Studies in History recent issues

Editors' Note

2009-07-28

Archaeology and the Construction of Identities in Medieval North India

Varma, S., Menon, J. — 2009-07-28

Archaeologists have at times perceived the early medieval to medieval period as marked by a break at the end of the twelfth century, thus separating the period 700–1200 CE—often described as the ‘Rajput’ period—from the period 1200–1500 CE—commonly designated as the ‘Sultanate’ period. It is frequently believed that this break is manifested in the entire range of archaeological materials with clear changes perceived between the two periods. Moreover, there has been a tendency to ascribe particular religious identities to the artefacts of the ‘Rajput’ and ‘Sultanate’ periods. Implicit in such a reading of the material culture are certain assumptions that have been made by archaeologists. One is that a change in political elites will bring about a change in daily practices and, concomitantly, in the artefacts. Another assumption is that certain artefacts indicate a specific religious/ethnic identity and that their use can be attributed only to a particular period. However, while excavating the cuttings at Indor Khera, which we dated from the tenth/eleventh to thirteenth/fourteenth centuries CE, we realized that not only was such a neat demarcation not evident in the material culture, but that the problem was far more complex and had not quite received the attention it deserved from archaeologists. This article discusses the issue of ascribing religious and ethnic identities to artefacts.

Religious Disputations and Imperial Ideology: The Purpose and Location of Akbar's Ibadatkhana

Rezavi, S. A. N. — 2009-07-28

The concept of religious debate is encountered even in the pre-Mughal period in India: we hear of special assemblies (mahzar) that held religious discussions but were confined to controversial themes within predominantly the Hanafi school of thought. But such debates were the instruments of the orthodoxy to consolidate their sway over the dissenters. The evidence of these religious assemblies (majlis) under the reign of Akbar is as early as 1570.

However, from the testimonies of a critique of Akbar (Badauni), a theologian (Shaikh Nurul Haq) and a known sycophant and courtier (Abul Fazl), it appears that the constitution of the Ibadatkhana and the discussions being held therein were not an extension of the type of religious debates that were held or organized before. It is the argument of this essay that the Ibadatkhana was an instrument of ‘tolerance’ for the imposition of ‘Reason’. Throughout his reign there was a stress on reason (‘aql’), which was to be given precedence over traditionalism (taqlid).

This article, on the basis of contemporary sources, further goes on to fix the location of the Ibadatkhana at Fathpur Sikri. The author proposes that the so-called daftarkhana was in fact the place where this important edifice was located.

Situating the Environment: Settlement, Irrigation and Agriculture in Pre-colonial Rajasthan

Kumar, M. — 2009-07-28

The complexities associated with interactions of various components of environment have not been examined in historical narratives of pre-colonial India. An important consideration for any agrarian society has been the availability of water for irrigation, and in arid and semi-arid regions—with unequal annual distribution of rains and low water table—often saline water is used even for the potable purposes. This article elucidates various systems of water management developed and maintained by the local/individual initiatives as well as those developed by the state at a larger scale for irrigation and potable purposes. It is argued here that the pre-colonial states in Rajasthan had to ensure continuity of habitation by offering concessions and support to protect the revenue base. It was a difficult act of balance in a society where political and social orders were integrated into a single complex web. The article argues that the same complex web endowed the state with an all-pervasive administrative apparatus. It questions the dominant assumption(s) centring on the relative apathy of the state towards agricultural production and resultant immunity enjoyed by the local magnates of socio-political power and even cultivators. The article also examines the nature of intricate interventions of the above-mentioned socio-political web to underline the prominent considerations enjoyed by the environment-related uncertainties.

Orwellian Rectification: Popular Churchill Biographies and the 1943 Bengal Famine

Hickman, J. — 2009-07-28

What Churchill's biographers have written about his life matter because he continues to be deployed by ideological conservatives in the Anglo-Saxon countries as the ideal leader exemplifying decisiveness and moral courage. This content analysis of seventeen popular biographies of Britain's emblematic prime minister show that they consistently ignore material about a decision taken by his government during the Second World War that had disastrous consequences for the Indians. While nearly all of the biographies treat the controversial area bombing of Germany by the Royal Air Force, which resulted in approximately 900,000 deaths of non-combatants, none treat the failure to respond to the 1943 Bengal Famine, which resulted in more deaths than the number of non-combatant deaths. This discrepancy may be explained by unconscious or conscious racist Eurocentrism that places greater value on the lives of Europeans than those of Asians. That was certainly true of their subject, and their choice of subject may reflect shared identity of values.

P.C. Joshi and the National Politics

Chandra, B. — 2009-07-28

This is a short political profile of P.C. Joshi underlying his relationship with the Communist Party of India (CPI). This article seeks to engage with Joshi and the CPI (in Joshi years) as a political organization, and to understand the reasons for its limited outreach. It also seeks to address the issue of CPI's and Joshi's, in particular, opinion on Gandhian and Nehruvian ideas to attain independence. Chandra argues that Joshi did not accept the notion that in colonial countries nationalism was a bourgeois concept and that this concept clashed with internationalism. Instead he put forth the notion of multiple loyalties to party, people and India. He did not see any clash among these three loyalties either.

P.C. Joshi started out with the Workers and Peasants Party holding the position of the General Secretary in 1928 until he joined the CPI formally in 1929. In late 1935 Joshi became the General Secretary of CPI, holding the position for twelve years. Joshi also had a long standing with students and young intellectuals, guiding them through various moments in their lives and advising them on their education.

In 1936–37 Joshi toured various provinces forming provincial party committees. He successfully continued to build the Party during 1939–41 until the resignation of the Congress ministry and a spate of repressions was imposed upon the CPI once again. During these years a large number of party leaders and activists were arrested. During Joshi's period, there was a resurgence of peasants, workers, writers and the students. The Party also organized several massive mass struggles of the people around their demands during this period. Kayyur, Punnapra-Vayalar, Tebhaga, Worli and Telengana are some of these names. The Party also played an important role in the Naval Revolt of 1946 and in the campaign to get the Indian National Army officers and soldiers released. The party members and leaders also did commendable work during the 1947 communal holocaust both in Bengal and Punjab.

This article is a lecture given by Professor Bipan Chandra on 17 August 2007, on the occasion of P.C. Joshi Birth Centenary Memorial Lecture organized by the Archives on Contemporary History, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

'Rights over Wastelands' and New Narratives of the Paraiyan Past (1860-1900)

Basu, R. S. — 2009-07-28

The rural world of nineteenth-century Tamil Nadu was highly diversified in terms of land control and ownership. Academic efforts have largely focused on the various claims to ‘privileged’ land-ownership. This overemphasis on the authority, rights, claims and protests of the ‘privileged’ too often negated the prospects of a serious introspection into the twin issues of agrestic servitude and landlessness. The present article is concerned with one group of rural labourers, who in nineteenth-century Tamil Nadu were essentially regarded as ‘agrestic serfs’. The Paraiyans were mostly landless labourers and depended for their livelihood on the dominant rural groups. Their existence as a depressed social category, denied of all privileges including landownership, provokes a serious investigation into the operation and mechanism of the institution of mirasi in the Tamil country. The definition of ‘waste’ was mired in terms of complexities emanating from the classification of lands, which were essentially referred to as anadu karambu or gramanattams. These complexities in course of the nineteenth century had fashioned differing sets of opinions within the conservative and reformist sections of the colonial bureaucracy. Such contradictions alongside discussions on the hidden ‘Paraiyan history’ have been explored to understand the broader issues centring around the ‘Sedentary Paraiyan’ as well as the ‘Slave Paraiyan’.

Book Reviews

2009-07-28

The Politics of Poetry: An Investigation into Hindu/Muslim Representation in Nabinchandra Sen's Palashir Yuddha

Chaudhuri, R. — 2008-12-09

When Nabinchandra Sen published his epic poem, Palashir Yuddha, in Calcutta in 1875, a stormerupted in civil society that divided the literary community and disrupted the functioning of the Text Book Committee for a number of years afterwards. The objections of some men in the TextBook Committee of Bengal was fundamentally connected to their bias against the representation of the Muslim king Sirajuddaula as the last independent king of Bengal, fighting to save the independence of his nation from the British aggressor. Why should a Hindu poet, they argued in private correspondence, depict a Muslim king in heroic light? Do the Hindus not have enough heroesof their own that they need to portray a Muslim as the last defender of the motherland? NabinchandraSen, in response, desperate to re-insert his text into the syllabus, sat down and amended line afterline in his poem to suit the inclinations of his right-wing critics. Railing in private against thecommittee, he nevertheless changed his text substantially, deleting the word ‘Bharat’ and ‘motherland’ from Siraj's speeches in the poem, changing the portrayal of Siraj's defence of the realminto a representation of parochial landlordism instead. This article will attempt to detail theresponses to Nabinchandra Sen's book and show how they reflect different positions on the Hindu-Muslim question, demonstrating how opposite ends of the spectrum responded in both a narrowand hostile manner as well as a liberal and secular way to a seminal text of its time.

'Tongue Has No Bone': Fixing the Assamese Language, c. 1800-c. 1930

Kar, B. — 2008-12-09

This article deals with the politics of envisioning a vernacular for Assam proper during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Through a small, connected history of orthographic contests, grammarians’ debates and print-culture, it tries to understand the various ways in and through which the boundaries of a vernacular were drawn, policed and violated during this period. Rather than narrating the complexities of the question in terms of stable and ever-present languages, this article attempts to show how the metropolis-oriented production of linguistic knowledge came to hypostatize an abstract grid of standard languages within which the mutable, heterogeneous and fluctuating speech practices (and the corresponding scribal culture) of a frontier province had to be definitively mobilized. The article explores the debates regarding the alleged dialectal status of the ‘Assamese’ and traces some connections between spatial sequence, linguistic imagination and proprietorial logic.

Jessie's Dream at Lucknow: Popular Memorializations of Dissent, Ambiguity and Class in the Heart of Empire

Mukharji, P. B. — 2008-12-09

Nineteenth-century British histories of the Indian ‘Mutiny’ have usually been seen as a moment of unequivocal imperial confidence. Little account has been taken of the large number of complex, non-historical texts that memorialized the ‘Mutiny’. Victorian Britain witnessed a wide and varied interest in the representation of events of the past. The representations spanned many genres and continually multiplied in form and medium under the impetus of an expanding commodity culture. Commoditized memorial texts—unlike professional histories—are read by an extremely diverse group of people. The wide dissemination and variety made the texts semantically unstable.

By concentrating on non-historical memorial texts of the ‘Mutiny’ and by attending to both their production and consumption, we can discern a far wider set of attitudes towards the ‘Mutiny’. Not only are many of these texts revealed to be ambivalent towards the imperial project, but also indeed they reveal a multiplicity of fissures within Victorian society.

Alexis de Tocqueville and the Indian Revolt of 1857-58

Sharma, Y. — 2008-12-09

Archaeological Problems with Specialization

Menon, J. — 2008-12-09

Archaeologists study craft production as it provides information on the ways in which artifacts were produced. Craft specialization is, however, more complicated as it involves not only techniques but also organization. In contrast to anthropology where observation can reveal the scale of production or the amount of resources or time utilized for the practise of a craft, archaeology can make only tentative interpretations. Scale of production, standardization, and levels of expertise can be understood when certain variables are known. Archaeology is a discipline that understands the past in the context of the present and thus often uses the methods of production and the function of present-day artefacts to interpret ancient artefacts. However, there is also a tendency to use present-day organizational systems to understand past production mechanisms. This may be problematic especially where past systems varied greatly from modern ones. The particular socioeconomic background of past systems must account for the forms that ancient specialization took. To explicate this, a case study of manufacture in a Harappan settlement is taken to understand the context of craft activities. The study shows that production in a large urban centre could be dispersed and episodic and yet be specialized.

Book Reviews

2008-12-09

Samaj, Jati and Desh: Reflections on Nationhood in Late Colonial Bengal

Gupta, S. — 2008-03-25

This article redefines ideas about nationhood in late colonial Bengal by studying the intersection between three main conceptual sites of identity formation—samaj (social collectivity); jati (a multidimensional term implying birth, caste, race, tribe and nation); and desh (sub-region/region/ province/country). It concentrates on how samaj was deployed to mediate the fragmentations of jati and desh in the literati's agenda of recreating a collective self and approximating nationhood. These mediations reveal how ideas about nationhood drew on pre-existing indigenous unities embedded in past samajs, and a harmonious social order that enmeshed with ‘Aryan’ cultural values. By highlighting such origins, the article seeks to qualify existing assumptions about the modernity of colonial nationalisms and their borrowed, derivative and political nature. Situating samaj in two interrelated temporal and connotative contexts—as a historical community from whence the nation emerged, and as an idea-in-practice (an ongoing social, experiential reality having a modern functionality), this article locates nationhood in a long historical tradition, to uncover the ways in which past unities were reoriented in the modern (late colonial) period to produce the notion of a nation.

Anarchies of Youth: The Oaten Affair and Colonial Bengal

Sen, S. — 2008-03-25

This article examines the crisis in Calcutta's Presidency College in 1916, when a white professor was assaulted and the college closed down. Focusing on conversations in the vernacular press, Anglo-Indian newspapers and the colonial government, it unpacks the meanings of ‘anarchy’, the word commonly used by all observers to describe the condition of young, middle-class Indian males. By locating this apparent anarchy in the context of nationalist agitation, the internal convulsions of middle-class Bengal, colonial race relations, wartime anxieties, and conflicting understandings of youth as a social phenomenon, it argues that the discourse of anarchy articulated a perception of incompatibility between colonialism and youthfulness that was broadly shared by whites and Indians of diverse political persuasions. At the same time this vision of deviant youth provided a platform on which blame could be assigned, and on which the competing factions of colonial Bengal could attack one another.

Localities, Coins and the Transition to the Early State in the Deccan

Parasher-Sen, A. — 2008-03-25

Looking from the perspective of different localities while making the numismatic data central to our analysis, this article not only raises critical questions about the transition to early state, but also interrogates the nature of this state in the Deccan. Localities cannot be understood as isolated historical entities, but in the context of region-based studies they cannot be treated as mere peri-pheries either. Since this task necessarily entails a minute and an in-depth study of the sources, we shall take two illustrative examples of localities in what we call the Telangana and Andhra areas of the present-day state of Andhra Pradesh, with their nodal points and spread around the sites of Kotalingala–Dhullikatta–Peddabankur and Amaravati–Bhattiprolu–Vaddamanu respectively. The coins under discussion shall necessarily be related to the broader archaeological and material profile of these two localities. There is a general tendency among historians to first look at the history of a region from its broadest definition and then move to its smaller units. Here we prefer to first focus on the history of small entities or localities, and then move both vertically and horizontally to etch out the historical moorings of early society and state in the region as a whole—the Deccan in this case study.

Organized Household Production and the Emergence of the Sangha

Tyagi, J. — 2008-03-25

This article attempts to trace social transformations that can be detected through the comparative study of early textual representations—Brahmanical and Buddhist. A comparative study of the early Grhyasutras (800 BCE–400 BCE) with some of the earliest portions of the Vinaya texts (400–200 BCE) is interesting as one can pinpoint shifts and changes within these texts which show that seemingly innocuous social transitions in matters related to production, reproduction and social interdependence at the micro level of the household and community, not only reflect larger trends at the level of the state and society but also have overarching social implications. The Grhyasutras have an emerging consciousness of the household as a social unit and the brahmanical compilers are anxious about how organization of production and reproduction within the household is to be regulated as they understand that the householder is crucial for creating social order. The Vinaya texts, rather than being anxious about household production, are familiar with it and seek to channelize this production to a larger, more elaborate, complex social organization, the sangha, which, although deriving its sustenance from resources generated from households, seeks to carve an identity for itself by being the very antithesis of the household—a community of bhikkus stripped of kinship bonds, not partaking in production or reproduction activities but bound with a common ideology. The social implications of these representations are discussed in this article.

Understanding Transitions at the Crossroads of Asia: c. Mid Second Century B.C.E. to c. Third Century C.E.

Ghosh, S. — 2008-03-25

The expression ‘Crossroads of Asia’ has been borrowed from a publication by Elizabeth Errington and Joe Cribb. It seemed to be the most befitting expression to underline the wide geographical horizon extending from Afghanistan to north-west India, which this paper intends to dwell upon.

In earlier historiography this period, generally known as the post-Mauryan period, was often seen as one of ‘foreign invasions’. The paper would seek to examine how far this notion was guided by the representation of these ‘foreigners’, their social standings in the contemporary texts. The paper will also bring in certain images that were markers of Hellenism. People of the north-west were themselves of varying cultures, and the region displayed networks of wide ranging territorial and inter-civilizational contacts. A synthesis of the archaeological materials found in this region indicates multi-prong linkages of which the Central Asian connection played a significant role in the shaping of the culture of the region.

In Pursuit of the Past: The Development of an 'Official' and 'Academic' Archaeology in Bengal

Basak, B. — 2008-03-25

This article tries to situate the development of archaeology as a discipline in Bengal in the official and the academic sphere covering the period from the first half of the twentieth century to the early 1960s. The beginning of an official archaeology is seen in the activities of the Archaeological Survey, Eastern Circle, as represented by its annual reports, and may be seen as part of a totalizing mission of the colonial state in the post-Mutiny era. After the dissolution of these reports in 1920–21, Bengal began to feature in a limited way in the annual reports of the Survey, and later in its reviews. The birth of an academic archaeology is traced in the activities of the University of Calcutta. This needs to be seen in the backdrop of an initiative, made by Wheeler, the then director general of the Survey, to promote the study of past heritage in organizations outside the Survey.

Book Reviews

2008-03-25

Delhi's Belly: On the Management of Water, Sewage and Excreta in a Changing Urban Environment during the Nineteenth Century

Mann, M. — 2007-03-01

The article locates Delhi's urban environmental history firmly within the matrix of colonial urban politics, and analyses the relationship between sanitary discourse in Europe and the ‘politics of sanitation’ in India. It describes how colonial town planning, particularly in the context of Delhi, segregated sanitary and unsanitary spaces on a racial basis, the former being inhabited largely by the colonizers and the latter by the colonized. It discusses the technological and administrative measures undertaken by the colonial authorities to improve sanitary conditions on the one hand, and provide fresh water on the other. The article argues that New Delhi, and its water and waste disposal systems, was conceived of in a segregated way with respect to the old city, and civic services too benefited the new city at the expense of the old. It establishes a contrast between conceptions of the city in the West (as modern and progressive spaces) and in India (as unsanitary and therefore uncivilized spaces). Old Delhi, the author argues, was made ‘old’ through neglect and underdevelopment.

Empire in the Hills: The Making of Hill Stations in Colonial India

Pradhan, Q. — 2007-03-01

The article focuses on the transformation of the four hill stations of Simla, Darjeeling, Ootacamund and Mount Abu in the nineteenth century from summer stations to imperial capitals. The taking of hill sites was not uncontested though many official and individual English records convey an impression that it was ‘peaceable’. However, hill sites were not acquired without protracted negotiations with the local rulers. The article has used various lease documents and other incidental references to indicate the tensions involved in acquisition.

Early developments are traced to accentuate the large-scale changes wrought in the late nine-teenth century with the declaration of these sites as imperial capitals. The political ramifications of such a move are explored along with the symbolic significance of exodus and its adherence to royal protocol. The main thrust of the argument is that the British were throughout conscious of their position as rulers and every action was calculated to strengthen their hegemonic position. The construction of roads, railways and bridges aimed at showing the ‘awesome’ technological superiority of the English in the eyes of the ‘natives’.

While tracing the imperial developments, the article probes the tensions and contradictions of colonial urban development, especially with the coming of the imperial capitals. The earlier appeal of the picturesque was marred by the nature of activities undertaken by the English in the late nineteenth century. The very exclusivity which the English sought for themselves was neutralized by their need to provide urban comforts which involved the use of Indian labour. Congestion and fears of subversion and diseases, which threatened the British in the Indian plains, haunted them in the hills by the twentieth century.

Representations of Ireland in the Political Thinking of Sri Aurobindo Ghosh

Sen, A. — 2007-03-01

In an interview given to Henry W. Nevinson in December 1907, Aurobindo Ghosh had spoken about his purpose regarding the Swadeshi Movement which, he explained, was the Irish policy of Sinn Fein—a universal swadeshi not limited to goods but including every phase of life. Many of his articles written between 1894 and 1910 and comments after 1910 also contain allusions to Ireland and its freedom struggle in different contexts. However several years later, sometime between 1943 and 1946, by which time Aurobindo had become a mystic, at his ashram in Pondicherry Aurobindo took recourse to an entirely different position. This article is an attempt to find out answers to the contradictory stand taken by Aurobindo in regard to Ireland and its freedom struggle by analysing his political writings, interviews and comments which contained references to Ireland and its freedom struggle. In the larger context, this article attempts to analyse the conflict inherent in the personality of a Western-educated Bengali. This article argues that Aurobindo had knowledge of the developments in Ireland and was influenced by them to a certain extent, which in turn shaped his representations of Ireland that shifted over time. Aurobindo's representations of Ireland were determined by his changing experience of the two worlds, Occidental and Oriental, and suggest that liminality and hybridity are necessary attributes of the colonial man and as such colonial identities are always a matter of flux and agony.

The Congress and the INA Trials, 1945-50: A Contest over the Perception of 'Nationalist' Politics

Alpes, M. J. — 2007-03-01

Whilst during the war the Indian National Army (hereafter INA) could be charged with having been the ‘puppet army’ of a fascist regime, the INA was brought firmly into the realms of anti-colonial and nationalist discourse after the war. Despite its earlier very distanced position, the Congress chose in 1945 to appropriate the trials of the INA soldiers to its own political advantage. Due to its emotive value, the INA became a symbol of national pride and anti-colonial resistance. Political engineering of the Congress can largely explain why the INA men had their biggest impact as prisoners of war, rather than as actual soldiers. Whilst the Congress dominated the perception and portrayal of the INA, the issue also helped to reinforce the ‘secular’ and ‘nationalist’ image of the Congress itself. The cause of the INA, the Congress and even the Indian ‘nation’ began to merge. The Congress by appropriating the perception and portrayal of the INA also managed to champion the very meaning of ‘nationalism’ itself.

Book Reviews

2007-03-01