Francesca Orsini and Samira Sheikh (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199450664
- eISBN:
- 9780199085019
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199450664.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Indian History
Most people imagine the period between Timur’s sack of Delhi and the arrival of the Mughals to be one of unrelenting darkness and disorder. The first major compendium of essays on the ‘long’ ...
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Most people imagine the period between Timur’s sack of Delhi and the arrival of the Mughals to be one of unrelenting darkness and disorder. The first major compendium of essays on the ‘long’ fifteenth century, this book presents a very different picture: one of intense cultural ferment, innovations in literature and language choice, and new forms of religious organization and expression. These cultural developments are set against a backdrop of political transformation. Once Timur returned to Samarkand in 1399, new kings and chieftains jostled for power, making new alliances and calling upon far-flung networks that stretched from Afghanistan to Bengal. Alongside the old capitals rose new towns inhabited by merchants and professionals, where long-standing local, cultural, and political forms were offset by transregional conversations wrought by increasingly mobile poets, preachers, and warriors who travelled widely in search of employment and adventure. A generation ago, the eighteenth century was revealed to be a period of innovation and entrepreneurship. In a similar vein, this book rehabilitates the fifteenth century through the interdisciplinary research of leading scholars of premodern South Asia, revealing foundational political and literary currents that have hitherto been obscured by empire-centred narratives of history.Less
Most people imagine the period between Timur’s sack of Delhi and the arrival of the Mughals to be one of unrelenting darkness and disorder. The first major compendium of essays on the ‘long’ fifteenth century, this book presents a very different picture: one of intense cultural ferment, innovations in literature and language choice, and new forms of religious organization and expression. These cultural developments are set against a backdrop of political transformation. Once Timur returned to Samarkand in 1399, new kings and chieftains jostled for power, making new alliances and calling upon far-flung networks that stretched from Afghanistan to Bengal. Alongside the old capitals rose new towns inhabited by merchants and professionals, where long-standing local, cultural, and political forms were offset by transregional conversations wrought by increasingly mobile poets, preachers, and warriors who travelled widely in search of employment and adventure. A generation ago, the eighteenth century was revealed to be a period of innovation and entrepreneurship. In a similar vein, this book rehabilitates the fifteenth century through the interdisciplinary research of leading scholars of premodern South Asia, revealing foundational political and literary currents that have hitherto been obscured by empire-centred narratives of history.
Margrit Pernau
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780198092285
- eISBN:
- 9780199082582
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092285.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Indian History
This book investigates the history of the Muslim communities in Delhi from the conquest of the city by Lord Lake in 1803 to the end of the First World War. It is based on a large range of sources in ...
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This book investigates the history of the Muslim communities in Delhi from the conquest of the city by Lord Lake in 1803 to the end of the First World War. It is based on a large range of sources in English, Urdu, and Persian—from government records to novels, from Sufi writings and fatwas to genealogies, from maps to miniatures, from handwritten newsletters to women’s journals. The book follows two main questions. One, Muslims have long been defined, first and foremost, by their religious identity. This study takes religion not as a given but asks about the universe of alternative identities—gender, territorial, class, descent, and language, which all shape a person’s sense of belonging to a specific community. It is only the interaction between the different identities, the book argues, which permits a re-evaluation of religious identity and a response to the question of when and under what circumstances it gains or loses predominance. Two, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the category of ashraf, marking out the respectable families, brought together the nobility and the educated and distinguished them from the trading communities, which were classified under the common people. This changed from the middle of the century: the new ashraf distinguished themselves not only from the commoners but also the nobility, held responsible for the disaster of 1857. At the same time, their new emphasis on work and achievement brought them nearer to the merchants. Thus the two-tiered social structure gave way to a three-tiered one, and the ashraf were transformed into middle classes.Less
This book investigates the history of the Muslim communities in Delhi from the conquest of the city by Lord Lake in 1803 to the end of the First World War. It is based on a large range of sources in English, Urdu, and Persian—from government records to novels, from Sufi writings and fatwas to genealogies, from maps to miniatures, from handwritten newsletters to women’s journals. The book follows two main questions. One, Muslims have long been defined, first and foremost, by their religious identity. This study takes religion not as a given but asks about the universe of alternative identities—gender, territorial, class, descent, and language, which all shape a person’s sense of belonging to a specific community. It is only the interaction between the different identities, the book argues, which permits a re-evaluation of religious identity and a response to the question of when and under what circumstances it gains or loses predominance. Two, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the category of ashraf, marking out the respectable families, brought together the nobility and the educated and distinguished them from the trading communities, which were classified under the common people. This changed from the middle of the century: the new ashraf distinguished themselves not only from the commoners but also the nobility, held responsible for the disaster of 1857. At the same time, their new emphasis on work and achievement brought them nearer to the merchants. Thus the two-tiered social structure gave way to a three-tiered one, and the ashraf were transformed into middle classes.
Romila Thapar
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198077244
- eISBN:
- 9780199081073
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077244.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Indian History
This volume is about the history of the decline of the Mauryan dynasty in ancient India and the reign of Aśoka Maurya. It describes the sources of information for this study and Aśoka's early life, ...
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This volume is about the history of the decline of the Mauryan dynasty in ancient India and the reign of Aśoka Maurya. It describes the sources of information for this study and Aśoka's early life, and his accession to the throne. It discusses the social and economic activity, internal administration, and foreign relations in Mauryan India and evaluates the role of Aśoka's policy of Dhamma in bringing social order. It highlights the weaknesses of the Mauryan rulers who followed after Aśoka's death and suggests reasons for the subsequent decline of the Mauryan dynasty.Less
This volume is about the history of the decline of the Mauryan dynasty in ancient India and the reign of Aśoka Maurya. It describes the sources of information for this study and Aśoka's early life, and his accession to the throne. It discusses the social and economic activity, internal administration, and foreign relations in Mauryan India and evaluates the role of Aśoka's policy of Dhamma in bringing social order. It highlights the weaknesses of the Mauryan rulers who followed after Aśoka's death and suggests reasons for the subsequent decline of the Mauryan dynasty.
Siobhan Lambert-Hurley and Sunil Sharma (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- October 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198068334
- eISBN:
- 9780199080441
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198068334.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Indian History
More than a century ago, Atiya Fyzee, a Muslim woman of the renowned Tyabji clan, set out from colonial Bombay to study in Edwardian London. As she rode the steamboat, she began writing her daily ...
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More than a century ago, Atiya Fyzee, a Muslim woman of the renowned Tyabji clan, set out from colonial Bombay to study in Edwardian London. As she rode the steamboat, she began writing her daily experiences in a diary that would later appear as serialized entries in an Urdu women’s magazine published from the Punjab. Despite the magazine’s small circulation at the time, Atiya’s travelogue drew enough attention and gave the fledgling author her first taste of fame. In the years to come, she also became well known for her friendship with Maulana Shibli Numani and Muhammad Iqbal, two of South Asia’s most prominent Muslim intellectuals. Atiya and her husband Samuel Rahamin gained popularity worldwide in the early twentieth century in the fields of music, dance, theatre, the visual arts, and literature. Atiya Fyzee became a key figure in the cultural and intellectual history of South Asia. Atiya’s legend, sometimes contradictory and often exoticized, was formed in the last years of her life when she lived in Karachi after the Partition. This is a fascinating account of a Muslim women’s experience of ‘everyday’ in Edwardian Britain.Less
More than a century ago, Atiya Fyzee, a Muslim woman of the renowned Tyabji clan, set out from colonial Bombay to study in Edwardian London. As she rode the steamboat, she began writing her daily experiences in a diary that would later appear as serialized entries in an Urdu women’s magazine published from the Punjab. Despite the magazine’s small circulation at the time, Atiya’s travelogue drew enough attention and gave the fledgling author her first taste of fame. In the years to come, she also became well known for her friendship with Maulana Shibli Numani and Muhammad Iqbal, two of South Asia’s most prominent Muslim intellectuals. Atiya and her husband Samuel Rahamin gained popularity worldwide in the early twentieth century in the fields of music, dance, theatre, the visual arts, and literature. Atiya Fyzee became a key figure in the cultural and intellectual history of South Asia. Atiya’s legend, sometimes contradictory and often exoticized, was formed in the last years of her life when she lived in Karachi after the Partition. This is a fascinating account of a Muslim women’s experience of ‘everyday’ in Edwardian Britain.
Anindita Mukhopadhyay
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- October 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195680836
- eISBN:
- 9780199080700
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195680836.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Indian History
This book investigates the deeper area of class antagonism between the privileged and underprivileged classes as they faced the colonial state and its different ideas of legality and sovereignty in ...
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This book investigates the deeper area of class antagonism between the privileged and underprivileged classes as they faced the colonial state and its different ideas of legality and sovereignty in colonial Bengal. It examines the ambiguity in the bhadralok — the educated middle class — response to courts and jails. The author argues that the discourse of superior ‘bhadralok’ ethics and morals was juxtaposed against the ‘chhotolok’ — who were devoid of such ethical values. This enabled the bhadralok to claim for themselves the position of the ‘aware’ legal subject as a class — a ‘good’ subject obedient to the dictates of the new rule of law, unlike the recalcitrant and ethically ill-equipped chhotolok. The author underlines the development of a new cultural language of morality that delineated the parameters of bhadralok public behaviour. As the ‘rule of law’ of the British government slid unobtrusively into the public domain, the criminal courts and the jails turned into public theatres of infamy — spaces that the ethically bound bhadralok dreaded occupying. The volume, thus, documents how the colonial legal and penal institutions streamlined the identities of some sections of the lower castes into ‘criminal caste’. It also examines the nature of colonial bureaucracy and highlights the social silence on gender and women's criminality.Less
This book investigates the deeper area of class antagonism between the privileged and underprivileged classes as they faced the colonial state and its different ideas of legality and sovereignty in colonial Bengal. It examines the ambiguity in the bhadralok — the educated middle class — response to courts and jails. The author argues that the discourse of superior ‘bhadralok’ ethics and morals was juxtaposed against the ‘chhotolok’ — who were devoid of such ethical values. This enabled the bhadralok to claim for themselves the position of the ‘aware’ legal subject as a class — a ‘good’ subject obedient to the dictates of the new rule of law, unlike the recalcitrant and ethically ill-equipped chhotolok. The author underlines the development of a new cultural language of morality that delineated the parameters of bhadralok public behaviour. As the ‘rule of law’ of the British government slid unobtrusively into the public domain, the criminal courts and the jails turned into public theatres of infamy — spaces that the ethically bound bhadralok dreaded occupying. The volume, thus, documents how the colonial legal and penal institutions streamlined the identities of some sections of the lower castes into ‘criminal caste’. It also examines the nature of colonial bureaucracy and highlights the social silence on gender and women's criminality.
Joy L. K. Pachuau
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199451159
- eISBN:
- 9780199084586
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199451159.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Indian History
The book is an attempt at understanding the complex issues of identity formation in the relatively unexplored region of Northeast India. The work adopts the methodology of historical anthropology to ...
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The book is an attempt at understanding the complex issues of identity formation in the relatively unexplored region of Northeast India. The work adopts the methodology of historical anthropology to make sense of a particular ethnic group, namely the Mizo, one of the many such groups in the region. While taking into consideration presentist self-perceptions of who the Mizos are, the study engages with their history as well as social practice to show the contours of identity-shaping and identity-making. Following from identity studies elsewhere, the author engages with the ideas of ‘difference’ and how it plays an important role in the creation of identity. She examines mainland India’s views about the Northeast and argues that the notion of ‘difference’ is deeply embedded in the politics of domination and hegemonization. Another thrust in the book is to look for patterns in social organization that impinge on identity-making that are not far removed from self-ascribed notions about the ‘ethnic self’. Such self-ascribed notions are seen as instruments of agency that defy the views of the ‘other’, while also organizing the ‘ethnic self’. In this, the community’s engagements with Christianity, which is ‘localized’, and its practices surrounding death are seen as prime organizers. ‘Praxis’, especially in the context of Christianity and death, are thus seen not only as chief organizers of Mizo identity, but also as the boundary markers around which notions of belonging and exclusion are invoked.Less
The book is an attempt at understanding the complex issues of identity formation in the relatively unexplored region of Northeast India. The work adopts the methodology of historical anthropology to make sense of a particular ethnic group, namely the Mizo, one of the many such groups in the region. While taking into consideration presentist self-perceptions of who the Mizos are, the study engages with their history as well as social practice to show the contours of identity-shaping and identity-making. Following from identity studies elsewhere, the author engages with the ideas of ‘difference’ and how it plays an important role in the creation of identity. She examines mainland India’s views about the Northeast and argues that the notion of ‘difference’ is deeply embedded in the politics of domination and hegemonization. Another thrust in the book is to look for patterns in social organization that impinge on identity-making that are not far removed from self-ascribed notions about the ‘ethnic self’. Such self-ascribed notions are seen as instruments of agency that defy the views of the ‘other’, while also organizing the ‘ethnic self’. In this, the community’s engagements with Christianity, which is ‘localized’, and its practices surrounding death are seen as prime organizers. ‘Praxis’, especially in the context of Christianity and death, are thus seen not only as chief organizers of Mizo identity, but also as the boundary markers around which notions of belonging and exclusion are invoked.
Rochelle Pinto
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195690477
- eISBN:
- 9780199081899
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195690477.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Indian History
This book explores the contours of print production in Goa as an extension of the questions that had prompted the studies on print in colonial India. It looks into the nature of and principles ...
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This book explores the contours of print production in Goa as an extension of the questions that had prompted the studies on print in colonial India. It looks into the nature of and principles guiding Portuguese colonialism in Goa. The discussion of print as the locus of the formation and contestation of polities rests on certain assumptions about the functioning of the colonial state, its relation with the colonial elite, relations within colonial society, dissemination and bilingualism. The book initially draws on the representations of the Catholic elite, who were historically situated by colonial policy to occupy that public realm in which representations from elite and the state circulated among a limited public. The basic determinants of the colonial print sphere, such as language, the price and availability of print, and the Portuguese colonial state’s stance towards indigenous culture and the colonial elite were manifest in this interaction. This book examines how publications such as newsprint, novels, and pamphlets were printed in Goa during the nineteenth century.Less
This book explores the contours of print production in Goa as an extension of the questions that had prompted the studies on print in colonial India. It looks into the nature of and principles guiding Portuguese colonialism in Goa. The discussion of print as the locus of the formation and contestation of polities rests on certain assumptions about the functioning of the colonial state, its relation with the colonial elite, relations within colonial society, dissemination and bilingualism. The book initially draws on the representations of the Catholic elite, who were historically situated by colonial policy to occupy that public realm in which representations from elite and the state circulated among a limited public. The basic determinants of the colonial print sphere, such as language, the price and availability of print, and the Portuguese colonial state’s stance towards indigenous culture and the colonial elite were manifest in this interaction. This book examines how publications such as newsprint, novels, and pamphlets were printed in Goa during the nineteenth century.
Mushirul Hasan
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198063322
- eISBN:
- 9780199080502
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198063322.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Indian History
Halide Edip (1884–1964) once observed that Turkey is an ideal cross-section of the human world. Her own life was no less eclectic. A prolific novelist, teacher, erudite scholar, and political ...
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Halide Edip (1884–1964) once observed that Turkey is an ideal cross-section of the human world. Her own life was no less eclectic. A prolific novelist, teacher, erudite scholar, and political activist, Edip preserved her objectivity throughout her odyssey on the left-of-centre. Building on Edip’s connections with the Indian national movement and Mahatma Gandhi, this volume analyses her description of India and its bearing on her life. It explores several aspects of Edip’s career in India including the questions she confronts on gender, modernity, freedom movement, Gandhian movement, participation of women in the freedom struggle, religion and politics, and everyday life. At another level, the volume identifies common currents of history and experience between India and Turkey. It explores a number of issues of tremendous significance for the histories of liberation struggles and nation building in the Third World in general and Muslim/Islamic world in particular.Less
Halide Edip (1884–1964) once observed that Turkey is an ideal cross-section of the human world. Her own life was no less eclectic. A prolific novelist, teacher, erudite scholar, and political activist, Edip preserved her objectivity throughout her odyssey on the left-of-centre. Building on Edip’s connections with the Indian national movement and Mahatma Gandhi, this volume analyses her description of India and its bearing on her life. It explores several aspects of Edip’s career in India including the questions she confronts on gender, modernity, freedom movement, Gandhian movement, participation of women in the freedom struggle, religion and politics, and everyday life. At another level, the volume identifies common currents of history and experience between India and Turkey. It explores a number of issues of tremendous significance for the histories of liberation struggles and nation building in the Third World in general and Muslim/Islamic world in particular.
Asiya Siddiqi
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- February 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780199472208
- eISBN:
- 9780199091072
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199472208.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Indian History, Social History
Caught in the web of global economic fluctuations, Bombay experienced a cataclysmic financial crisis in the 1860s. Before the crash the city’s economy was heavily dependent on the trade in cotton. By ...
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Caught in the web of global economic fluctuations, Bombay experienced a cataclysmic financial crisis in the 1860s. Before the crash the city’s economy was heavily dependent on the trade in cotton. By 1865, with the end of the American Civil War, the price of cotton plummeted, and with it the fortunes of Bombay’s people. Even people not directly involved in the cotton trade were affected. Thousands declared themselves insolvent and sought the protection of the Bombay High Court. Drawing on almost twenty thousand petitions of insolvents, Asiya Siddiqi explores a crucial phase of transformations in Indian economy and society. Situating her study in the early colonial period of constant negotiations between local, colonial, and global relationships, Siddiqi maps patterns of income, literacy levels, and connections between religion and occupation. She not only analyses the finances of the wealthy and the powerful but also of working people. Among the people who made an appearance in the insolvency petitions were artisans, traders, courtesans and dancing girls, managers, homemakers, domestic servants, and labourers. The documents tell us about types of professions, modes of self-identification, kinds and degrees of literacy, and income levels. The study also illuminates certain features of colonial law. People whose conduct was grounded in customary codes of practice that were relatively flexible and informal had to negotiate the streamlining and codification of practices that the colonial government undertook. From this scrutiny is revealed the workings of the complex and dynamic economic and social relationships among Bombay’s people in the late nineteenth century.Less
Caught in the web of global economic fluctuations, Bombay experienced a cataclysmic financial crisis in the 1860s. Before the crash the city’s economy was heavily dependent on the trade in cotton. By 1865, with the end of the American Civil War, the price of cotton plummeted, and with it the fortunes of Bombay’s people. Even people not directly involved in the cotton trade were affected. Thousands declared themselves insolvent and sought the protection of the Bombay High Court. Drawing on almost twenty thousand petitions of insolvents, Asiya Siddiqi explores a crucial phase of transformations in Indian economy and society. Situating her study in the early colonial period of constant negotiations between local, colonial, and global relationships, Siddiqi maps patterns of income, literacy levels, and connections between religion and occupation. She not only analyses the finances of the wealthy and the powerful but also of working people. Among the people who made an appearance in the insolvency petitions were artisans, traders, courtesans and dancing girls, managers, homemakers, domestic servants, and labourers. The documents tell us about types of professions, modes of self-identification, kinds and degrees of literacy, and income levels. The study also illuminates certain features of colonial law. People whose conduct was grounded in customary codes of practice that were relatively flexible and informal had to negotiate the streamlining and codification of practices that the colonial government undertook. From this scrutiny is revealed the workings of the complex and dynamic economic and social relationships among Bombay’s people in the late nineteenth century.
Udayon Misra
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- February 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780199478361
- eISBN:
- 9780199090914
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199478361.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Indian History, Political History
The work attempts to show how the shadow of Partition continues to fall over the society and politics of the state of Assam and how issues such as immigration, demographic change, language, and ...
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The work attempts to show how the shadow of Partition continues to fall over the society and politics of the state of Assam and how issues such as immigration, demographic change, language, and identity as well as citizenship that occupied the centre stage in the years immediately before and after the Partition have not only retained their relevance but have also gained an extra sense of urgency in the contemporary politics of the region. It is interesting to note that in the archive of the colonial state, the reader is often confronted with the region’s colonial past. The quest to define the Assamese identity still continues as it did in the 1940s and 1950s, and the historical effects of Partition have certainly had a long afterlife in the region. Not only did the Partition radically transform the political geography of the region and turn it overnight into a landlocked one, its aftereffects continued to be felt in the socio-political and economic life of the region in diverse ways. This book focuses primarily on the issues of immigration, land, language, and identity, which are seen as the unresolved issues of Partition politics. It attempts to show how after seven decades of Independence, the issues that almost exclusively engaged the public mind in the pre-Partition days continue to do so in today’s Assam. It is as if Assam has been caught in a rather eerie time warp.Less
The work attempts to show how the shadow of Partition continues to fall over the society and politics of the state of Assam and how issues such as immigration, demographic change, language, and identity as well as citizenship that occupied the centre stage in the years immediately before and after the Partition have not only retained their relevance but have also gained an extra sense of urgency in the contemporary politics of the region. It is interesting to note that in the archive of the colonial state, the reader is often confronted with the region’s colonial past. The quest to define the Assamese identity still continues as it did in the 1940s and 1950s, and the historical effects of Partition have certainly had a long afterlife in the region. Not only did the Partition radically transform the political geography of the region and turn it overnight into a landlocked one, its aftereffects continued to be felt in the socio-political and economic life of the region in diverse ways. This book focuses primarily on the issues of immigration, land, language, and identity, which are seen as the unresolved issues of Partition politics. It attempts to show how after seven decades of Independence, the issues that almost exclusively engaged the public mind in the pre-Partition days continue to do so in today’s Assam. It is as if Assam has been caught in a rather eerie time warp.
“A Gentleman and an Officer”
‘A Nation of Beggars’?
The A Priori in Philosophy
A. J. Appasamy and his Reading of Rāmānuja
A. J. Tomlinson
Aaron Hill
The Abbey Theatre, 1899-1999
The Abbots and Priors of Late Medieval and Reformation England
Abelard and Heloise
