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This chapter examines the rise of the corporations in India during the eighteenth century, focusing on the organisation and influence of the merchants. It reveals that ‘commercialisation’ actually blocked out the possibility of ‘capitalism’. The growth of a more commercial and bureaucratic style of government had implications for the organisation of groups between the state and agrarian society. The weakening of state power forced the corporations and towns into new defensive organisations which provided the base for a true merchant class. The specific features of such corporations also informed the relations between the elements of the later middle class. It argues that organisation of the pre-colonial Hindu corporation and of the Muslim dargah or qasbah town were a middle stage between the fluid relations of the Mughal court and the organisation of communal politics in the late nineteenth century.

This chapter discusses the manner in which the author's own gendered, racialized, and communally marked body was read by different Tanzanian Asian communities in various social sites in the city of Dar es Salaam, and how these encounters shaped the knowledge she was able to produce about Asian communal politics in that city in the early 1990s. The second part of the chapter turns to questions of reciprocity, power, trust, and ethical engagement in research relationships by focusing on examples of two life historians who participated in her study. The first was Frances, a Goan taxi driver with strong views about gender and race; the second was Nargis, a divorced Shiite feminist professional who returned to Dar es Salaam from London to fight a property case on behalf of her father. To offer an example of the kind of feminist “ethno-geography” that this self-reflexive methodological exploration helped the author create, the chapter ends with a sidebar drawn from excerpts from an unpublished chapter of her dissertation that focused on the politics of languages and mother tongues in Dar es Salaam.

This chapter discusses Jawaharlal’s political evolution. It looks at Jawaharlal’s letter to Devadas Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi’s youngest son, where Jawaharlal narrated the incident that occurred during the Ardh Kumbh Mela. It also notes that while Jawaharlal was not familiar with the new communal and factional politics, he was still able to hold high office in the Congress organization. The next section discusses his term as Chairman of the Allahabad Municipal Board, where he took his civic duties seriously. Unfortunately, his efforts proved to be in vain, for most of the Municipal Board were more concerned with securing positions for their friends and families. It then studies Indian politics from 1923 to 1925, as well as some domestic issues that greatly troubled Jawaharlal. The chapter also shows that Jawaharlal’s trip to Europe changed some of his views on Indian politics.

The 2014 general election heralded a major shift in Indian politics. For the first time since Independence, India elected a right-wing party to power at the Centre and in several states. The Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi, won the election on the basis of the much-publicized Gujarat model and his track record of development represented by it. The chapter examines the genesis of this model and its role in shaping the emergence and consolidation of a BJP dominated political system, which has resulted in the exclusion and marginalization of minorities. It highlights the limitations and inconsistencies of this model and contrasts it with the development policies of the UPA government. It also examines the elitist and communal dimensions of the Gujarat model which has been a source of considerable disillusionment with it.