Repossessing Property in South Asia: Land, Rights, and Law across the Early Modern/Modern Divide-Introduction

Abstract

AbstractThe introductory essay to this special double issue on “Repossessing Property in South Asia: Land, Rights and Law Across the Early Modern/Modern Divide” reviews existing historical scholarship on land control and proprietary right in the Indian subcontinent in order to contextualize the contribution made by the articles that follow. Dividing earlier writings—by historians and anthropologists since the 1950s—into three phases/thematics, the introduction shows how work on South Asia has long grappled with property both as a material relation and as an alien cultural category. Making the case that we must think about property’s conceptual history as being necessitated by more than just the critique of Eurocentrism, the essay clarifies how the articles that follow both continue and extend past discussion. Overall, it argues that by providing integrated perspectives on property’s materialandideational dimensions, our articles will be illuminating both to scholars of Afro-Asia and those interested in law, political economy and political culture more generally.