History of South Asia

Written for the centenary year of the presence of the Salesians of Don Bosco (SDB) in South Asia, this article looks back at their methods of communication during the pioneering years, describes  the many communication initiatives undertaken across the century, takes stock of the situation in the year of its publication, and proposes possibilities for the flourishing of SDB communication in South Asia beyond 2006.

The  article  traces  the  History  of  the  East  India  Company  in  the  region  of  South  Asia  till  1757  when  it  ceased  to  remain a  mere  trading  corporation  and  became  a  player  in  the  power  politics  of  the  region    following  the  defeat  of  the  Nawab  of  Bengal  at  Plassey.

While it is true that India did not exist as a political entity at the time, and also that independence had a very limited meaning to kings, princes and landed castes like the chuefs of Cuncolim, if one is looking for rebellions against the Portuguese in Goa, Bijapur was first, more successful, and, in terms of lives lost, produced a great many more martyrs for the cause.

This publication explores various folk festivals, rites, rituals, beliefs and oral traditions to understand the many processes that went into creating a unique identity of the area of study – the Radh region of Bengal. The work has been supplemented with intensive ethnographic fieldwork across the region, supplemented by available archaeological findings, records and publications. Forming the western part of the state of West Bengal (India), the present study focuses on the districts of Purulia, Bankura and Paschim Mednipur (West Mednipur) and is a representative of understanding a continuous process of historical development to look into settlement patterns, migrations and resettlements, geographical boundaries, royal patronages of festivals and beliefs and oral traditions, reflecting ideas and identities.The local characteristics of these also helps to connect the area to the larger picture of the region and also brings to context a historical understanding with the bigger part of India. The fieldwork undertaken, was intensive enough in nature and looks into rural communities, which have undergone important processes of assimilation of thought processes and ideas, rendering them a distinct identity.

আলোচ্য প্রবন্ধটি ইতোপূর্বে এশিয়াটিক সোসাইটি, বাংলাদেশ কর্তৃক প্রকাশিত প্রবন্ধটির পরিমার্জিত ও পরিবর্ধিত বাংলা রূপ। বাংলাদেশের উত্তরপশ্চিমাঞ্চলে পরিচালিত প্রত্নতাত্ত্বিক গবেষণার একটি অতি সংক্ষেপিত পরিচয় এই প্রবন্ধে পাওয়া যাবে। বাংলায় লিখিত হওয়ার কারণে পরিভাষা এবং গঠনের দিক থেকে ভিন্নতা যেমন রয়েছে তেমনি ইংরেজি সংস্করণে অনুল্লেখিত বেশ কিছু প্রসঙ্গ এখানে সংযোজিত হয়েছে। প্রত্নতাত্ত্বিক জরিপ ও মাঠকর্ম ভিত্তিক গবেষণার পরিবেশন বাংলাভাষায় এখনো বিরল।

As part of a series of connected inquiries, this paper focused on the regional ethnic/religious movements of the Pashtuns/Pathans, the Sikhs and Dravidian/Tamil activism before independence.
While the formation of political identity in pre-independence South Asia is most often associated with pan-Indian forces of the nationalist movement, regional identity-building is often neglected or relegated to the background. Though the main
political forces of the time, the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League,
were themselves composed of different regional sub-groupings, both aimed at
objectives comparable in their reach beyond a particular region and for the lure of
power over the whole of India. To fill this gap, a comparative study of regional
politics under colonial rule might be required. This paper focused on ethnic and
religious movements of an independent stature and a somewhat indigenous political
nature before independence. It builds on a conceptual framework which was laid
out in an earlier article on the subject. (Ethnic and religious identities in colonial India: a conceptual debate. Also here on academia.edu) The twenties and thirties of this century with their high tide of the nationalist movement gave a strong boost to mass support for regional political parties aiming at an ethnic or religious appeal. After
independence their concepts, organisations and leadership networks extended right
into the body politics of the young states of India and Pakistan.
For the purpose of comparison, I would distinguish between three types of regional
political reflexes relying on ethnic and religious support: (1) major activist,
(2) minor activist and (3) loyalist movements. Their political status varied. At some point they were independent, on other occasions they belonged to one of the major South Asian movements, the Indian National Congress or the Muslim League; and at other times all three options applied simultaneously. When a local group championed a
particular cause like the administrative amalgamation of the Oriya-speaking tracts
of various provinces it lobbied for whatever support it could get, be it within
Congress, any other party, or independently.

Archaeometallurgy has become a significant brunch of Archaeology. Coins are the most important and frequently found artifacts of the sultani period of Bengal. The political history, chronology and geographical area of the kingdom of Bengal sultans have been exposed by the direct help of coin. But no archaeometallurgical analysis has been ever done before on any sultani coin of Bengal. Metal content of sultani coin can tell us much information such as economic, political and social history of that period by proper and in depth archaeometallurgical analysis. As we know nothing about the metallurgy of the coins of Bengal sultans, it can be an adventurous and exciting step to research on the unknown facts of sultani period of Bengal.

Maitreya is the future Buddha, the Buddha who will follow our present Buddha Śākyamuni. For more than two thousand years Maitreya (Pali: Metteyya) has been an inspiration for Buddhist devotees who look forward to his coming and aspire to meet him and receive his blessings and teachings. Their devotions have animated art, ritual, meditation practice, and literature across Asia. The Theravaṃsa of Sri Lanka and South-East Asia transmits a ‘Chronicle of the Future’ (Anāgatavaṃsa) in a bewildering number of recensions. Written in Pali, the ‘Chronicle’ is a paean of the golden future that Maitreya will inaugurate for those who practice sincerely. The present volume contains a study, a critical edition, and an annotated translation of a commentary on the ‘Chronicle’, the Amatarasadhārā, or ‘Stream of Deathless Nectar’ composed in Pali by the Sri Lankan elder Upatissa. An appendix gives the Pali Anāgatavaṃsa side by side with two fourteenth-century Tibetan translations. The volume is a significant contribution to research on Maitreya the future Buddha and to the study of the Pali manuscript culture of Thailand.

Despite their seemingly different political paths, India and Pakistan have both experienced a shift from the national to the local dimension of politics. The reasons behind this shift are assumed to be of a quite different nature. In the case of India, this evolution is widely connected to the crisis that has affected the Congress since the late 1980s, and, secondly, to the political strategy followed by Indira Gandhi in the 1970s and the early 1980s of disconnecting the traditional links of the party to the regional notables. Both elements contributed to make the Congress increasingly dependent on regional caste/kinship-based political organizations. The similar evolution observed in Pakistan has been explained, in part, with reference to the structural weakness of the mainstream political parties - in particular the Pakistan People Party and the Pakistan Muslim League – and their dependence on kinship and religious structures and hierarchies, and, in part, with the impact of military regimes. The latter would have constantly aimed to depoliticizing society by putting formal and informal obstacles to the activities of the political parties, and reinforced the biradari (extended family/caste) loyalties at the provincial and district level. There is however a relevant difference between the two cases, in so far the role played by castes in India has been since long identified as a factor that favors democratization. A recent analysis has even emphasized a “vernacularization” of democracy (Michelutti 2007). On the contrary, in the Pakistani case, “caste” groups have been identified as an obstacle towards the consolidation of democracy. While in both cases the evolution of the political system seems to emphasize the relevance of political culture for the process of democratization, the result seems to be radically different. The paper will aim to discuss this paradox, through an analysis of the role played by descent groups in the electoral process and the political bargaining in an area of South Western Punjab in Pakistan.

In this magazine article, I examine how a value-free approach to historiography in post-colonial South Asia generally,  and particularly in Pakistan, ignores the interconnectivities and entanglements of inequalities, racism and structures of oppression within Euro-asiatic relationality. I propose, instead, to engage in global history and transcultural historiography to identify structural inequalities in Pakistan as well as to challenge nationalist historiographies which often glorify imperial conquests by Arabs to establish and legitimize identity politics.

*Editorial error in the print version: In the first sentence of the seventh paragraph, it is NOT the opinion of the author that global history or transcultural historiography is value-free. Both do not understand imperial history as mere 'facts' and acknowledge the conflicting, even contradicting, historical accounts of the colonizer and the colonized.

Workshop Description: The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were a period of major political and social transformation in South Asia, as the Delhi Sultanate consolidated and expanded its power with each successive dynasty. Beginning in the thirteenth century, Jain intellectuals and monastic leaders in western India began to produce narratives of kings, the Jain ministers who served them, and famous monks who led the community in the (more recent) past. These narratives, called prabandhas, were composed mainly in Sanskrit and Prakrit and gathered in collections (saṃgraha) or composed as a collection (kośa). Later, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, prabandhas composed in Sanskrit and vernacular languages chronicled and lauded the deeds of famous laymen and their families. Scholars have remarked that these narratives often appear to display a historical consciousness rarely seen in other genres of Sanskrit literature, making them enticing sources to use to write the social and religious history of the period, but they also caution about taking their "facts" at face value. This workshop will survey the breadth of the Jain prabandha literature in order to understand the nature of this genre and to consider the historiographical challenges and potential rewards of writing the history of late medieval India using these sources. Daily sessions will include reading passages from the texts in the original Sanskrit (and Prakrit), examining themes and topics of historical and literary interest, and discussing scholarship that uses these sources to understand the past. Themes we will investigate include Jain views of kingship, the proper relationship between monks and kings, the roles of monks and laymen as social and political leaders; Jain technologies of power (mantras, tantras, and alchemy), the re-imagining of sacred space and sacred geography in light of ongoing political transformations, and the relations between Jains and the Islamicate polities emerging in this period. We will also interrogate historiographical and literary concerns, such as the nature of the genre, comparisons with other genres, temporality in and of the texts, their social and political worlds, historiographical issues and topics, such as how to understand encounters between Jains and Muslims will also be debated with a survey of contemporary scholarship on the prabandhas.

This article explores the politicization of ethnicity in Nepal since 1990. In particular it looks at how ideas of indigeneity have become increasingly powerful, leading to Nepal becoming the first and—to date—only Asian country to have signed International Labour Organization Convention number 169 (hereafter ILO 169). The rise of ethnic politics, and in particular the reactive rise of a new kind of ethnicity on the part of the ‘dominant’ groups—Bahuns (Brahmans) and Chhetris (Kshatriyas)—is the key to understanding why the first Constituent Assembly in Nepal ran out of time and collapsed at the end of May 2012. This collapse occurred after four years and four extensions of time, despite historic and unprecedentedly inclusive elections in April 2008 and a successful peace process that put an end to a ten-year civil war.

In October 2018, midway through the course of my research on colonial-era Allahabad, the city's name was suddenly changed to Prayagraj through a fiat of the state government of Uttar Pradesh. While this shift might seem merely a nomenclatural one, those who follow the cultural politics of region will know that there is more to the tale. In fact, the change is rooted in a concerted attempt to erase the Mughal-era history of the city that does not fit homogenizing narratives that the right-wing wishes to peddle. My dissertation explores how textuality became the staging ground for the emergence of urbanity in Allahabad and how the city presents a significant object of enquiry to understand linguistic, caste, religious, and gender contestations in this region. In 2017, I began reconstructing the micro-histories of individuals and cultural institutions of the city in the colonial period through visits to local archives and vernacular libraries. Following the name change in 2018, it felt even more urgent to remember Allahabad, its contested identities, and histories of provincial cities, not just as objects of nostalgia for the Sunday columns of newspapers, or through the glorified but homogenous lens of tourist or pilgrimage towns, but in a clear-eyed manner, as everyday and lived spaces with complex pasts.

What do we mean when we speak of decolonizing the history of science? Today, leading voices on decolonization come from the Indigenous studies community, some of whom have emphasized, following Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, that "decolonization is not a metaphor," but rather about giving land back to those from whom it was stolen. Other scholars, however, expand the significance of decolonization to all subjugated cultures and express the need to "decolonize Western epistemologies" and "build decolonial epistemologies" (Mignolo). This session will be organized as an open forum to take up the question of decolonizing science from the perspective of Asian history. What is the relationship between deterritorializaton and epistemological colonialism? How can changes in methodology introduced by postcolonial and/or decolonial thinkers inform the history of science in Asia? We invite all participants to reflect on what decolonization means to you as intellectual and political practice. The Co-Chairs of FHSAsia (Minakshi Menon and Sigrid Schmalzer) will each speak for ten minutes on the state-of-play in South Asian and East Asian studies regarding decolonizing the history of science. We will then open the floor for discussion among our members and the audience at large.

This article situates the category of the personal law in late colonial India in the nineteenth-century genealogy of the idea of family law. In doing so, it also looks at a case between Indian Muslim spouses before the famed judge and Islamic modernist Syed Mahmood. Involving the doctrine of the restitution of conjugal rights, the case was conducted in the shadow of a question about whether marriage was a status or contract that had a much wider resonance in the late nineteenth century Anglo-common law world. The overall goal of the article is to critically reconsider a common view about legal modernization in the long nineteenth century Afro-Asian arena as a process of domesticating native juridical tradition to the sphere of family affairs and personal status. Working along a distinct path from other new scholarship on law and empire that is moving past this thesis in the specific context of the nineteenth century Islamicate world, I suggest that the domestication of the sharīʿa should instead be seen as part of what some have called the globalization of classical legal thought after 1850. Because the era of supposed domestication was still undoubtedly an important point of reference for later exponents of political Islam, the article also argues that seeing the categories of personal law and family law genealogically has important implications for the problem of translation that complicates any equivalence between “Islamic law” and “sharīʿa” (and between “modern law” and Afro-Asian juridical tradition more generally). This is because even though the translation problem is acknowledged in theory, it has been all too easy to forget in scholarly practice. In the context of contemporary territorial-bureaucratic states in the Muslim world more specifically, therefore, the article argues that seeing personal law and family law genealogically ultimately sharpens the translation problem in a way that must undermine any ideal of a sharīʿa-based rule of Islamic law.

Organizing Committee: Vasudha Bharadwaj, Maria Framke, Nikolay Kamenov, Luzia Savary (Professorship for the History of the Modern World, ETH Zurich), Jana Tschurenev (CeMIS, University of Göttingen).

The interdisciplinary workshop “Rethinking Inequality in South Asia”, held at ETH Zurich from 21-22 July 2014, was the fourth event in the conference series Young South Asia Scholars Meet (Y-SASM). Since 2010, Y-SASM aims to promote exchange among doctoral students and early career academics in the field of South Asian Studies, and thus to further the integration of research networks across Europe and beyond (a documentation of previous activities can be found at: http://y-sasm.blogspot.de/). This year’s meeting brought together young scholars – and invited commentators – from history, sociology, anthropology, educational studies, political science, literature, and architecture, in order to explore new ways to address social inequality in South Asia.