Studies in People’s History

The article proceeds from the hypothesis that Bengal was peripheral to the main Brahmanical zone, and that many religious beliefs and ritualistic practices existed there, probably in much diversity, before Brahmanism established its dominance. Brahmanism absorbed, modified and unified the local cults. The article takes the cult of the Goddess Maṅgalacaṇḍī as an illustration of how it is specific to Bengal and drew on various local rituals and beliefs in goddesses locally prevalent previously, but now regionalised. The cult as it was being formed was also sought to be accommodated in the Punāṇic framework: thus Bengal was given its particular cults, while preserving its place in the Brahmanical world.

The formation of regions is as complex a process as the formation of countries or nations. Geography has much to do with it in some cases, languages in others. But political events, commercial networks and tribal or caste dominance can also play their part. History, actual or imagined, may be invoked to create regional consciousness. This article examines how owing to complex factors Kerala came to be identified as a definite region by the sixteenth century, so identified not only by its mainstream tradition but also by people external to it.

North Bengal is an area of heavy rainfall through which rivers flowing down from the Himalayas have been frequently overflowing and changing their beds in the soft alluvial soil. Floods have, therefore, been a recurring phenomenon, caused by snow-melting and heavy rainfall. The present article is an intensive study of the floods that ravaged north Bengal in a period of over 50 years (1871–1922) during which the ground surface changed with the building of embanked railway lines, other embankments and dams thereby blocking the natural drainage lines of the past. The article also chronicles how the local populations suffered from the constant recurrence and increasing virulence of floods. It thus aims to bring together the information we have on the environmental and the human history of the region for a period of about 50 years of colonial rule.

It has now become a fashion among many historians, notably from the West, to denounce Gandhi’s fast and the Poona Pact of 1932 as a great betrayal of the ‘Untouchables’. This view essentially overlooks the constant effort of British imperialism to divide the Indian people into a number of special-interest groups at loggerheads with each other and so weaken the National Movement. This paper weighs the critics’ assertions in the light of the British Government’s own statements and those of the leaders of the Depressed Castes. It is also forgotten that the Poona Pact greatly increased Depressed Castes’ representation; and that no separate electorates have been ever established in Western democracies to avoid majoritarian rule.

The Northeast is now an officially recognised name for a region comprising seven contiguous states, plus the detached state of Sikkim. The article examines how the name evolved in official and scholarly writing, while, in fact, no such region can be justified either by any affinity among its individual parts or by culture, political history, languages, social structure or economic ties. It is argued that such a concept may blur the understanding that each of the region’s distinct parts requires for its problems and aspirations.

When the states’ reorganisation took place in 1956, Andhra Pradesh, enlarged by inclusion of Telangana, faced two contrary pulls. On the one hand, there was widespread pride in the Telugu language and culture, prevailing over the whole state, and, on the other, there was the legacy of the different histories of its two major parts, namely, coastal Andhra, long held under direct British administration, and Telangana, which had been a part for over two centuries of the largest princely state of India, Hyderabad. The paper examines how owing to this divergent legacy of the past, a union lasting for over half a century (1956–2014) proved unworkable, and separation became inevitable.

India had been envisioned as a federation by our Constitution makers, and so states were assigned some important subjects in which the centre could have no or only limited authority. Thus state governments run by opposition parties could pursue policies different from those of the Central Government in a number of ways. But since the onset of economic ‘liberalisation’ beginning with the late 1980s the financial strength and economic role of the state governments have been constantly undermined. This came, first, through the raising of interest rates to attract foreign finance capital, which created budgetary crises for the states since they fell under heavy debt simply to pay interest on existing debt. Neo-liberal policies were then imposed on them by Finance Commissions which made compliance with these compulsory for centre’s financial assistance. More recently the states’ powers have been further curtailed by the Goods and Services Tax, which has deprived the state government of the power to determine tax rates on goods produced within the states. Another means to the same end has been the centre’s trade agreements with foreign countries, with no reference made to states whose products thereby may be priced out of the market. The demonetisation of 2016, which impacted so destructively on employment and the cooperative sector in the states, was also undertaken by the centre without any reference to the states.

The export of Indian indentured labour to British oversea colonies containing sugar, cotton and indigo plantations began around mid-nineteenth century. One of the destinations was Fiji, the British island colony in the Pacific, to which the Indian labourers, men and women, mainly went from East UP and West Bihar where Bhojpuri was spoken. While archival documents can help us trace the fortunes of individuals, their own feelings and sentiments are best preserved in their songs orally carried from one mouth to another for decades. The earlier songs contain mournful dirges over separation, the misery of those whom they left behind and their own afflictions in Fiji’s harsh white-owned plantations. As the migrations ceased, the Fiji–Indian people’s interest shifted to restoring their connection with Hinduism and its customs, and this has become more prominent in later folk songs. The gender problem (women outnumbered by men) was severe earlier but has now eased as with the passage of generations, the sex ratio has normalised.

B.R. Ambedkar is often held to be an uncompromising advocate of the cause of the depressed castes or Dalits. But his advocacy for Dalits was within the larger framework of his vision for an Indian nation that needed to be formed, since he believed that there could be no nation unless everyone within it was not treated as an equal—an end that could be only attained through the annihilation of the caste system. He was not unmindful also of the need to protect religious minorities, for which reason he argued in favour of their adequate representation in legislative bodies, services, etc.

Suchandra Ghosh, From the Oxus to the Indus: A Political and Cultural Study, c. 300 bce to c.100 bce (Delhi: Primus Books), 2017, 178 pp., ₹1,150.

Syed Ejaz Hussain, Shiraz-i Hind: A History of Jaunpur Sultanate (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers and Distributors), 2017, 266 pp., ₹2,995 (Hb).

Aslam Pervez, The Life and Poetry of Bahadur Shah Zafar, translated from Urdu by Ather Farouqui (Delhi: Hay House India), 2017, 240 pp., ₹599.

Imre Banga, ed., Tagore: Beyond His Language (Delhi: Primus Books), 2017, 230 pp., ₹995 (Hb).

Ambalika Guha, Colonial Modernities: Midwifery in Bengal, 1860–1947 (London: Routledge), 2018, xii + 219 pp., ₹795 (Hb).

T.C.A. Raghavan, The People Next Door: The Curious History of India’s Relations with Pakistan (Noida: Harper Collins Publishers), 2017, 348 pp., ₹699.