Marathas

In this intelligent and important work, Prachi Deshpande creatively constructs ‘a social history of historiography’ (6) – or a genealogy of history entailing overlapping yet disjunctive pasts – in the large Maharashtra region of western India. Combining a range of readings that draw upon
a variety of archival, literary and cultural materials in the Marathi and English languages, the book unravels the terms, textures and transformations not only of history writing, but also of historical consciousness, memory and identity in the region over the last three hundred years. Deshpande writes in a lucid and lively style, and the book is bound through tight organization, but without betraying a schematic structure. At the same time,  Deshpande [displays] a  wider reluctance to de-familiarize (and make strange) historical knowledge(s) – as practice, discipline and imagination. On the one hand, such predilections lead her to acknowledge only insufficiently discussions of critical difference in formations of historical consciousness that have a contentious
connection with written genres, even assimilating such scholarship in the Indian context to memory studies (e.g. 3, 213 n.9). On the other hand, she overlooks the terms of authority, especially procedures of excision and selection, in the production of narrative collections, especially those of oral traditions, quite as the book (uncertainly) privileges the textual in approaching the past and (uneasily) takes for granted the nature of history. Such tensions in this imaginative and innovative work are not simply disabling, but productive to ponder.

Drawing on a year’s fieldwork in the Mumbai BDD Chawls neighborhood, this paper analyses an urban migration phenomenon called the gramastha mandal. Gramastha mandals are village-run committees that buy chawl (tenement) rooms and rent them to single male migrants from their own villages. Save a few studies and cursory references, gramastha mandals have received limited academic attention, especially in today’s climate of economic liberalization following the widespread closure of Mumbai’s cotton mills. Through an examination of gramastha mandal living arrangements, working patterns and social activities, I answer three broad questions. Firstly, how have the gramastha mandals been impacted by the closure of the mills that once provided a major source of employment? Secondly how does living in a gramastha mandal room impact migrants’ relationships with the city around them and, thirdly, how does this arrangement perpetuate societal divisions from the village? I suggest that most gramastha mandal residents remain more part of their villages than of Mumbai’s social structures, and that this alienation has increased since the mills closed and opportunities for forging a working-class urban solidarity correspondingly declined. Moreover, through strict eligibility criteria, gramastha mandals replicate, rather than erode, village fault-lines between caste Hindu and Dalit Buddhist communities, a phenomenon that shows only limited signs of changing.

In recent years, the Maratha community has mobilised
for reservations in employment and higher education,
claiming that the lack of reservations has resulted in
socio-economic backwardness. Their opponents have
largely highlighted the political and economic
dominance of the community. This paper examines the
income, education and occupational status of the
Marathas vis-à-vis non-Marathas while scrutinising the
statistical limitations of the Gaikwad Committee report
(2018). Compared to other castes and communities in
Maharashtra, the Marathas have a higher proportion of
the rich and wealthy and the lowest share among the
poorest and poor. It is only in comparison to the
Brahmins and other upper castes that the Marathas lag
behind in education and employment.

portuguesO texto apresentado analisa o contexto alargado no qual se insere um excerto de uma carta do quarto Conde de Ericeira,enviado, em 1741, para Luis da Cunha, embaixador portugues em Franca. Esta carta foi encontrada no Arquivo Regional da Moravia em Brno, Republica Checa. E uma contribuicao para o estudo das guerras entre os Portugueses e os Maratas que comecaram na decada de 60 do seculo XVII e demoraram ate aos anos 40 do seculo XVIII. O interesse do documento reside na descricao de eventos nao muito amplamente documentados do periodo tardio das guerras luso-maratas. A maioria dos estudos termina em 1739, ou seja, no momento da ocupacao da Provincia do Nortepelos Maratas. EnglishThe present text discusses the broad context surrounding an excerpt from a letter from the fourth Count of Ericeira to the Portuguese ambassador in France,Luis da Cunha, dated1741. Found in the Moravian Regional Archives in Brno,in theCzech Republic, this letter is an important contribution to the s...