Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T13:30:53.987Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Colonizing the Sacred: Allahabad and the Company State, 1797–1857

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2015

Faridah Zaman
Get access

Abstract

This article rethinks the complicated encounter between the East India Company and the built heritage of India in the early nineteenth century. Through an extended case study of the imperial mosque in Allahabad, which was periodically subject to British intervention over some sixty years, it traces vicissitudes in attitudes towards history, religion, and the social existence of Muslims in India generally and Allahabad in particular. The article argues for the need to look beyond the narrative of Britain's relationship with architecture as artefact or heritage—a relationship that took on institutional form in the 1860s—to the comparatively less familiar story of the Company State's prolonged and serious interest in the built environment, and specifically religious buildings, as part of the political economy of its rule. It demonstrates that such an interest was simultaneously a logical outcome of and a tension within the legitimating discourses that the Company State fashioned during the last half-century of its rule in India.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 74 , Issue 2 , May 2015 , pp. 347 - 367
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Aitchison, C. U. 1876. “Memorandum of the Final Result of the Discussions between His Excellency the Most Noble the Governor-General and the Nabob Vizier of Oudh.” In A Collection of Treaties, Engagements and Sunnuds Relating to India and Neighbouring Countries, revised by Talbot, A. C., 2:104–11. Calcutta: Foreign Office Press.Google Scholar
Ali, Mir Hassan. 1832. Observations on the Mussulmauns of India: Descriptions of Their Manners, Customs, Habits, and Religious Opinions. London: Parbury, Allen, and Co.Google Scholar
Anthropological Review. 1863. “The Influence of Race on Art.” 1(2):216–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
ASI (Archeological Survey of India, Government of India). 2011. “Legislations.” http://asi.nic.in/asi_legislations.asp (accessed February 1, 2015).Google Scholar
The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China and Australasia. 1833. Vol. 11. London: Parbury, Allen, and Co.Google Scholar
Bayly, C. A. 1986. “Delhi and Other Cities of North India during the ‘Twilight.’” In Delhi Through the Ages: Essays in Urban History, Culture and Society, ed. Frykenberg, Richard, 221–36. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bayly, C. A. 1996. Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780-1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
BC (Records of the Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India—Board's Collections). 1808–28. Oriental and India Office Collection. British Library, London.Google Scholar
Bevan, Robert. 2007. The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War. London: Reaktion.Google Scholar
Crinson, Mark. 1996. Empire Building: Orientalism and Victorian Architecture. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Durkheim, Émile. [1912] 1995. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Translated by Fields, Karen E.. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Elliot, Henry M. 1867. “Original Preface.” In The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians – The Muhammadan Period, ed. Dowson, John, 1:xv–xxvii. Delhi: Munshi Ram.Google Scholar
Fergusson, James. 1876. History of Indian and Eastern Architecture. London: John Murray.Google Scholar
Fergusson, James. [1867] 1883. “Ethnography as Applied to Architectural Art.” In A History of Architecture in All Countries, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, 1:52–84. Boston: S. E. Cassino.Google Scholar
Glover, William J. 2008. Making Lahore Modern: Constructing and Imagining a Colonial City. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Glover, William J. 1828. The East India Gazetteer, vol. 2. London: Parbury, Allen, and Co.Google Scholar
Heber, Reginald. 1828. Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, from Calcutta to Bombay, 1824-1825, vol. 1. London: John Murray.Google Scholar
HM (Home Miscellaneous Series). 1814. Oriental and India Office Collection. British Library, London.Google Scholar
Hoock, Holger. 2010. Empires of the Imagination: Politics, War, and the Arts in the British World, 1750-1850. London: Profile Books.Google Scholar
Hosagrahar, Jyoti. 2005. Indigenous Modernities. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
House of Commons Parliamentary Papers. 1806, 1837.Google Scholar
Hunter, William W. [1871] 1872. The Indian Musalmans. London: Trübner and Company.Google Scholar
John Kaye's Mutiny Papers. 1857. Oriental and India Office Collection. British Library, London.Google Scholar
Jones, William. [1821] 1824. “Discourse III,” delivered February 2, 1786. In Discourses Delivered before the Asiatic Society and Miscellaneous Papers, Jones, William and ed. Elmes, James, 1:20–37. London: W. H. Carpenter.Google Scholar
Kozlowski, Gregory C. 1995. “Imperial Authority, Benefactions and Endowments (Awqāf) in Mughal India.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 38(3):355–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leask, Nigel. 2004. Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Travel Writing, 1770-1840. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mandler, Peter. 2000. “‘Race’ and ‘Nation’ in Mid-Victorian Thought.” In History, Religion, and Culture: British Intellectual History, 1750-1950, eds. Collini, Stefan, Whatmore, Richard, and Young, Brian, 224–45. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, Robert Montgomery, ed. 1838. The History, Antiquities, Topography and Statistics of Eastern India, vol. 2. London: W. H. Allen and Co.Google Scholar
Mujeeb, Mohammad. 1967. The Indian Muslims. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.Google Scholar
Mukerji, Satya Chandra (text), and Baman Das Basu (illustrations). 1910. Allahabad in Pictures Containing an Account of the Past History, the Antiquities and the Principle Sights of Allahabad. Allahabad.Google Scholar
Nair, Janaki. 2002. “Past Perfect: Architecture and Public Life in Bangalore.” Journal of Asian Studies 61(4):1205–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pandey, Gyandendra. 1990. The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Reid, Donald M. 1992. “Cultural Imperialism and Nationalism: The Struggle to Define and Control the Heritage of Arab Art in Egypt.” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 24(1):57–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sharif, Ja'far. 1832. Qanoon-e-Islam, or the Customs of the Moosulmans of India. Composed under the direction of and translated by Herklots, G. A.. London: Parbury, Allen, and Co.Google Scholar
Singh, Ujagir. 1966. Allahabad: A Study in Urban Geography. Varanasi: Benaras Hindu University.Google Scholar
Sleeman, William H. [1844, 1915] 1975. Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official. Karachi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tassy, M. Garcin de. 1831. Memoires sur les particularités de la religion Mussulmane dans l'Inde [Notes on the particularities of the Mussalman religion in India]. Paris: Imprimerie Impèriale.Google Scholar
Thornton, Edward. 1857. A Gazetteer of the Territories under the Government of the East India Company and the Native States of the Continent of India. London: W. H. Allen and Co.Google Scholar
Travers, Robert. 2007. Ideology and Empire in Eighteenth Century India: The British in Bengal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vattel, Emer de. 1759–60. The Law of Nations, Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns. London: Newbury.Google Scholar
Wilson, Jon E. 2008. The Domination of Strangers: Modern Governance in Eastern India, 1780-1835. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar