scholarly journals Pre-partition India and the Rise of Indian Nationalism in Amitav Ghosh’s 'The Shadow Lines'

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-165
Author(s):  
Sheikh Zobaer
Keyword(s):  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Indian Nationalism ◽  
Great Insight ◽  
Revolutionary Movements ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Insight Into

The Shadow Lines is mostly celebrated for capturing the agony and trauma of the artificial segregation that divided the Indian subcontinent in 1947. However, the novel also provides a great insight into the undivided Indian subcontinent during the British colonial period. Moreover, the novel aptly captures the rise of Indian nationalism and the struggle against the British colonial rule through the revolutionary movements. Such image of pre-partition India is extremely important because the picture of an undivided India is what we need in order to compare the scenario of pre-partition India with that of a postcolonial India divided into two countries, and later into three with the independence of Bangladesh in 1971. This paper explores how The Shadow Lines captures colonial India and the rise of Indian nationalism through the lens of postcolonialism.

Self-Rule and the Problem of Peoplehood in Colonial India

2019 ◽  
Vol 114 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
NAZMUL S. SULTAN
Keyword(s):  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Moral Self ◽  
Indian People ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Self Rule ◽  
Indefinite Future

This article theorizes the colonial problem of peoplehood that Indian anticolonial thinkers grappled with in their attempts to conceptualize self-rule, or swaraj. British colonial rule drew its legitimacy from a developmentalist conception of the colonized people as backward and disunited. The discourse of “underdeveloped” colonial peoplehood rendered the Indian people “unfit” for self-government, suspending their sovereignty to an indefinite future. The concept of swaraj would be born with the rejection of deferred colonial self-government. Yet the persistence of the developmentalist figuration of the people generated a crisis of sovereign authorization. The pre-Gandhian swaraj theorists would be faced with the not-yet claimable figure of the people at the very moment of disavowing the British claim to rule. Recovering this underappreciated pre-Gandhian history of the concept of swaraj and reinterpreting its Gandhian moment, this article offers a new reading of Gandhi's theory of moral self-rule. In so doing, it demonstrates how the history of swaraj helps trace the colonial career of popular sovereignty.

scholarly journals “Imperium in Imperio”: The Corporation, Mining, and Governance in British Southeast Asia, 1900–1930

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
DAVID BAILLARGEON
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
State Model ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
State Regulations ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Corporate Ventures

This article examines the history of mining in British Southeast Asia during the early twentieth century. In particular, it focuses on the histories of the Burma Corporation and the Duff Development Company, which were located in British-occupied Burma and Malaya, respectively. It argues that despite being represented as “rogue” corporate ventures in areas under “indirect” colonial rule, the contrasting fates of each company—one successful, one not—reveal how foreign-owned businesses operating in the empire became increasingly beholden to British colonial state regulations during this period, marking a shift in policy from the “company-state” model that operated in prior centuries. The histories of these two firms ultimately demonstrate the continued significance of business in the making of empire during the late colonial period, bridging the divide between the age of company rule and the turn toward state-sponsored “development” that would occur in the mid-twentieth century.

THE RAJ AND THE PARADOXES OF WILDLIFE CONSERVATION: BRITISH ATTITUDES AND EXPEDIENCIES

2015 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
VIJAYA RAMADAS MANDALA
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Sensitivity ◽  
Wildlife Conservation ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Game Species ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Infrastructural Development ◽  
Colonial Economy ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Wild Predators

AbstractThis article throws light on how the issue of conservation stood in tension with imperial hunting and exploitation in colonial India. The indiscriminate slaughter of wildlife and the declining numbers of game species in nineteenth-century India gave rise to a need for conservation, but with a caveat. Wildlife conservation, consequently, was aimed at the expansion of colonial economy and infrastructural development. Thus, in colonial India, wild predators that posed a threat to such interests were ruthlessly decimated and those animals that were useful for the smooth functioning of the British colonial rule were overlooked. This, in part, was also necessitated by the British seeking to establish their credentials as rulers, which explains the reason the colonial government's conservation programme was fundamentally selective and guided by expediency. The comparative perspective on elephants and tigers elucidates how the former were protected by the law because of the critical role they played in the colonial economy and administration, whilst the latter were ruthlessly exterminated for the threat they posed to the same. This article especially argues that the reasons for conserving elephants and decimating tigers in colonial India were more practical and economic than a mere reflection of cultural sensitivity on the part of the colonizers.

British Rule and Tribal Revolts in India: The curious case of Bastar

2015 ◽  
Vol 50 (5) ◽  
pp. 1619-1644 ◽  
Author(s):  
AJAY VERGHESE
Keyword(s):  
Colonial Period ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Indian Government ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Indigenous Groups ◽  
Princely State ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Colonial Policies

AbstractBritish colonial rule in India precipitated a period of intense rebellion among the country's indigenous groups. Most tribal conflicts occurred in the British provinces, and many historians have documented how a host of colonial policies gave rise to widespread rural unrest and violence. In the post-independence period, many of the colonial-era policies that had caused revolt were not reformed, and tribal conflict continued in the form of the Naxalite insurgency. This article considers why the princely state of Bastar has continuously been a major centre of tribal conflict in India. Why has this small and remote kingdom, which never came under direct British rule, suffered so much bloodshed? Using extensive archival material, this article highlights two key findings: first, that Bastar experienced high levels of British intervention during the colonial period, which constituted the primary cause of tribal violence in the state; and second, that the post-independence Indian government has not reformed colonial policies in this region, ensuring a continuation and escalation of tribal conflict through the modern Naxalite movement.

Dispossession, Un-freedom, Precarity

2021 ◽  
Vol 120 (1) ◽  
pp. 209-219
Author(s):  
Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
The Other ◽  
The People ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Citizenship Laws ◽  
Laws And Regulations

The partition of the Indian subcontinent forced millions of people to flee to the other side of the borders, freshly demarcated by the British colonial rulers just on the eve of their departure from South Asia. Almost a decade-long migration of people could not, however, settle the boundaries and lives of the people once and for all. The postcolonial rulers retained many of the draconian laws of the late colonial period, like the Foreigners’ Act in India, and laced them with new laws and regulations, thus leading to greater dispossession of people of homes, generating widespread situations of un-freedom, and creating countless refugees and stateless persons, mostly forced to survive in sites of precarious life, without any right to have rights. The concern of this contribution is this politics of dispossession in postcolonial South Asia and its relation with citizenship laws of the region.

Conclusion: Torture in a State of Exception

2021 ◽  
pp. 179-188
Author(s):  
Deana Heath
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Nationalist Movement ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
High Profile ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Primary Form

Colonial Terror concludes by exploring how the attempts of the British colonial regime in India, in the decades following the Madras torture commission, to deny the ongoing prevalence of torture in the Indian police began to unravel in the early twentieth century thanks to the emergence of a voluble Indian press and a mass nationalist movement. But it was not until 1909, following the failures of a series of high-profile ‘conspiracy’ trials due to the ongoing reliance of the police on extorted confessions as their primary form of evidence, combined with pressure exerted by yet another group of reformist MPs, that torture once again erupted into scandal. The Indian and British governments were thus forced to act, but although the actions they took exposed the sheer scale of police torture in colonial India, they did little, once again, to attempt to eradicate it, since eradication was impossible thanks to the importance of torture to the maintenance of colonial rule. They endeavoured, instead, to make it disappear by renaming it, as well as to transform India into a fully-fledged state of exception in which police torture could continue to flourish, freed from the constraints placed on it by the rule of law.

scholarly journals Tropicality of Colonial Heritage Buildings in a Deltaic Landscape: British Colonial Architecture in Khulna

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 72-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhaiminul Islam ◽  
Hasan Muntasir
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Residential Buildings ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Tropical Region ◽  
Design Elements ◽  
Bengal Delta ◽  
Architectural Features ◽  
British Colonial

During the 17th-18th century colonial period on the Indian subcontinent, British colonial architecture flourished – including in the Bengal Delta. Although colonial architecture was inherently different from the traditional architecture of this tropical region, the monsoon climate and deltaic landscape forced colonial style buildings to incorporate a number of tropical architectural features to ensure climatic comfort. In the contemporary period, due to pressure from population density, many colonial buildings have been demolished and replaced with multi-story buildings. However, the tropical forces of this deltaic region need to be evaluated in order to re-create climate responsive architecture. This study aims to identify tropical architectural features inherent within colonial buildings of Khulna, Bangladesh, a city which formed a junction in the deltaic region during the colonial period. Four colonial buildings have been selected as case studies: two residential buildings, one mixed-use building, and a school. Tropical features were analysed from photographic data, and reproductions of plans and sections of the selected buildings, in order to reveal the significant tropical architectural features of these colonial period buildings. The case studies reveal structural and design elements that aided ventilation and air flow, and controlled solar radiation, humidity and driving rain. The findings aim to encourage practicing architects to rethink climate responsiveness in contemporary buildings in Bangladesh, by revealing how, a century ago, colonial buildings were influenced by the tropical deltaic climate, which impacted foreign architectural ideology and practice.

Islamic Identities in Colonial India

2018 ◽  
pp. 14-53
Author(s):  
Muhammad Qasim Zaman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
British India ◽  
The South ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
The Subject ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This chapter introduces many of the groups that will form the subject of this book and charts their emergence and development in conditions of British colonial rule. It shows that the traditionalist orientations that enjoy great prominence in the South Asian landscape began to take a recognizable shape only in the late nineteenth century, although they drew on older styles of thought and practice. The early modernists, for their part, were rooted in a culture that was not significantly different from the `ulama's. Among the concerns of this chapter is to trace their gradual distancing from each other. The processes involved in it would never be so complete, in either British India or in Pakistan, as to preclude the cooperation of the modernists and their conservative critics at critical moments. Nor, however, were the results of this distancing so superficial as to ever be transcended for good.

scholarly journals “Human Telephone Lines”: Flag Post Mail Relay Runners in British Southern Cameroon (1916–1955) and the Establishment of a Modern Communications Network

2014 ◽  
Vol 59 (S22) ◽  
pp. 211-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Gam Nkwi ◽  
Mirjam de Bruijn
Keyword(s):  
Colonial Period ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Colonial Administration ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Communications Network ◽  
Southern Cameroon ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Communications System

AbstractThe flag post mail relay runners, a communications system established in Cameroon during British colonial rule, laid the foundations for the communications structure of this colonial state. They were a remnant of a pre-colonial communications system and, with the advancement of “modern” communications structures such as roads, telephone lines, and post houses, the flag post runner gradually disappeared. This article explores the role of the runners for the colonial administration in Cameroon and is based mostly on archival research. It describes the runners’ system and how it influenced the colonial communications landscape. In addition, the questions of how these runners were involved in the colonial state and what forms of resistance emerged among runners are analysed. Finally, the article discusses the degree to which the subsequent construction of roads, telegraphic communications, and postal networks reflected the role played by mail runners in the British colonial period up to the 1950s.

Identifying the ‘agriculturists’ in the Burma Delta in the colonial period: A new perspective on agriculturists based on a village tract's registers of holdings from the 1890s to the 1920s

2011 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asuka Mizuno
Keyword(s):  
Economic Activity ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Clear Distinction ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
New Perspective

According to the existing studies on Myanmar's economic history, agricultural land in the Lower Myanmar delta was transferred from ‘agriculturists’ to ‘non-agriculturists’ under British colonial rule. However, a clear distinction could not be drawn between the agriculturists and non-agriculturists as was generally thought with respect to their economic activity. More importantly, the categories could be applied interchangeably. The purpose of this study is to reconsider the very concept of ‘agriculturist’ as a colonial category in British Burma by exploring the hitherto unused register of holdings (Register IA, U pain hmatpoun sayin).

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