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    A dynamic eastern Indian ocean
    ( 2011-01-01) Mukherjee, Rila
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    A Hoard of Copper Plates: Patronage and the Early Valkhā State
    ( 2015-01-01) Ghosh, Suchandra
    The horizontal spread of the state society accompanying the institution of land grants leading to the formation of a monarchical state polity is frequently witnessed during c. 300–600 CE. Among the many new and small kingdoms which surfaced during the time of the Guptas was the kingdom of Valkhā in Central India located on the banks of the Narmada. The kingdom, as it appears from their land grants, was situated on both sides of the Narmada river, at the southern periphery of the important Gupta strongholds in central India (Airikiṇa, Eran) and beyond the northern frontier of the Vākāṭakas kingdom to the south. In case of the Valkhā kingdom, it appears that in the process of transition from a pre-state to a state, it can be placed in a category where, with the formation of the kingdom around the mid-fourth century CE, Valkhā has just transcended the pre-state stage and could be placed in the genre of an early state. We seek to understand the early character of the Valkhā state through the lens of twenty-seven copper plates found together in a hoard and five others published in a scattered manner. It goes to the credit of K.V. Ramesh and S.P. Tewari who edited the plates in 1990 and revealed the names of the rulers of Valkhā. Through a reading of these charters we seek to understand the emergence and growth of the Valkhā state. Due to the donations, the donee assumes a significant position and so the nature of patronage of the Valkhā rulers becomes central to our study. © 2015, Jawaharlal Nehru University. All rights reserved.
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    A Single-hole Stone Anchor from Kottapatnam: Early historic port site of Andhra Pradesh, India
    ( 2014-03-01) Tripati, Sila ; Rao, K. P. ; Kumari, S. ; Imsong, O. ; Vanlalhruaitluangi, V.
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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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    Ambivalent engagements: The Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean world
    ( 2017-02-01) Mukherjee, Rila
    This article investigates the role played by the Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean world. It argues that formulations that suggest the Bay's encounters were ambivalent and sporadic until c.1000 - when there was a trade revolution - and see it as a latecomer in the Indian Ocean world, are wrong. Examples from commerce and cultural flows reveal the Bay world as an active participant in the Indian Ocean world from early times and debunk the notion of passivity.
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    An industry of frauds? State policy, migration assemblages and nursing professionals from India
    ( 2019-01-01) Varghese, V. J.
    India’s governmental regulation of emigration and the emergence of the country’s migration industry have both been largely guided by the facilitation of low-skilled outmigration. Taking the rapidly growing migration of nursing professionals from India as a point of departure, this chapter seeks to understand the way the Indian state’s concerns and interests entangle with that of an emerging migration industry in significant ways. Recounting in detail a case of migration fraud, it argues that there is a dialectic relationship between the character and functioning of the migration industry and state policy.
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    Anahilapura: Understanding Its Expansive Network during the Time of the Chaulukyas
    ( 2018-01-01) Ghosh, Suchandra
    Gujarat's role in the international trade network has long been researched. During the first half of the second millennium CE, the Indian Ocean emerged as a vast trading zone; its western termini were Siraf/Basra/Baghdad in the Persian Gulf zone and Alexandria/Fustat (old Cairo) in the Red Sea area, while the eastern terminus extended up to the ports in China. However, this essay privileges a single place, Anahilapura, which acted as a hinterland to many of the ports of Gujarat.
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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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    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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    Between Tradition and modernity nizams, colonialism and modernity in hyderabad state
    ( 2013-11-30) Bhukya, Bhangya
    The British colonial state in India ensured that the princely states were picturised as backward enclaves that kept alive an older feudal polity characterised by autocracy and underdevelopment, while British India moved towards modernity and capitalist development. However, the reality was that while the princes appeared superficially to enshrine an exotic Oriental past in their courtly and private life, the general development was carried out on the line of the colonial model. The ideological boundaries between the princely states and British territories were fluid and there was visible cross-pollination between the sociocultural and political issues and movements of the two territories. In fact, the colonial state used a number of methods to produce the effect of colonial power in the princely states. The coastal Andhra ruling class has continued a similar strategy after the formation of Andhra Pradesh state in order to subordinate the people of Telangana.
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    Buddhist moulded clay tablets from Dvaravati: Understanding their regional variations and Indian linkages
    ( 2017-08-29) Ghosh, Suchandra
    The regional variations of the Dvaravati Buddhist clay tablets are the subject of this essay. The act of making tablets as a part of meditation practice, religious exercise or merit making was itself the main reason for the production of these tablets. The essay further probes into the possible adoption or adaptation from India as the practice of making these tablets is of Indian origin and numerous equivalents in the shape of plaques dating from seventh to eleventh centuries have been uncovered in abundance on different Buddhist sites of India. The essay argues that moulded clay tablets, albeit, a minor object in the vast repertoire of artistic or religious expressions are also to be taken into account as an element for understanding shared cultural practices across Asia.
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    Caste and power in villages of Colonial Bengal
    ( 2018-02-10) Mukhopadhyay, Anindita
    An exposition of four court cases demonstrates that by the late 1920s, the educated middle classes wielded the colonial state apparatus. Moreover, the colonial state had partially delinked the premodern affiliation of local muscle to the local hubs of power. Therefore, at the village level, local malcontents were isolated and booked for lawbreaking. Villagers/village communities were located within a caste-based social structure, though caste hierarchies in Tamluk seemed more fluid. They also had the option to activate the (ideally) caste-neutral state apparatus, which sharpened their perceptions of legal subjectivity, and increased their stake in the government.
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    Civilizational linkages in the bay of bengal region until 1800
    ( 2019-10-16) Mukherjee, Rila
    This chapter discusses a temporal inconsistency depending on the Bay sector falling under scrutiny. Chakravarti’s ‘pull’ is apparent in seventh century South Asia, while Lieberman sees it occurring between the tenth and sixteenth centuries in mainland Southeast Asia. An age of commerce and a commercial revolution are seen in both the ninth and eleventh centuries; linked to new polities emerging in the tenth-eleventh centuries. The chapter describes three radical phase transitions: one from the ninth to the eleventh centuries, another in the fifteenth-sixteenth centuries and a third in the eighteenth century. The tenth-eleventh centuries saw a period of transition in the Indian Ocean as new powers emerged to assume control over the major centres of contemporary civilization: the Fatimids in Egypt; the Cholas in southern India; and the Songs in China. The Bay of Bengal always had strong Asian connections, but was a latecomer in the western Indian Ocean world, although its southern segment had participated in Roman.
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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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    Crossings and contacts across the Bay of Bengal: a connected history of ports in early South and Southeast Asia
    ( 2019-09-02) Ghosh, Suchandra
    The eastern Indian Ocean could be viewed as a world of flows and connections. This paper focuses on three ports of the eastern sea-board of India and their interactions with ports in Srilanka and in Peninsular Thailand in the early–medieval period (c.600 CE–1300 CE). These ports are Samandar (Chittagong), Vishakhapattinam and Nagapattinam. These were nodes of mercantile organization and hubs through which connections were fostered. Among the three ports, Samandar in Chittagong gains primacy in our discussion with its strong hinterland and extensive foreland. Port towns were often a unique site of cultural exchange that challenged boundaries. Put differently they formed a point of convergence of different types of people and thus were open to a rich array of exchanges both mercantile and cultural. This paper attempts to explore some of these exchanges.
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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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    Dreaming mobility and buying vulnerability: Overseas recruitment practices in India
    ( 2013-01-01) Rajan, S. Irudaya ; Varghese, V. J. ; Jayakumar, M. S.
    In the alarming contemporary context of widespread corruption and fraudulence in the overseas labour recruitment system in India, this book attempts to understand the institution of emigration governance and recruitment practices in the country with a focus on the unskilled and semi-skilled sectors. It brings together the results of research in the major emigration hubs of India with the aid of quantitative and qualitative tools, drawing from all the major stakeholders —intending emigrants, recruiting agents, return emigrants, emigrant households, Protector of Emigrants, foreign employers, foreign recruiting agents, Indian missions and emigrant workers at the destination countries.