Commodities trade, river transport and colonialism: The Brahmaputra river valley in the nineteenth century

The article seeks to show how Assam’s riverine environment, and its natural resources, generated and inflected a process of commercialisation in the nineteenth century. Historically, present-day Assam was connected to the rest of the world through the Brahmaputra river and its tributaries. In the early decades of colonial rule, plants such as caoutchouc and tea were discovered in the valley. These developments, together with transportation networks built with state and private capital, heralded a new phase of commerce in the region. A rich scholarship in South Asian history has shown how the river played a crucial role in the economic changes in different regions. The article belongs in that scholarship but stresses the role of the river as an artery of transportation rather than as an agricultural resource. The river system facilitated Assam’s closer integration with the world economy and the colonial regime.

Introduction

The introduction briefly frames the project in terms of the study of drugs, alcohol, and altered states of consciousness in South Asian history and religions. What sort of evidence exists for writing a history of alcohol in India and what are the limits of this archive? What are the methodological and philological difficulties to be overcome in writing this sort of history of India? This chapter also presents a brief survey of previous scholarship on this topic and raises the question of whether this book should be considered controversial or offensive. The chapter concludes with an outline of the book and an explanation for the organization of topics within the book.

Responsible Writing of Violence: A Study of Select Partition Stories

This paper analyzes select Partition stories such as Bhisham Sahni’s “Pali,” K. S. Duggal’s “Pakistan Zindabad,” Ishmat Chughtai’s “Roots,” S.H. Vatsyayan’s “The Avenger,” and Atin Bandhopadhyay’s “Infidel” which realistically portray the cataclysmic times of the Subcontinent in 1947. The paper shows that though the stories depict some chilling scenes, they concentrate more on the psychological impact of violence on the characters and the positive aspects of humanitarian gestures seen during the dismal days in South Asian history. With much tact, the authors approach the subject and document the dreadful events of the Subcontinent’s painful past. Also, while dexterously registering the public resistance to the unspeakable horrors of Partition violence, the authors also honestly present their own ethical stance on the events. The article argues that the authors have documented the tragic history in a mature and convincing manner by presenting its balanced and holistic picture by employing an impartial and unbiased perspective. The texts stand as testimonies to the writers’ sense of responsibility at recording tragic incidents not only because of their objective and holistic approach but also because of their cautious use of language so that they do not trigger any further violence through their writing.

Crab-Rangoons in Kyrat: (Re)Writing South-Asian History in Far Cry 4

Recent research has started focusing on the representation of history in videogames. Such representation is almost always of mainstream history and usually presented from a Western perspective. Set in a fictitious Himalayan kingdom in South Asia, Ubisoft’s Far Cry 4 is arguably a crucial example of how history is represented using Western and even colonial frameworks and where the narratives that do not emerge from conventional written history are almost always rendered invisible. Using the frameworks of Subaltern Studies and “border-thinking,” this essay attempts to unpack issues of Orientalism and “colonial difference”; it then engages with postcolonial digital humanities and postcolonial game studies to comment on how history is represented in videogames and how the neglected gaps and silences in the game are important in constructing the historiography in videogames. In the process, the essay engages in a debate with current notions of videogame-historiography.

Introduction

This chapter introduces readers to the Sikh institution of the Cherished Five and their role in Sikh ritual and tradition today. It also relays the normative versions of the origin story of the Cherished Five and introduces the meagre amount of scholarship that exists on this important organization. After this, the chapter provides a lengthy interlude on the traditional history of the late seventeenth-century Sikh community that re-examines the formation of the Khalsa, the martial order of which the Cherished Five is the most basic component. It does this in the light of both the latest scholarship in Sikh and South Asian history and in Mughal studies.

“To Understand All Life as Fragile, Valuable, and Interdependent”

As old age garners more attention in the time of COVID-19, this roundtable discussion brings together scholars from three different areas within aging studies to define the field’s terms and map out some of its contours and potential future directions. Stephen Katz draws on poststructuralist theory, feminism, and theories of materiality and embodiment in his historically informed work in critical gerontology. Kavita Sivaramakrishnan’s research in global public health and South Asian history brought her to the study of physiological old age as it intersects with social histories in the global South, thus critiquing Eurocentric epistemologies of aging. Pat Thane is a social historian interested in old age in relation to gender, labor, inequality, and welfare states, as well as the long arc of the meaning of old age in the West.

Book review: Rohan Deb Roy and Guy Attewell (eds.), Locating the Medical: Explorations in South Asian History

Rohan Deb Roy and Guy Attewell (eds.), Locating the Medical: Explorations in South Asian History, New Delhi: OUP, 2018, ₹950, ISBN: 0199486719.