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Identity Registration in India During and After the Raj

Ravindran Gopinath

in Registration and Recognition: Documenting the Person in World History

This chapter is essentially a history of an absence — the absence of individual identity registration in pre-colonial and colonial India. The main question that it attempts to answer is the apparent ... More

This chapter is essentially a history of an absence — the absence of individual identity registration in pre-colonial and colonial India. The main question that it attempts to answer is the apparent contradiction between the colonial Indian state's encyclopaedic attempts at statistical recording and the absence of individual identity registration. The colonial government, while counting and recording virtually everything from people to property to natural resources, somehow did not feel the need to register individual identity. For the Indian population, social aggregates such as caste, despite official misgivings, continued throughout the colonial period to be a proxy for individual identity. It was only with the establishment of a democratic state based on universal adult suffrage after Independence that individual identity registration developed slowly and partially.Less

Are Subaltern Studies Postmodern or Postcolonial? The Politics and Sensibilities of Geohistorical Locations

Walter D. Mignolo

in Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking

This chapter discusses South Asian subaltern studies as well as their adaptation by Latin Americanist historian Florencia Mallon and by the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group. It is important to ... More

This chapter discusses South Asian subaltern studies as well as their adaptation by Latin Americanist historian Florencia Mallon and by the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group. It is important to keep in mind the differences between the original projects of South Asian Subaltern Studies Group formulated in terms of querying the “historic failure of the nation to come to its own” and of making clear that, “it is the study of this failure which constitutes the central problematic of the historiography of colonial India.” Although one can say that it is this problematic that engages Mallon's and the Latin American Group's adaptation, in both cases, there is a lack of attention to the fact that Latin America is not a country—like postpartition India—and that the many countries of Latin America obtained their independence at the beginning of the nineteenth century and not in 1947.Less

Knowledge Formation in Colonial India

Norbert Peabody

in India and the British Empire

This chapter argues that it is no longer tenable to insist that the forms of knowledge through which colonial rule was established were fully European in origin and development but, rather, they were ... More

This chapter argues that it is no longer tenable to insist that the forms of knowledge through which colonial rule was established were fully European in origin and development but, rather, they were created out of conditions that entailed considerable collaboration — intended and unintended, conscious and unconscious, wanted and unwanted — between the British and, at least, certain key indigenous groups. These Indian groups were often able to harness, redirect, and shape aspects of the emergent forms of knowledge that were being created during the colonial encounter in order to establish and/or deepen a privileged position in local society that itself was divided along various lines including class, status, party and gender. By working through and, in some cases, beyond conditions of possibility raised by the colonial encounter, Indian actors exercised substantial, but often unacknowledged, agency in the formation of colonial knowledge.Less

Introduction: The Relevance of Social Service in Indian History

Carey Anthony Watt

in Serving the Nation: Cultures of Service, Association and Citizenship

The Introduction outlines the background for social service and philanthropy in colonial India during the 1910s. It mentions the four main groups under scrutiny in the book: the Arya Samaj, the ... More

The Introduction outlines the background for social service and philanthropy in colonial India during the 1910s. It mentions the four main groups under scrutiny in the book: the Arya Samaj, the Theosophical Society, the Seva Samiti, and the Servants of India. It also explores the broader social, political and cultural relevance of social service associations, including their implications for the nationalist movement as well as the shaping of India’s ‘civil society’. It also elaborates how traditional living traditions of dana, seva, karmayoga and brahmacharya combine with global developments in organized philanthropy meant for the larger public good. It describes the promotion of a vibrant ‘associational culture’ as linked to notions of active citizenship. It also points out that the emergence of an organized voluntary sector and vibrant public life occurred at the same time as developments in the field globally. An overview of the chapters included in this book ends the Introduction.Less

Incentives for Organized Social Service: The Social Context

Carey Anthony Watt

in Serving the Nation: Cultures of Service, Association and Citizenship

This chapter tries to answer the question why new social service organizations came to be formed in the 1910s and 20s. It investigates the social context in which the evolution of ideas and practices ... More

This chapter tries to answer the question why new social service organizations came to be formed in the 1910s and 20s. It investigates the social context in which the evolution of ideas and practices of service and philanthropy occurred. It covers influential world events from the 1890s to the 1910s: the globalization of philanthropy and social service; the transnational emergence of associational cultures and organizational societies; a worldwide interest in citizenship; and widespread anxieties about race and ‘national efficiency’. Besides becoming more aware of dynamic changes sweeping the world in the area of philanthropic activity, the increase in philanthropic associations coincided with the growing Indian understanding of the emptiness of British rhetoric about equality within the empire. New wealth among the Hindus and fears of a population decline among them (because of famine, plague and conversion) were other catalysts in the expansion of an associational culture. The latter was also supported by other ideologies prevalent in colonial north India in the 1910s.Less

Living Loss at Land’s End

Sumathi Ramaswamy

in The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories

This chapter examines devotees of Tamil in colonial and postcolonial India. It documents how and why Lemuria accumulated the density of commemorative meaning in the Tamil country by first considering ... More

This chapter examines devotees of Tamil in colonial and postcolonial India. It documents how and why Lemuria accumulated the density of commemorative meaning in the Tamil country by first considering its transformation from the homogeneous paleo and occult place-worlds of Euro-America into an intimate Tamil home-place that is catastrophically lost to the ocean. Labors of loss accompany paleo-scientific and occult placemaking around Lemuria in Euro-America, but the loss experienced by its Tamil place-makers appears much more profound and personal precisely because it is not some remote paleo land or occult domain that vanishes, but the very birthplace of the Tamil language, literature, and culture.Less

EPILOGUE: Archive Fever and the Panopticon of History

Antoinette Burton

in Dwelling in the Archive: Women Writing House, Home, and History in Late Colonial India

This chapter begins by discussing that during an extended historical moment characterized by pronouncements about “the end of history” and the “death of history”, the traditional archive is being ... More

This chapter begins by discussing that during an extended historical moment characterized by pronouncements about “the end of history” and the “death of history”, the traditional archive is being rehabilitated as the originary site of “real” history and the last bastion of real historical knowledge and authority. It explains that the presumptive boundaries of “the archive,” and especially its “concrete” location inside the nation, have been crucial to the security of the nation-state since the onset of modern processes of archive rationalization,. It discusses that the women in this book may have believed that rematerializing house and home would complete an otherwise unfinished history of late colonial India. It notes that the works of these women allow people to appreciate the radical possibilities that domesticity has to offer history, rather than succumb to the logic of archive fever and the partial truths of its diagnosticians.Less

Minority Rights in Colonial India and the Constituent Assembly: A Historical Background

Rochana Bajpai

in Debating Difference: Group Rights and Liberal Democracy in India

This chapter offers a historical interpretation of the career of group preferential policies from the late nineteenth century through to close of the Constituent Assembly debates. It shows that while ... More

This chapter offers a historical interpretation of the career of group preferential policies from the late nineteenth century through to close of the Constituent Assembly debates. It shows that while group rights in the first half of the twentieth century saw steady expansion, their colonial proportions came to be scaled back eventually. The chapter also argues that the dynamic of containment assumed different degrees and forms in different areas of group rights, with the most far-reaching changes occurring in political representation for religious minorities. While Partition is usually cited to account for attenuation in the rights of religious minorities during constitution-making, this chapter suggests that it does not constitute a sufficient explanation as is commonly believed. Instead, longer-term ideological features of Indian nationalism favoured the containment of differential treatment.Less

The Fight for the Forest

Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha

in This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India

This chapter explores some of the evidences on conflicts over forest and pasture in colonial India. It reviews the major dimensions of such conflicts by addressing the genesis, the geographical ... More

This chapter explores some of the evidences on conflicts over forest and pasture in colonial India. It reviews the major dimensions of such conflicts by addressing the genesis, the geographical spread, and the different forms in which protest manifested itself. The new laws restricted small-scale hunting by tribals and they facilitated more organized shikar expeditions by the British. The disruption of the delicate balance between humans and forests has resulted to a sharp fall in the jhum (shifting) cycle. The most sustained opposition to state forest management was to be found in the Himalayan districts of present-day Uttar Pradesh. The experience of Jaunsar Bawar showed the struggle between villagers and colonial forest management. Contemporary movements asserting local claims over forest resources have repeated earlier movements in terms of their geographical spread, in the nature of their participation, and in the strategies and ideology of protest.Less

The Context

Benjamin Zachariah

in Developing India: An Intellectual and Social History, c. 1930-50

This chapter examines the setting in which ‘development’ was discussed in India in the 1930s and 1940. It outlines the background debates regarding political economy in colonial India, and points to ... More

This chapter examines the setting in which ‘development’ was discussed in India in the 1930s and 1940. It outlines the background debates regarding political economy in colonial India, and points to the dependence of these debates on the attribution of essentialized and stereotypical economic and social roles to particular groups of people by British imperial discourse. It raises the question of how far counter-arguments were able to break down these essentialisms, or how far they required the creation of counter-essentialisms. It examines the interplay between allegedly universal principles—‘economics’ or ‘political economy’—and particular exceptions, based, for instance, on the ‘nature’ of Indians. It is argued that many of the debates on development emerged from categories and concepts intrinsic to everyday situations of imperial administration, but threw up the need to formulate alternative arguments.Less

Introduction: Excess, a History

Durba Mitra

in Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought

This introductory chapter traces the history of the concept of the sexually deviant female in colonial India. It first takes a look at how the figure of the prostitute appears across different ... More

This introductory chapter traces the history of the concept of the sexually deviant female in colonial India. It first takes a look at how the figure of the prostitute appears across different archives from colonial India and within analyses of Indian social life. The chapter then shows how colonial studies on the nature of Indian society were to become the empirical basis for universalist theories of comparative societies. Indeed, the colonial state in India was, at its inception, an experiment in new forms of scientific and social scientific practices that were to influence state practices and the formation of disciplinary knowledge in the colony and metropole. At the heart of these sciences of society was a concern about structuring, tracing, and mapping the social world of colonial India through the assessment of women's sexuality. These histories reveal the way key debates about gender, caste, communal difference, and social hierarchy in India became objects of social scientific analysis through the description and evaluation of female sexuality. And, as the chapter shows, this social scientific imaginary had extraordinary reach.Less

Colonial Secularism and Islamism in North India: A Relationship of Creativity?

in Secularizing Islamists?: Jama'at-e-Islami and Jama'at-ud-Da'wa in Urban Pakistan

This chapter, which explores the origins of Islamism within the North Indian context, rests on Talal Asad's insight about the dialectical relationship between “secularism” and “religion.” It proposes ... More

This chapter, which explores the origins of Islamism within the North Indian context, rests on Talal Asad's insight about the dialectical relationship between “secularism” and “religion.” It proposes that the type of secularism which the British sought to impose in colonial India developed the possibility of novelty in Muslim thought and practice that is called Islamism. The particular kind of secularism that the British employed to the Indian context was one which developed severe hindrances to secularization. Maududi moved from Hyderabad to Jabalpore to Delhi in search of employment variously as a journalist/editor, tutor, and college lecturer. He and the Islamists were destablized by their insistence on the universalism of Islamic laws. Maududi's modernity was a source of contention with the traditionalists. His approach to religion and its practice translated into innovations at various levels, while building upon earlier vocabularies and “traditions” of reform.Less

Introduction

Gyanendra Pandey

in The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India

This introductory chapter first sets out the purpose of the book, which is to examine the conditions, the character, and the consequences of what has been called ‘communal’ conflict in nineteenth and ... More

This introductory chapter first sets out the purpose of the book, which is to examine the conditions, the character, and the consequences of what has been called ‘communal’ conflict in nineteenth and early-twentieth-century India. At the same time, it seeks to analyse a particular construction of knowledge about Indian society — the construction of a sociology and a history that is fairly well summed up in the term ‘communalism’. The chapter then examines what happens when the term ‘communalism’ is applied to the history of Hindu–Muslim (or Hindu–Sikh/Muslim–Sikh) relations in colonial north India, what remains hidden behind the term and what, if anything, it illuminates.Less

Introduction

Sanjay Sharma

in Famine, Philanthropy and the Colonial State: North India in the Early Nineteenth Century

The Introduction outlines how the subject of famines has attracted the attention of scholars ever since the early nationalists argued that India had become more famine prone under colonial rule. It ... More

The Introduction outlines how the subject of famines has attracted the attention of scholars ever since the early nationalists argued that India had become more famine prone under colonial rule. It points out that the focus of the book will be on the Ganaga-Jamuna interfluve known as the Doab, and discusses its hydrographical factors, the fertility of its soil, irrigation initiatives, and its crop sowing patterns. It also includes a discussion of how the decline of the Mughal Empire reduced trading opportunities which resulted in agricultural stagnation leading to the depression of the 1830s. It describes how the forthcoming chapters will approach the famine years as entry points to investigate the clash between indigenous and European notions of charity, and the impact of the classificatory categories of pauperism and destitution on the management of famine relief in the colonial context, and the origins of structured poverty, welfarism, and state responsibility for famine prevention.Less

‘Vakil Raj’: The Indian National Congress and the Birth of the Lawyer as Political Representative

Mithi Mukherjee

in India in the Shadows of Empire: A Legal and Political History (1774–1950)

Chapter 3 discusses how notions of justice, equity, and liberty that were introduced in India by the British Empire in the wake of the 1857 Revolt were mediated by the figure of the monarch. This ... More

Chapter 3 discusses how notions of justice, equity, and liberty that were introduced in India by the British Empire in the wake of the 1857 Revolt were mediated by the figure of the monarch. This chapter focuses on how that historical mediation overdetermined the origin and nature of the Indian National Congress, the most powerful political party in colonial India that came to be founded in 1888. It argues that the discourse of the Indian National Congress was firmly lodged within an epistemologico-juridical paradigm determined by the telos and procedures of justice as equity and liberty. This juridical paradigm explains why the lawyer emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as the dominant enunciative persona for the articulation of political discourse. It also explains why the Indian National Congress, even as it opposed the colonial regime, continued to operate within an imperial juridical framework grounded in the figure of the monarch.Less