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    The rhetorical strategy of an autobiography: Reading Satyavati's Atmacaritamu
    ( 2003-01-01) Rajagopal, Vakulabharanam
    This article describes and analyses the autobiography of an ordinary woman, perhaps the first autobiography by a woman in Telugu. Despite its unique features, the text, strangely enough, fell into oblivion. Published in 1934, Satyavati's Atmacaritamu contains a radical critique of religion and society. Though a widow, Satyavati claimed the status of pativrata and through this ingenious rhetorical strategy legitimated her critique as internal to tradition. The article also situates the text in the corpus of writings by women all over India in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, and traces the evolution the 'women's question' in colonial Andhra in relation to this literature.
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    Contested authenticities
    ( 2004-12-01) Mukherjee, Rila
    The image of the past is redefined by communities within a particular cultural context. The future of the past does not flow to a fixed end-point; on the contrary it betrays an anxious and continuous negotiation with the present. The past therefore becomes an invention suited to immediate concerns. In a multicultural country such as India the past lends itself to many interpretations: examples discussed in this miniature article are the visionary geography of Garhwal, the reinvention of the Vailankanni myth and the propagation of the Somnath agenda. © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd.
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    Fashioning Modernity in Telugu: Viresalingam and His Interventionist Strategy
    ( 2005-01-01) Rajagopal, Vakulabharanam
    This article looks at the politics of modernity within Telugu culture by focusing on Kandukuri Viresalingam, the most prominent Westernizing social reformer from the Telugu-speaking region of British India in the nineteenth century. It analyses two of his major literary productions—an autobiography and a novel—and his wider interventions within the public sphere. This study reflects on the ambivalences and contradictions within the reformist project, and the nature of its association with nationalism. It is suggested that in the battle between social reformers and political nationalists, the former managed to assert their social leadership. This allowed Viresalingam's legacy to be successfully appropriated by the nationalist ideology of the region. By showing that political nationalism could indeed accommodate critiques of Indian society from Western or colonial perspectives, the article puts forward an argument different from some of the current understandings of Indian nationalism. © 2005, Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved.
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    Migrant narratives: Reading literary representations of Christian migration in Kerala, 1920–70
    ( 2006-01-01) Varghese, V. J.
    The population movements that have occurred within present-day Kerala should be seen in tandem with the history of the massive out-migration record of the state, which has earned for its people the image of being a robust community with a proclivity for migration. This article explores the fashioning of the figure of the kutiyettakkaran, a migrant, in the Malayalee unconscious by problematising the peasant migration from Travancore to Malabar during 1920–70. Reading across Malayalam literary representations, this article looks at the configuration of the migrant self as located within the problematic of capital and colonial modernity. These literary texts, simultaneously fashioned by and fashioning history, give a nuanced picture of the contradictions and compulsions that governed the migrants as well as the natives. The migrant identity of the Syrian Christian settler in Malabar is construed within a social imaginary regulated by a specific discourse of development. The fashioning and circulation of a modernising and heroic image endowed the migrant with a peculiar authority in the landscape and history of Malabar. However, such a mission is critiqued, often in absolute terms, by texts closer to our times. These contemporary texts, informed as much by the consequences of the migration, play an important role in reconfiguring the Syrian Christian migrant as a stooge of capital. © 2006, Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd,. All rights reserved.
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    Strange riches: Bengal in the mercantile map of South Asia
    ( 2006-01-01) Mukherjee, Rila
    This book attempts to understand the commercial and social history of erstwhile Bengal in terms of its links with it neighbouring countries in the northern region of the Bay of Bengal. It touches upon the key issues in both maritime and territorial history such as the early medieval trade revolution and its impact on the borders of Bengal.The discussion focusses on Southeast Bengal - the most economically developed area of Bengal in terms of transport networks, agriculture, artisan products and trade. Most of this area underwent two major transformations in the twentieth century: once as a result of the formation of East Pakistan in 1947 and a second time after the formation of Bangladesh in 1971. The volume concludes with certain major issues of concern between India and Bangladesh at the turn of the twenty-first century.
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    Behind the Mask: The Cultural Definition of the Legal Subject in Colonial Bengal (1715-1911)
    ( 2006-11-02) Mukhopadhyay, Anindita
    This book investigates the deeper area of class antagonism between the privileged and underprivileged classes as they faced the colonial state and its different ideas of legality and sovereignty in colonial Bengal. It examines the ambiguity in the bhadralok - the educated middle class - response to courts and jails. The author argues that the discourse of superior 'bhadralok' ethics and morals was juxtaposed against the 'chhotolok' - who were devoid of such ethical values. This enabled the bhadralok to claim for themselves the position of the 'aware' legal subject as a class - a 'good' subject obedient to the dictates of the new rule of law, unlike the recalcitrant and ethically ill-equipped chhotolok. The author underlines the development of a new cultural language of morality that delineated the parameters of bhadralok public behaviour. As the 'rule of law' of the British government slid unobtrusively into the public domain, the criminal courts and the jails turned into public theatres of infamy - spaces that the ethically bound bhadralok dreaded occupying. The volume, thus, documents how the colonial legal and penal institutions streamlined the identities of some sections of the lower castes into 'criminal caste'. It also examines the nature of colonial bureaucracy and highlights the social silence on gender and women's criminality.
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    Understanding Transitions at the Crossroads of Asia: C. Mid Second Century B.C.E. to c. Third Century C.E.
    ( 2007-01-01) Ghosh, Suchandra
    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. © 2007, Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved.
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    'Delinquent subjects': Dacoity and the creation of a surveillance society in Hyderabad state
    ( 2007-04-01) Bhukya, Bhangya
    This article examines how dacoities in colonial India began largely during famines, and how they were perpetuated by the state's cruel practices of detention and surveillance. When dacoity was seen to be a threat to civil society and the state, the authorities deployed a variety of methods to put down, control, punish and reform the dacoits, many of who were considered to belong to 'criminal tribes/communities'. The creation of a body of anthropological knowledge about the 'criminal' communities was important in this respect, as it helped the state to separate supposedly 'delinquent' from 'honest' subjects. It also conferred a specific social identity upon such groups, thereby socially stigmatising them. The creation of a surveillance society served colonial ends. The Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) of 1871 provided for those designated as criminal tribes to be registered with local police stations, to be confined to specific villages, fined, punished, and put in reformatories. Groups that suffered such a fate thereafter found it so difficult to earn an honest livelihood that they became even more likely to commit dacoities. The itinerant Lambadas of Hyderabad state who were so incarcerated were particularly hard hit.
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    The mapping of the adivasi social: Colonial anthropology and adivasis
    ( 2008-12-01) Bhukya, Bhangya
    The construction of textual knowledge about Indian communities in the colonial milieu resulted in an extensive literature on almost all communities that was not only used as a source of legal and general administration but also to establish colonial domination. In this process the adivasis of India were constructed apposite to civilised society, therefore a distinct society. Unfortunately, post-colonial scholarship did not decolonise this colonial construction of adivasi society.
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    Partition(s) and Bengal
    ( 2010-07-01) Mukherjee, Rila
    This paper looks at partition theory as regards South Asia and claims that the Bengal partition differed significantly from the Punjab model. It argues that the Punjab partition cannot be seen as a universal model. Moreover, the paper does not regard the partition of 1947 as the sole partition in Bengal, but looks at Bengal's partition history as part of a process starting in 1905 and culminating in 1971 when East Pakistan became Bangladesh. Finally, the paper emphasizes regionalism as an important component of the Bengal partitions. The paper pays attention to the physical map of partition: the delta, its rivers, ports and cities and their respective hinterlands all have their 'own' histories which were reoriented after the partition of 1947. Moreover, a new geographical and political category, the enclaves that emerged post-1947, is also studied. Today, soon after the signing of the New Delhi-Dhaka bilateral agreement, this revisiting of Bengal's partition history, and the physical map of the two Bengals, is especially significant. © 2010 IUP.
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    Adivasis and land assertion in Andhra agency
    ( 2010-10-01) Bhukya, Bhangya
    The colonial land tax system, designed to stimulate the extension of commercial agriculture and commoditification of agricultural production, has severe impacts on the adivasis of India. Particularly, the notion of colonial rule of property evicted millions of adivasis out of their land by force and for mollified debts. This process has been witnessed more widely in the post-colonial India. Using their own method of struggle, the educated adivasi youths began to reassert their lands that their forefathers lost to non-adivasis. The interventions of civil society (NGO) diverted the adivasis toward a so called legal fight which did not take the issue to a logical end. The legal process helped the non-adivasis to legalize their illegal holdings in the Agency tracts of Andhra region of Andhra Pradesh. © 2010 IUP.
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    Seals, amulets and coinages of Dvāravatī cultural sites: Understanding their social environment and religious network
    ( 2011-01-01) Ghosh, Suchandra ; Ghosh, Lipi
    This paper focuses on minor artifacts, such as sealings, tablets, coinages, small figurines and amulets, that form integral parts of the socio-religious cultural milieu of a society. Such objects were recovered from various sites in Thailand attributed to the Dvāravatī cultural period, and they lead us to two concerns: First, what the nature of the society was that encouraged production and use of objects like sealings, terracotta figurines and amulets, and second, the persons that made them and the agency that percolated such socio-religious beliefs/rituals in the mind of people. An overview of archaeological materials recovered from Dvāravatī sites in central Thailand allow us to perceive a kind of society where Buddhism dominated, with elements of Brahmanism in its rituals. Seals and amulets were sure to come as voyaging objects from India in their initial phase. The ideology behind the offering and making of seals was then deeply ingrained in the Southeast Asian societies The network of Buddhism can be understood also from the penetration of Mahayana ideas in the Dvāravatī sites. These ideas could have percolated both from Srivijaya and also from South eastern Bengal after traversing Arakan. In some cases, there are definite examples of emulation of Indian cultural practices. In others, there are examples of adaptation. Nonetheless, the strong presence of indigenous elements cannot be overlooked.
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    A dynamic eastern Indian ocean
    ( 2011-01-01) Mukherjee, Rila
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    Production and productivity of medicinal and aromatic plants in mughal India: A study of contemporary texts
    ( 2011-01-01) Subodh, Sanjay
    Mughal India in the 17th century had a vast area of land cultivated by peasants residing in this geographical territory. The accounts given by European travelers tell us that Indian peasants followed similar methods in agricultural production as their counterparts in Europe. Though the Indian peasant was illiterate, the technology employed by him was similar or even superior to the one used by his counterpart in Europe. His knowledge was based on tradition and it got transmitted from generation to generation. This paper attempts to analyze the production of medicinal and aromatic plants in Mughal India keeping in view the information contained in contemporary sources namely, Babur-Nama, Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, Vishvavallabha, and Nuskha Dar Fanni-Falahat. It attempts to look into the description given about the plant and its usage in the medieval era.
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    Ancient sky-map from Mudumal
    ( 2011-04-01) Rao, K. P.
    An ancient sky-map assignable to the megalithic period was found at Mudumal in Mahbubnagar district, Andhra Pradesh. The site of Mudumal has megalithic menhirs, cists and stone circles. Some of the menhirs are arranged in rows forming alignments and avenues. It is observed that these formations are aligned to rising and setting of sun on various days. Among a group of stone circles, a square stone has a number of cup-marks. These cup-marks resemble the pattern of the Ursa Major constellation. Apart from similarity in the pattern, even the orientation of the stars is followed carefully in the depiction. This sky-map is probably the earliest chart of the night-sky found anywhere in South Asia. The total complex with the menhir formations and the depiction of the Ursa Major seems to have been used as a celestial observatory. © Serials Publications.
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    To Survive or To Flourish? Minority Rights and Syrian Christian Community Assertions in Twentieth-century Travancore/Kerala
    ( 2011-07-01) Devika, J. ; Varghese, V. J.
    The arrival of modernity not only constituted communities but also impelled them in competition against each other in Kerala. Modern politics of the state as a result is inextricably linked with intense community politics. The success of community politics for rights and resources varied across communities, so also did strategies of assertion. This article will focus on different instances of community assertions by the Syrian Christians in twentieth-century Travancore/Kerala. The confrontation of the community with the ‘Hindu state’ and the then Dewan in the 1930s, the ‘Liberation Struggle’ against the Communists during late 1950s and the anti-eviction movements of the 1960s testifies its lack of primordial adherences and openness to heterogeneous strategies as required by different historical circumstances. It moves freely from secular to non-secular, minoritarian to majoritarian and lawful to unlawful, with claims to a greater citizenship. The hegemonic developmentalist ideology to which the community subscribes, along with reiteration of a righteous and industrious citizen, ensured the transformation of the ‘unlawful’ into ‘lawful’. Using even state secularism as a route of sectarianism, Syrian Christian politics resorted to no permanent self-representation, resulting in unfixed community constellations. The article also suggests that the recent recourse of the community to minority rights may hint at an inherent crisis and a loss of moral weight it possessed earlier.
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    Outside and Inside the Nation: Migrant Narratives and the Making of a Productive Citizen in Kerala
    ( 2012-01-01) Varghese, V. J.
    The advent of modernity in Kerala through the mediation of colonialism, among other things, allowed the local population to see their own landscape in altogether new ways. It is true that the British, as the carriers of western modernity, came to South Asia with a deep ideological animosity towards forests and ‘unused’ landscapes (Rangarajan 1996: 16-18). The forests were seen as signs of human indolence, abodes of the lawless and uncivilized and mysterious, threatening and irrational space (Thompson 1975). The cultural baggage of hostility towards forests and untamed spaces that the British carried to their colonies was coincided by a larger political imperative of consolidating their position by reformulat- ing the production system of the colony and extending cultivation to heterodox areas to produce exotic crops for the global market (Varghese 2009). The British interventions on the native landscape of Travancore through plantation enterprises were underwritten by such ideological and material preoccupations. The plantation making was preceded by a systematic hollowing of the Travancore crown, which ensured the support of the princely state in the creation of a new agro-economy in tune with the global demands (Baak 1997: 43-60). Through a ‘scientific’ survey undertaken by Ward and Conner during 1816-1820, the British not only categorized the topography of the princely state into intelligible types but also identified untapped areas for expropriation, i.e., areas ‘lost to human industry’ to be reclaimed with ‘imperial’ agriculture (Ward and Conner 1863).2 The Ashambu hills of southern Travancore and the hills and hillsides in the northeastern part of the princely state came under mostly British-run plantations, first that of coffee and then tea, in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Owing to a feeble political maneuverability, the princely state backed the plantations as desired by the British (Lovatt 1972; Baak 1997: 73-123; Devi 1989: 110-12). The initial lack of local interest, coupled with attempts to exclude indigenous planters, ensured a complete dominance of British planters in the plantation scenario of Travancore through the latter half of the nineteenth century, making it nothing less than a ‘British Planters’ Raj’ (Baak 1997: 61-137).
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    Migration, transnationalism, and ambivalence: The Punjab-United Kingdom linkage
    ( 2012-01-01) Qureshi, Kaveri ; Varghese, V. J. ; Osella, Filippo ; Rajan, S. Irudaya
    This chapter investigates developments in the Punjab-UK transnational space, a long-standing and extensive migration corridor. Within India’s diverse migration history, Punjab’s specificity is its particular historical connection with the UK, despite criss-crossing colonial and postcolonial migrations across the globe. We juxtapose field research in the UK and Punjab and show that transnationalism appears and works differently when viewed from either location-highlighting the differentially empowered nature of transnational space, as well as irresolvable ambivalences that are worked into transnational relationships. We reconsider the transnationalism paradigm through five interrelated arguments. We demonstrate the complexity of transnational space, which exceeds the binary sending-receiving country relationship that characterizes the literature. We find that transnationalism is not merely produced “from below” by the activities of migrants and diaspora, but is orchestrated and formalized by various arms of the Indian and British states. Moreover, illicit flows of people are also produced by the governance of migration. Transnational connectivity does not diminish individuals’ desire for a single, solid citizenship and nationality beyond the pragmatism attached with citizenship. Finally, we argue for historicizing of transnational networks and appreciation of the social relations of gender, generation, class, and caste by which they are cleaved.