Materialism, Mutiny and Modernization in British India

2000 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 545-580 ◽  
Author(s):  
IRA KLEIN
Keyword(s):  
Complex Analysis ◽  
Social Engineering ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Rapid Progress ◽  
British India ◽  
British Raj ◽  
Past Generation ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Career Opportunities ◽  
Poverty Levels

British rule in India probably was in the reformist van of colonial regimes, but by Independence relatively few among the Indian populace had benefited notably from Western ‘modernization’. Although praised lavishly by a past generation of English historians for equipping India for ‘rapid progress’ under ‘the rule of law’, British policies hardly represented exemplary social engineering or ‘transformed’ the prosperity, health, well being, education or career opportunities of most Indians. Early in its sway the British raj conceived of implanting on the subcontinent modes of development responsible for England's rapid progress and prosperity and the advance of its peoples. Why, then, was the success not greater of Western programs, and why did policies of economic development leave at mid-twentieth century a majority of Indians living below poverty levels drawn close to subsistence? Was Western ‘reformism’ materially exploitative, or promising but checked by the regime's major political disturbance, the ‘Mutiny’ or Revolt of 1857, or were British policies culturally suppressive, or is more complex analysis needed to comprehend the Western impact?

scholarly journals Muslims preaching movements in British-India: An appraisal of the Tablighi Jamaat and its competitors

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 356-371
Author(s):  
Kausar Ali ◽  
Huang Minxing
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Research Articles ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
British India ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Islamic Schools ◽  
British Raj ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
British Rule ◽  
The World

The article examines emergence of the Tablighi Jamaat (henceforth TJ) in colonial India. It discusses the emergence of Tablighi Jamaat in light of the proselytizing (Tablighi) competition among various Islamic schools that emerged soon after the failure of the 1857 war. This article answers the question of why Maulana Ilyas founded the TJ in undivided India? This study aims to understand the emergence of the TJ in light of the deprivation and Maududian theory of Islamic revivalism. The discussion is based on qualitative analysis of the existing secondary sources in the form of books, research articles, and reports, etc. This study finds that TJ was founded because several Tablighi Jamaats belonged to different Islamic sects during British rule, responded to the challenges of the Muslim community. The Deobandi, Barailvi, Ahl-i-Hadith, and Shi’a Muslims established their proselytizing societies. This study concludes that the Deobandi Tablighi Jamaat emerged not only in response to the anti-Islamic campaigns of Hindus and Christians. The TJ was also founded in response to the preaching struggles of other Islamic schools in the British Raj. It is recommended that the TJ works to implement the Deobandi version of Islam in the world should be further studied

Medical Culture in Transition: Mughal Gentleman Physician and the Native Doctor in Early Colonial India

2008 ◽  
Vol 42 (5) ◽  
pp. 853-897 ◽  
Author(s):  
SEEMA ALAVI
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Colonial Medicine ◽  
Medical Culture ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Medical Authority ◽  
Mughal Empire ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Public Servant ◽  
British Rule

AbstractThe essay explores a Greco-Arabic healing tradition that arrived in India with the Muslims and evolved with the expansion of the Mughal Empire. It came to be known as unani in the sub-continent. It studies unani texts and its practitioners in the critical period of transition to British rule, and questions the idea of ‘colonial medicine’ being the predominant site of culture and power. It shows that in the decades immediately preceding the early 19th century British expansion, unani underwent a critical transformation that was triggered by new influences from the Arab lands. These changes in local medical culture shaped the later colonial intrusions in matters related to health. The essay concludes that the pro-active role of the English Company and the wide usage of the printing press only added new contenders to the ongoing contest over medical authority. By the 1830s this complex interplay moved health away from its previous focus on individual aristocratic virtue, to the new domain of societal well being. It also projected the healer not merely as a gentleman physician concerned with individual health, but as a public servant responsible for the well being of society at large. These changes were rapid and survived the reforms of 1830s. They ensured that ‘colonial medicine’ remained entangled in local contestations over medical authority.

The Indian Civil Service 1919–1924: Service Discontent and the Response in London and in Delhi

1984 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Ewing
Keyword(s):  
Civil Service ◽  
First World War ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
British India ◽  
World War ◽  
Vital Part ◽  
British Rule ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Galaxy ◽  
First World

The British controlled their empire in India through the twin instruments of the army and the civil services. But the army was never used much to administer British territories and the day-to-day business of law and order was left to the civil services, headed by the élite corps of covenanted officers, the Indian Civil Service. This corps was the vital link that carried the dictates of the centre to the two hundred and fifty districts that made up British India. Obviously a Service only a thousand or so strong had a presence too thin to achieve what some hagiographers have claimed but it was, nonetheless, a vital part of the structure of British rule. In the years immediately following the first world war, this vital part seemed unable to cope with the galaxy of problems with which it was beset: its own members increasingly questioned the value of their role; Indian politicians attacked what they saw as the remnant of imperial control whilst, on the widest scale, the complex task of governing India seemed to be beyond the creaking, anachronistic and overworked I.C.S.

1. Does dyslexia exist?

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Margaret J. Snowling
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Academic Achievement ◽  
Health Literacy ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Learning Disorder ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
Specific Learning Disorder ◽  
Career Opportunities ◽  
Diagnostic Profile ◽  
Specific Learning

Difficulties with reading and writing have wide-ranging effects beyond academic achievement, including effects on career opportunities, personal well-being, and to some extent mental health. Literacy difficulties, when they are not caused by lack of education, are known as dyslexia. Dyslexia can be defined as a problem with learning that primarily affects the development of reading accuracy and fluency and spelling skills. ‘Does dyslexia exist?’ explains that it is now widely understood that dyslexia is a specific learning disorder, but that there is no clear, diagnostic profile. However, dyslexia can be a disabling condition and we can do a great deal to ameliorate its effects.

The British Raj and the 1915 Communal Riots in Ceylon

1969 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 245-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. T. M. Fernando
Keyword(s):  
General Trend ◽  
British Raj ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Major Exception ◽  
Communal Riots ◽  
Colonial Office

In contrast to India, where communal affrays were ordinary incidents of life, there was little inter-communal hostility in Ceylon throughout British rule. The clash between the Sinhalese and the Muslims that occurred in May–June 1915 was the major exception to this general trend of peace and tranquillity2. Not only did the disturbance take the Ceylon government by surprise, it placed the Colonial Office in a quandary. In this paper it is proposed to examine the reactions of the Ceylon government and the Colonial Office to what was an unprecedented disturbance in the ‘senior colony of the new empire’3.

Federating the Raj: Hyderabad, sovereign kingship, and partition

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
SUNIL PURUSHOTHAM
Keyword(s):  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Decisive Factor ◽  
British India ◽  
Indian States ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
British Raj ◽  
Princely State ◽  
Muslim Majority

AbstractThis article explores the idea of federation in late-colonial India. Projects of federation sought to codify the uncodified and fragmented sovereign landscape of the British Raj. They were ambitious projects that raised crucial questions about sovereignty, kingship, territoriality, the potential of constitutional law in transforming the colonial state into a democratic one, and India's political future more broadly. In the years after 1919, federation became a capacious model for imagining a wide array of political futures. An all-India Indian federation was seen as the most plausible means of maintaining India's unity, introducing representative government, and overcoming the Hindu–Muslim majority–minority problem. By bringing together ‘princely’ India and British India, federation made the Indian states central players in late-colonial contestations over sovereignty. This article explores the role of the states in constitutional debates, their place in Indian political imaginaries, and articulations of kingship in late-colonial India. It does so through the example of Hyderabad, the premier princely state, whose ruler made an unsuccessful bid for independence between 1947 and 1948. Hyderabad occupied a curious position in competing visions of India's future. Ultimately, the princely states were a decisive factor in the failure of federation and the turn to partition as a means of overcoming India's constitutional impasse.

Anthropologists and Viceroys: Colonial knowledge and policy making in India, 1871–1911

2015 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 217-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. J. FULLER
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Rural Society ◽  
Land Policy ◽  
British India ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Agrarian Policy ◽  
Indian Nationalism ◽  
Late Nineteenth

AbstractThe anthropology of caste was a pivotal part of colonial knowledge in British India in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Denzil Ibbetson and Herbert Risley, then the two leading official anthropologists, both made major contributions to the study of caste, which this article discusses. Ibbetson and Risley assumed high office in the imperial government in 1902 and played important roles in policy making during the partition of Bengal (1903–5) and the Morley-Minto legislative councils reforms (1906–9); Ibbetson was also influential in deciding Punjab land policy in the 1890s. Contemporary policy documents, which this article examines, show that the two men's anthropological knowledge had limited influence on their deliberations. Moreover, caste was irrelevant to their thinking about agrarian policy, the promotion of Muslim interests, and the urban, educated middle class, whose growing nationalism was challenging British rule. No ethnographic information was collected about this class, because the scope of anthropology was restricted to ‘traditional’ rural society. At the turn of the twentieth century, colonial anthropological knowledge, especially about caste, had little value for the imperial government confronting Indian nationalism, and was less critical in constituting the Indian colonial state than it previously had been.

The Material Consequences of Welfare States

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (7) ◽  
pp. 880-904 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lyle Scruggs ◽  
James P. Allan
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Absolute Poverty ◽  
Economic Equality ◽  
Relative Poverty ◽  
Industrial Democracies ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Poverty Levels

Several recent studies have focused attention on the relationship between welfare states and poverty, looking primarily at relative poverty and employing concepts of welfare state generosity that are problematic. This has made it difficult to evaluate claims that equality has come at the expense of economic growth. In this article, the authors examine more directly the relationship between welfare state generosity in three social insurance programs— unemployment, sickness, and pensions—and poverty levels in advanced industrial democracies in the past quarter of the 20th century. The results strongly suggest that more generous entitlements to key social insurance programs are associated not only with lower relative poverty but also with lower absolute poverty. This supports the contention that promoting relative economic equality can improve the absolute material well-being of the poor. However, no evidence suggests that relatively more generous unemployment benefits systematically reduce poverty.

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