Unravelling India's Past

This engaging edited volume traces India’s late medieval to colonial transformations through essays on power, identity, society, culture, and economy.

This engaging edited volume explores the rich and complex history of India from the late medieval to the colonial period through a diverse collection of scholarly essays. Covering themes such as political change, social structures, cultural interactions, economic life, and intellectual traditions, the book offers fresh insights into a transformative era in South Asian history.

The essays examine the shifting dynamics of power and identity across the subcontinent from the politics of the Maratha court to the expansion of colonial rule, and from evolving social hierarchies to resilient cultural practices that negotiated tradition and modernity. By focusing on subjects such as agrarian economies, urbanization, trade networks, religious and literary expressions, and colonial interventions, the volume highlights the interconnectedness of regional and global histories.

Bringing together rigorous scholarship and wide thematic range, the book also foregrounds voices and experiences often overlooked in mainstream historical narratives, presenting a more inclusive and nuanced understanding of India's past. Accessible to scholars, students, and general readers alike, this volume demonstrates the continuing relevance of historical inquiry in understanding the legacies of India's complex historical experience.

Table of Contents

• List of Figures and Tables 9
• Acknowledgements 11
• Introduction
• BIPASHA RAHA and AMARENDRA KUMAR 13
• 1. The Fall of Vijaydurg (1756): Lessons in Diplomacy of the English East India Company AMARENDRA KUMAR 23
• 2. Breaking of Indigenous Insularity: British and the Hill Tribes of Burma, 1885-1900 SANDIP BASU SARBADHIKARY 35
• 3. Colonial Ethnography of the Zo in the India-Burma- Bangladesh Borderlands: A Review PUM KHAN PAU 77
• 4. Dalit Assertion and the Indian National Congress: Claims for Social Equality and the Politics of Integration SUDHI MANDLOI 103
• 5. Colliers and Coolies in a Bengal Coalfield in Late Colonial Period NAINA BANERJEE 147
• 6. Reading the Artisan's History in Lucknow through the Census c. 1860s to the 1930s BIDISHA DHAR 171
• 7. Literary Texts: Documenting Plants in Rural Bengal, 1870-1880 BIPASHA RAHA 195
• 8. The Tribes of Chotanagpur: Quest for Identity through many Vicissitudes SUCHIBRATA SEN 207
• 9. Matriliny in Shades: Gendered Constructs of Khasi Society in the Writings of Two Bengali Brahmos ARPITA SEN 227
• 10. Repressive Policy versus Counter Resistance: Bengal in the Quit India Movement SUKANTA PRAMANIK 257
• 11. Red Soil: Left Organization and Radicalism in Birbhum, 1947-1972 ATIG GHOSH 287
• 12. Origin of the Berubari Problem, 1947-1974 SHYAMAL CHANDRA SARKAR 323
• List of Contributors 345
• Index 347