Showing papers in "Studies in History in 2016"
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore ways in which India's northeast is represented and experienced that signal deeply-rooted, contradictory and contested narratives of history, geography and identity, and propose an agenda for historicising the northeast by way of three interconnected strands of inquiry.
Abstract: Northeast India is in an apparent state of being marginalized, rediscovered and redefined. The region, it might be said, is a historical problem. This article explores ways in which India’s northeast is represented and experienced that signal deeply-rooted, contradictory and contested narratives of history, geography and identity. It further proposes an agenda for historicising the northeast by way of three interconnected strands of inquiry. First, it argues that an analysis of governance is essential to determine the ways in which the northeast frontier as British and Indian buffer zone has been shaped by the personnel, agencies and regulatory systems of imperial authority. Second, it proposes that a deeper study of Christianity and the ways in which particular experiences of belief, conversion and intimate cross-cultural encounter can exemplify tensions at the heart of colonial power and identity. Third, it turns attention to the ways in which ecological history can determine the extent to which the exp...
6 citations
TL;DR: For many years, the region we know as Northeast India has suffered from a dismal lack of academic attention as mentioned in this paper, and the need remains, however, to study the region by means of fresh analytical frames.
Abstract: For many years, the region we know as Northeast India has suffered from a dismal lack of academic attention. Recently this lacuna is being addressed through various disciplinary interventions. The need remains, however, to study the region by means of fresh analytical frames. Historians have an important role to play here, as David Zou demonstrates in his review article of six recent thoughtprovoking monographs. This special issue on the Northeast seeks to address the region through the framework of ‘borderlands’. This conceptualization is especially relevant because of the region’s location. There are four reasons to think of Northeast India as a borderland. First, in the colonial period it was the eastern frontier of British India: here the expanding British Empire encountered the Chinese and Burmese Empires. Second, the region reached independence as the eastern periphery of post-colonial India. Third, it became conceptualized as a liminal zone between the areas of ‘South Asia’ and ‘Southeast Asia’. Fourth, it is now a dynamic crossroads of geopolitical reconfiguration involving China, Myanmar/Burma, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal and India. It is precisely because of its encounter with colonial and post-colonial Others that Northeast India can be treated as a region today. Without its incorporation as a borderland into larger jurisdictions, its political history would have been a story of many fragments—a multi-polar zone of some monarchical realms and numerous chieftaincies in interaction with each other. These two processes of incorporation, colonial and post-colonial, and the region’s academic neglect, as a forgotten margin between South and Southeast Asia, resulted in Northeast India’s unique habitus, which the essays in this issue address. Most Indian historiography has elided this special position, usually preferring to overlook the region when making general statements about ‘India’. In addition, the methodological nationalism of many historians of India, Myanmar/Burma, Bangladesh and China has obscured historical processes that cross the borders of Northeast India. Fortunately, this is now changing with new historical research going beyond national confines.1 The history of border making has been dynamic and complex and it has impinged on life in Northeast India in many subtle ways. Various stages of colonial incorporation produced fluctuating borders and contested borderlands. These were accompanied by shifting categorizations of various groups of inhabitants (from ‘settled’, to ‘primitive’, to ‘savage’ and ‘most primitive’) and these in turn produced gradations in their cultural capital and in variations in administrative absorption (Excluded Territories, Partially Excluded Territories, Inner Lines, etc.).
6 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, divergent contemporary political and territorial claims and counterclaims in the history of the Indo-Naga conflict have been discussed, taking the upland, tribal Nagas, and the long lingering Indo Naga conflict, as my case.
Abstract: Taking the upland, tribal Nagas, and the long lingering Indo-Naga conflict, as my case, this article positions divergent contemporary political and territorial claims and counterclaims in the histo...
5 citations
TL;DR: In recent years, there has been a growing awareness that such areas were much more open than h... as discussed by the authors, and the borderlands of India's northeast are often seen as historically isolated, remote and inaccessible.
Abstract: The borderlands of India’s northeast are often seen as historically isolated, remote and inaccessible. In recent years, there has been a growing awareness that such areas were much more open than h...
3 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that political authorities were accommodative in their attitude towards the implications of inherent dynamism of the physical environment, and if not by choice then definitely under compulsions of natural exigencies, the ruling elites were forced to make preventive interventions by extending support to the peasantry in their negotiations with the environment.
Abstract: Recent writings have questioned the conventional portrayal of nature as benevolent and suggested that vagaries of monsoon necessitated regular negotiations to ensure agrarian production at multiple levels especially during early modern times in the semi-arid and arid landscape of Rajasthan. It is generally assumed that most of the negotiations were carried out by the peasantry, and political apparatus was usually a mere spectator or at best provided relief during severe scarcity. This article argues that political authorities were accommodative in their attitude towards the implications of inherent dynamism of the physical environment. Therefore, if not by choice then definitely under compulsions of natural exigencies, the ruling elites were forced to make preventive interventions by extending support to the peasantry in their negotiations with the environment.
3 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on the key issues that shed light on the urban settlement in the post-Plassey period and show how certain schemes of infrastructural development of a space often do not produce the desired effect, but instead set in motion a whole range of activities that brings forth a range of other issues.
Abstract: In this article I will try to show how certain schemes of infrastructural development of a space often do not produce the desired effect, but instead set in motion a whole range of activities that brings forth a range of other issues. Through the study of the building of the New Fort William and the project of construction of a dockyard in Calcutta in the second half of the eighteenth century, I intend to focus on some of the key issues that shed light on the urban settlement in the post-Plassey period. The building of the New Fort William and the dockyard were important projects that shaped the space of the town. But the projects themselves did not have the intended effect on the settlement—the fort took a long time to complete and the dockyard could not be built in the first attempt. The halted and aborted efforts did leave a mark on the space of the town, brought in new forms of labour regulations and put forth questions of proprietary rights of individual and the Company. These projects also shed ligh...
3 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the historical records about the northeastern frontier of British India reinforce the idea of the frontier and evoke images of linear and ethnocentric contact zones, which is not the case today.
Abstract: Frontiers evoke images of linear and ethnocentric contact zones. Much of the historical records about the northeastern frontier of British India reinforce this idea of the frontier. This article fa...
2 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the activities of the Kuomintang operating in India as well as in Calcutta since the early decades of the 20th century are discussed. But, the present article intends to throw light on the activities and activities of this group.
Abstract: The present article intends to throw light on the activities of the Kuomintang operating in India as well as in Calcutta since the early decades of twentieth century. Kuomintang was the National People’s Party, which basically performed as a secret revolutionary party under Dr Sun Yat-sen in 1894. Before discussing the activities of the Kuomintang, we shall delve into an overview of how and in what ways the Chinese settled in various parts of India, especially in Calcutta.
2 citations
TL;DR: This paper examined the evidence of Mysore's "hunt for noses" within the broader context of nose-cutting in South Asia, namely through the lenses of punishment, humiliation, ritual offerings, and as a military practice.
Abstract: In this article, the evidence of Mysore’s ‘hunt for noses’ within the broader context of nose-cutting in South Asia was examined, namely through the lenses of punishment, humiliation, ritual offerings, and as a military practice.In order to do so, a variety of sources from dharma śastric literature and folk narratives, which mentioned nose-cutting, were briefly examined to provide a fuller picture of the many meanings latent within the practice that associate nose amputation with punishment, and as a public mark of humiliation. The Mysore case, however, does not conform to usual characterization of nose amputation in secondary literature. The practice of nose-cutting in Mysore is shown to contain aspects of these broader connotations, but Mysore’s practice of nose amputation also remains specific to the Mysore context as an amalgamation of the variety of meanings from the broader Indian context with local military and ritual practice. This article, therefore, is an attempt to build a conceptual framework—...
2 citations
TL;DR: When Kabir is invoked today, he is apt to come across as an individualistic and defiant social critic, someone who inveterately set himself apart from the religion he saw being practiced all around as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: When Kabir is invoked today, he is apt to come across as an individualistic and defiant social critic, someone who inveterately set himself apart from the religion he saw being practiced all around...
1 citations
TL;DR: The Mughal Empire sought to sustain an ecological hoofprint, so to speak, that involved the cultivation and systematic transport of a range of nutritious grasses that required a constant and voluminous supply of fodder.
Abstract: The Mughal Empire did not feed itself only on its agrarian surpluses. While extraction from its vast agrarian hinterland was a crucial source of revenue, realizing those surpluses was critically de...