Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire

1988 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. A. Bayly
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Indian Society

Chronicle of Dream in Amitav Ghosh’s Novel “Sea of Poppies”

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Ashok Kumar Malviya ◽  
Dr. Ajay Bhargava
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Historical Novel ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
Opium War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Indian Village ◽  
Village Woman

Sea of Poppies is a historical novel based on human being's survive and fulfilment of dream. The novel is divided into three main parts, first one is land, second one is river and third one is sea, in which the whole novel is chronologically weave with the fulfilment of dream. The chief character in this novel is Deeti, a village married woman of India, who dreamed to travel in an ample vessel, quenched her desire in an unprecedented situation. One day, she saw a big ship sailing on the ocean, which she had never seen earlier even in her dream.       Sea of Poppies is a meditation in the guise of a novel, but such is the author's meticulousness in matters of research, and so firm is his grasp of the unexplored underbelly of the British Empire. Ghosh is the author of ten highly acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction which include the booker- prize shortlisted Sea of Poppies. The novel, Sea of Poppies, told the history of Indian society, opened in 1838, on the eve of first opium war, the novel divided into three parts, Land, Water and Sea. The first part narrated the condition of the protagonist that made able to reach near the ship. The first part also described the economic and social states of the Indian society. The second part invited the characters to join the ship and being ready for their voyage to abroad. The third part, allowed the characters to sail for their new life in Mauritius.        Sea of Poppies, shows the chronicle of dreams through the eyes of an Indian village woman, named Deeti, in a different circumstances. The novel depicted the nascent desire of female protagonist, to fulfill her dream. She lived her life as a common Indian house lady, and left her village in an unpredicted situation that visualized the 19th and 20th century’s condition of Indian society. The novel, breaks the doors of caste description and colonialism, and reveals the new way of life, seeking freedom in a different condition.

Jack Sepoy and the Dervishes: Islam and the Indian Soldier in Princely India

2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
NILE GREEN
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
South India ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Informal Empire ◽  
Chain Of Command ◽  
History Of ◽  
Princely State ◽  
Almost All

Like other Britons in colonial India, Sir William Sleeman had a poor opinion of the traditional holy men who still formed an important part of Indian society in the nineteenth century. Reflecting his writings on the suppression of the Thugs that would make him famous, Sleeman declared that, “There is hardly any species of crime that is not throughout India perpetrated by men in the disguise of these religious mendicants; and almost all such mendicants are really men in disguise”.1 None of these holy men were considered more dubious – more superstitious and reactionary – than the dervishes and faqīrs. In popular Indian usage the terms darwīsh and faqīr referred to a class of Muslim holy men who were considered to possess a range of miraculous powers, powers which served to demonstrate their proximity to God; and so in turn to underwrite their considerable authority.2 For many British officials, it was this authority that stood at the heart of what they saw as the faqīr problem. As the rumours that surrounded the various ‘mutinies’ of the nineteenth century demonstrate, faqīr s were seen as the perpetual ringleaders of rebellion and sedition. Nowhere were these concerns more insistent than in the circles of India's colonial armies, which more than any other aspect of colonial society relied on loyalty to a formalised and rational chain of command. Yet in spite (and in some ways because) of these fears, the commanders of the various armies under British command in India were anxious to demonstrate their respect for the autonomy of the religious rights of the Indian soldier. Through the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Islam of ‘Jack Sepoy’ or the Indian soldier fell in between this tension of covert suspicion and official respect, and in different ways the careers of a series of Muslim holy men attached to the Muslim soldiers were shaped by this tension. Over the following pages, this essay examines the careers of three faqīr s connected to the Hyderabad Contingent, the army under British command in the nominally independent princely state of Hyderabad in South India, better known as the Nizam's State. Looking out from this princely corner of Britain's ‘informal empire’, the essay uses a number of forgotten small-town texts in Urdu to begin to reconstruct the religious history of the Indian soldier from the inside, as it were, and so to create an ethnohistory of Islam in the colonial armies of the British Empire.3

The New Cambridge History of India. Volume II.1. Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire.

1989 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 125
Author(s):  
Michael H. Fisher ◽  
C. A. Bayly ◽  
P. J. Marshall
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
History Of

scholarly journals BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN GLOBAL AND LOCAL STRATEGIES OF ARCHITECTURAL CONSERVATION, EXAMPLES OF THE CURRENT SCENARIOS IN INDIA

2017 ◽  
Vol XLII-5/W1 ◽  
pp. 607-614
Author(s):  
M. Kavuru
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Conservation Education ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Government Organizations ◽  
The Government ◽  
Global And Local ◽  
Diverse Cultures ◽  
Italian Philosophy

Culture develops from a civilization and progresses through the generations in tangible and intangible forms affecting various aspects of living. It gradually becomes a rulebook that guides the way of life for some people. This holds true in the Indian Society, which is punctuated by constant incorporation of migrating people with the diverse cultures that surround India. Such illustrious past should predict augmented conservation efforts. However, that is not the case. Following the Hindu philosophy of the life cycle, buildings are allowed to be deteriorating over the passage of time. It was only much later that the occidental influence of the British Empire encouraged conservation of built heritage. Yet today these efforts are absent at the most basic levels. On one side are the international organizations such as UNESCO providing guidelines for protection of these buildings and the on the other side are the government and non-government organizations which help maintain the structures. Co-relation between the two levels of conservation are non-existent in a way that initiatives by the government focus on improving infrastructure but neglect the Risk-assessment of the buildings. Such examples will be discussed further in the paper with suggestions to improve the situation with the help of new technologies and simplified methods that include making conservation education easier for even the most rural population. The research explores avenues of diagnosis integrated in the Italian philosophy of conservation to make maintenance more easy and effective.

scholarly journals Indian Topic in R. Kipling’s early Creative Art («Plain Tales from the Hills», 1888): An Alternative View

2017 ◽  
Vol 79 ◽  
pp. 29-32
Author(s):  
Olga Posudiyevska
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Main Idea ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Indian People ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Literary Heritage ◽  
Creative Art ◽  
Harsh Climate

This article presents the study of Rudyard Kipling’s early pieces of writing (the collection of stories Plain Tales from the Hills, 1888). The author proposes an alternative view to the consideration of the writer’s literary heritage from the position of jingoism and propagation of the civilizing mission of the British Empire, which can still be encountered in academic research. The analysis of Plain Tales from the Hills suggests that the praise of British imperialism was not the main idea of Kipling’s early works. The researcher comes to the conclusion that Kipling did not regard India as a conquered barbarous land which the British people had to civilize. This remote exotic country became a motherland for a representative of Anglo-Indian society, who was born in Indian environment. Kipling’s love for India is felt in his strive to give a detailed description of exotic locations and ethnographic peculiarities and even to restore the manner of speech of Indian population. The reader of Plain Tales from the Hills can perceive the author’s respect for the English and Indian people, working in harsh climate, his interest and great sympathy with the aboriginal population, living in hard social conditions under the British rule. The sarcastic remarks of his characters, which reflect Kipling’s doubt in the beneficial role of the British Empire in the lives of the Indian people, finally refute the statement about the writer’s glorification of the imperialistic policy of Great Britain as the main aim of his creative art.

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