Categories: History

The Mahabodhi Temple at Bodhgaya: Constructing Sacred Placeness Deconstructing the Great Case of 1895

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<p>The Mahabodhi Temple investigates the historic and ethnographic accounts of the ongoing religious contestations over the status of the Mahabodhi Temple complex in Bodhgaya (a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2002) and its surrounding landscape to critically analyse the working and construction (and re-construction) of sacredness. It endeavours to make a ground-up assessment of ways in which human participants in the past and present respond to and interact with the Mahabodhi Temple and its surroundings. The volume argues that sacredness goes beyond scriptural texts and archaeological remains. The Mahabodhi Temple complex and its surround­ing landscape is a ‘living’ heritage which has been produced socially and constitutes differential densities of human involvement attachment and experience. Its significance lies mainly in the active interaction between religious architecture within its dynamic ritual settings. This endless con­testation of sacredness and its meaning should not be seen as the ‘death’ of the Mahabodhi Temple; on the contrary it illustrates the vitality of the ongoing debate on the meaning understanding and use of the sacred in the Indian context.</p>

King Thebaw and The Ecological Rape of Burma

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<p>This pioneering work should be required reading for anyone who is concerned about the destruction of our environment and who is interested in understanding how past human societies in this case Upper Burma in the late-1800s have struggled with the problem. This is also the best biographical study ever made of Burma's colourful King Thebaw (1878-85) and in particular of his domineering and beautiful wife Queen Supayalat. The book places their lives against the back­ground of the ecological and diplomatic occurrences that convulsed the Burmese kingdom of Mandalay during its last years of independence. The effects of the race between French and British commercial inter-ests with the eager cooperation of the Burmese Government to deforest Upper Burma are related in fascinating detail. This process of deforestation set off a number of ecological disturbances which culminated in the partially man-made ‘drought’ of 1883-5. This in turn disrupted much of Upper Burma’s social and political life thus making the country an ever more inviting area for further French expansion westwards from French Indo-China. Ultimately this 'French Threat' resulted in the Third Burmese War in 1885 and in the eventual annexation of Upper Burma to Britain’s Indian Empire in 1886. Finally King Thebaw and the Ecological Rape of Burma develops several ecological concepts which might well be applicable to the study of man’s interaction with his environment in any period of history including our own.</p>

North India Between Empires: Awadh, the Mughals, and the British 1729-1801

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<p>The author addresses the fundamental issue of eighteenth-century Indian history: the rise and consolidation of independent regional polities during the fragmentation of the Mughal Empire and their encounters with the growing power of the English East India Company. Awadh the largest and most enduring post-Mughal state in North India typified the historical persistence of regional resilience in first exploiting the Mughal emperor's dwindling authority pragmatically building its own elites and institutions and opposing the advancing British Empire. India in this era has been labelled chaotic egotistic mindlessly violent effete and decadent. Barnett's systematic analysis using a novel explana­tory typology of political resource exchange within the constraints of the Indian social and historical setting shows that Awadh relied for its success on the dispersal and redistribution of its resources and on the studied manipulation of recognized political rules rather than on planned violence or chronic warfare. Major political entrepreneurs called revenue contractors dismissed by British observers as rapacious parasites and noble widow dowagers by being allowed to retain wealth status and continuing access to the state’s surplus produce prolonged its internal sovereignty by shield­ing its resources from the acquisitive grasp of the British East India Company. Intended as a contribution to the study of India's early modern political evolution this account is useful also as a basis for comparison with processes of decentralization recombination and cultural persistence in other pre-colonial areas. It is equally relevant to the study of British expansion in India which has sometimes been viewed as the only success story of the century. Barnett shows that the confrontation between Awadh and the Company was much more complex than either the existing historiography or the English documents alone suggest.</p>

From Mountain Fastness to Coastal Kingdoms: Hard Money and 'Cashless' Economics in The Medieval Bay of Bengal World

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<p>Money is central to the functioning of economies yet for the pre-modern period our knowledge of monetary systems is still evolving. Until recently historians of the medieval world have conflated the use of coins with a high degree of monetization. States without coinage were considered under-monetized. It is becoming more evident however that some medieval states used money in complex ways without using coinage. Moneys of account supplanted coins wholly or in part. But there is an imbalance of evidence: coins survive physically while intangible forms of money leave little trace. This has skewed our understanding. Since coin usage has been well studied in the past these essays flesh out our consideration of societies that used money but struck no coins. Absence or shortage of coining metals was not the causative factor: some of these societies had access to metal supplies but still remained coinless. Was this a strategic choice? Does it reflect the unique system of gover­nance that developed in each kingdom? It is surely time to unravel this puzzle. This book examines money use in the Bay of Bengal world using the case of medieval Bengal as a fulcrum. Situated between mountains and the sea this region had simultaneous access to both overland and maritime trade routes. How did such ‘cashless’ economies function internally within their regions and in the broader Indian Ocean context? This volume brings together the thoughts of a range of upcoming scholars (and a sprinkling of their elders) on these and related issues.</p>

Tracing Indo-Russian Diplomatic History

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<p>The India-Russia relationship has been through a number of phases since its formal establishment in April 1947. Prime Minister Nehru’s strategic vision led him to seek diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union (USSR) even before India attained Independence. The enthusiastic Soviet res- ponse launched a relationship which has had some unique features in the past seventy-two years. The detailed history of the India-Russia relationship presented in this volume highlights the continued relevance of many of the factors that led to a close India-Russia bonding even while identifying the slip roads into which the partnership has occasionally drifted. Politics evolves continuously but geography remains constant. The India-Russia relationship has a mutually-recognized geopolitical logic. They have common concerns in the shared neighbourhood of West and Central Asia. Like India Russia has had a complex relationship with China. In the quest for a multi-polar world in which every pole seeks to protect its core interests and promote its aspirations Russia and India as this com­prehensive volume notes will remain staunch partners in the foreseeable future. Before his untimely demise in February 2018 Arun Mohanty was the Director of Area Studies and former Chairperson of the Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies School of International Studies Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi. Professor Mohanty was awarded Ph.D from USSR Academy of Sciences Moscow and spent thirty years of his life in Russia teaching at various Russian Universities before returning to India. In 2011 he was awarded the prestigious Pushkin Medal for his contribution towards developing and strengthening scientific and cultural relations between India and Russia. He was the founding Director of Eurasian Foundation and chief editor of Eurasian Report.</p>

Maulana Azad

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<p>Three passions dominated Maulana Azad’s life: love of learning Hindu-Muslim unity and freedom of India. This comprehensive and sensitive study using extensive source material offers for the first time a critical portrait of a remarkable intellectual who fought for his country's freedom. He never ceased cultivating his own garden even when as a rebel against British rule he had to live in gaol for about a decade. Shy and reserved by nature and temperamentally a private person who would commune with the minarets of the Taj at Agra in moonlit nights than mix with crowds this scholar extraordinary was pushed into the arena of political battle and he consecrated his life to the service of the country. Forsaken by his own community and distrusted by others he never compromised his integrity. Jinnah refused to shake hands with him! In high politics he showed a rare sagacity but his advice was disregarded on some crucial occasions for 'which the country has had to pay a heavy price’. Towards the close of his life he was a sad man. His thwarted love affair like Dante's had given him a new exalted vision of life. But the ideals he stood for lay shattered and the sense of utter failure in his mission seized him. He never sought fortune and bore sufferings with sangfroid. He complained against none. This work captures the unique spirit of this remarkable personality torn by conflicts and caught up in paradoxical situations. It also provides a sound understanding of those inner turmoils of the man by reviewing them in the broad historical perspective of his times when the destiny of the country which he helped to shape was taking a new turn.</p>

The Census in British India: New Perspectives

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<p>The censuses are a most important source of material on social economic and political issues concerning nineteenth and twentieth century India. Initiated for informational purposes in mid-nineteenth century the census became regularized and evolved.</p>

Peasant Revolt in Malabar: A History of the Malabar Rebellion, 1921

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<p>Over the past decades there has been increasing interest in the phenomenon of peasant rebellions their sources and their character. This is reflected in the growth of scholarly literature to which various studies of agrarian unrest have made a substantial contribution. Within the twentieth century the 1921 Mappila or Moplah rebellion in Malabar provides a fascinating case study in its combination of agrarian end Islamic religious origins. This led to a number of scholars to examine the social organisation and history of the community and also the long series of ‘outrages’ which culminated in the outbreak on 20 August 1921. The principal document on the rebellion is a British Police Officer Hitchcock’s confidential history published by the Madras Government in 1925. This history which is both an enquiry into the causes of the rebellion and justification for the British Indian Government's response to it is now being made available again in a reprint edition. It was reprinted earlier in 1983. It is an exhaustive report running into about 350 pages complete with appendices and an index. It traces the origin and early history of Mappilas describes the Mappila character drawing attention to the differences between the coastal Mappilas and the those of Ernad the centre of the rebellion and gives a blow-by-blow account of its rise and spread and how the Government managed to quell it. A 27 page introduction by a well-known scholar Robert L. Hardgrave Jr. places the rebellion within a wider context and critically examines the sources of Mappila discontent and the British actions taken in response to it. General readers no less than the scholars will find the volume a mine of information on an outbreak which though non-communal in origin ended as one and which was a turning point in the life of Mappilas.</p>

The Wahhabi Movement in India

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<p>Founded by Sayyid Ahmad (1786-1831) of Rae Bareli the Wahhabi Movement in India was a vigorous movement for socio-religious reforms in Indo-Islamic society in the nineteenth century with strong political undercurrents. It stood for a strong affirmation of Tauhid (unity of God) the efficacy of ijtihad (the right of further interpretation of the Quran and the Sunnah or of forming a new opinion by applying analogy) and the rejection of bid'at (innovation). It remained active for half a century. Sayyid Ahmad's writings show an awareness of the increasing British presence in the country and he regarded British India as a daru'l harb (abode of war). In 1826 he migrated and established an operational base in the independent tribal belt of the North Western Frontier area. After his death in the battle of Balakote the Movement slackened for some time but his adherents particularly Wilayet Ali and Enayat Ali of Patna revived the work and broad-based its activities. The climax of the Movement was reached in the Ambeyla War (1863) during which the English army suffered serious losses at the hands of the Wahhabis. This led the Government to take stern measures to suppress the Movement. Investigations were launched the leaders were arrested and sentenced to long-term imprisonments and their properties confiscated. That broke the back of the Movement but it continued to be a potential source of trouble to the government. The Movement does not fit in neatly in any one of the groups and categories into which the history of the early resistance to British rule has been divided by some of the writers on the subject. It cut across some of them time-wise and theme-wise. The existing studies on the subject do not offer a comprehensive profile of the Movement and fail to analyse its nature and the reasons for its failure politically. This well researched study drawing on a vast array of contemporary records many of them for the first time seeks to fill this gap and presents an integrated account of the rise and growth of the Movement its operation over the entire area and period of its existence its impact and reasons for its failure.</p>

A History of Intoxication: Opium in Assam, 1800-1959

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<p>Within an imperialism-centred paradigm A History of Intoxi­cation: Opium in Assam 1800-1959 is an attempt to unearth a critical relationship between a crucial lever of colonialism in Asia and a frontier province filled with tea gardens and on a route laden with opium poppy. The present volume is premised on explaining several queries that revolve around the emerging pattern of consumption of opium in colonial Assam and the creation of drug-dependency in a social context. It analyses in a comprehensive manner the competing forces of the empire which played a key role in the production and distribution of opium; national politics alongside international drug diplomacy and how these together shaped the discourse of opium in Assam; the wider implications of opium production and consumption in the agrarian economy and the narrative of the nationalist critique of intoxication.</p>