History and Sociology of South Asia

The past is never dead. It is not even past—William Faulkner

This article reviews recent literature on the accession of the princely state of Hyderabad to the Indian union in 1948, in the context of events that have raised the temperature of communal confrontation in the region. Scholarship on nation formation has drawn attention to the role that the act of remembering only to forget, plays in cementing a sense of nationalist solidarity. By that criterion, the accession of Hyderabad presents a case of historical record that may have been abridged and in part effaced, without the consent of its more substantial minority group. This allows for historical tensions to emerge anew as fault-lines where modern democratic competition could spill over into communal antagonism. Recent efforts to restore the historical record, one by way of a memoir and the other, a work of archival scholarship, assume great importance in this regard.

This article intends to study the methods used by Hindu missionaries to bring the tribals within their fold in order to avoid the spread and popularity of Christianity among the tribals. Barring a few scholars like S.C. Roy and K.N. Sahay, no one has ever tried to look into the activities of Hindu missionaries in the region prior to 1947. The primary sources clearly show that in their methods they were quite organised and united, contrary to the views of most scholars. It is argued in the article that the main objective of Hindu missionaries was to check Christian missionary activities instead of promoting upliftment work among the tribals. The information culled from newspapers, the Patna State Archives and other materials form the source of evidences used to formulate and substantiate arguments in the article.

The farmers’ movement in Maharashtra was understood as, and identified essentially with, economism—raising demands related to prices of farm produce, inputs and agricultural credit, etc. However, the Shetkari Sanghatana did attempt to go far beyond simple economic demands. It involved women in its numerous agitations—like rasta roko, rail roko, blockade of the Collector’s office at the district and also at local levels between 1980 and 1994. However, the movement sought women’s liberation and gender equity without any cogent critique of patriarchy; instead the agenda document prepared by Joshi reaffirmed its position regarding marriage and family institution as indispensable. Women’s mass mobilisation was thus only an entry point for the Sanghatana into electoral politics that it had eschewed initially. The Sanghatana thus used the agenda of women’ s liberation and empowerment as a sheer token symbolism and women’s mass mobilisation as an instrument of its pragmatic populist politics. While it raised women’s hopes, this strategy left many women activists in total despair.

This article examines the transformation of charitable medical institutions in Delhi within the context of the changes in medicine, science, charity and society. To elucidate this, it traces the emergence, growth and transformation of institutions from the colonial era to post-partition. The article provides the larger context within which these institutions emerged, the colonial state and its interactions with various actors, the differential patronage provided by the colonial state to allopathic institutions, the changing social composition and the transformation of the institutions.