Redefining the way history and anthropology view tribal India, this book explores the expansion of the state in Bastar over the past two centuries. Adivasis have always been part of a 'mainstream', but a 'mainstream' whose contours they have debated. Nandini Sundar studies the pre-colonialeconomy and polity, the critical rebellions and growing restrictions on customary rights in colonial times, and the relationship between colonial anthropology and the formation of laws. The second edition brings the book up to date discussing the contemporary socio-political developments inChhattisgarh and the contradictions faced by tribal societies today.
Challenging dominant theories of kingship, this book explores the transformation of the polity under indirect rule as well as in independent India. It documents the growing restrictions on popular access to land and forest and the multiple historical understandings that shaped the encounter between different actors.
The series Religion and Society (RS) contributes to the exploration of religions as social systems - both in Western and non-Western societies; in particular, it examines religions in their differentiation from, and intersection with, other cultural systems, such as art, economy, law and politics. Due attention is given to paradigmatic case or comparative studies that exhibit a clear theoretical orientation with the empirical and historical data of religion and such aspects of religion as ritual, the religious imagination, constructions of tradition, iconography, or media. In addition, the formation of religious communities, their construction of identity, and their relation to society and the wider public are key issues of this series.
Examines the political worldview of courtly and royal women in India during the late colonial and post-Independence period. This book offers a history of the zenana, which served as the 'women's courts' or 'female quarters of the palace', where women lived behind pardah in seclusion.
In recent years, the most important and influential change in the historiography of South Asia, and particularly India, has been brought about by the globally renowned 'Subaltern Studies' project that began 20 years ago. The present volume of critiques and readings of the project represents the first comprehensive historical introduction to Subaltern Studies and the worldwide debates it has generated among scholars of history, politics and sociology. The volume provides a reliable point of departure for new readers of Subaltern Studies and a resource base for experienced readers, who want to revive critical debates. In his introduction, David Ludden traces the intellectual history of subalternity and analyses trends in the globalization of academic discourse that account for the changing character of Subaltern Studies as well as for the shifting debates around it. In doing so, he expands the field of discussion well beyond Subaltern Studies into broader problems of historical research methodology in the study of subordinate people and into problems of writing contemporary intellectual history. The book thus provides a general readers' guide to techniques for critical historical reading. It uses Subaltern Studies to indicate how readers can read themselves, their context, the text, the author, the author's sources and the subject of study into a single, contentious field of historical analysis.
An empathetic, moving account of what drives indigenous peasants to support armed struggle despite severe state repression, including lives lost, and homes and communities destroyed Over the past decade, the heavily forested, mineral-rich region of Bastar in central India has emerged as one of the most militarized sites in the country. The government calls the Maoist insurgency the “biggest security threat” to India. In 2005, a state-sponsored vigilante movement, the Salwa Judum, burned hundreds of villages, driving their inhabitants into state-controlled camps, drawing on counterinsurgency techniques developed in Malaysia, Vietnam and elsewhere. Apart from rapes and killings, hundreds of “surrendered” Maoist sympathizers were conscripted as auxiliaries. The conflict continues to this day, taking a toll on the lives of civilians, security forces and Maoist cadres. In 2007, Sundar and others took the Indian government to the Supreme Court over the human rights violations arising out of the conflict. In a landmark judgment in 2011 the court banned state support for vigilantism. The Burning Forest describes this brutal war in the heart of India, and what it tells us about the courts, media and politics of the country. The result is a fascinating critical account of Indian democracy.
This book demonstrates synergies and distils hard-earned lessons of human and forest rights struggles to inform the ongoing debates on environmental human rights. It highlights the ongoing struggles of the communities in postcolonial India that are confronted with the most brutal and unprecedented assault on their economic and sociocultural rights – often led by the political establishment. The contributions in this edited volume present multiple narratives of these struggles, theoretical inquiries into a diversity of political imaginations, and the intertwined changes in the legal and biophysical landscapes. These contributions speak to some of the most important contemporary debates within the human rights community that stands in the crossroads with rights of Indigenous Peoples and other members of subaltern groups. This volume will be of great value to scholars, students, and researchers interested in human rights politics, power, forest governance, and environmental movements in postcolonial India. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of Human Rights.
Working within a global frame, The Routledge Companion to Postcolonial and Decolonial Literature considers postcolonial and decolonial literary works across multiple genres, languages, and both regional and transnational networks. The Companion extends beyond the entrenched hegemony of the postcolonial or Anglophone novel to explore other literary formations and vernacular exchanges. It foregrounds questions of language and circulation by emphasizing translation, vernacularity, and world literature. This text expands the linguistic, regional, and critical foci of the emergent field of decolonial studies, pushing against the normative currents of postcolonial literary studies, and offers a critical consideration of both. The volume prioritizes new literatures and critical theories of diasporas, borderlands, detentions, and forced migrations in the face of environmental catastrophe and political authoritarianism, reframing postcolonial/decolonial literary studies through an emphasis on multilingual literatures. This will be a crucial resource for undergraduate and graduate students of postcolonial and decolonial studies.
A groundbreaking view of South Asian history in the twentieth century that underlines the similarities and intertwined cultures of India and Pakistan "[A] definitive new 20th-century thematic history of the Indian subcontinent that rejects hegemonic conceptions of national 'difference.'"--Financial Times This radically original and ambitious history of the Indian subcontinent explores the region's unique twentieth-century history and foregrounds the deep connections, rather than the well-publicized fissures, between the cultures of India and Pakistan. Taking the partitions of British India rather than the two world wars as the century's inflection points, Joya Chatterji examines how issues of nationalism, internal and external migration, and technological innovation contributed to South Asia's tumultuous twentieth century. Chatterji weaves together elements of her autobiography and family history; stories of such legendary figures as Tagore, Jinnah, Gandhi, and Nehru; and, in particular, the accounts of the many who were left behind and marginalized in relentless nation-building projects. Chatterji examines the countries' mirroring patterns in state building, social and cultural life, modes of leisure, consumption, and oppression, and offers a timely course correction to our understanding of the dynamics of South Asian history. It reframes the events of the twentieth century that are continuing to play out in the present day.
