Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age

Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age PDF Author: Susan Bayly
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521798426
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
The phenomenon of caste has probably aroused more controversy than any other aspect of Indian life and thought. Susan Bayly's cogent and sophisticated analysis explores the emergence of the ideas, experiences and practices which gave rise to the so-called 'caste society' from the pre-colonial period to the end of the twentieth century. Using an historical and anthropological approach, she frames her analysis within the context of India's dynamic economic and social order, interpreting caste not as an essence of Indian culture and civilization, but rather as a contingent and variable response to the changes that occurred in the subcontinent's political landscape through the colonial conquest. The idea of caste in relation to Western and Indian 'orientalist' thought is also explored.

Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age

Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age PDF Author: Susan Bayly
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521798426
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
The phenomenon of caste has probably aroused more controversy than any other aspect of Indian life and thought. Susan Bayly's cogent and sophisticated analysis explores the emergence of the ideas, experiences and practices which gave rise to the so-called 'caste society' from the pre-colonial period to the end of the twentieth century. Using an historical and anthropological approach, she frames her analysis within the context of India's dynamic economic and social order, interpreting caste not as an essence of Indian culture and civilization, but rather as a contingent and variable response to the changes that occurred in the subcontinent's political landscape through the colonial conquest. The idea of caste in relation to Western and Indian 'orientalist' thought is also explored.

Castes of Mind

Castes of Mind PDF Author: Nicholas B. Dirks
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400840945
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
When thinking of India, it is hard not to think of caste. In academic and common parlance alike, caste has become a central symbol for India, marking it as fundamentally different from other places while expressing its essence. Nicholas Dirks argues that caste is, in fact, neither an unchanged survival of ancient India nor a single system that reflects a core cultural value. Rather than a basic expression of Indian tradition, caste is a modern phenomenon--the product of a concrete historical encounter between India and British colonial rule. Dirks does not contend that caste was invented by the British. But under British domination caste did become a single term capable of naming and above all subsuming India's diverse forms of social identity and organization. Dirks traces the career of caste from the medieval kingdoms of southern India to the textual traces of early colonial archives; from the commentaries of an eighteenth-century Jesuit to the enumerative obsessions of the late-nineteenth-century census; from the ethnographic writings of colonial administrators to those of twentieth-century Indian scholars seeking to rescue ethnography from its colonial legacy. The book also surveys the rise of caste politics in the twentieth century, focusing in particular on the emergence of caste-based movements that have threatened nationalist consensus. Castes of Mind is an ambitious book, written by an accomplished scholar with a rare mastery of centuries of Indian history and anthropology. It uses the idea of caste as the basis for a magisterial history of modern India. And in making a powerful case that the colonial past continues to haunt the Indian present, it makes an important contribution to current postcolonial theory and scholarship on contemporary Indian politics.

Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars

Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars PDF Author: C. A. Bayly
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521310543
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 510

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Book Description
Widely acclaimed when it first appeared in hard covers, Dr Bayly's authoritative study traces the evolution of North Indian towns and merchant communities from the decline of Mughal dominion to the consolidation of mature Victorian empire following the 'mutiny' of 1857. The first section of the book looks at the response of the inhabitants of the Ganges Valley to the 'Time of Troubles' in the eighteenth century. The second section shows how the incoming British, were themselves constrained to build their new empire on this resilient network of towns, rural bazaars and merchant communities; and how in turn colonial trade and administration were moulded by indigenous forms of commerce and politics. The third section focuses on the social history of the towns under early colonial rule and includes an analysis of the culture and business methods of the Indian merchant family. It is based in part on the private records and histories of the business people themselves.

From Hierarchy to Ethnicity

From Hierarchy to Ethnicity PDF Author: Alexander Lee
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108489907
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
From Hierarchy to Ethnicity discusses the origins of politicized caste identities in twentieth-century India, and how they evolved over time.

Asian Voices in a Post-Colonial Age

Asian Voices in a Post-Colonial Age PDF Author: Susan Bayly
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521868858
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A study of intellectuals and their cosmopolitan life trajectories in Vietnam and India that focuses on the extraordinary mobility of intelligentsia lives. The author explores the role of the intellectual in the economic, social and cultural transformation of the post-colonial world through in-depth ethnographic fieldwork methods.

Caste

Caste PDF Author: Isabel Wilkerson
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0593230272
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NEW YORK TIMES READERS PICK: 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • “An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions—now with a new Afterword by the author. #1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, O: The Oprah Magazine, NPR, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, New York Post, The New York Public Library, Fortune, Smithsonian Magazine, Marie Claire, Slate, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • Winner of the Carl Sandburg Literary Award • Dayton Literary Prize Finalist • PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist • PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Finalist • Kirkus Prize Finalist “As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.” Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Isabel Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire

Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire PDF Author: C. A. Bayly
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781139053501
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This volume provides a synthesis of some of the most important themes to emerge from the recent proliferation of specialized scholarship on the period of India's transition to colonialism and seeks to reassess the role of Indians in the politics and economics of early colonialism. It discusses new views of the "decline of the Mughals" and the role of the Indian capitalists in the expansion of the English East India Company's trade and urban settlements. It considers the reasons for the inability of indigenous states to withstand the British, but also highlights the relative failure of the Company to transform India into a quiescent and profitable colony. Finally it deals with changes in India's ecology, social organization, and ideologies in the early nineteenth century, and the nature of Indian resistance to colonialism, including the Rebellion of 1857.

Ants Among Elephants

Ants Among Elephants PDF Author: Sujatha Gidla
Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
ISBN: 0865478112
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
A Wall Street Journal Top 10 Nonfiction Book of 2017 A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2017 A Shelf Awareness Best Book of 2017 "Ants Among Elephants is an arresting, affecting and ultimately enlightening memoir. It is quite possibly the most striking work of non-fiction set in India since Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, and heralds the arrival of a formidable new writer." —The Economist The stunning true story of an untouchable family who become teachers, and one, a poet and revolutionary Like one in six people in India, Sujatha Gidla was born an untouchable. While most untouchables are illiterate, her family was educated by Canadian missionaries in the 1930s, making it possible for Gidla to attend elite schools and move to America at the age of twenty-six. It was only then that she saw how extraordinary—and yet how typical—her family history truly was. Her mother, Manjula, and uncles Satyam and Carey were born in the last days of British colonial rule. They grew up in a world marked by poverty and injustice, but also full of possibility. In the slums where they lived, everyone had a political side, and rallies, agitations, and arrests were commonplace. The Independence movement promised freedom. Yet for untouchables and other poor and working people, little changed. Satyam, the eldest, switched allegiance to the Communist Party. Gidla recounts his incredible transformation from student and labor organizer to famous poet and founder of a left-wing guerrilla movement. And Gidla charts her mother’s battles with caste and women’s oppression. Page by page, Gidla takes us into a complicated, close-knit family as they desperately strive for a decent life and a more just society. A moving portrait of love, hardship, and struggle, Ants Among Elephants is also that rare thing: a personal history of modern India told from the bottom up.

Saints, Goddesses and Kings

Saints, Goddesses and Kings PDF Author: Susan Bayly
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521372011
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Book Description
Saints, Goddesses and Kings illumines the meaning and history of religious conversion and the nature of community.

Modern South Asia

Modern South Asia PDF Author: Sugata Bose
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415307871
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
A wide-ranging survey of the Indian sub-continent, Modern South Asia gives an enthralling account of South Asian history. After sketching the pre-modern history of the subcontinent, the book concentrates on the last three centuries from c.1700 to the present. Jointly written by two leading Indian and Pakistani historians, Modern South Asia offers a rare depth of understanding of the social, economic and political realities of this region. This comprehensive study includes detailed discussions of: the structure and ideology of the British raj; the meaning of subaltern resistance; the refashioning of social relations along lines of caste class, community and gender; and the state and economy, society and politics of post-colonial South Asia The new edition includes a rewritten, accessible introduction and a chapter by chapter revision to take into account recent research. The second edition will also bring the book completely up to date with a chapter on the period from 1991 to 2002 and adiscussion of the last millennium in sub-continental history.