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South Asia
Historiography in Question I
Manan Ahmed
Spring 2022

[Syllabus subject to change]

South Asia: Historiography in Question I

GR8946 section 001

W 4:10pm-6:00pm

Acknowledgements: I am grateful to Durba Mitra for helping shape this course and its readings. My thanks to Sheldon Pollock, Anubhuti Maurya, Shahid Amin and Whitney Cox for additional recommendations.

Course Description

This course is intended to provide a broad yet thorough grounding in the major themes in historical writings on South Asia ca. 1947-2000. In 1947, the twinned “Republic of India” and “Islamic Republic of Pakistan,” gained independence from British colonial rule. With independence came the establishment of new universities and history departments but also the continuation of centuries old tradition of studying the subcontinent at Oxford and Cambridge. After 1957’s launch of Sputnik, United States embarked on a massive investment in the study of the “Third World” to keep Communism at bay, giving rise to “Area Studies.” The longstanding disciplines of “Indology” and “Oriental studies” gave way to new anthropologies of “Village India” and eventually to the rise of “Development Studies.” Fulbright and Rhodes scholarships took students from Lahore and Delhi and Calcutta and Mysore to the US and the UK to study. From such grounds would the study of colonial rule and governance, and ideas of Kingship, caste, and Hinduism develop along both nationalist and Marxist lines. A signal event in this history occurred in 1983, when the emergence of the Subaltern Studies collective marked the South Asian historical discipline’s first major intervention into the global academy. Since then, historians of/and about South Asia have participated in defining major debates across academies--from "histories from below" to rethinking global intellectual history. This course takes a theme centered approach to these histories, in order to highlight the major ideas, presuppositions, and arguments for the second half of twentieth century.

To be clear, this is not a course on the history of South Asia, nor are we going to focus on the task of history-writing itself (albeit parenthetically). We will also not cover major historians of the anti-colonial period (1890-1950). Rather, the attempt throughout the course is to introduce students to the ‘canonical,’ field-defining texts from the first fifty years of the post-colonial period. "South Asian Studies", as a field, is certainly far broader than History and we will generally not cover any of the foundational scholarship from Anthropology, Sociology, Political Science or Literature.

Class Expectations

The class is designed as a graduate-level discussion seminar. Doing full and complete assigned readings, plus any further research to understand the historiography or theory, is necessary for full participation in the class. You are also expected to act respectfully and with an open disposition with your peers and colleagues. You should respect both the intellectual and social space of the seminar room.

  • March 1: Annotated Bibliography of an Event (~15 entries): 20%
  • May 1: Final Research Essay (min. 5000 words): 40%
  • CW weekly discussion posts (each ~300-500 words): 30%
  • Class Participation: 10%

There are two types of writing assignments.

  1. First, your weekly discussion posts which should be around 500 words. They should reflect thinking across all the assigned readings under the week's topic and aim to be substantively thematic and summary in nature. A typical assignment would try and answer how the theme for the week (the question of ...) is answered by the collected readings but focusing on the chronology, academic locality, and intellectual arguments across the readings. All students (auditors included) are expected to do this weekly assignment on Ed Discussion (CW).
  2. The final research essay covers the historiography of a singular event–built around a primary source or sources. Certain events have created enormous historiographies: 16 December 1971 (the creation of Bangladesh) or 6 December 1992 (destruction of Babri Masjid) are such two major events (see below). You can either choose one of these events or propose another event from from this period. The first step is to create an annotated bibliography (due March 1) on the event you choose, focusing on historical writing before or after the event, including at least 2 primary sources: these can can be legal, diplomatic, visual, media, oral histories, memoirs etc. The final essay will be your reading of the event, through a particular slice of historiography of the event, incorporating your own reading of primary sources.

EVENT: On thinking about the "Event" see William Sewell. Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2005), Michel-Rolph Trouillot. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), Shahid Amin. Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura 1922–1992. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1995, Natalie Zemon Davis. The Return of Martin Guerre. Cambridge Mass: Harvard Univ. Press, 1983.

Course Readings & Timeline

January 19: The Question of Colonial Knowledge [first class is 4-7pm]

  • Cohn, Bernard S. Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996. ["The Command of Language, and the Language of Command" (1985)- "Law and Colonial State in India" (1986)]
  • Inden, Ronald. “Orientalist Constructions of India.” Modern Asian Studies 20, no. 3 (1986): 401–46.
  • K.N. Panikkar, "The Intellectual History of Colonial India: Some Historiographical and Conceptual Questions," in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya and Romila Thapar (eds.), Situating Indian History for Sarvepalli Gopal. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986
  • Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for ‘Indian’ Pasts?” Representations, no. 37 (1992): 1–26.
  • Guha, Ranajit. “Not at Home in Empire.” Critical Inquiry 23, no. 3 (1997): 482–93.

January 26: The Question of Collaboration

  • Anil Seal. The Emergence of Indian Nationalism: Competition and Collaboration in the Later Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971. [chp 1, 4, 7, 8 & Appendices]
  • Washbrook, David. “Country Politics: Madras 1880 to 1930.” Modern Asian Studies 7, no. 3 (1973): 475–531
  • Bayly, C. A. “Knowing the Country: Empire and Information in India.” Modern Asian Studies 27, no. 1 (1993): 3-43.

February 2: The Question of the Origins

  • Kosambi, D. D. “The Basis of Ancient Indian History (I).” Journal of the American Oriental Society 75, no. 1 (1955): 35–45.
  • Kosambi, D. D. “The Basis of Ancient Indian History (II).” Journal of the American Oriental Society 75, no. 4 (1955): 226–37
  • Thapar, Romila. “The Image of the Barbarian in Early India.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 13, no. 4 (1971): 408–36.
  • Pollock, Sheldon. "Rāmāyaṇa and Political Imagination in India." The Journal of Asian Studies 52, no. 2 (1993): 261-297.
  • Trautmann, Thomas R. Aryans and British India. University of California Press, 1997. [chp 1-3-4-6-7]

February 9: The Question of Kingship

  • Richards, John F, "The Formulation of Imperial Authority under Akbar and Jahangir," in Kingship and Authority in South Asia. ed. John F. Richards. Madison: University of Wisconsin (South Asian Studies Pub. No. 3), 1978
  • Chattopadhyaya, B. D. “Political Processes and Structure of Polity in Early Medieval India: Problems of Perspective.” Social Scientist 13, no. 6 (1985): 3–34
  • O’Hanlon, Rosalind. “Issues of Masculinity in North Indian History: The Bangash Nawabs of Farrukhabad.” Indian Journal of Gender Studies 4, no. 1 (March 1997): 1–19.
  • Inden, Ronald B. Imagining India. Indiana University Press, 1990. [chp 5]
  • Subrahmanyam, Sanjay and David Shulman. "The Men Who Would Be King? The Politics of Expansion in Early Seventeenth-Century Northern Tamilnadu." Modern Asian Studies 24, no. (2) (1990): pp. 225-48

February 16: The Question of the Peasant

  • Habib, Irfan. The Agrarian System of Mughal India. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963. [chp 9]
  • Raychaudhuri, Tapan, "The Agrarian System of Mughal India, Enquiry vol 2, no. 1. Spring 1965, pp. 92-121.
  • Hasan, Nurul. "Zamindars under the Mughals," Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History, R.E. Frykenberg (ed.). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969.
  • Stein, Burton. Peasant state and society in medieval South India Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1980. [chp 2]
  • Mukhia, Harbans. "Was There Feudalism in Indian History?" Journal of Peasant Studies 8, no. 3 (1981): 272-310.
  • Sharma, R. S. “How Feudal Was Indian Feudalism?” Social Scientist 12, no. 2 (1984): 16–41.
  • Guha, Ranajit, "The Prose of Counter-Insurgency" in Ranajit Guha, Subaltern Studies II, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983 pp. 45-86
  • Spivak, Gayatri, "Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography,” Subaltern Studies IV, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986, pp. 3-32.

February 23: The Question of the Nation

  • Habib, Mohammad. "Presidential Address," Indian History Congress December, 1947
  • Chandra, Bipan, "Economic Nationalism," The Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism in India 1880-1905. Delhi: Peoples Publishing House, 1966. [chapter 9, part 2 in The Writings of Bipan Chandra]
  • Hasan, Mushirul. Nationalism and Communal Politics in India 1885-1932. New Delhi: Manohar, 1979. [chp 6-7]
  • Amin, Shahid. "Gandhi as Mahatma: Gorakhpur District, Eastern UP, 1921-2" Subaltern Studies no. 3, Ranajit Guha (ed.) Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984
  • Chatterjee, Partha, “History and the Nationalization Of Hinduism.” Social Research 59, no. 1 (1992): 111–49.
  • Sarkar, Tanika, "Hindu Conjugality and Nationalism in Late Nineteenth Century Bengal." In Indian Women: Myth and Reality, Jasodhara Bagchi (ed.). Calcutta: Sangam Books Limited, 1995.
  • Jalal, Ayesha. Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia: A Comparative and Historical Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. [chp 2]
  • Jalal, Ayesha. “Conjuring Pakistan: History as Official Imagining.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 27, no. 1 (1995): 73–89.
  • Shahla Hussain, “Mapping Kashmiri Visions of Freedom: The Past and the Present” in Chitralekha Zutshi (ed.), New Perspectives on Kashmir: History, Representation, and Politics, Cambridge University Press, 2017: 89-110.

March 2: The Question of the Woman [Guest lecture: Dr. Durba Mitra]

  • Minault, Gail. “Begamati Zuban: Women’s Language and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Delhi.” India International Centre Quarterly 11, no. 2 (1984): 155–70.
  • Guha, Ranajit. “Chandra's Death” in David Arnold and David Hardiman (ed.) Subaltern Studies Vol. V. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987.
  • Spivak, Gayatri. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988, 271-313.
  • Sangari, Kumkum, and Sudesh Vaid. Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990. [Chakravarti, Mani, Banerjee, Lalitha, Chatterjee]
  • Oldenburg, Veena Talwar. “Lifestyle as Resistance: The Case of the Courtesans of Lucknow, India.” Feminist Studies 16, no. 2 (1990): 259–87

March 9: The Question of the Muslim

  • Nizami, Khaliq Ahmad. “Some Aspects of Khānqah Life in Medieval India.” Studia Islamica, no. 8 (1957): 51–69.
  • Hardy, Peter. The Muslims of British India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972. [chp 1-3-4-9]
  • Eaton, Richard. The Sufis of Bijapur, 1300-1700: Social Role of Sufis in Medieval India. Princeton U. Press, 1978 [chp 4-6, 8-10]
  • Metcalf, Barbara D. “Nationalist Muslims in British India: The Case of Hakim Ajmal Khan.” Modern Asian Studies 19, no. 1 (1985): 1–28
  • Pandey, Gyanendra. "The Colonial Construction of 'Communalism'" The Construction of Communalism in North India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990.

March 23: The Question of the Riot

  • Yang, Anand A. “Sacred Symbol and Sacred Space in Rural India: Community Mobilization in the ‘Anti-Cow Killing’ Riot of 1893.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 22, no. 4 (1980): 576–96.
  • Tanika Sarkar, "Communal Riots in Bengal," Communal and Pan-Islamic Trends in Colonial India, Mushirul Hasan (ed.). New Delhi, 1985
  • Das, Veena. “Anthropological Knowledge and Collective Violence: The Riots in Delhi, November 1984.” Anthropology Today 1, no. 3 (1985): 4–6.
  • Pandey, Gyanendra, 'In Defence of the Fragment: Writing about Hindu-Muslim Riots in India Today', Representations, 37 (Winter, 1992).

March 30: The Question of Language

  • Brass, Paul R. “Muslim Separatism in United Provinces: Social Context and Political Strategy before Partition.” Economic and Political Weekly 5, no. 3/5 (1970): 167–86.
  • King, Christopher. One language, Two scripts: The Hindi movement in nineteenth century North India. Oxford University Press, 1994 [chp 3-4-5]
  • Ramaswamy, Sumathi. Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India, 1891-1970. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1997. [chp 1-2-3]
  • Chatterjee, Kumkum. “History as Self-Representation: The Recasting of a Political Tradition in Late Eighteenth-Century Eastern India.” Modern Asian Studies 32, no. 4 (1998): 913–48.
  • Alam, Muzaffar. “The Pursuit of Persian: Language in Mughal Politics.” Modern Asian Studies 32, no. 2 (1998): 317–49.
  • Orsini, Francesca. “What Did They Mean by ‘Public’? Language, Literature and the Politics of Nationalism.” Economic and Political Weekly 34, no. 7 (1999): 409–16.

April 6: The Question of Caste [Guest lecture: Dr. Chinnaiah Jangam]

  • Dumont, Louis. Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970)[chp 2-3-4-5]
  • Appadurai, Arjun. "Review of Is Homo Hierarchicus?, by E. Valentine Daniel, Ravindra S. Khare, and Ashis Nandy". American Ethnologist 13, no. 4 (1986): 745–61
  • Dirks, Nicholas B. “Castes of Mind.” Representations, no. 37 (1992): 56–78
  • Omvedt, Gail. Dalits and the Democratic Revolution: Dr. Ambedkar and the Dalit Movement in Colonial India. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1994.[chp 3-4-7-8-9]
  • Guru, Gopal, "The Politics of Naming," Seminar 471, ‘Dalit’, November 1998, pp. 14-18

April 13: The Question of Labour [Held on Zoom]

  • Arnold, David, "The Colonial Prison: Power, Knowledge and Penology in Ninteenth-Century India," Subaltern Studies VIII: Essays in honour of Ranajit Guha David Arnold, David Hardiman (eds.) New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994: 148-184.
  • Chandavarkar, Rajnarayan. The Origins of Industrial Capitalism: Business Strategies and the Working Classes in Bombay, 1900–1940. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 [chp 2-3-4-6]
  • Sen, Samita. Women and Labour in Late Colonial India. The Bengal Jute Industry. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999. [chp 2-3-4]

April 20: The Question of Partition [Guest Lecture: Dr. Pallavi Raghavan]

  • Philips, Cyril Henry and Mary Doreen Wainwright (eds.). The Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives 1935-1947 London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1970. [A.G. Noorani (104-17), B.R. Nanda (148-88), Z.H. Zaidi (245-76), Humayun Kabir (390-406), C.S. Venkatachar (468-90), H.T. Lambrick (504-17)]
  • Gough, Kathleen and Hari P. Sharma (eds.) Imperialism and revolution in South Asia. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973. [Obeysekara, Mukherjee, Ahmed F.]
  • Jalal, Ayesha, and Anil Seal. “Alternative to Partition: Muslim Politics between the Wars.” Modern Asian Studies 15, no. 3 (1981): 415–54
  • Butalia, Urvashi. The Other Side of Silence. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1998 [chp 1, 3, 8]

April 27: Conclusions