Strangers in the Village? Colonial policing in rural Bengal, 1861 to 1892

2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (5) ◽  
pp. 1378-1404 ◽  
Author(s):  
ERIN M. GIULIANI

AbstractThe chief concern of this article is the organization and administration of rural policing in colonial Bengal during the last 40 years of the nineteenth century. It connects its design and implementation with the consolidation of India's colonial police force, while highlighting the ongoing negotiations made by the Bengal police in a wider colonial model. The article argues that the police administration of rural Bengal was shaped initially by the ordinary constraints of the colonial state which underpinned the design of the Indian police—namely its frugality and preference for collaborating with local intermediaries, a manifestation of salutary neglect. Yet, it highlights the role of Bengal's largely British police executive in renegotiating customs of governance and, ultimately, as an established model of policing in India. The article focuses, therefore, on ongoing and at times informal police reforms which were based upon notions contradictory to an official discourse about policing in India. This article thus contextualizes the development of rural police administration in Bengal in a strong tradition of police-led reform in the province. In so doing, the article redresses a traditional historiographical focus on the political origins and coercive function of the police, and problematizes current research which situates Indian policing within customs of British governance in the subcontinent.

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hou Yuxin

Abstract The Wukan Incident attracted extensive attention both in China and around the world, and has been interpreted from many different perspectives. In both the media and academia, the focus has very much been on the temporal level of the Incident. The political and legal dimensions, as well as the implications of the Incident in terms of human rights have all been pored over. However, what all of these discussions have overlooked is the role played by religious force during the Incident. The village of Wukan has a history of over four hundred years, and is deeply influenced by the religious beliefs of its people. Within both the system of religious beliefs and in everyday life in the village, the divine immortal Zhenxiu Xianweng and the religious rite of casting shengbei have a powerful influence. In times of peace, Xianweng and casting shengbei work to bestow good fortune, wealth and longevity on both the village itself, and the individuals who live there. During the Wukan Incident, they had a harmonizing influence, and helped to unify and protect the people. Looking at the specific roles played by religion throughout the Wukan Incident will not only enable us to develop a more meaningful understanding of the cultural nature and the complexity of the Incident itself, it will also enrich our understanding, on a divine level, of innovations in social management.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (10-4) ◽  
pp. 93-103
Author(s):  
Vadim Kulachkov ◽  
Irina Goncharova ◽  
German Chuvardin

The article examines the role of social communications in the modernization of the Russian village in the 1920s, which were used by the authorities to transform rural life and form “Pro-Soviet” attitudes in the village. On the basis of archived data, we analyze communication models and determine the political and social order in this area. It is proved that the achievement of optimal results was hindered by material, financial and technical problems of the period of the new economic policy.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Wawan Sobari

This qualitative case study aims to explore the practice of political entrepreneurship in a rural Javanese village. Political entrepreneurship is dictated by the special interest of political entrepreneurs, incentives gained from the political system, and awareness about targeting the change of political institution, an explanation theorized by McCaffrey and Salerno (2011). Unlike the theory, this study assesses the importance of cultural explanation of political entrepreneurship which provides room in an academic discussion. The study reveals the role of Javanese (and Islam) values in encouraging the political entrepreneurship of a village head. Philosophical values of Javanese leadership promoting an exemplary leader (ing ngarso sung tulodo) and leadership behavior that is andap asor (humble) have favored public acceptance of the practice of political entrepreneurship. Furthermore, the doctrine (akhlak) and practices of Islamic rituals by the village head explain the direction of political entrepreneurship. This study discovers also the concept of ‘sungkan’ demonstrated in respect for the performance of the village head. Moreover, the ability to provide solutions to villagers’ problems practiced through suwuk and petungan add gratitude for the village head. Leadership behavior adhering to these cultural and religious values directly or indirectly induced a ‘sungkan’ effect in a reelection bid (the 2013 Village Election). ‘Sungkan’, which is equal to electoral accountability, explicates the outcome of political entrepreneurship for the electoral process in the village that were relatively clean from vote-buying. Lastly, the casework expands political entrepreneurship theory, indeed, cultural and religious values can also drive the practice of political entrepreneurship.


Author(s):  
Aleksander Yuryevich RYADNYKH

We study one of the most specific forms of work to build political and cultural educational centres in the peasant masses unification. That work was not directly connected with administrative and command methods. We analyze the stages, organization and means for the implementation of the Soviet campaign to strengthen the political education and cultural level centers in the cohesion of the peasant masses held in 1920–1927s. We make a comparison of educational work in the centers of political education with ideological aspects that allows us to trace the dynamics of the Soviet power interaction with the population of the province in the peasant masses formation and consolidation around the Soviet government. We describe the legal formation of the political education centers on the Kursk province territory. During the socialist construction the Council of People’s Commissars adopted a Decree “On cultural and educational work in the village”. The main purpose was to attract as many peasant workers as possible in the country, who were given the right to vote. The young Soviet state needed specialists of the cultural and political education to create a new management structure. In addition, there was a need for qualified personnel in the workplace, who could convey information to the masses. This material explains the basic prerequisites of the cultural and political construction centers, defines the main tasks of the proletariat in the cultural and political education in raising the cultural level of the masses. We consider the role of the mass political work centers in improving the activity of political education, which contributed to the governance of the state, introducing to the political life of the country in addressing the most important social issues of the village.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 39-70
Author(s):  
Wilson K. Yayoh

Present-day scholars have critically examined the nature and dynamics of indirect rule in Africa and have found it to be riddled with contradictions and ambiguities. Colonial officers were often accused of imposing colonial structures on local people in the name of tradition. Native Authorities (NAs), for instance, were seen as colonial inventions that often lacked real legitimacy. This article, however, extends the counter argument that the colonial state was actually the product of complex local dynamics rather than a straightforward ‘imposition’. This article uses both primary and secondary sources to provide evidence which shows how ethnographic research shaped the British policy of amalgamation in colonial Ewedome and secondly adds to our knowledge on the role of local power brokers in the formulation of colonial policies in Africa.Keywords: Ethnography; Power Brokers; Colonial State; Intermediaries; mediation; legitimacy


2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT TRAVERS

AbstractThis article explores the role of Indian petitioning in the process of consolidating British power after the East India Company's military conquest of Bengal in the late eighteenth century. The presentation of written petitions (often termed‘arziin Persian) was a pervasive form of state-subject interaction in early modern South Asia that carried over, in modified forms, into the colonial era. The article examines the varied uses of petitioning as a technology of colonial state-formation that worked to establish the East India Company's headquarters in Calcutta as the political capital of Bengal and the Company as a sovereign source of authority and justice. It also shows how petitioning became a site of anxiety for both colonial rulers and Indian subjects, as British officials struggled to respond to a mass of Indian ‘complaints’ and to satisfy the expectations and norms of justice expressed by petitioners. It suggests that British rulers tried to defuse the perceived political threat of Indian petitioning by redirecting petitioners into the newly regulated spaces of an emergent colonial judiciary.


2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 181-192
Author(s):  
Anna A. Komzolova

One of the results of the educational reform of the 1860s was the formation of the regular personnel of village teachers. In Vilna educational district the goal was not to invite teachers from central Russia, but to train them on the spot by establishing special seminaries. Trained teachers were supposed to perform the role of «cultural brokers» – the intermediaries between local peasants and the outside world, between the culture of Russian intelligentsia and the culture of the Belarusian people. The article examines how officials and teachers of Vilna educational district saw the role of rural teachers as «cultural brokers» in the context of the linguistic and cultural diversity of the North-Western Provinces. According to them, the graduates of the pedagogical seminaries had to remain within the peasant estate and to keep in touch with their folk «roots». The special «mission» of the village teachers was in promoting the ideas of «Russian elements» and historical proximity to Russia among Belarusian peasants.


Author(s):  
Marsel Eliaser Liunokas

Timorese culture is patriarchal in that men are more dominant than women. As if women were not considered in traditional rituals so that an understanding was built that valued women lower than men. However, in contrast to the article to be studied, this would like to see the priority of women’s roles in traditional marriages in Belle village, South Central Timor. The role of women wiil be seen from giving awards to their parents called puah mnasi manu mnasi. This paper aims to look at the meaning of the rituals of puah mnasi maun mnasi and the role and strengths that women have in traditional marriage rituals in the village of Belle, South Central Timor. The method used for this research is a qualitative research method using interview techniques with a number of people in the Belle Villa community and literature study to strengthen this writing. Based on the data obtained this paper shows that the adat rituals of puah mnasi manu mnasi provide a value that can be learned, namely respect for women, togetherness between the two families, and brotherhood that is intertwined due to customary marital affrairs.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (11) ◽  
pp. 150
Author(s):  
Mustafa Ibrahim Salman Al - Shammari ◽  
Dhari Sarhan Hammadi Al-Hamdani

The topic area of that’s paper dealing with role of Britain in established of Israel, so the paper argued the historical developments of Palestinian question and Role of Britain Government toward peace process since 1992, and then its insight toward plan of Palestinian State. That’s paper also argued the British Policy toward Israeli violations toward Palestinians people, and increased with settlement policy by many procedures like demolition of houses, or lands confiscation, the researcher argued the Britain position toward that’s violations beside the political developments which happens in Britain after Theresa May took over the power in Ten Downing Street


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