The Changing World Of Caste And Hierarchy In Bengal

Download or read book The Changing World of Caste and Hierarchy in Bengal written by Sudarshana Bhaumik and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-08-26 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book challenges the prevalent assumptions of caste, hierarchy and social mobility in pre-colonial and colonial Bengal. It studies the writings of colonial ethnographers, Orientalist scholars, Christian missionaries and pre-colonial literary texts like the Mangalkavyas to show how the concept of caste emerged and argues that the jati order in Bengal was far from being a rigidly reified structure, but one which had room for spatial and social mobility. The volume highlights the processes through which popular myths and beliefs of the lower caste orders of Bengal were Sanskritized. It delineates the linkages between sedantized peasant culture and the emergence of new agricultural castes in colonial Bengal. Moreover, the author discusses a wide spectrum of issues like marginality and hierarchy, the spread of Brahmanical hegemony, the creation of deities and the process of Sanskritization, popular Saivism, the cult of Manasa in Bengal and the revolt of 1857 and the caste question. Rich in archival sources, this book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of colonial history, Indian history, political sociology, caste studies, exclusion studies, cultural studies, social history, cultural history and South Asian studies, especially those interested in undivided Bengal.

Download or read book The Tribes and Castes of Bengal written by Sir Herbert Hope Risley and published by . This book was released on 1891 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Being Bengali written by Mridula Nath Chakraborty and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-03-26 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bengal has long been one of the key centres of civilisation and culture in the Indian subcontinent. However, Bengali identity – "Bengaliness" – is complicated by its long history of evolution, the fact that Bengal is now divided between India and Bangladesh, and by virtue of a very large international diaspora from both parts of Bengal. This book explores a wide range of issues connected with Bengali identity. Amongst other subjects, it considers the special problems arising as a result of the division of Bengal, and concludes by demonstrating that there are many factors which make for the idea of a Bengali identity.

Download or read book The Politics of Caste in West Bengal written by Uday Chandra and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-09-25 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers for the first time a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the making and maintenance of a modern caste society in colonial and postcolonial West Bengal in India. Drawing on cutting-edge multidisciplinary scholarship, it explains why caste continues to be neglected in the politics of and scholarship on West Bengal, and how caste relations have permeated the politics of the region until today. The essays presented here dispel the myth that caste does not matter in Bengali society and politics, and make possible meaningful comparisons and contrasts with other regions in South Asia. The work will interest scholars and researchers in sociology, social anthropology, politics, modern Indian history and cultural studies.

Download or read book Castes of Mind written by Nicholas B. Dirks and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-09 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When thinking of India, it is hard not to think of caste. In academic and common parlance alike, caste has become a central symbol for India, marking it as fundamentally different from other places while expressing its essence. Nicholas Dirks argues that caste is, in fact, neither an unchanged survival of ancient India nor a single system that reflects a core cultural value. Rather than a basic expression of Indian tradition, caste is a modern phenomenon--the product of a concrete historical encounter between India and British colonial rule. Dirks does not contend that caste was invented by the British. But under British domination caste did become a single term capable of naming and above all subsuming India's diverse forms of social identity and organization. Dirks traces the career of caste from the medieval kingdoms of southern India to the textual traces of early colonial archives; from the commentaries of an eighteenth-century Jesuit to the enumerative obsessions of the late-nineteenth-century census; from the ethnographic writings of colonial administrators to those of twentieth-century Indian scholars seeking to rescue ethnography from its colonial legacy. The book also surveys the rise of caste politics in the twentieth century, focusing in particular on the emergence of caste-based movements that have threatened nationalist consensus. Castes of Mind is an ambitious book, written by an accomplished scholar with a rare mastery of centuries of Indian history and anthropology. It uses the idea of caste as the basis for a magisterial history of modern India. And in making a powerful case that the colonial past continues to haunt the Indian present, it makes an important contribution to current postcolonial theory and scholarship on contemporary Indian politics.

Download or read book Colonialism and Culture written by Nicholas B. Dirks and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides new and important perspectives on the complex character of colonial history

Download or read book Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial written by Vinayak Chaturvedi and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2012-11-13 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by Antonio Gramsci's writings on the history of subaltern classes, the authors in Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial sought to contest the elite histories of Indian nationalists by adopting the paradigm of 'history from below'. Later on, the project shifted from its social history origins by drawing upon an eclectic group of thinkers that included Edward Said, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida. This book provides a comprehensive balance sheet of the project and its developments, including Ranajit Guha's original subaltern studies manifesto, Partha Chatterjee, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Gayatri Spivak.