Showing papers in "Studies in History in 2015"

‘Purifying the River: Pollution and Purity of Water in Colonial Calcutta’

Abstract: This article explores the river as a site of urban modernity in India. At the heart of this article is the colonial project of purifying the water of the river Hooghly for the domestic supply of Ca...

Towards Adivasi Studies: New Perspectives on ‘Tribal’ Margins of Modern India:

Abstract: Daniel J. Rycroft and Sangeeta Dasgupta (eds), The Politics of Belonging in India: Becoming Adivasi. Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2011, xvii + 238 pp., $112.57 (hbk).Sanjukta Das Gupta and Raj...

Far from Home, But at Home: Indian Migrant Workers in the Iranian Oil Industry

Abstract: This article revisits the life and times of Indian migrant workers in Persia/Iran during the first half of the twentieth century, and discusses their contributions to the founding, development and eventual consolidation of the Persian/Iranian oil industry. A number of factors that shaped this experience are investigated. They include the geographic and ethno-religious origins of Indian labourers; the policies adopted by the oil company (APOC), labour agencies and the Government of India to recruit workers and regulate their working conditions and terms of contract; and the lived experience of the workers once they were hired and began working in the Persian/Iranian oil industry. Across nearly half a century, Indian workers in the Persian/Iranian oil industry faced a variety of labour experiences ranging from coerced recruitment as indentured workers during wartime, to wage labour with a negotiated contract and protection under colonial labour laws. I will discuss how these workers responded to the various recruitment policies, the demanding working conditions and labour discipline imposed on them, their remuneration and wage-structures, and their living conditions and housing situation. Records of the lengthy presence of Indian workers in the oil industry provide us with numerous stories of contestation, resistance and negotiations for better working and living conditions. Ultimately, the story of Indian migrant workers is also a story of accommodating within an emerging multinational corporation. I situate the history of migrant labour agencies within the framework of colonial labour practices. By examining the workers’ encounter with multiple class, ethnic and territorial identities, I survey the changing relations of both solidarity and discord between Indian migrant workers and indigenous Iranian workers.

A Hoard of Copper Plates: Patronage and the Early Valkhā State

Abstract: 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...

Vibrant Thalassographies of the Indian Ocean: Beyond Nation States

Abstract: This review essay delves into three major works on maritime history, especially of—but not merely limited to—the Indian Ocean. Two of the three works relate to new kinds of primary source materials, viz. inscriptions (1st to 5th centuries CE) in Hoq cave in the island of Socotra in the western Indian Ocean and about 450 letters of Jewish ‘India Traders’ (c. 1000-1300 CE). The two sources have immensely lit up the pre-1500 CE Indian Ocean scenario and therefore, demand sustained attention and close scrutiny of maritime historians. The third work, an edited volume emerging out of an important conference, deals primarily with the port-cities which are mostly seen from the point of view of the network theory and understanding of space. The third work does not limit itself to any particular temporal and spatial frame. The review essay weaves several other important themes and issues of maritime history, especially on the formation of ports, to highlight the possibilities of new openings and interventions in thalassography.

The Making and Proliferation of Jāti: A Historical Inquiry

Abstract: The article seeks to argue that the making of jāti was homologous with the opening up of deltas for agriculture, involving integration of agro-pastoral descent groups into hereditary specialists of occupational identity, and formation of stratified relations of production transcending kin labour. It emphasises that productive relations in the deltas had preconditions such as hereditary occupations, asymmetrical social relations, amenability to differential allocation of status, and the dominant presence of the Brāhman.a-s with tacitly recognized ritual supremacy, resource potential, social control, political influence and cultural pre-eminence for the emergence of jāti hierarchy. A related argument is that the emergence of hereditary occupation groups and promulgation of sāstraic norms must have been processes of mutuality and concurrence. It has been understood the context of the Jāti institution of coercive control and seigniorial jurisdiction over the labouring body was crucial. As regards proliferatio...

Quotidian Madness: Time, Management and Asylums in Colonial North India, c. 1850–1947

Abstract: This article focuses on the ‘internal’ histories of the lunatic asylums in colonial north India. It looks closely at the asylums in the Punjab and the United Provinces. The routinized life of the inmates revolved around ‘employment and amusement’, ‘diet and space’, ‘reform and reward’ and ‘resistance and adjustment’. The trope of the mundane provides a microscopic lens to delve deeper into the banal social lives of inmates behind the asylum walls. Work was emphasized for its therapeutic value but profits were central in order to make asylums self-sufficient. Work, in fact, became the yardstick on which a patient’s recovery was measured, and insanity was conceptualized as curable or incurable. An investigation into diet and recreation patterns helps construct the social history of psychiatry in colonial India. The complex temporal and spatial materialities of everyday lives inside the asylum are studied here in order to comprehend the role played by various actors and discern how authority was constantly reordered and redefined.

Iranian Diaspora in Maritime Asia: A Study of Sixteenth Century Portuguese Sources:

Abstract: In the preceding article,2 the data provided by the Portuguese sixteenth century sources on the Iranian presence in the Deccan sultanates has been analyzed. In a similar vein, the present article w...