{"title":"The 'hut' and the 'axe': The 1947 Sylhet referendum","authors":"B. Chakrabarty","doi":"10.1177/001946460203900401","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460203900401","url":null,"abstract":"an unfolding of historical processes in which people were drawn spontaneously or under compulsion, and participated as significant actors in what was, among other things, ’a history of struggle’ for survival in changed circumstances following the construction of new political identities as Indians and Pakistanis. Independence came in 1947, but with it came Partition. Not simply a British decree, but various schemes in which different modalities were followed, divided India. For the accession of princely states, the consent of the rulers was sought to amicably settle the issue of amalgamation with either of the independent nations. The Muslim-majority provinces, Bengal and Punjab, had decided for partition by voting by the respective legislators. Under the chairmanship of Ceril Radcliffe, two Boundary Commissions were accordingly appointed to demarcate the boundaries. There was also a third way of referendum through which new boundaries were drawn, separating the two independent dominions. Following the outcome of the referendum, the fate of Sylhet in Assam and the North West Frontier Province was decided. All these modalities were clearly stated in Louis Mountbatten’s 3 June statement.","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2002-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77335601","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Reviews : ROMILA THAPAR, Śakuntalā: Texts, Readings, Histories, Delhi: Kali for Women, 1999, pp. x + 272, Rs 400","authors":"D. Shulman","doi":"10.1177/001946460203900412","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460203900412","url":null,"abstract":"When it comes to the Abhijiianasakuntala, an almost eery unanimity prevails. Medieval Sanskrit commentators and poeticians declare unambiguously that among all plays (notakam), this work is the finest. Goethe, as is well known, upgraded the Sakuntala’s perfection to embrace everything that ’charms, bewitches, nourishes, and satisfies’ in the world, whether in heaven or on earth. A long series of European Romantics, Orientalists and Bengali modernists vied in inventing","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2002-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82372075","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Reviews : VASANT MOON, Growing Up Untouchable in India. A Dalit Autobiography, Boston, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2001, pp. 203","authors":"Awadhendra Sharan","doi":"10.1177/001946460203900407","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460203900407","url":null,"abstract":"distinctive, popularly based denomination-like orientations, detached from active political life, as the Farangi Mahallis never did. These articles provide rich material for debate and reflection. In the first article, for example, on Indo-Persian culture, Robinson follows the Pakistani scholar Aziz Ahmad in describing Persian literature as demonstrating a ’complete rejection of Indian life and landscape’ and speaks of ’a world which wished to distance itself","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2002-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88574229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Reviews : DAVID SHULMAN, The Wisdom of Poets Studies in Tamil, Telugu and Sanskrit, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 384","authors":"K. Natarajan","doi":"10.1177/001946460203900408","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460203900408","url":null,"abstract":"militaristic tone animates the cadre of the Samta Sainik Dal (SSD) formed in Maharpura 1938, and there are interesting juxtapositions with other such militaristic formations. The youth who joined the SSD were thus drawn from the youth that earlier attended RSS meetings in the area, and once the ’turf battles’ had been settled, there was also constant participation in the programmes of each other. Volunteers were organised in platoons, sections and companies, and taught military drills (through with sticks serving as substitutes for rifles) that remind the author of Russian soldiers. These skills were useful not only in organising large meetings, but were also tested in the rather violent atmosphere of the 1946 elections when a huge poster proclaimed that ’We will play holi with the blood of Mahars’ and ’a sort of war atmosphere spread in all Mahar neighborhoods’. And finally, there is the world of militant mill workers, especially of women leaders such as Radhabai, member of the INTUC and later of Ambedkar’s Independent Labour Party, and of student leaders such as Kausalya Nadeshwar and Shanta Shabharkar who organised meetings of the Scheduled Caste Student Federation, whose public activities complemented the day-to-day struggles of workers such as Pumabai. To conclude, this is a refreshing account, especially for those who wish to look at Dalit lives beyond the narrow political understanding anchored in the GandhiAmbedkar divide. The narrative is steeped in nostalgia and sometimes jumps from one theme to another rather abruptly (a chapter on Politics and Pigeons discusses the 1942 movement together with the passion for raising pigeons), both of which may not be to the liking of all readers. But to this reviewer, these ’faults’ are more than made up by the richness of detail. The one quibble that I do have relates to translation, wherein Marathi caste names have been rendered into English on the basis of traditional profession. These names-Oilpresser, Ropemaker, Gardener, Farmer, Stonebreaker and Writer-are simplistic, if not misleading, and it would perhaps have been a better strategy to include them in the glossary with brief descriptions that are suggestive of the complexity of caste identities","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2002-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88705639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Reviews : AYESHA JALAL, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 630","authors":"D. Gilmartin","doi":"10.1177/001946460203900414","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460203900414","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2002-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89615291","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Reviews : PETER L. SCHMITTHENNER, Telugu Resurgence: C.P. Brown and Cultural Consolid ation in Nineteenth-Century South India, Delhi: Manohar, 2001, pp. 324","authors":"A. Raghuramaraju","doi":"10.1177/001946460203900410","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460203900410","url":null,"abstract":"’Parsi lustre on Indian soil’. Although the author has done an enormous amount of reading on the Parsis and sifted through legal materials which are not easily accessible, the end result is, on the whole, disappointing. The reader in search of details on the legal history of the Parsis will undoubtedly find nourishment in this work, but the author does not appear to have had any ambitions beyond the reconstruction of this legal history. Of recent books about the Parsis, of which there are few, T.M. Luhrmann’s The Good Parsi stands out as more focused and informed by a better knowledge of social science theory. The Parsis certainly deserve more attention from historians and social scientists, taking into account recent developments in methodology of studies of ethnic communities. Future studies might undoubtedly benefit from some of the empirical research done by Jesse Palsetia, especially as far as legal problems are concerned. But it remains a mystery how such a raw piece of research could have been published as a book by a reputable publishing house like Brill.","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2002-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88620184","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Indian political economy and the early British industrial revolution: A fresh look for 1753-1794","authors":"N. Hatekar","doi":"10.1177/001946460203900404","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460203900404","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the relationship between the dynamics of Indian political economy and the British Industrial Revolution over the period 1753-94. During this period, the Industrial Revolution was taking place slowly and gradually. During 1700-60, GDP from industry increased by 0.7 per cent per year, while during 1760-80 it increased by 1.3 per cent per annum. For 1780-1801, this rate jumped to 2 per cent per year.’ At the same time, England was getting increasingly involved with the politics and the economics of the Indian subcontinent through the East India Company. Since the middle of the century, the Company’s political involve-","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2002-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84819630","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Reviews : UPINDER SINGH, Ancient Delhi, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 114","authors":"S. Kumar","doi":"10.1177/001946460203900415","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460203900415","url":null,"abstract":"she has structured her arguments not as a contribution to scholarly dialogue on the history of Indian Muslims in this period, but simply as an answer to polemicists who have seen modern Indian history as shaped by a monolithic Muslim community driven by communalism. Unfortunately, given its length and mass of detail, this book is no more likely to succeed as an intervention in polemical debate than as an effective contribution to scholarly dialogue","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2002-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85631731","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Reviews : KUNAL CHAKRABARTI. Religious Process: The Purānas and the Making of a Regional Tradition. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 368","authors":"D. Curley","doi":"10.1177/001946460203900411","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460203900411","url":null,"abstract":"Professor Chakrabarti’s thesis is that in the early medieval period, brahmans in Bengal engaged in a creative process of ’negotiation of meanings’ between the ’great’, pan-Indian traditions of ’brahmanism’ and ’little’, local Bengali traditions (p. 317). A body of Sanskrit texts, the ’Bengal PurGl)as’, most of them composed in Bengal between the eighth and the thirteenth centuries, record results of these negotiations, at least from the perspectives of their brahman authors. The latter selectively legitimated some features of local beliefs and religious practices, especially those having to do with the worship of local goddesses, even though these same beliefs and practices sometimes contradicted the Vedas. Of course brahman authors of the Bengal Purdnas also upheld the core principles of ’brahmanism’: the formal authority of the vedas, the authority of brahmans as knowers of the Vedas, the legitimacy of varndsrama-dharma (modified to take into account special features of Bengali society), and an implacable opposition to Buddhism (p. 25). Their purpose was to secure hegemony for brahmans in authorising rituals, and a wide range of attendant political and social privileges. But their efforts also had","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2002-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85142594","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Reviews : JESSE S. PALSETIA, The Parsis of India: Preservation of Identity in Bombay City, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 2001, pp. 368","authors":"Claude Markovits","doi":"10.1177/001946460203900409","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460203900409","url":null,"abstract":"doctrine of conditioned origin, pratityasamutpada. Both are like a large circle spiralling inward in concentric patterns to a central point, where they implode. Within this system of self-destruction and apparently irreversible momentum, the heroine manages to extricate herself through the application of dream logic which functions as the mode of memory, the paradoxical absence that is presence and the presence that is absence. The book’s final section deals with the triple nexus of love, desire and longing for the other. The essay ’Bhavabhuti on Cruelty and Compassion’ studies this writer’s portrayal of the painful separation of Rama and Sita. The virtuous king Rama is tragically torn between the conflicting ideals of individual attachment and collective duty, the king’s dharma. Shulman details the interweaving of the modes of karuna (compassion) and daruna (harsh, terrible, cruel) in the experience of love. In ’The Fire and Flood: The Testing of Sita in Kampan’s Iramavataram’, Shulman contrasts the south Indian version of the epic with the north Indian version by Valmiki. In Kampan’s version, the couple, reunited after Sita’s ordeal by fire, ’direct allegations to one another with almost shocking, verbal abandon’. The poem hinges on a level of passion and conflict not normally associated with more normative cultural representations of the saintly couple. The last two essays are lyrical articulations of classical Telugu poetic visions, interrogating notions of human identity and psychic formation. The handful of printing errors in this compilation could have been avoided through more rigorous editing; fortunately, they did not detract from this reviewer’s experience of David Shulman’s outstanding scholarship.","PeriodicalId":45806,"journal":{"name":"Indian Economic and Social History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2002-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83303686","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}