Colonial North India Research Articles

Ideology and public works: “Managing” the Mahanadi river in colonial North India∗

Ideology and public works: “Managing” the Mahanadi river in colonial North India∗

Bodies Clean and Unclean: Prostitution, Sanitary Legislation, and Respectable Femininity in Colonial North India

Bodies Clean and Unclean: Prostitution, Sanitary Legislation, and Respectable Femininity in Colonial North India

The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India.

The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India.

Book Reviews : GYANENDRA PANDEY, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India, Oxford, Delhi, 1990; SANDRIA B. FREITAG, Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in North India, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1989; VEENA DAS, ed. Mirrors of Violence: Communities, Riots and Survivors in South Asia, Oxford, Delhi, 1990

Book Reviews : GYANENDRA PANDEY, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India, Oxford, Delhi, 1990; SANDRIA B. FREITAG, Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in North India, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1989; VEENA DAS, ed. Mirrors of Violence: Communities, Riots and Survivors in South Asia, Oxford, Delhi, 1990

The construction of communalism in colonial North India

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION PREFACE ABBREVIATIONS GLOSSARY CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 2. THE COLONIAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE INDIAN PAST CHAPTER 3. THE BIGOTED JULAHA CHAPTER 4. COMMUNITY AS HISTORY CHAPTER 5. MOBILIZING THE HINDU COMMUNITY CHAPTER 6. HINDI, HINDU, HINDUSTAN CHAPTER 7. NATIONALISM VERSUS COMMUNALISM AFTERWORD APPENDIX I APPENDIX II BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX

Philosophy and Reality in Riparian South Asia: British Famine Policy and Migration in Colonial North India

The assumption of the passive peasant in Indian history has been existent at least since the time of Max Weber, and continues to return, phoenix-like in its appearance, every few decades. Its importance, however, lies in the responses the generality spawns. Morris D. Morris refuted Max Weber's thesis, detailed inThe Religions of India, in 1967, while Barrington Moore, Jr.'sSocial Origins of Dictatorship and Democracywas aptly rebutted by Kathleen Gough in 1974. Since then, the concept of the rational peasant, particularly during colonial times, has undergone a metamorphosis. Various modes of peasant dynamics have been amply demonstrated in recent works, stepping into the realms of peasant rebellion, desertion, banditry, and the like. Of particular import, in terms of peasant consciousness, has been the rise of the ‘Subaltern School’ of study. Beginning with Ranajit Guha's seminal work,Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India, and continuing with volumes of articles by a variety of authors, the Subaltern Studies group has attempted, in their own words, to offer an alternative to historical writing ‘that fails to acknowledge, far less interpret, the contributions made by the peopleon their own, that isindependently of the elite.…’ These scholars thus use the term subaltern for those social groups which they believe have been ignored through the course of history.

Crime in the Social Order of Colonial North India

The necessary vocabulary has not yet been created to encompass both the ‘informing spirit’ and ‘whole social order’ of British India. In part, at least, this is because research has generally concentrated on either British or Indian realms of action, rather than the interaction between them. But British colonial rule shaped a distinctive social system in India, one that drew on both British and indigenous values as well as notions of authority. This essay analyzes aspects of this colonial social order by focusing on its legal system, particularly that portion designed to deal with what the British identified as ‘extraordinary’ crime. Indeed, criminal law may be among the most revealing aspects of a social order. For, as Douglas Hay has observed for a similar elaboration of the English legal structure, ‘criminal law is as much concerned with authority as it is with property … the connections between property, power and authority are close and crucial.’