British Rule and Classifications of Indian Languages

2018 ◽  
pp. 39-65
Author(s):  
Mithilesh Kumar Jha
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Group Identity ◽  
Knowledge Systems ◽  
Indian Languages ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Arduous Task ◽  
Daunting Task ◽  
Effective History

This chapter examines the ways through which Christian missionaries and British officials attempted to classify Indian languages. How these exercises turned out to be the basis for different groups in India to forge various identities? How that led to competing claims and counter claims by various communities and groups? In particular, language turns out to be a powerful marker of group identity. The question of ‘chaste’ versus ‘standard’, written versus oral, and language with or without grammar and literature became politically and emotionally charged issue since the beginning of the nineteenth century. It also led to the politics of linguistic dominations and subordinations as well as resistances to such processes. For the British, it was an arduous task to classify and categorize various languages and knowledge systems of ‘natives’ in India into one single hegemonic narrative. They did not follow a consistent linguistic policy which remains a daunting task for the post Independent governments in India as well. And, we continue to witness various forms of identity movements based on language, religion and caste with varying degree of intensities. In these movements, their numerical strength became one of the most important signifier. Their engagement with modernity and their own ‘pre-modern’ selves are also important conjuncture in such mobilizations. I have argued in this chapter that more serious explorations of these movements will enrich not only the effective history and politics of modern India but also the understanding of unfolding and adaptations to modernity in India.

TROUBLING CONJUGAL LOYALTIES: THE FIRST INDIAN NOVEL IN ENGLISH AND THE TRANSIMPERIAL FRAMEWORK OF SENSATION

2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 475-489
Author(s):  
Sukanya Banerjee
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Indian Languages ◽  
Rabindranath Tagore ◽  
Scant Attention

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee(1838–94) is widely recognized as one of the preeminent novelists of nineteenth-century India. A literary forerunner of the much-celebrated Rabindranath Tagore, he authored fourteen Bengali novels which set the benchmark for Bengal's foray into novelistic territory. Bankim acquired national and international repute over the course of his lifetime, and not only were his novels translated into other Indian languages over the course of the nineteenth century, but translations of his work also appeared in Russia from as early as the 1870s (Novikova ii). While Bankim's fame rests on the strength of his Bengali writings multiply translated as they were, his first novel,Rajmohan's Wife(1864), was written in English. Interestingly,Rajmohan's Wife, usually considered the first Indian novel in English, is now seldom read, a neglect replicating the scant attention that the novel garnered when it was first serialized in the 1860s.

Of Two Minds About Minding Language in Culture

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Silverstein
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
American Indian ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Comparative Method ◽  
Indian Languages ◽  
Universal Truth

Analyzing Franz Boas's critically new insights under the lens of philology, this chapter redefines Boasian linguistics as a globalizing mode of mutual enlightenment through the exchange of grammatical concepts between selves across borders of sound and sense—a process he calls “comparative calibrationism,” the asymptotic pursuit of the always-inaccessible yet ever-closer universal truth. It focuses on the Handbook of American Indian Languages, where Boas dismantled every plank in the language-focused platform on which inferences of evolutionary primitivism stand. Boas also went after the very applicability to American languages of the comparative method of historical linguistics, from which inferences of so-called linguistic families descended from single proto-languages emerged in the nineteenth century.

scholarly journals Socio-Religious and Political Changes in Punjab during the Second Half of Nineteenth Century

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Karanbir Singh
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Instability ◽  
The State ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Best Interests ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Precautionary Measures ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Anglo Indian

<div><p><em>After the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the East India Company defeated the Khalsa Army of Lahore Darbar in two Anglo-Sikh Wars. Being astute political masters, the British felt the lurking fear of simmering discontent among the Punjabis against their rule. For safeguarding the logistics of administration, efficacious precautionary measures were undertaken by them to satisfy the grievances of certain sections of the society so that British rule would face lesser political instability and enmity of the natives. After 1857, the British conducted a thorough study of ethnographic, fiscal, geographical, political, social and religious conditions of Punjab and oriented their administrative policies to suit the best interests of the Empire.  Far-reaching political, economic and social changes were introduced by the British to strengthen their hold over all branches of administration. A new administrative hierarchy, composed of Anglo-Indian elements was firmly established and it embraced every activity of the state.  </em></p></div>

Black Diasporic Gothic

2019 ◽  
pp. 289-303
Author(s):  
Maisha Wester
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
Black Writers ◽  
Knowledge Systems ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Real ◽  
Twenty First Century

Black Diasporic Gothic can trace its origins back to the nineteenth century at the height of the Gothic’s appearance, when many black writers began to appropriate the genre to describe the real horrors of existence within racially oppressive and enslaving societies. However, many twenty-first-century Black Gothic texts suggest that modifying traditional Gothic monsters is not enough to create subversive work.Rather modern texts such as Jeremy Love’s Baypu (2009-10), Helen Oyeyimi’sWhite is for Witching (2009) and Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017) force Western readers out of their region and tradition entirely by introducing monsters from the African Diaspora, creatures recording the horror of physical and cultural theft even as they demand recognition of a pre-encounter cultural history. In each text, marginalised characters are able to recognise, define and combat monstrous assailants primarily because they exist outside of dominant ideological systems. Thus twenty-first century Black Gothic texts posit the existence of radically alternative, and ultimately liberating, knowledge systems within marginalised locations.

Re-Imagining Ireland’s Early Modern Past during the Later Nineteenth Century

2021 ◽  
pp. 257-290
Author(s):  
Nicholas Canny
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Past ◽  
Great Famine ◽  
British Rule

The Great Famine provided a stimulus to the writing of history, not least because it eroded the credibility both of British rule in Ireland, and of Irish landowners. The new interpretations can be characterized as follows. The authors of a Catholic narrative wanted the Catholic nation that had emerged from suffering to be treated as an equal with the English and Scottish nations within a shared British monarchy. Militant nationalist historians cherished memories of Catholic sufferings in the hope that these would foment popular ‘disaffection’ and further revolutionary action. Moderate Unionist historians acknowledged the unjust treatment of the Irish in the past and detailed this to encourage the present government to promote reform that would elicit loyalty. Hard-line Unionist historians also faulted past British rule. Their concern, however, was that governments had not stuck rigidly to stern measures that would have produced stability. They believed that stability might still be achieved if the present government avoided conciliation.

Imperial Vision, Colonial Prisons:

2018 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mira Rai Waits
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Primary Objective ◽  
Moral Reform ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Built Form ◽  
British Rule ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
New System

Prison construction was among the most important infrastructural changes brought about by British rule in nineteenth-century India. Informed by the extension of liberal political philosophy into the colony, the development of the British colonial prison introduced India to a radically new system of punishment based on long-term incarceration. Unlike prisons in Europe and the United States, where moral reform was cited as the primary objective of incarceration, prisons in colonial India focused on confinement as a way of separating and classifying criminal types in order to stabilize colonial categories of difference. In Imperial Vision, Colonial Prisons: British Jails in Bengal, 1823–73, Mira Rai Waits explores nineteenth-century colonial jail plans from India's Bengal Presidency. Although colonial reformers eventually arrived at a model of prison architecture that resembled Euro-American precedents, the built form and functional arrangements of these places reflected a singularly colonial model of operation.

IRELAND, COLONIAL SCIENCE, AND THE GEOGRAPHICAL CONSTRUCTION OF BRITISH RULE IN INDIA, c. 1820–1870

2009 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 963-987 ◽  
Author(s):  
BARRY CROSBIE
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Irish People ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Global Exchange ◽  
Geological Research ◽  
Colonial Science

ABSTRACTThis article examines the role that Ireland and Irish people played in the geographical construction of British colonial rule in India during the nineteenth century. It argues that as an important sub-imperial centre, Ireland not only supplied the empire with key personnel, but also functioned as an important reference point for scientific practice, new legislation, and systems of government. Occupying integral roles within the information systems of the colonial state, Irish people provided much of the intellectual capital around which British rule in India was constructed. These individuals were part of nineteenth-century Irish professional personnel networks that viewed the empire as a legitimate sphere for work and as an arena in which they could prosper. Through involvement and deployment of expertise in areas such as surveying and geological research in India, Irishmen and Irish institutions were able to act decisively in the development of colonial knowledge. The relationships mapped in this article centre the Irish within the imperial web of connections and global exchange of ideas, technologies, and practices during the long nineteenth century, thereby making a contribution towards uncovering Ireland's multi-directional involvement in the British empire and reassessing the challenges that this presents to existing British, Irish, and imperial historiography.

Population and Agriculture in Northern India, 1872—1921

1974 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ira Klein
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
Standard Of Living ◽  
Northern India ◽  
Preliminary Work ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Standards Of Living ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Natural Calamity

What were the relationships between agriculture, natural calamity, standards of living, and population growth in India? To what extent were Indian agriculturalists able to raise their standard of living in the nineteenth century under British rule? Why did population grow, or fail to expand, in particular regions and provinces at certain times? Historians have left these questions virtually untouched. Population growth has been at the center of the controversy about the impact of British rule. But only preliminary work has been done on the actual expansion of population, and hardly a page has been written on the economic and medical reasons for change.

scholarly journals Governors, Regents, and Rituals: an Exploration of Colonial Diplomacy in Ambon at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century

Diplomatica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-94
Author(s):  
Philip Post
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
British Rule ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Dutch Colonial

Abstract This article analyses how the Dutch colonial state in Ambon in the early nineteenth century tried to reestablish relations with local regents, making use of already existing protocols that were produced during the period of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (1602–1799). Engaging in colonial diplomacy was very important because the demise of the voc (1796) and two short periods of British rule in Ambon (1796–1803 and 1810–17) had shaken Dutch rule to its foundations. To reestablish its legitimacy with these local rulers, the colonial state made use of diplomatic protocols, documents and rituals which had been drawn up and negotiated by the voc. This article will focus on comparing the so-called “Instruction for the Regents,” which was drawn up in 1771 by a voc administrator, with one that was reissued in 1818 by the colonial state and will analyze a number of rituals and protocols which played an important role in defining the relationship between the governor and the regents.

Anticipations of Freedom

2018 ◽  
pp. 146-207
Author(s):  
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Civil Servants ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
The Public ◽  
British Rule ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere

In the last two decades of colonial rule in India, there were anticipations of freedom in many areas of the public sphere. In the domain of archiving these were chiefly felt in the form of reversal of earlier policies. The biggest change was that the habit of looking at the records as resources exclusively to be used by the civil servants for purposes of governance was abandoned. The resistance of the bureaucracy from the 1860s to opening the records to the Indian public was overcome. And, above all, the locus of policymaking shifted in the 1920s to the Indian Historical Records Commission, consisting of leading Indian historians who outnumbered the ‘official’ members who represented the government record offices. The period spanning the beginning of the nineteenth century to the last years of British rule in India saw the evolution from a Eurocentric and disparaging approach to India towards a more liberal and less ethnocentric approach.

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