Peasants and Monks in British India


Book Description

In this compelling social history, William R. Pinch tackles one of the most important but most neglected fields of the colonial history of India: the relation between monasticism and caste. The highly original inquiry yields rich insights into the central structure and dynamics of Hindu society—insights that are not only of scholarly but also of great political significance. Perhaps no two images are more associated with rural India than the peasant who labors in an oppressive, inflexible social structure and the ascetic monk who denounces worldly concerns. Pinch argues that, contrary to these stereotypes, North India's monks and peasants have not been passive observers of history; they have often been engaged with questions of identity, status, and hierarchy—particularly during the British period. Pinch's work is especially concerned with the ways each group manipulated the rhetoric of religious devotion and caste to further its own agenda for social reform. Although their aims may have been quite different—Ramanandi monastics worked for social equity, while peasants agitated for higher social status—the strategies employed by these two communities shaped the popular political culture of Gangetic north India during and after the struggle for independence from the British.













The Art of Eastern India


Book Description




The Struggle for India's Independence in Bihar 1912-22


Book Description

This work looks back at the role Bihar played in the struggle for India's independence in the first decade after its separation from Bengal as a province in 1912, particularly through the archival material contained in the contemporary confidential government files preserved in the Bihar State Archives, Patna. It uncovers some significant facts and dimensions like rumor-mongering adopted as a mode of struggle by the revolutionaries against British rule during World War I and the establishment of parallel administration at different levels during the Non-Cooperation Movement by its local leaders in Bihar. While it scrutinizes the sorrowful tales of sufferings of the Indian people under British colonial rule, it also raises questions about how the hate politics and hate crimes under BJP's rule, particularly against Minorities and Dalits can be justified as less brutal than the brutalities committed under the tyrannical British rule? Or how the targetted use of draconian laws or law enforcing agencies against those who question its unconstitutional and repressive policies and communal or rather hate politics can be justified as just in independent India under democratic government, and the use of similar laws or law enforcing agencies as repressive and unjust under despotic British rule?