Spatial Inequity and National Territory: Remapping 1905 in Bengal and Assam

2011 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 483-525 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID LUDDEN
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Spatial Dynamics ◽  
Economic Globalization ◽  
Northeast India ◽  
Uneven Development ◽  
Transnational History ◽  
The Political ◽  
British India ◽  
History Of ◽  
Territorial Politics

AbstractIn 1905, Viceroy Nathaniel Curzon applied well-worn principles of imperial order to reorganize northeastern regions of British India, bringing the entire Meghna-Brahmaputra river basin into one new administrative territory: the province of Eastern Bengal and Assam. He thereby launched modern territorial politics in South Asia by provoking an expansive and ultimately victorious nationalist agitation to unify Bengal and protect India's territorial integrity. This movement and its economic programme (swadeshi) expressed Indian nationalist opposition to imperial inequity. It established a permanent spatial frame for Indian national thought. It also expressed and naturalized spatial inequity inside India, which was increasing at the time under economic globalization. Spatial inequities in the political economy of uneven development have animated territorial politics in South Asia ever since. A century later, another acceleration of globalization is again increasing spatial inequity, again destabilizing territorial order, as nationalists naturalize spatial inequity in national territory and conflicts erupt from the experience of living in disadvantaged places. Remapping 1905 in the long twentieth century which connects these two periods of globalization, spanning eras of empire and nation, reveals spatial dynamics of modernity concealed by national maps and brings to light a transnational history of spatial inequity shared by Bangladesh and Northeast India.

Diversities and Minorities

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yulia Egorova
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
British India ◽  
History Of

The chapter provides an outline of the history of Jews and Muslims in South Asia focusing on the multiplicity of definitions of both groups. While highlighting the diversity of Indian Jews and Indian Muslims, it discusses how in the British period the colonial authorities constructed and sedimented the boundaries both around and within the two groups, depicting them simultaneously as foreign to the subcontinent in ways that would minoritize them in British India and, subsequently, in independent India, and as indigenous, in ways that proved to be detrimental to their position vis-à-vis the Hindu majority in the case of Indian Muslims and vis-à-vis overseas Jewish organizations in the case of Indian Jews.

State, Sovereignty, and the People: A Comparison of the “Rule of Law” in China and India

2009 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan K. Ocko ◽  
David Gilmartin
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Social Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
British India ◽  
Fourth Section ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
China And India ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of

This paper uses the concept of the “rule of law” to compare Qing China and British India. Rather than using the rule of law instrumentally, the paper embeds it in the histories of state power and sovereignty in China and India. Three themes, all framed by the rule of law and the rule of man as oppositional yet paradoxically intertwined notions, organize the paper's comparisons: the role of a discourse of law in simultaneously legitimizing and constraining the political authority of the state; the role of law and legal procedures in shaping and defining society; and the role of law in defining an economic and social order based on contract, property, and rights. A fourth section considers the implications of these findings for the historical trajectories of China and India in the twentieth century. Taking law as an instrument of power and an imagined realm that nonetheless also transcended power and operated outside its ambit, the paper seeks to broaden the history of the “rule of law” beyond Euro-America.

South Asia

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ravinder Gargesh ◽  
Pingali Sailaja
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Wide Spectrum ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
The Political ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Economic

This chapter traces the history of English in the countries of South Asia, including the political, economic, educational, and social impact of the language on the region. The major debates and processes that led to the institutionalization of the language are highlighted. It then presents an outline of the typical linguistic features and also their variation across the region. Some of the consequences of the multilingual context and the need to communicate by a wide spectrum of groups led to the development of sub-varieties and widespread code-switching; the chapter discusses these phenomena as well. Some theoretical approaches that aim to explain some of the aspects of the linguistic features rather than merely describe the data are then presented.

Presidential Address: Too Little and Too Much: Reflections on Muslims in the History of India

1995 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 951-967 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara D. Metcalf
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Religious Nationalism ◽  
British India ◽  
The South ◽  
Untimely Death ◽  
Muslim Minority ◽  
History Of

I want to begin this evening by recalling my immediate predecessor as AAS president from the South Asian field, Barbara Stoler Miller, whose untimely death in 1992 took from us a distinguished Sanskritist, a gifted teacher, and a generous colleague whose absence we mourn. In my address I continue themes taken up by Barbara Miller four years ago (Miller 1991) as well as by Stanley Tambiah, as president from the Southeast Asian field, the year before (Tambiah 1990). Then, as now, scholars across the disciplines—whether, like Barbara Miller, a scholar of classical texts; or like Stanley Tambiah, an anthropologist; or myself, a historian of British India—have struggled to understand the religious nationalism of South Asia, one of whose most tragic outcomes has been an accelerating violence against the Muslim minority.

Scientific Advice for British India: Imperial Perceptions and Administrative Goals, 1898—1923

1975 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy M. MacLeod
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Scientific Activity ◽  
The Political ◽  
British India ◽  
Commercial Exploitation ◽  
Scientific Institutions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Economic

In recent years there has been a continuing effort to place the history of scientific activity in Europe firmly in the political, economic and social contexts in which ideas and institutions have developed. Hitherto, however, comparatively little attention has been paid to the development of scientific institutions in the European colonial empires, or to the role of scientific activity in the commercial exploitation, civil government, or political development of individual countries.

scholarly journals Mass Mobilization in Indian Politics: A Case Study of Non-Cooperation Movement

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-25
Author(s):  
Farooq Ahmad Dar ◽  
Muhammad Sajid Khan ◽  
Muhammad Abrar Zahoor
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mass Mobilization ◽  
Indian Politics ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Masses

Mass-Mobilization is one of the key ingredients for not only launching a movement but also for spreading any political agenda. The involvement of the masses always plays an important role in a process of bringing change anywhere and at any time. The history of South Asia, however, witnessed that in the struggle against the colonial rulers, to begin with, started by the elite alone. Politics was considered as the domain of a selected few and the common men were considered as ignorant and perhaps irrelevant and thus were kept at a distance. It was only after the beginning of the twentieth century and especially after the entrance of Gandhi on the political screen that the masses gained importance and were directly involved in political affairs. They not only became part of the Non-Cooperation Movement but also played an important role in spreading the movement all across India. In this paper, an attempt has been made to highlight Gandhi’s efforts to mobilize Indian masses during the Non-Cooperation Movement and its impact on the future politics of the region. The paper also discusses in detail different groups of society that actively participated in the process of mass-mobilization.

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