Showing papers in "Studies in History in 1997"
••
TL;DR: In this article, the first essay from a larger work in progress on law, family, religion and nationalism in late colonial Bengal was presented at Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in a seminar in November 1994.
Abstract: Acknowledgements: This is the first essay from a larger work in progress on law, family, religion and nationalism in late colonial Bengal. The essay, however, is still being broadened out. I am grateful for comments and criticisms on earlier drafts by Radhika Singha, Ravi Vasudevan, Neeladri Bhattacharya, Ratnabali Chatterjee and Sumit Sarkar. An earlier version of the paper was presented at Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in a seminar in November 1994. I
23 citations
••
TL;DR: The moral order derived from its ruler who gave the city its ’orthogenetic’ character as mentioned in this paper, and the order it represented was not a moral order but a technical order, an environment for both good and evil.
Abstract: city, the really significant point, Ramanujan pointed out, is that the wellplanned city of Ayodhyd as described by V51miki ’matches the moral order and the well-planned hierarchy of the society it houses’. The moral order derived from its ruler who gave the city its ’orthogenetic’ character. By contrast, Puhar, the littoral city of the Tamil country in the epic Silappadikaram,2 was ’heterogenetic’; the order it represented was not a moral order but ’a technical order, an environment for both good and evil’. Madurai, also of Silappadikaram, was another variant-a unitary city which was protected but corrupt, and unlike Puhar, was closed and positively inhospitable to outsiders.
19 citations
••
TL;DR: In this article, Datta et al. present the making of a Jat identity in the Southeast Punjab, circa 1880-1936, Cambridge University, 1995 (hereafter Datta, Jat Identity).
Abstract: Acknowledgements: This essay is based on my Ph.D. thesis, The Making of a Jat Identity in the Southeast Punjab, circa 1880-1936, Cambridge University, 1995 (hereafter Datta, Jat Identity). I thank Professor Chris Bayly for his valuable guidance as my research supervisor. I am also grateful to Dr Neeladri Bhattacharya for his incisive comments on this essay. N.B.: In this essay identity is not individual, but public and collective. In the Jat hinterland which is situated to the south of Delhi around the
16 citations
••
TL;DR: In this article, a sister-in-law used to live in Trivandrum and she used to wear blouses there, and she also began wearing them, and when she came home, she brought me a couple of blouses.
Abstract: My sister-in-law used to live in Trivandrum. Women used to wear blouses there, and she also began wearing them. My misfortune, when she came home, she brought me a couple of blouses. Two glittering blouses. How the blouse suited her! I also liked the blouses, and wore one at once. It looked good, but I felt ticklish wearing it. I took it off, folded it carefully, and brimming with enthusiasm, showed it to my B
16 citations
••
TL;DR: A strategic compromise is allowed by the creation of a dichotomous, even schizophrenic consciousness as mentioned in this paper, which allows a recognition of the superiority of western science and civilization in the material, 'outer' domain.
Abstract: cultural matrix of the elite seems to melt into the air. Having once eaten of the forbidden fruit of western knowledge, an uncompromising retreat into tradition does not seem possible. A strategic compromise is allowed by the creation of a dichotomous, even schizophrenic consciousness. This manouevre so well charted by Partha Chatterjee in his studies concentrating on the Bengali bhadralok, allows a recognition of the superiority of western science and civilization in the material, ’outer’ domain. Face (and soul) is saved by retreating into an ’inner’ spiritual domain from which the colonial power is excluded. And it is from this ’inner’ domain of national culture
8 citations
••
7 citations
••
TL;DR: The authors compare the contours of two Malayalam novels, Indulekha and Padmavati, written by Chandu Menon and V.T. Shankunni Menon, respectively.
Abstract: this problem in the context of the Malayalam novel. in Kerala. Several questions spring to mind: for instance, how does one read the early ’social’ novel? Alongside this is an equally interesting problem for the historian: what does one make of the literary landscape in the early novel? In other words, how can the historian engage with the question of realism? Here I shall compare the contours of two novels-Indulekha, written by Chandu Menon in 1889, which received almost instantaneous celebrity status, and Padmavati, written almost thirty years later in 1920 by a young matriculate, V.T. Shankunni Menon. Both are squarely situated within the matrilineal taravads of Malabar, a locale suggestive of Kerala to most people. But the actuality of Kerala, then as well as now, was a m6lange of castes and communities, inheritance practices and lifestyles. If one were to look for the throbbing activity which existed in the coastal towns of Calicut and Tellicherry, replete with Mappilla merchants, Jewish traders and vagrant soldiers idling away their time, then this is not the place to look for them.
7 citations
••
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present and former Directors and the staff of the B.J. Institute of Learning and Research, Ahmedabad for their generous and unstinted help during my research there.
Abstract: Acknowledgements: I am grateful to Professors Harbans Mukhia and Muzaffar Alam (JNU, New Delhi) for their help, suggestions and encouragement in the preparation of this paper. I am also thankful to my colleague, Professor S.M. Rashid for extending his valuable help. It is my pleasure to record my debt to the present and former Directors and the staff of the B.J. Institute of Learning and Research, Ahmedabad for their generous and unstinted help during my research there. In studies of the agrarian system and economy of the Mughal empire, agricultural statistics, that is, area figures ( jamadami, hasil, etc. ) occupy a pivotal position. Modern historians have utilized the available data to an
2 citations
••
TL;DR: In the field of Indian history, a case in point is that of those merchant guilds called mahajans, which played an important role in the pre-colonial period as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Acknowledgements: My stay at the Bombay Archives, necessary to complete the research on which the present paper is based, has been financed by a grant from MURST (the Italian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific and Technological Research). Its help is gratefully acknowledged. Without the support of a few good friends, my work would have been much more difficult than it was: I thank Filippo Sabetti (of McGill University) and Norberto de Sousa (formerly of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge), for their criticism and encouragement, and Rusheed Wadia (JNU) for his tips on the inner working of the Bombay Archives and his kindness in cross-checking the exact wording of some of the archival material quoted in this paper. Finally, I want to remember that the exact wording of the heading of the petition quoted in note 50 has been cross-checked at the Indian Office Library by’the late Burton Stein. To his memory this paper is respectfully dedicated. Historiography has its own equivalents of the Loch Ness monster. There are events and institutions about which a great deal is written and debated, which when examined at close quarters prove strangely elusive. In the field of Indian history, a case in point is that of those merchant guilds called mahajans. There is widespread consensus that in the pre-colonial period, particularly in Gujarat, they did exist and played an important role. Yet a great deal of uncertainty remains even about such basic questions as ’their structure and role.
1 citations
••
TL;DR: In this article, some substantial disagreements with Chaudhury's interpretation of Bengal in the eighteenth century have been identified, such as the use of evidence of flight from oppression in order to discuss mobility of weavers (pp. 156-58).
Abstract: These are some of the substantial disagreements I have with Chaudhury’s interpretation of Bengal in the eighteenth century. Apart from these, minor problems include his use of evidence of flight from oppression in order to discuss mobility of weavers (pp. 156-58). Reference to sources create problems sometimes. For instance, one manuscript, IOL, Mss Eur. D 283 is referred on page 146 as a ’contemporary source’. On page 172 that same manuscript becomes ’an early nineteenth century’ text, while on page 334 it is reborn as a ’near contemporary’ document. More confusion is created for the reader because now the document is given an entirely different number, but retains the same text. There are some conceptual slips too. For instance, the concept of a ’low-level equilibrium trap’ (p. 173; emphasis mine) advanced by some historians to explain the absence of technological changes in India’s traditional economy. The argument, on . the contrary, is of a high-level equilibrium, a concept used by Mark Elvin for China (Pattern of the Chinese Past, London, 1973), and in a very limited fashion by Tapan Raychaudhuri for late Mughal India (Cambridge Economic History of India, Volume 2, Delhi, 1984). Nevertheless, there are many valuable sections in this book. The discussion of brokers is useful for the details it gives on their organization and role in the economy. The analysis of Bengal’s silk production and trade is important. Particularly important is the discussion of the Asian merchants in this trade. On the whole Chaudhury does make an important contribution to