representation. This article argues that right through the colonial period, there remained a great deal of ambiguity about how to distinguish lower castes from tribes, unclean castes from Untouchables and these from the Depressed Classes, ambiguities that were consequent upon the particular enumerative exercise being undertaken.","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2003-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/001946460304000302","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64785650","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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