The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early Twentieth-Century India

by Nandini Gooptu

• ISBN13: 9780521617130
• ISBN10: 0521617138
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-03-31
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Nandini Gooptu's magisterial history of the labouring poor in India represents a tour-de-force. By focusing on the role of the poor in caste, religious and nationalistic politics, and on their contribution to the urban economy, the author demonstrates how they emerged as a major social factor in South Asia during the interwar period. The empirical material, concentrated on Uttar Pradesh, provides compelling insights into what it meant to be poor in the urban environment: exploitation in the workplace, the problems of finding housing, police harassment, social and political exclusion by the elite. Approaching the history of early twentieth-century Indian politics from this perspective, the author takes issue with current interpretations of sectarian and nationalist politics which argue the salience of community identity and the irrelevance of class in political analysis. This book will interest those concerned with urban social history, ethnic and sectarian conflict, nationalism, and the politics of poverty, labour and class relations.

Table of Contents

List of tables

Acknowledgements

List of abbreviations

Select glossary

1. The study and its perspectives

Part I. Changing Conditions and Experiences in Interwar North India: 2. The poor in the urban setting

3. Urban local policies and the poor

4. Urban policing and the poor

Part II. Modes of Political Action and Perception: 5. Untouchable assertion

6. Militant Hinduism

7. Resurgent Islam

8. Nationalist action

9. Congress socialist mobilisation

10. The politics of exclusion and the 'virtuous deprived'

Bibliography

Index.