Against History, Against State

by Mayaram, Shail

• ISBN13: 9780231127318
• ISBN10: 0231127316
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-11-01
• Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr

Summary

-- Susanne Rudolph, William Benton Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago

Author Biography

Shail Mayaram is a visiting senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, India, and a fellow at the Institute of Development Studies in Jaipur, India

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Preface	xi
Abbreviations	xix
A Note on Transcription and Transliteration	xxi
1. Introduction	1	(18)
Orality and Writing	4	(3)
Myth and History	7	(2)
State Formation	9	(4)
Marginality and Resistance	13	(6)
2. The Making of Meo Marginality	19	(30)
Religion and Identity	36	(6)
The Meo Oral Tradition	42	(7)
3. Antistate: The Pal Polity	49	(25)
The Pãlon ki Bansdbah or the "Genealogy" of the Pals	52	(7)
Decentering Power: The Pal Polity	59	(6)
Genealogy, Memory, and Community	65	(9)
4. Toward a Critique of Indo-Persian Historiography	74	(23)
Mewati Otherness in Indo-Persian Historiographical Texts	76	(21)
5. Imperial State Formation and Resistance	97	(29)
State Formation: The Mughal Empire	100	(2)
State Formation: The Rajput Kingdom	102	(4)
The Persian Administrative Discourse	106	(3)
Pãñch Pahdr ki lardi: An Anti-Imperial Narrative	109	(17)
6. The Construction of Meo Criminality: Toward a Critique of Colonial Ethnography	126	(26)
On Criminality	127	(2)
On Colonial Ethnography	129	(1)
The Ethnographic Construction of Meo Criminality	130	(8)
The Evidence of Meo Criminality	138	(4)
The Mewati Narrative of Dá yã Khãñ	142	(10)
7. Crime, Feud, and Resistance in Early Nineteenth-Century Mewat	152	(35)
State Formation and Meo Resistance	155	(3)
The Feud, State Crime, and Abducted Women	158	(19)
Debating Kingship	177	(10)
8. The Prose and Verse of Rebellion: The Gadar of 1857	187	(13)
Anticolonialism and Rebellion in British and Princely India	188	(9)
Debating 1857	197	(3)
9. Kings, Peasants, and Bandits	200	(27)
Paramountcy and the Princely State of Alwar	201	(5)
Revenue and Resistance	206	(2)
The Tragedy of Heroism: The Bandits Churchari and Mev Khan	208	(19)
10. Conclusions	227