Negotiating India's Past : Essays in Memory of Partha Sarathi Gupta

Contents: Preface. Partha Sarathi Gupta (1934-1999)/Biswamoy Pati, Bhairabi Prasad Sahu and T.K. Venkatasubramanian. I. Ideology, legitimacy and the state: 1. The discovery of the Indus civilization: early intuitions and unknown reports, 1826-1920/Nayanjot Lahiri. 2. The early state in Orissa: from the perspective of changing forms of patronage and legitimation/Bhairabi Prasad Sahu. 3. The making of a Mandala: Fuzzy frontiers of Kalhana's Kashmir/Kumkum Roy. 4. The legitimacy of order: music as ideology in ancient and medieval Tamilakam/T.K. Venkatasubramanian. 5. Pindaris, soldiers and state formation in Malwa, c.1800-18/Amar Farooqui. II. Of environment, exchange and economic transactions: 1. Water resources and forests in Southern Rajasthan: glimpses from inscriptions (Seventh-Seventeenth centuries)/Nandini Sinha Kapur. 2. Mughals and Mahmudis: the incorporation of Gujarat into the imperial monetary system/Najaf Haider. 3. Nomadic or semi-nomadic: Banjaras and the Indian economy, sixteenth to nineteenth centuries/Meena Bhargava. 4. English trading methods in the seventeenth century and the Rajapur experiment/Vijaya Ramaswamy. III. Social change and resistance: 1. The household, the community and women: perspectives from the early Grhyasutras, c. 800-500 BC/Jaya Sinha Tyagi. 2. Symbols of resistance: non-Brahmanical Sants as religious heroes in late medieval India/Rameshwar Prasad Bahuguna. 3. The bhils in colonial Mewar/Hari Sen. 4. Negotiating with Dharma Pinnu: towards a social history of smallpox in colonial Orissa/Biswamoy Pati. 5. A note on jobbers and jobbery/Partho Datta. 6. World War II and the politics of loyalty and defiance in Bengal, 1939-42/Srimanjari. Index. "The essays collected in the book weave together issues and concerns of different scholars from the world of Indian history. The themes they examine reflect a common desire to understand historical processes over time and form the perspective of different regions, without losing sight of the broader historical context. Through this attempt, the book perhaps demonstrates not only the fascinating possibilities of India's historical scholarship, but also the fact that it has indeed come of age. The fifteen essays included here, covering the early, medieval and modern periods of Indian history, are organized under three thematic sections: ideology, legitimacy and the state; environment, exchange and economic transactions; social change and resistance. Together, they present ways of 'negotiating India's past'.". …