Indian Economic and Social History Review 

About: Indian Economic and Social History Review is an academic journal published by SAGE Publishing. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Colonialism & Politics. It has an ISSN identifier of 0019-4646. Over the lifetime, 1038 publications have been published receiving 10360 citations. The journal is also known as: The Indian economic and social history review.

Disciplining and policing the 'criminals by birth', Part 1: The making of a colonial stereotype— The criminal tribes and castes of North India

Abstract: The exigencies of colonial transformation and prevalent European ideas provided British rule with the frames of reference for the classification of the ’native’ population of India. Through an elaborate corpus of revenue, juridical and police records the British Raj produced for itself a colonial archive: a ready-at-hand knowledge which in turn provided manuals for modifying and when necessary thwarting the challenge of traditional, unchanging-and to that extent anticipated-behaviour of subject population. Inherent in the production of this colonialist knowledge was the conception of the essential types without history. This paper concerns itself with the history of a well-known but little studied

Disciplining and policing the 'criminals by birth', Part 2: The development of a disciplinary system, 1871-1900:

Abstract: The discourse on criminal tribes was affirmed in the Act of 1871, which both cast a specific ’type’ and sought to mould it further by an entire apparatus of surveillance and control. That the knowledge of groups officially designated as criminal by birth, creed and caste, developed an entire apparatus of coercive and disciplinary measures~registration, roll-call, limitation on movement, the pass system, agricultural settlements, reformatory camps, workhouses, the separation of children from their parents-is a clear indication of the operation of power/knowledge, the operation of discursive practices. In other words, in the practices of segregation, exclusion and resettlement envisaged in the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, the power of colonial discourse is first confirmed by the creation of a criminal-type with which these practices were intended to deal. Of course the Criminal Tribes Act was not the earliest of the coercive

New intellectuals in seventeenth-century India:

Abstract: The intellectual history of Sanskrit South Asia in the last centuries before European expansion poses serious obstacles to scholarly understanding. Indeed, if there is a dilemma about these last Sanskrit intellectuals beyond the crucial fact, and the causes of the fact, that they were to be the last, it is that they are so difficult for contemporary scholarship to approach. The first and foremost problem is the complexity of the discourses themselves that they produced. In idiom and subject matter, these surely represent some of the

Law, custom, and statutory social reform: the Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act of 1856

Abstract: When the British assumed judicial responsibility in India, there were several diverse systems of law existing. Not only were there literary traditions of Hanafi and Ithna Ashari Muslim Law and the Dayabhaga and Mitakshara schools of Hindu Law, but there were also numerous practical traditions of Customary Law, applicable to caste, tribe, linefiige or family group. In assuming judicial powers and responsibilities over Indian territory in the late eighteenth century, the British rulers promised their Indian subjects that the personal laws administered to them would be those of their own respective religious community-a promise reiterated in every act establishing further courts and expanding the jurisdiction of the legal system. For the Hindus (particularly upper caste Hindus) this meant that the British-Indian courts assumed the responsibility of administering textual Hindu Law (Dayabhaga or Mitakshara as appropriate) in suits concerning such matters as marriage, adoption, succession, and legitimacy to which the parties were Hindus. In order to fulfil this promise, the British appointed Indian pandits to expound the Hindu Law and advise the courts on questions concerning Hindu Law coming before them; and undertook to collect, compile, and translate standard legal texts which were then recognised by the British-Indian legal system as authoritative. By the mid-nineteenth century the texts had replaced the pandits as the repositories of Hindu Law. Mknowkdgemmts: The research on which this article is based was made possible by a fellowship awarded by the Joint Committee on South Asia of the Social Sciencr Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies, whose support is most gratefully acknowledged. I am indebted to Professor J.D.M. Derrett for introducing me to the study of Hindu Law in British India and for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this article. Responsibility for analysis, interpretations, and opinions rests, of course, with the author alone.