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Classic monographs on the history, anthropology and politics of South Asia.

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43 results in Cambridge South Asian Studies

Page 2 of 3

The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in India
  • Business Strategies and the Working Classes in Bombay, 1900–1940
  • Rajnarayan Chandavarkar
  • Published online:
    24 November 2009
    Print publication:
    10 March 1994
  • Rajnarayan Chandavarkar presents the first major study of the relationship between labour and capital in India's economic development in the early twentieth-century. He explores the emergence of capitalism in the region, the development of the cotton textile industry, its particular problems in the 1920s and 1930s and the mill owners' and the state's responses to them. The author also investigates how a labour force was formed in Bombay - its rural roots, urban networks, industrial organisation and the way in which it shaped capitalist strategies. In a subject dominated by the assumption of unities, Rajnarayan Chandavarkar convincingly demonstrates the fragmentation of class, on the side of both capital and labour. Their interaction sometimes exacerbated their internal differences. But, the author also asks on what terms, to what ends, and under what circumstances solidarities could be forged between workers.

Provincial Politics and Indian Nationalism
  • Bombay and the Indian National Congress 1880-1915
  • Gordon Johnson
  • Published online:
    24 November 2009
    Print publication:
    03 January 1974
  • This is a study of the Indian National Congress, the first political association to approach the government of India at an all-India level. The Congress became the most important national party in twentieth century India, and the whole history of the freedom movement is closely bound up with its fortunes. National politics, however, were influenced by regional and local affairs. In the early twentieth century the Indian Congress was split between the 'Moderates' and the 'Extremists'. Dr Johnson argues that this division was closely related to existing rivalries between politicians in the provinces, and that provincial interests determined their national point of view. Because the early Congress depended so much for its regular organisation on men from Bombay, party lines in western India were particularly important in determining the course of the struggles between the parties in the National Congress. The unpublished letters and diaries of the protagonists in these disputes have enabled Dr Johnson to examine this theme in detail. This is the first book to stress the need for study of regional and local politics as an integral part of the history of the Congress. Its revelation of the complex connections between parochial, provincial and all India politics adds a new dimension to our understanding of nationalism in South Asia.

Private Industrial Investment in Pakistan
  • 1960-1970
  • Rashid Amjad
  • Published online:
    23 November 2009
    Print publication:
    02 December 1982
  • This book examines the behaviour of private industrial investment in Pakistan in the 1960s, in the first half of which it rose at an unprecedented rate, followed by sharp decline, and then stagnation for the rest of the period. The approach adopted is institutional and empirical. The developments studied appeared to be very much the product of the institutional setting of Pakistan, which was different from that of most advanced countries but possibly riot so dissimilar from that in many other developing countries.

The Dynamics of Indian Political Factions
  • A Study of District Councils in the State of Maharashtra
  • Mary C. Carras
  • Published online:
    23 November 2009
    Print publication:
    26 October 1972
  • This study constitutes an analysis of factionalism between rival groups in the dominant Congress Party in Maharashtra. The principal question examined is whether a politician's decision to oppose or 'rebel against' party authority is determined or can be predicted by certain characteristics of the individual concerned and his environment (e.g. the amount of land he owns, or the level of education, urbanization, prosperity, etc., of the area in which he operates politically). About 160 Congress Party members on four district councils were interviewed, and their answers provided the main source of information for the analysis. The legally defined jurisdiction of the district councils is rural Maharashtra, and the political factions examined thus operate in a rural milieu.

Caste Conflict Elite Formation
  • Michael Roberts
  • Published online:
    30 October 2009
    Print publication:
    21 January 1982
  • Caste Conflict and Elite Formation is a study in the social history of Sri Lanka. However, it does not merely document the remarkable successes in business enterprise and in the acquisition of Western-educated professional skills which were achieved by families from the Karava caste during the last two centuries; their advances, and the social and political struggles which accompanied this process, are employed as a window through which a survey of social change in Sri Lanka during the last four hundred years is conducted. The interest of the book extends beyond the many fascinating social incidents, historical trends and channels of elite formation that are described within its pages to a series of controlled comparisons which reveal the factors responsible for the formation of the Karava elite. Thus the book extends the methodological frontiers of the social history of the region. It emphasizes the significance of the patterns of caste discrimination and caste interaction in Sri Lankan politics, and reveals how these patterns were central to the incentives and opportunities which powered the advances of the Karava families.

The Transition in Bengal, 1756–75
  • A Study of Saiyid Muhammad Reza Khan
  • Abdul Majed Khan
  • Published online:
    29 October 2009
    Print publication:
    01 July 1969
  • Saiyid Muhammad Reza Khan held the office of Naib Nazim and Naib Diwan of Bengal from 1765 to 1772. This study includes the early life of the Khan, but concentrates particularly upon the years from 1756, when the Khan first held public office, to 1775.There was much greater continuity and overlapping between the British and Mughal administrations than has been supposed. Company servants like Clive seemed to the local public to be simply Mughal grandees in British uniforms and the innovations supposed to have arrived with British rule actually occurred much later. Instead of the British gradually taking over the local administration under the urge to eliminate corruption, there was an administration carried on competently in traditional style by Reza Khan under attack from the East India Company's officers who were not so much concerned with rooting out this alleged corruption in the interest of justice and efficiency as increasing the revenues of the Company and adding the by-products to themselves.

The State and Poverty in India
  • Kohli
  • Published online:
    27 October 2009
    Print publication:
    22 January 1987
  • This analysis of the role of government in eradicating India's rural poverty raises a whole series of crucial contemporary issues relating to the state, its degree of autonomy in the developing world and the problems of effecting genuine redistributive reform. The particular importance of the book is that it focuses attention on the nature of ruling political parties as an important factor influencing the success or failure of redistributive and welfare politics in a democratic capitalist setting. Dr Kohli compares in detail three state-level Indian governments of the late seventies: Communist-ruled West Bengal, Karnataka under the Congress Party, and Uttar Pradesh under the Janata Party. Comparing these in terms of their success in redistributing agricultural land and creating employment for the rural poor, the author argues cogently that well-organised, left-of-centre parties in government - like that in West Bengal - are the most effective in implementing reform.

The Politics of South India 1920–1937
  • Christopher John Baker
  • Published online:
    27 October 2009
    Print publication:
    15 April 1976
  • The interwar years witnessed great changes in the political life of India, with the establishment of new governmental institutions, the emergence of political movements based on class, caste and ideology, and the rapid expansion of the nationalist campaign. This book looks at the complex of political changes during this crucial and formative period in the Madras Presidency, the largest but often the most neglected province of British India. Among the many strands of political life and behaviour which Dr Baker studies are the non-Brahman movement, peasant agitations, caste movements and the rise of the Indian National Congress to a position of undisputed primacy in the region. Making use of hitherto unresearched materials Dr Baker attempts the first overall study of the political process and the dynamics of political change in the province. The book may also be seen as a case-study of political change in a late-colonial society.

The Hollow Crown
  • Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom
  • Nicholas B. Dirks
  • Published online:
    25 October 2009
    Print publication:
    31 March 1988
  • A pioneering piece of ethnohistory, The Hollow Crown uses a variety of interdisciplinary means to reconstruct the sociocultural history of a warrior polity in south India between the fourteenth and the twentieth centuries. Central to the book is the belief that comparative sociology has systematically denied the importance of the Indian state and obscured the political basis of Indian society by representing caste as fundamentally a religious system. In reconstructing the history of the polity that eventually became the colonial princely state of Pudukkottai, Dr Dirks therefore raises a whole series of issues concerning the methodologies of history and anthropology, the character of Tamil kingship and social organization, the relationship between politics and ritual, the impact of colonialism and 'modernization', and the dynamics of the whole last millennium of south Indian history.

Indian Business and Nationalist Politics 1931–39
  • The Indigenous Capitalist Class and the Rise of the Congress Party
  • Claude Markovits
  • Published online:
    25 October 2009
    Print publication:
    04 April 1985
  • The 1930s was a critical decade in Indian politics. It saw the Congress Party begin its rise to political dominance, while Indian 'big business' strengthened its position in the economy. This book seeks to analyse the response of India's most important indigenous businessmen to the growth of political nationalism. Dr Markovits' study falls into three parts: an analysis of the structure of the business class, revealing its basic heterogeneity and lack of political unity; an examination of the impact of the Depression of the 1930s on the fortunes of Indian businessmen and on government economic policy; and a survey of the uneasy and changing relationship between businessmen and Congress at a time of political turmoil and realignment. Drawing heavily on the private papers of prominent businessmen as well as on a wealth of official sources, this is the first systematic study, on an all-India scale, of the political attitude of big business during the final and most crucial phase of the nationalist struggle. Given increasing prominence of businessmen in Indian politics after 1920 an understanding of their behaviour is fundamental to our view of the overall pattern of Indian nationalist politics. All those interested in the rise of anti-colonial movements and in patterns of capitalist development in Third World countries should also find matter for thought in this sensitive and unusual study.

The Mutiny Outbreak at Meerut in 1857
  • J. A. B. Palmer
  • Published online:
    24 October 2009
    Print publication:
    01 January 1966
  • The establishment in British India produced an impressive number of scholars and scholarly amateurs who pursued historical and other studies and wrote books and articles of distinction. Mr Palmer has produced a work in this tradition. His subject is the outbreak of the Mutiny (as the Raj considered it) among the native regiments (as the Raj called them) at Meerut on the evening of Sunday 10 May 1857. Was the outbreak planned in advance or did it arise through chance circumstances on that fateful evening? How badly was the situation handled?

Agrarian Bengal
  • Economy, Social Structure and Politics, 1919-1947
  • Sugata Bose
  • Published online:
    24 October 2009
    Print publication:
    05 February 1987
  • As well as being an outstanding contribution to Indian economic and social history, this book draws important conclusions about peasant politics in general and about the effects of international economic fluctuations on primary producing countries. Dr Bose develops a general typology of systems of agrarian production in Bengal to show how these responded to different types of pressure from the world economy, and treats in detail the effects of the world Depression on Bengal. Separate chapters are devoted to the themes of agrarian conflict and religious strife in east Bengal, the agrarian dimension of mass nationalism in west Bengal and sharecroppers agitations in the frontier regions. The conclusion attempts a synthesis of the typology of agrarian social structure and the periodisation of peasant politics, placing this in the wider context of agrarian societies and protest in other parts of India and in South-east Asia.

The Peasant and the Raj
  • Studies in Agrarian Society and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial India
  • Eric Stokes
  • Published online:
    20 October 2009
    Print publication:
    23 March 1978
  • These twelve essays explore the nature of south Asian agrarian society and examine the extent to which it changed during the period of British rule. The central focus of the book is directed to peasant agitation and violence and four of the studies look at the agrarian explosion that formed the background to the 1857 Mutiny. The essays give a coherent historical treatment of the Indian peasant world, and the paperback edition of this successful book will be of interest to the student of peasant studies and to the sociologist as well as to development economists and agronomists generally.

The Muslims of British India
  • Hardy
  • Published online:
    19 October 2009
    Print publication:
    07 December 1972
  • Dr Hardy has attempted a general history of British India's Muslims with a deeper perspective. He shows how the interplay of memories of past Muslim supremacy, Islamic religious aspirations and modern Muslim social and economic anxieties with the political needs of the alien ruling power gradually fostered a separate Muslim politics. Dr Hardy argues (contrary to the usual view) that Muslims were able to take political initiatives because, in the region of modern Uttar Pradesh, British rule before 1857 and even the events of the Mutiny and Rebellion of 1857–8 had not been economically disastrous for most of them. He stresses the force of religion in the growth of Muslim political separatism, showing how the 'modernists' kept the conversation among Muslims within Islamic postulates and underlining the role of the traditional scholars in heightening popular religious feeling. Regarding any sense of Muslim political unity and nationhood as an outcome of the period of British rule, Dr Hardy shows the limitations and frailty of that unity and nationhood by 1947.

Caste, Conflict and Ideology
  • Mahatma Jotirao Phule and Low Caste Protest in Nineteenth-Century Western India
  • Rosalind O'Hanlon
  • Published online:
    14 October 2009
    Print publication:
    21 March 1985
  • The nineteenth century saw the beginning of a violent and controversial movement of protest amongst western India's low and untouchable castes, aimed at the effects of their lowly position within the Hindu caste hierarchy. The leaders of this movement were convinced that religious hierarchies had combined with the effects of British colonial rule to produce inequality and injustice in many fields, from religion to politics and education. This study concentrates on the first leader of this movement, Mahatma Jotirao Phule. It shows him as its first ideologist, working out a unique brand of radical humanism. It analyses his contribution to one of the most important and neglected social developments in western India in this period - the formation of a new regional identity. This process of identity formation is studied against the background of the earlier history of caste relations in this area of India, and contributes important evidence about the relationship between ritual status and political power.The movement itself provides a fascinating example of early Third World radicalism, illustrating the role of ideology and religion in the struggle against British colonial power.

Land and Local Kingship in Eighteenth-Century Bengal
  • John R. McLane
  • Published online:
    13 October 2009
    Print publication:
    01 September 1993
  • This book examines the politics and culture of landholding in eastern India. Professor McLane explores the dual and sometimes conflicting roles of the zamindars, the landed chiefs, in eighteenth-century western Bengal during the decline of the Mughal empire and the rise of the British hegemony. He focuses on zamindari rent extraction, techniques of coercion, and the meaning of gift-giving and gift-receiving. He shows how the zamindars kept alive the rituals, patronage, and other traditions of normative Hindu kingship for their subjects in the villages while they extracted revenue from the peasantry and intermediate gentry for the government of the Mughals and then the English East India Company. He argues that the increased commercialization and efforts to maximize land revenues imposed severe strains on the paternalistic and gift-oriented culture of Bengal's huge landlords. This analysis is illustrated with a case study of Bengal's most important and controversial zamindari, the Burdwan raj.

South Indian Factory Workers
  • Their Life and their World
  • Mark Holmström
  • Published online:
    06 October 2009
    Print publication:
    30 December 1976
  • This book studies workers in four factories in Bangalore - an industrial city of more than one and a half million people in South India - and seeks to answer questions about the situation and thinking of workers in modern capital intensive factories. It is based on case studies of Bangalore workers and their families, on statistical material from management files on workers and from other sources, and on interviews with managers and union officials. Among the principal questions considered are: who are the factory workers and what are their origins, career prospects and living conditions? Are they a privileged elite in a dual economy and what relations are there between them and people outside steady factory employment? How do the workers see their own situation, as individuals and as a class? And how do they think of a 'job' as part of a 'career' and a career as part of their lifetime, in relation to other things that matter to them?

Religion under Bureaucracy
  • Policy and Administration for Hindu Temples in South India
  • Franklin A. Presler
  • Published online:
    03 October 2009
    Print publication:
    14 April 1988
  • Religion under Bureaucracy is an innovative study of religion and politics in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu which focuses on the relationship between the state and the central religious institution of the area, the Hindu temple. Religion, politics, economy and culture intersect in the temple and Tamil Nadu has 52,000 in all, many richly endowed with land and prominent locally as sources of patronage and economic and political power. Dr Presley examines the institutional challenge that Hindu temples have presented to the developing South Indian state over the last century and a half and the ways in which a government publicly committed to non-intervention in religious matters has come to involve itself deeply in temple life - establishing a presence in temple management, regulating the use of the temple's material and symbolic resources and, beyond this, seeking to control many details of Hindu organisation, economy and worship.

Sufi Saints and State Power
  • The Pirs of Sind, 1843–1947
  • Sarah F. D. Ansari
  • Published online:
    01 October 2009
    Print publication:
    31 January 1992
  • In this book, Dr Sarah Ansari examines the system of political control constructed by the British in Sind between 1843 and 1947. In particular, she explores the part of the local Muslim elite, the pirs or hereditary sufi saints. Using a wealth of historical material and in depth interviews, the author looks at the development of the institution of the pir, its power base and the mechanics of the system of control into which the pirs were drawn. The overall success of the political system depended on the willingness of the elite to participate and Dr Ansari argues that it did indeed work in Sind. This enabled the British to govern while allowing the pirs to adapt to colonial rule, and later independence, without serious damage to their interests. The author demonstrates that only in the heightened nationalist atmosphere of the 1940s did the system break down.

Worship and Conflict under Colonial Rule
  • A South Indian Case
  • Arjun Appadurai
  • Published online:
    30 September 2009
    Print publication:
    31 July 1981
  • Although temples have been important in South Indian society and history, there have been few attempts to study them within an integrated anthropological framework. Professor Appadurai develops such a framework in this ethnohistorical case study, in which he interprets the politics of worship in the Sri Partasarati Svami Temple, a famous ancient Sri Vaisnava shrine in India. The author uses the methods and concepts of both cultural anthropology and social history to construct a model of institutional change in South Asia under colonial rule. Focusing on the problem of authority as a cultural concept and as a managerial reality, Professor Appadurai considers some classic problems of South Asian anthropology: problems of deference, sumptuary symbolism, and religious organization. In addition, he addresses such issues as the nature of conflict under a hybrid colonial legal system, the political implications of sumptuary disputes, and the structure of relations between polity and religion in pre-modern South Asia. These aspects of the study should interest a broad range of scholars.

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