Indian Economic & Social History Review recent issues

Introduction: Princely spaces and domestic voices: New perspectives on the Indian princely states

Ikegame, A., Major, A. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:14:16 PDT

Re-visioning princely states in South Asian historiography: A review

Zutshi, C. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:14:17 PDT

This article reviews several key works within the scholarship on princely states produced in the past decade, in order to highlight their engagement with larger conversations in South Asian historiography. It argues that princely state scholarship no longer operates on the margins; rather, it has the potential to, and does, contribute to issues such as the idea of the feudal formation, the nature of modernity and the modern state, the articulation of religious and ethnic identities, women's status in Islam, and indigenous agency and resistance in colonial knowledge production, to name a few, that animate South Asian history while also transcending its narrow confines. Rather than analysing princely states in opposition to British India, these works approach them as distinct entities where particular social, economic and political conditions, combined with an interaction with external ideas and movements, produced certain outcomes in the realms of state, society and collective identity. Moreover, by combining archival research with ethnographic studies, these works have allowed access to the oral histories, memories, and vernacular literary traditions of several marginalised social groups in South Asia. More remains to be done, however, as we continue to decolonise these realms in popular memory and scholarly analysis, and the article suggests some directions princely state scholarship can take in this age of global historiographies.

Enslaving spaces: Domestic slavery and the spatial, ideological and practical limits of colonial control in the nineteenth-century Rajput and Maratha states

Major, A. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:14:17 PDT

This article explores British attitudes to domestic slavery in the Princely States of Rajputana and Malwa in the nineteenth-century. Working primarily from colonial archives, it analyses British conceptions of the nature of slavery and slave-trading in Rajputana, making compari-sons between this and their perception of slavery in its wider Indian and transatlantic contexts in order to analyse British understandings of Rajput identity, family and gender relations, as well as their conception of the nature and limits of their political and moral influence. It argues that British constructions of ‘benign’ domestic slavery were juxtaposed against concerns about the implications of slave-trading for crime, stability and the integrity of territorial borders, in British and princely India. The article discusses British attempts to persuade Rajput rulers to prohibit and prevent slave-trading and slave-holding in their territories, representing this debate as a point of intersection between ideological imperatives (in this case anti-slavery ideals) and political concerns about the nature and limits of acceptable British intervention in the internal affairs of the ‘independent’ states, and demonstrating the degree to which ‘moral’ and practical concerns intertwined in the formation of political dis-course on the limits of British ‘authority’. British attempts to regulate slave-trading on the ground are also explored, and cases brought before the British for the restitution of illegally procured slaves, contained in British Parliamentary Papers and East India Company's Board's Collections and Foreign Department Records, are used to demonstrate the fluid manner in which individuals could move (or be moved) between British and Indian controlled spaces, physically and metaphorically, demonstrating the extent to which the British capacity to both control and even observe was in practice limited, both spatially and ideologically.

Space of kinship, space of empire: Marriage strategies amongst the Mysore royal caste in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Ikegame, A. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:14:17 PDT

This article centres on perceptions of ‘space’ amongst members of the Mysore royal caste from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. There were several perceptions of space coexisting at the time. One was based upon a traditional idea of space that prohibited the aristocracy, especially the king, from travelling beyond a certain area. Another was the imposed perception of empire, which gave Indian royals the idea that parts of their world were connected horizontally through the expansion of empire. The Mysore royals tried to embody perceptions of both spaces through restrictions on kinship and strategic matrimonial alliances beyond their territories. On the one hand, one of the royal clans insisted that they had the right to receive women from the royal house by using a Dravidian kinship language of ‘reciprocity’, which had in practice never been fully exercised between the clan and the royal house in the pre-colonial period. On the other hand, some royal caste members were keen to embody the Imperial hierarchy, in which Mysore occupied the second highest position, by establishing marriage alliances with the Rajputs in northern India. By doing so, they could re-assert their status, both in terms of Imperial hierarchy and of Kshatriyaness. The article argues that both perceptions of spaces helped a national class of Indian aristocracy to emerge, and that that class of aristocracy still influences the political culture of India in the twenty-first century.

The Malabar Hill murder trial of 1925: Sovereignty, law and sexual politics in colonial princely India

Jhala, A. D. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:14:17 PDT

This article seeks to address issues relating to sovereignty, law and sexual politics in colonial princely India through an examination of the Malabar Hill Murder Trial of 1925 in the Bombay High Court. In this particular case, the Hindu Maratha Maharaja of Indore was charged with the murder of his Muslim courtesan's lover. The ensuing trial illuminates two important developments in late colonial Indian law. First, it reveals how British courts empowered some Indian women as individual agents before the law, despite the restrictions of pardah (or seclusion), to contest and resist indigenous patriarchies. Second, it exposes the complex rela-tionship between Indian kingship and British paramountcy. Due to their position as semi-autonomous rulers, who were not under the restrictions of British Indian law, native princes were exempt from being tried in British Indian courts on the basis of their treaty regulations. This case discusses the extent to which the sexual desires and love unions of the Indian kings were affected by the princely state's fraught relationship with the colonial regime. In this in-stance, the Malabar Hill Murder trial cost the ruler his gaddi (throne) when he was compelled to abdicate.

To 'tear the mask off the face of the past': Archaeology and politics in Jammu and Kashmir

Rai, M. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:14:17 PDT

This article examines the historical and political course followed by a colonial discipline, namely the British-initiated archaeological project, as it was extended to the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir in the early twentieth century. It examines how and in what circumstances colonial archaeology was adopted both by the Dogra-Hindu rulers and their preponderantly Muslim subjects in this indirectly governed part of the British Indian Empire. This article argues that the adoption of this project emanated not so much from interest in the discipline of archaeology qua discipline, but in its ancillary political effects. It demonstrates that whereas the Hindu princely rulers modified colonial archaeology in ways that could enable them to use it buttress their sovereignty, their Kashmiri Muslim subjects appropriated it to strip the legitimacy off that very sovereignty. In the process, this article also highlights the capacity of various indigenous actors to recast aspects of colonial projects to serve their own several purposes.

Princely states and the making of modern India: Internationalism, constitutionalism and the postcolonial moment

Bhagavan, M. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:14:17 PDT

This article examines discussions that took place regarding princely states at the moment of transition from colonial to postcolonial India. It argues for a rethinking of Nehru's vision for ‘the integration of states’, locating his intellectual position in his broader concerns with the United Nations and a framework of international rights. For Nehru, the relationship between princely states and independent India existed reciprocally with that between the new postcolonial state and the UN. The purpose of the article, then, is to understand what ‘princely states’ meant to the imagination of India, and, more broadly, the idea of postcoloniality itself.

Cultural flows and cosmopolitanism in Mughal India: The Bishnupur Kingdom

Chatterjee, K. — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 02:51:58 PDT

This article explores a phase of cultural efflorescence characterised by temple construction, the cultivation of music, scholarship, the copying and embellishment of manuscripts in the kingdom of Bishnupur in south-western Bengal from the late sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The inspiration for these cultural accomplishments is traced to a combination of Mughal–Rajput and Vaishnava influences. The article traces the historical factors that made possible the complex inter-relations among these strands of culture and argues that the rulers of Bishnupur initiated this cultural programme with the aim of assimilating cosmopolitan, elite practices associated with Northern Indian courtly society. The discussion highlights the role of Mughal–Rajput courtly culture in creating a concept of cosmopolitanism in tandem with the devotional culture of Vaishnavism.

Cosmopolitanism in the Hinterland? Bellary District through Fresh Lenses, 1800-1840

Mallampalli, C. — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 02:51:58 PDT

This essay revises earlier work on colonial Bellary by highlighting its status as a complex cultural frontier. As a south Indian ‘dry zone’, Bellary often has been associated with economic stagnancy, warfare and the absence of a dominating cultural high tradition. By contrast, the region may be viewed as a site of ‘hinterland cosmopolitanism’, marked by dynamic interactions between persons of different linguistic, cultural and religious affiliations. Situated between Hyderabad, Mysore, the Maratha country and Madras, Bellary bridged Indo–Islamic, Sanskritic, south Indian and north Indian cultural terrains. Colonial rule transformed Bellary from a site of multi-directional trade and cultural influence to an economy centred upon its cantonment and bazaar. Sharper racial distinctions between Europeans and Indians diminished Bellary’s cosmopolitanism without entirely eradicating it. While an imperial quest for revenue and political dominance had once defined the story of this district, it is necessary for historians to move beyond such concerns to address other compelling aspects of Bellary’s history.

The military influence on engineering education in Britain and India, 1848-1906

Black, J. — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 02:51:58 PDT

The original colleges for military engineers—the Royal Military Academy (RMA) Woolwich and the East India Company (EIC) Seminary at Addiscombe—were the only outlet for a curriculum based on the theory and practice of engineering taught within an academically orientated institution in Britain during the nineteenth century. Overall, engineering in Britain was taught through work-related traditional apprenticeship systems that focused on the ‘practical man’ concept, supported from 1853 onwards with funding based on a payments-by-results system administered by the Department of Science and Art. This trend continued despite the introduction of modest engineering faculties within the British university system. In India, matters were different: there were four colleges of civil engineering, the oldest, Thomason College, having been founded in 1847. Their role was to provide civil engineers for the Indian Public Works Department. Both in Britain and in India, the administration and management of science, technical and engineering education was undertaken by officers from the Royal Engineers and the Indian Army equivalent, (commonly referred to as sapper officers). This trend in civil/military relationships continued with the establishment of the Royal Indian Engineering College (also known as Cooper’s Hill College) in 1870, specifically to train civil engineers in England for duties with the Indian Public Works Department. The comparisons between engineering education in Britain and India during the nineteenth century are stark. The role of the military in the development of engineering education both in Britain and India was crucial. The Indian Public Works Department, although technically a civilian organisation, relied on military engineers during its life until 1947. An examination of the topic from both the British and Indian perspective gives an insight not only into comparative engineering education but also into the civil/military relationships that existed in Britain and India during the latter half of the nineteenth century.

New province, old capital: Making Patna Pataliputra

Mukherjee, S. — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 02:51:58 PDT

In 1912, Bihar and Orissa was carved out of the erstwhile Bengal Presidency as a separate Province. The next year saw the beginnings of one of the most lavishly financed archaeological excavations of colonial India in the new province—the Pataliputra excavations funded by Ratan Tata and supervised, on behalf of the Archaeological Survey of India, by D.B. Spooner. The excavations discovered Patna, the new Provincial capital, as the ancient city of Pataliputra. This essay traces the history of archaeological excavations at Patna between 1913 and 1918. However, it does not engage with Pataliputra as a pre-given, physically available site, which could be discovered through archaeological excavations. Against the backdrop of provincial reconfigurations across Bengal, Bihar and Orissa in the opening decades of the twentieth century, the paper explores the politics of place-making and provincial self-fashioning in early twentieth-century colonial Bihar. It maps how Pataliputra was brought into being through the place-making labours of colonial archaeology. And in tracking the different and changing trajectories of making Patna Pataliputra, the essay unearths how nationalist identities were deeply imbricated in the same disciplinary and institutional spaces opened up by colonial archaeological and museum practices.

Book Reviews

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 02:51:58 PDT

Introduction: Personal law, identity politics and civil society in colonial South Asia

Newbigin, E., Denault, L., De, R. — Tue, 05 May 2009 07:35:18 PDT

From begums and bibis to abandoned females and idle women: sexual relationships, venereal disease and the redefinition of prostitution in early nineteenth-century India

Wald, E. — Tue, 05 May 2009 07:35:18 PDT

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw a proliferation of laws in colonial India which targeted women deemed to be prostitutes. As the number of laws grew, so too did the category of ‘prostitute’. Yet, before the nineteenth century, it would have been difficult to identify many of these women or their activities as criminal, or even immoral. This article examines how such legal boundaries and conceptualisations came to be formulated. It suggests that the ‘prostitute’ category in India was shaped by the repeated failure of the East India Company's surgeons and officers to control venereal disease among the European soldiery. Such attempts at disease control were experimented with from the late eighteenth century and, as this article argues, were keys in the later formulation of the Contagious Diseases Acts. This article traces the decline of long-term, monogamous relationships between European men and Indian women, and the corresponding rise in shorter-term sexual transactions in and around military cantonments. By grounding later legal shifts within the military medical context, we can clearly see the forces behind the social and moral changes surrounding this group of women in the early nineteenth century.

Partition and the politics of the joint family in nineteenth-century north India

Denault, L. — Tue, 05 May 2009 07:35:18 PDT

Using nineteenth-century case law, legal and social theory, and ethnography, this essay will examine colonial attempts to coalesce complex relational identities into individual and collective ones, and to create ‘the Hindu joint family’ as a codified ritual and property-holding collective. Focussing on texts and court cases that considered the ‘joint family’ as a social unit under siege or a property collective at the point of dissolution, we can see how individuals were forced to privilege certain social and intimate bonds above others in establishing a clear identity before the state. The importance of the creation of alienable property rights and markets in land became a clear motive for supporting the North Indian Hindu joint family as a social norm across India. Courts felt free to assign identities and to codify customs when confronted with syncretic practices or blurred ‘traditions’ that had characterised eighteenth-century families.

The semi-autonomous judge in colonial India: Chivalric imperialism meets Anglo-Islamic dower and divorce law

Sharafi, M. — Tue, 05 May 2009 07:35:18 PDT

Through a survey of 19 leading cases on Islamic dower and divorce between 1855 and 1924, this article explores the ways in which judges acted as semi-autonomous agents by undermining the colonial legislation and personal law treatises they were expected to apply. Contrary to the view that colonial judges consistently reinforced the patriarchal authority of husbands in direct and immediate ways, it suggests that some colonial judges were working in the service of their own chivalric imperialist agenda: the defence of Muslim wives. The article focuses on two particular moves. First, colonial judges encouraged the use of inflated dower, a device intended to make the husband's power of triple talaq too expensive to use. Colonial legislators invalidated inflated dower in various parts of India, but judges confirmed the validity of inflated dower sums whenever possible. Second, judges expanded the use of delegated divorce, a device that helped Muslim wives counter their husbands' right to polygamy and unilateral divorce. In doing so, judges undermined the restricted approach to delegation taken by colonial treatises on Anglo-Islamic law.

The codification of personal law and secular citizenship: Revisiting the history of law reform in late colonial India

Newbigin, E. — Tue, 05 May 2009 07:35:18 PDT

Recent debates about personal law and a uniform civil code in India have seen both Hindu and Muslim leaders insist on the ‘religious’ status of Muslim law vis-à-vis a more secular or ‘civil’ Hindu legal system. This article argues that such claims obscure very important similarities in the development and functioning of these legal systems. Tracing the origins of the current debate to late nineteenth and early twentieth-century debates about law reform, it argues that the systems of personal law in operation in India today are the outcome of late colonial attempts by Hindu and Muslim male reformers to alter their legal systems in ways that served their own interests. The ways in which they succeeded in securing these ends were very different; colonial constructions of Hindu and Muslim religious practices, and later partition, shaped the context within which male reformers sought to assert their claims, before the state and their own religious communities. Thus, far from marking an inherent difference between Hindu and Muslim law, claims about the ‘civil’ or ‘religious’ status of the legal systems serve in both cases to underpin particular forms of patriarchal authority and gender inequality.

Mumtaz Bibi's broken heart: The many lives of the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act

De, R. — Tue, 05 May 2009 07:35:18 PDT

This article investigates the formation of a political consensus between conservative ulama, Muslim reformers, nationalist politicians and women's organisations, which led to the enactment of the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act in 1939. The Act was a radical piece of social legislation that gave South Asian Muslim women greater rights for divorce than those enjoyed by other women in India and Britain. Instead of placing women's rights and Islamic law as opposed to each other, the legislation employed a heuristic that guaranteed women's rights by applying Islamic law, allowing Muslim politicians, ulama and women's groups to find common ground on an Islamic modernity. By interrogating the legislative process and the rhetorical positions employed to achieve this consensus, the paper hopes to map how the women's question was being negotiated anew in the space created in the legislatures. The legislative debate over family law redefined the boundaries of the public and the private, and forced nationalists to reconsider the ‘women's question’. The transformation of Islamic law through secular legislation also gave greater licence to the courts in their interpretation, and widened the schism between traditional practitioners of fiqh and modern lawyers.

Book Reviews

Tue, 05 May 2009 07:35:18 PDT

History, buranjis and nation: Suryya Kumar Bhuyan's histories in twentieth-century Assam

Saikia, A. — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 07:57:49 PST

How was history read and written in early twentieth-century Assam? Was it strikingly different from contemporary Indian practices? This article investigates these issues while carrying out a biographical reconstruction of Assamese historian Suryya Kumar Bhuyan. Bhuyan’s ambivalence in choosing a paradigm for historical pursuit is clear. For instance, while he endeavoured to escape from the contemporary historical practices based on rationalist-positivist model, he also continued to use two parallel forms of understanding of past: history and literature.

While he meticulously invested his energy in the building of a modern archival repository of sources, he was equally interested in addressing the needs of two competing consumers of the past: his peers and the Assamese readers. This article talks about how Bhuyan, trained both in literature and historical studies, published extensively in both English and Assamese, wrote professional and popular history, built up a resourceful archive, and stood defiantly amidst the competing Western and Assamese practices of recounting the past.

Missionary pedagogy and Christianisation of the heathens: The educational institutions introduced by the Basel Mission in Mangalore

Shetty, P. — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 07:57:49 PST

The Basel Evangelical Missionary Society came to India in 1834 and established its first school two years later. Through the formation of a carefully structured and disciplined pedagogic community at its mission school, the Basel Mission hoped to insert its version of Protestant Christianity into a society that already possessed its own well-entrenched religious traditions. In the years to follow, the Basel Mission Schools increased in number and diversified in structure and curriculum. This article studies how this resulted in unforeseen socio-religious restructurings of the local people, even as it recontoured the Christianity brought by the missionaries.

Living on the edge: The village and the state on the Goa-Maratha frontier

Axelrod, P. — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 07:57:49 PST

The New Conquest districts of Goa were seized by the Portuguese between 1763 and 1819, about 250 years after the Portuguese first colonised Goa. The villages of the New Conquests were contested terrains between quite a number of polities during that 250-year period, including the Bijapur Adilshahi rulers, the Mughals, the Marathas, the Kolhapur kings, the Sawants of Wadi, the Sonda kings and the Portuguese. The records for these villages have heretofore never been studied in any depth. My analysis of these records reveals the myriad ways in which the villages are both penetrated by state rule and retain their own structures. I conclude that the villages were able to persist over time within the context of the regional culture in varying degrees and under peculiar circumstances, but were not immune to the state penetration that transformed them to a degree. There is no one principle that can properly account for all cases, and no single formula for understanding village-state relations in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century India. The records show the multiple discourses of state rule, local agriculture and social practices, and the complexity of village-state relations.

Book Reviews

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 07:57:49 PST

Index to Volume XLV

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 07:57:49 PST