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7 - Princely states: society and politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

Barbara N. Ramusack
Barbara N. Ramusack
Affiliation:
University of Cincinnati
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Summary

The paucity of research on social change and popular political activity in the princely states contributes to Orientalist representations of the princely states as the epitome of unchanging India. Fortunately the adventurous scholarship of a few social and cultural historians challenges such interpretations. Karen Leonard's path-breaking study of the kayasths of Hyderabad illuminates the adaptations of a literate, urban-based caste group to opportunities in a large princely state bureaucracy and then in a post-colonial successor state. Robin Jeffrey has traced the gradual attenuation of nayar dominance in Travancore and the role of women in the evolution of the Kerala model of economic development in independent India. Analyses of non-elite groups include David Hardiman's work on a low-caste reform movement within Baroda; Nandini Sundar on the tribal population in Bastar; Mridula Mukherjee and Mohinder Singh onpeasant movements in the Punjab princely states before and after 1947 respectively; Shail Mayaram on the construction of Muslim identity among the marginalised Meos in Alwar; and Janaki Nair on labourers in Mysore. Their work explores the internal dynamics of group formation and identity and political struggles for a greater portion of scarce political, economic, and ritual resources.

Other scholars have concentrated on the political associations and agitational activity of elite and non-elite groups. Actors range from newly educated young men ambitious for political power, to peasants who found their lives and resources increasingly circumscribed by jagirdars, who were being squeezed by centralising durbars and commercialised agriculture, to landlords challenging constraints on their authority and resources. The political activities of these groups provide a framework through which the complex interplay between agitational political activity in British India and in the princely states and the diversity of political actors and agendas within the states themselves may be deciphered.

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The Indian Princes and their States , pp. 206 - 244
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

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