Search Results

This chapter first focuses on the history, origins, and governance of Mysore, a historic city of south India. This is followed by a characterization of the city’s demographics (population, density patterns, labour force, and social composition), city economy (economic base, credit disbursed, investment flows, commercial infrastructure, residential and commercial buildings, and urban poverty). It then goes on to examine resources and finances (primarily revenues, tax collections, and capital expenditures), and provides information on basic infrastructure such as roads, street lights, and transport. Education (schools and colleges) and health (hospitals) are considered as social infrastructure. Next the chapter presents a profile of essential services, such as water supply, sewerage, electricity, and solid waste. It also presents several indicators for the quality of life in Bengaluru, taking into account air and water quality, entertainment (parks, recreation centres, and museums), and the traffic density on roads. Finally, the chapter captures public security and safety (measured in terms of crimes such as murders, dacoity, and theft).

This chapter describes how the author's study of Rampura, a multi-caste village in Mysore, began in 1945–46 when he was a doctoral student in social anthropology at Oxford. According to Radcliffe-Brown, the author's teacher, it is a fact that extant studies did not give an idea of day-to-day social relations between members of diverse castes living in a small community. An important social process in Mysore, if not in South India as a whole, is the urbanization of Brahmins. This process is yet to be studied, and its many consequences and implications understood.

Mysore acceded to the Indian Union nearly two months after Independence and it was only on 12 October that Maharaja Jayachamaraja Wadeyar signed away the prerogatives of the princely house of Mysore. This chapter begins by examining the years in which the political system of former princely Mysore was integrated with the polity of independent India. Dealing with the decade or so after the linguistic reorganization of the states, it gives readers a clearer sense of the political climate prevailing within the milieu.

This chapter discusses Kannada cinema in the 1970s, covering both popular and art films. It explores the first Kannada art film —Samskara (1970), based on a 1965 novel by U. R. Ananthamurthy, about a Brahmin scholar driven into moral crisis and forced to question the tenets he has lived by. It describes how the years beginning with 1972 represent a new era for Mysore because of happenings at the national level influencing the local arena. It considers the roles played by Rajkumar in the 1970s, which always included a characteristic bit of moral rhetoric not usually found when other actors play the lead. It highlights three art films made in the 1970s — Girish Karnad’s Kaadu (1973), B.V. Karanth’s Chomana Dudi (1975), and Girish Kasaravalli’s Ghatashraddha (1977) — after Indira Gandhi’s Congress came to power in Karnataka under Devaraj Urs to illustrate how later Kannada art cinema differs from Samskara in its implications.

This chapter examines Kannada films of the 1980s, a period in which some genres in Kannada cinema — the mythological film, the historical film — died out and new genres like the youth film appeared. These new genres were, however, not ‘stable’ like the mythological film, the historical drama, and the family melodrama, and faded away almost immediately. While most films of the late 1980s abandon the traditional signifiers associated with Mysore, there is still evidence in the Kannada films of the late 1980s that it once existed.

This chapter suggests that linguistic reorganization was unsuccessful in creating a single Kannada nation out of the different Kannada-speaking areas brought together. The vestiges of Mysore still appear to dominate the ‘Kannada community’ and the asymmetry in the constitution of the ‘Kannada identity’ was perhaps accentuated by Bangalore being made the capital of the Kannada state instead of a more appropriate city — like Davanagere or Hubli — which was more centrally located in the Kannada-speaking territory. Despite the discouraging situation with regard to the strength of the region in the local consciousness, the regional identity still resists subsumption by the nation. If such resistance had not been offered, Kannada cinema, like Hindi cinema, might perhaps have been celebrating wealth and consumption-based lifestyles instead of dealing with those living on the margins as it has been doing in the past few years.

This chapter suggests that the discourse formulated in relation to the dominant south Indian cinemas in Tamil or Telugu can prove to be homogenizing when used to analyse other regions, such as Kannada, which emerged before the linguistic organization of the states. It argues that Kannada films of the 1950s — which trace a separate trajectory by displaying a preference for the mythological, folklore, or saint films abandoned in Hindi cinema in the early 1940s — did not address a Kannada identity but one belonging exclusively to ‘old Mysore’.

This chapter discusses the analytical links between the pro-poorness of the state as manifested in its policies, and the social/caste structure and political movements in Karnataka. The chapter continuously refers to the relevant comparative marker, which is shown to be the politics in Tamil Nadu as well as the key observations about its political history. The causal mechanisms in Karnataka politics and those that account for the observed level of redistribution of resources towards the poor are discussed. Most of this chapter focuses on the evolution of the balance of power between the major social groups found in Karnataka society. The chapter includes sections on political competition, redistributive implications, the distribution of caste, and stable dominance. The challenges posed to this dominance are also examined.

A picture is painted in this chapter of life at the Bangalore Residency in the well-run Hindu state of Mysore with all its pageantry and colourful festivals. The maharajah is seen to be an enlightened ruler who takes note of the feelings of his representative council and is devout, capable, and popular. Also Sir Mirza Ismail, his dewan—a Muslim of great ability who becomes a lifelong friend—like Barton, understands the importance of hydro-electric schemes. Sectarian troubles allegedly stirred up by Brahmins affect the universities and there are hartals in November 1922 but these are quickly dealt with. The maharajah steps up his programme of reforms.

This chapter examines the origins of a distinctive system of organizing military conquest in the final quarter of the eighteenth century. It seeks to de-centre the study of politics and military contestation by looking at the war against the Marathas (1778–82) from the vantage point of the region most directly affected by it—the western peninsular territory of the Bombay presidency. The advantage in shifting the focus away from the politically dominant Bengal presidency allows identification of a critical component in the political economy of conquest—the transfer of political authority from a civilian council to the commander of a military force. This shift in political power was essential to the success of the EIC regime of conquest even as it became a perennial source of conflict within the governing structures of the Company state. The debate and dissension that accompanied the deployment of military force both enabled the success of the machine of war and characterized the creation of a distinctive early colonial ideology of rule that subverted civilian control of the military.

Building on the preceding chapter’s effort to study war and territorial conquest from the vantage point of peninsular India, this chapter focuses on the Madras presidency at war against the sultans of Mysore (1780–4). In stark contrast to the muted resistance offered by the civilian government of Bombay, when confronted with a vastly expanded military challenge, the Madras civilian power completely imploded. The belligerent Governor George Macartney struggled to wrest control against encroachments over his civilian authority from military commanders, an overweening Bengal administration and the inveterate hostility of the rulers of Mysore. These fissiparous struggles were not merely confined to the high politics of colonial administration. Ideologues like Henry Malcolm argued for the complete inversion of the ideology of civilian control of the military, especially for the local administration in Madras presidency. Taken together—the complete breakdown of civil–military relations at the highest levels of the Madras presidency and the view from the margins of local administration—the experiment of placing the military well above and beyond the civilian components of early colonial rule had taken deep roots in peninsular India.

By the final decade of the eighteenth century, the political economy of conquest had crystalized into a distinctively recognizable modern form. Expanded scale of war-making created a need to surveil the financial operations of the colonial state. The changing valence of ‘corruption’ came to include a growing insistence on eliminating leakages from the financial flows that enabled conquest. Corruption was not merely a moral scourge but a structural flaw, which if left unresolved would drain the war-making capability of the early colonial regime. Financial accounts of the East India Company therefore had to be rendered legible to public scrutiny and parliamentary debate in the form of an annual India Budget. Colonial conquest captured the cultural imagination of metropolitan Britain – from painting and the Georgian stage to a new graphic scheme of statistical visualization – all sought to comprehend Britain’s territorial empire in South Asia. The growing appetite for war was fed by territorial conquest on an ever-expanding scale and transformed colonial warfare into the most fiscally impactful activity. An entire infrastructure of financial surveillance had to be created to organize warfare and conquest more efficiently. This edifice of control and scrutiny rested upon a growing appetite for reliable information about the financial health of the Indian empire and forecasting the dividends of territorial conquest.

This chapter introduces the reader to the history of the Mysore kingdom and the courts of Tipu Sultan and Krishnaraja Wodeyar III. It investigates the kingdom’s development before and during the British colonial encounter in order to show the historical circumstances that led to the rearticulation of sovereignty in the late early modern and early colonial period. This chapter frames the period under discussion as a time in which the Mysore courts searched for their sovereign identity, which became intimately connected to religious idioms and the kings’ royal devotion. Lastly, this introduction provides an overall outline of the book and its major arguments.

The focus of this chapter is on two texts—the Book of Haidar (Haidar Nama) and the History of Haidar (Nishan-i Haidari)—that relate Tipu Sultan’s genealogy. Of particular interest is the incorporation of tropes from the local southern Karnataka and Kannadiga genealogical tradition that demonstrates how Tipu Sultan and his court acted as adept curators of the historical tradition, constructing a narrative of succession that placed Tipu Sultan as the pinnacle of the kings of Shrirangapattana and its divinely elected ruler. By careful and selective use of the genealogical materials from the courts of his predecessors and through the construction of genealogies of his own family, the court of Tipu Sultan created a complex view of sovereign succession in which both the biological body of the king and the body politic were united as a result of his biological uniqueness and his divine election.

This chapter examines the process of devotional continuity as a way of situating kingship within Tipu Sultan’s reign. Tipu Sultan made claims about his relationship to the divine and thereby about his sovereignty. The Mysore king enacted many of the same devotional practices as his predecessors in the region, patronizing regionally significant dargahs, temples, and mathas that had been associated with royal devotion. The primary focus of the chapter is how Tipu Sultan performed his succession as the king of Bidanuru by sponsoring goddess rituals at the Shringeri Matha and through his devotion to its jagadguru, who Tipu Sultan claimed was responsible for the agricultural and military stability of the Mysore kingdom. This is read alongside Tipu Sultan’s devotional relationship with Gisu Daraz, the Sufi saint patronized by the Bahmani kings of Gulbarga and the Adil Shahs of Bijapur, who visits Tipu Sultan in his dreams.

This chapter examines warfare and diplomacy during Tipu Sultan’s reign as a means to understand the complex constructions of religious fidelity and infidelity in his court. The first section explores the murals of his summer palace, the Dariya Daulat Bagh, in order to demonstrate the position of warfare in his political thought from early in his reign, when his regional dominance was at its height and his sovereign authority unquestioned. These murals portray Tipu Sultan’s holistic vision of sovereignty in which diplomacy, piety, and war coexist and substantiate one another. These murals, especially the understudied portraits on the palace’s eastern wall, correlate religious fidelity with Tipu Sultan’s political allies and infidelity with his rivals. The next section interrogates Tipu Sultan’s proclamations of jihad, or holy war, in his correspondence with international political bodies during the brief armistice between the Third and Fourth Anglo-Mysore Wars.

This chapter examines the vamshavalis, or genealogies, from the court Krishnaraja Wodeyar III. These texts worked within and through modes of historiography from both India and Europe, incorporating innovative structures, styles, and methods from their colonial counterparts. The genealogies, however, remained rooted in the local concerns of sovereignty in which devotion and divine authority were central, but these themes were reframed, and the lineage was shaped through the scope of linear human history. Blending Indian and European modes of historiography, the genealogies of Krishnaraja III are uniquely early colonial Indian histories composed and produced in relation with, response to, and reaction against European modes of political theology, governance, and meaning making. In a period when the king was bereft of administrative and military power, kingship and succession were removed from claims to the “right of conquest” and from the physical process of biological succession.

Through patronage, Krishnaraja Wodeyar III and his court constructed a cultural memory of devotion that cemented the identity of the Wodeyar lineage as the “ancient Hindu Rajahs” and displayed the king and his Wodeyar predecessors as ideal king-devotees. To supplement his acts of charity, Krishnaraja III commissioned a host of paintings and sculptures that display the king participating in royal devotional rituals in the palace and worshipping in various important temples throughout the region. These images were placed alongside older sculptures of royal patrons at key pilgrimage sites throughout the Mysore kingdom and identified with former Wodeyar kings, creating a visual genealogy of devotion that permeated the sacred landscape of southern Karnataka and situated the entire Wodeyar lineage in an unbroken line of regional devotionalism. In doing so, Krishnaraja III and his court constructed dynastic continuity through representations of devotion and redefining Indian kingship through a devotional lens.

This chapter examines the visual media from Krishnaraja Wodeyar III’s court that present a different perspective on royal power rooted in Indian understandings of sovereignty. The chapter focuses on the visual culture of Krishnaraja III’s court and how it was employed to display an alternative to colonial hegemony. Given the vast corpus of visual material that was produced in the Mysore court during Krishnaraja III’s reign, it focuses on the large mural complex in the Rangamahal as an exemplary production of this display of power while drawing on similar imagery in the literary and artistic traditions of his court with occasional reference to others from northern and southern India to build a context for the practice in this early colonial period.