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Book ReviewsDavid Ludden a , Priya Naik b , Gagan Preet Singh c , MichaelPearson d , Troy Downs e , Linda Hemphill f , Malcolm McLean g ,Nadia Siddiqui h , Dev N. Pathak i & Annie K.Y. Chan ja New York Universityb Zakir Hussain College, University of Delhic Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhid University of New South Wales, Sydneye Christchurch, New Zealandf Melbourneg Dunedinh University of Birminghami South Asian University, New Delhij Monash University

Available online: 07 Nov 2011

To cite this article: David Ludden, Priya Naik, Gagan Preet Singh, Michael Pearson, Troy Downs,Linda Hemphill, Malcolm McLean, Nadia Siddiqui, Dev N. Pathak & Annie K.Y. Chan (2011): BookReviews, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 34:3, 507-525

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Book Reviews

Iftekhar Iqbal, The Bengal Delta: Ecology, State, and Social Change, 1840–1943(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), ISBN: 978-0-230-23183-2/10: 0-230-23183-7,288 pp., npg, hdbk.

The major contribution of this book is to weave ecology into social and economichistory. Iftekhar Iqbal is now a pioneer among historians in his appreciation of long-term ecological change in the agrarian environment in modern Bengal. But we still haveno modern history of the delta’s land- and river-scape, which does not receive directattention in this book, but rather appears as a stable ecology working off-stage to shapethe drama. The book proceeds from the idea that a series of earthquakes which shiftedriver courses to complete the unification of the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna deltasended in the 1820s. The period under study thus appears to be the final product ofnature’s past handiwork in the region, the delta being henceforth ‘exposed only toseasonal disasters such as tidal upsurges and cyclones’ (p.42). That appearance seemsunrealistic in light of the earthquakes that shook the delta in 1828, 1852, 1869, 1885,1897, 1918, 1930, and 1934. As well, how drastically ‘seasonal disasters’, along withfloods, erosion, siltation, and moving populations, altered ecologies remains under-studied. The book thus opens but then closes the door on ecological history, though weknow well that nature’s force—typically glossed as ‘disaster’—has consistentlychallenged powers of human adaptation in the delta, tilting the course of historyright down to the present day, mostly in ways that historians have yet to explore, butsuggested by the role of the 1970 hurricane in the politics of Bangladesh’sindependence.

Having described the delta’s uniquely-challenging ecology, Iqbal considers a series ofestablished themes, focusing on the southern delta and the Sundarbans, thus addingregional detail to historical understandings of Bengal, but without highlighting thatgeographical contribution or even putting most relevant place names in the index.Technically, most of Bangladesh is deltaic, so it makes sense that in this book the deltagenerally merges vaguely with Eastern Bengal, but in the best parts of the book, theregion of study is more literally deltaic, filled with rivers shifting, eroding, flooding,flushing, and re-making the land downstream of the Meghna-Brahmaputra confluence.

The overall theme for the first half of the book is dynamic localised agriculturalexpansion on nineteenth-century deltaic frontiers, which explains the initialimperfection and rapid, conflict-ridden demise of the 1793 Permanent Settlement

South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies,n.s., Vol.XXXIV, no.3, December 2011

ISSN 0085-6401 print; 1479-0270 online/11/030507-19

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2011.620559

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in this region. The instability of the land and the vast expanses of low jungle andnew alluvium ready for cultivation undermined the permanence of property claimsby distant state authorities and by landlords not on the spot. Farm land wasexpanding and with it grew the state’s desire for new revenues from new acreage thatwould not be settled permanently. Deltaic ecology thus strengthened the hand ofself-cultivating peasant families and intrepid contractors, whose productivity fosteredlively trade along rivers, the main arteries of travel and commerce, described nicely,if too briefly, as a social world of boats. This growing agrarian prosperity is thetheme of a chapter pegged to the 1888 Dufferin Commission Report, whose accountof prosperous deltaic peasants farming jute, rice, and numerous cash crops receivesdetailed discussion and qualification to account for impoverished sectors of deltaicsociety.

Agrarian dynamism in the deltaic ecology bolstered the Faraizi Movement, whichIqbal illuminates afresh by focusing on its agrarian activism. It is well known that thismovement flourished for much of the nineteenth century most actively in southerndistricts, and that it organised peasant opposition to zamindars and indigo planters; buthere we find that organising deltaic peasants to protect their growing prosperity fromzamindar and planter claims, which were backed by state authority, made the Faraizi adistinctively deltaic peasant movement. Though it did spread elsewhere, the movementwas most productively rooted in deltaic farming frontiers; it declined there in partbecause of decreasing peasant prosperity, as frontier conditions gave way to modernforms of economic development, epitomised by the railway; under modern modes ofstate discipline represented by the Arms Act of 1878, which was designed to disarmFaraizis and Santhals; and with the arrival of modern urban politics. Thus in severalconnected ways, Faraizi decline marks the onset of twentieth-century modernity andwhat Iqbal calls ‘the loss of social and economic autarky in agrarian East Bengal’(p.89).

The twentieth-century demolition of localised deltaic dynamism provides the centraltheme for the last four chapters, which begin with a surprise: after 1901, urbane high-caste Hindu bhadralok families began moving into the delta more frequently, pushed byunemployment in the city and pulled by opportunities in the hinterland, where theybecame increasingly important, not as old-fashioned zamindars, but rather as investorsin land rights, commerce, and credit markets. Census data indicate that between 1901and 1931, the bhadralok caste population increased about 190 percent in Chittagong(p.98), considerably faster than elsewhere in Bengal, and that in 1931 Kayasthas andBrahmins in the east were concentrated mostly in southern districts, including areasaround Dhaka city. The other major agrarian Hindu group was the Namasudras,former Chandals, concentrated heavily in Barisal and southern Faridpur, where theyhad prospered as frontier farmers alongside Muslims in the delta (pp.62–3). The delta’spopulation was very mixed and became more so, with large Hindu concentrations inthe countryside and in urban areas. In 1911, Dhaka had a larger proportion of Hindusand bhadralok castes than Calcutta. The new twentieth-century bhadralok arrivals in

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the delta entered a closing agrarian frontier that pressed upon Hindu and Muslimpeasants alike, as ‘frontier fertile rice lands were already becoming subject of ascramble by a fast-growing peasant population’ (p.115). Backed by the state authorityand bolstered by urban assets and connections, the new arrivals prospered as new farmacreage stopped growing, indebtedness increased, and landless worker and share-cropper populations grew. The closing frontier at the end of the century is a generaltheme in agrarian South Asia, but ‘the return of the bhadralok’ that Iqbal describesimparts ominous communal colouration to later decades of relative ecological andeconomic decline and increasing class differentiation in the delta, which he describes inthe following chapters.

In two chapters that elaborate the well-established theme of ecological mayhemproduced by modern development schemes and by globalisation, we learn how railwayembankments disrupted the intricate silt- and life-giving deltaic river system, which wasfurther clogged and poisoned by an invasion of water hyacinth. At the end of the book,we learn that both these problems continue to plague Bangladesh, now furtheraggravated by roads, bridges, flood control embankments, pollution, and urbansprawl. And we find government still compounding at least as much as solving suchproblems, which now include poisonous shrimp farming in the Sundarbans, pushed bypoliticians to serve global markets.

Nevertheless, in the old tradition of South Asian historiography, Iftekhar Iqbal endshis story before 1947, with a chapter on the 1943 Bengal famine, which pivots onarguments by Amatya Sen (Poverty and Famines, Oxford University Press, 1981),though he models his own ‘prehistory’ of the famine more on the lines of PaulGreenough (Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal, Oxford University Press,1982). Whereas arguments by and with Sen focus on the opposition of FoodAvailability Decline (FAD) and entitlement collapse as competing explanationsfor mass famine death, Iqbal elaborates Greenough’s history by showing that,in deltaic eastern Bengal, decades of declining per capita food availabilityaccompanied agricultural stagnation and deteriorating economic conditions amongthe growing population of landless poor who would suffer famine collapse not onlyin their entitlements to food, but in their capacity to resist infectious disease. Thischapter is a useful addition to the famine literature because it includes diseasemortality aggravated by declining public health and focuses specifically on easternBengal.

Iftekhar Iqbal has done more than write a good agrarian history of colonial Bengal.His is the first historical account focusing on the delta. He has methodically butmodestly opened new frontiers of historical study, which beckon others to follow.District Records hold mountains of documentation concerning everyday life onagricultural frontiers. Comparative work and regional histories of Bangladesh andBengal are yet to appear. Histories of changing environments and landscapes remain tobe written. The social worlds of rivers, boats, frontier farming, and ways of life on the

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water where rivers meet the sea—all await exploration. Many exciting topics open up inthis book. Of all these, moving historical studies beyond the boundary of 1947 andacross the full expanse of the last several centuries, down to the present, promise toliberate modern South Asian history from its colonial strait-jacket and historians fromtheir long, dutiful service to the nation, making history a much more useful disciplinefor understanding the world we live in today.

David Ludden

New York University� 2011 David Ludden

Iftikhar Dadi, Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia (Chapel Hill: The Univer-sity of North Carolina Press, 2010), xivþ 312 pp., 28 colour plates, $US39.00, hdbk.

From the self-designed anonymity of A.R. Chughtai, the first ‘modern’ Muslim artistof South Asia, to the aggressively anti-colonial and feminist works of Rasheed Araeenand Naiza Khan, the art of Muslim South Asia has emerged with a distinctive voiceand colour. This genealogy of the development of individual agency in the artists ofMuslim South Asia is the subject of Dadi’s elegant work. Indeed if invention andimagination are pivotal in forging fresh political nation-states, the artist’s role isdecisive. Dadi’s wide and ambitious canvas aims at capturing the anxieties, challengesand success of artists who belong to Muslim South Asia.

In four chapters and twenty-eight colour plates, Modernism and the Art of MuslimSouth Asia traces the genealogy of the emergence of an artistic South Asian modernismfrom within a national art history. Dadi’s concern is specific: how have artistsresponded to modernity and what are the discursive symbols they have sought in a richbut distressed Islamic political imagination? For artists of Muslim South Asia, theheritage of Islamic art poses more of a constraint than an aid. As Dadi points out,Islamic art has been seized by a Western vocabulary which limits the possibilities ofIslamic art to ‘slogans’ such as calligraphy, the arabesque, nomadic memories oftextiles and unity in form and purpose (p.33). Coupled with the anonymity of pre-modern Islamic art, modern, subjective and individual Muslim artists in pre- and post-Partition South Asia faced an aporia in identity and art.

Muslim artists have been peculiarly distanced from undertaking works with nationalistovertones, even on specifically national ‘moments’ like the death of the founder ofPakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Zainul Abedin’s painting, Way to Quaid’s Cave, is acasual, deliciously-irreverent depiction of common folk walking to a grave, rather thana portrayal of an officious ceremony. It lends credibility to Dadi’s fundamental thesisthat artists have addressed the anxieties of new nationhood by turning to alternativeaesthetics beyond the sovereign strait-jacket of the state of Pakistan.

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Yet the artists’ role in imagining the nation-state is irreplaceable. A.R. Chughtai’simagination turned to figures and symbols of Islamic importance, as his illustrations ofthe works of Ghalib in Muraqqa-i-Chughtai demonstrate. The term muraqqa issignificant, ‘denoting codex albums composed in Timurid and Safavid Persia and inMughal India’ (p.67). Indeed, Chughtai’s efforts to revive Islamicate and Persianateaesthetics, Mughal nostalgia and Urdu poetic symbolism resonate with his practice ofnot signing his works, a pre-modern practice. Dadi captures this tension in pre-Partition India between the Bengal School of Art, which drew lines between ‘Hindu’,‘Buddhist’ and ‘Rajput’ aesthetics, and Chughtai very well. It is ironic that Chughtaidisplayed a cosmopolitan ease in painting Yashoda, a figure in Hindu mythology, asmuch as works which mimicked Mughal miniatures.

The dilemmas faced by the next generation of artists in a palpably-sovereign Pakistanwere different to Chughtai’s. The works of Zainul Abedin, Zubeida Agha and ShakirAli define this ‘mid-century’ modernism. The establishment of the Progressive ArtistsGroup (PAG) in 1947 facilitated an ‘engagement with transnational modernism’ (p.96)and the new sovereign state of Pakistan was confronted by turning away from them, todistinctly pre-national symbols. As Dadi points out, during the 1971 war with India,Shakir Ali’s overriding concern was for his fellow artist in East Pakistan, ZainulAbedin, ‘rather than by any nationalist rhetoric of sacrifice and bravery’ (p.131).

The genealogy of artistic subjectivity is most pronounced in the works of the artistSadequain. This hierophant of Islamic art translated traditional calligraphy into ahighly-stylised modern one and in return earned the respect accorded to a nationalhero. Working in the Islamised political environment of Bhutto’s ‘Islamic socialism’,and continuing in the regime of Zia-ul-Haq, Sadequain’s turn to pure Qur’aniccalligraphy assured him of a national audience. However, Dadi points out that whileSadequain utilised modern agency to break new norms, these ‘transgressions alsolimited him’ (p.174). An analysis of the work of contemporary Muslim artists such asRasheed Araeen and Naiza Khan, who re-imagine Muslim selfhood in a globalisedworld, forms the fourth chapter. In ‘Emergence of the Public Self’, Dadi critiques anddocuments these artistic projects which demonstrate an abstraction and conceptualisa-tion of the question of Islamic art ‘beyond a mere fidelity to forms and materials’(p.216).

Genealogies, by definition, do not end. In his demonstration of the subversion ofoppressive conceptual frameworks of nationalism and colonialism, Dadi’s contributionis valuable to post-colonial scholarship in South Asia. To his credit, the work isaccessible to both amateurs and experts on art. The excellent choice of colour platescompliments tracking this illuminating genealogy.

Priya Naik

Zakir Hussain College, University of Delhi� 2011 Priya Naik

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Pritam Singh, Federalism, Nationalism and Development: India and the Punjab Economy(Oxon: Routledge, 2008) xviiiþ 223 pp., npg, hdbk.

Thirty-two years of engagement with the Punjab economy (the author submitted hisM.Phil Dissertation in 1976) has contributed to this work. Pritam Singh (b.1949) haslived during the period (1966–1991) his book investigates. He presents a Marxistreading of the political and economic crisis in Punjab focusing on centre–state financialrelations.

The argument of the book resembles (and is probably influenced by) the Indiannationalists’ critique of British policies in India. The nationalists argued that the Britishkept the Indian economy predominantly agrarian in order to provide raw materials forBritish industry and to support industry at home, and thereby thwarted India’sindustrialisation. Singh detects similar policies by the Indian federal government (thecentre) which have thwarted Punjab’s industrial growth. He finds a form of ‘drain’(p.158) of Punjab’s wealth: if the nationalists of yore called this relationship‘colonialism’, Singh implies a similar relationship exists now through his use of theterm ‘federalism’. In both contexts, federalism and colonialism imply not only forms ofpolitical structure, but also a relationship of exploitation.

However, there is one difference which distinguishes Punjab: its prosperity. Punjab is arich state—thanks to the centre’s Green Revolution strategy—with a well-developedagricultural sector. But this developed agriculture has not been followed by the nextlogical stage: industrialisation. Thus the richest state of the Indian Union is also hometo the poorest industrial sector. Punjab depicts a case of material prosperity in themidst of structural poverty.

This paradox is explained in six chapters. Chapter I contextualises the study in the lightof existing national and international literature on federalism vis-a-vis the uniquesituation of Punjab within the Indian Union. It also provides the key contention of thebook (‘Punjab: rich but not developed’ p.4), a new theoretical approach to studyfederalism (a ‘reconfigured centralization–decentralization approach’ p.11), and thescope of the book (unfortunately restricted to 1991). Chapter II summarises the historyof the Sikhs (and Punjab) from the fifteenth century to the present—a period in whichSikh (and Punjabi) nationalism brewed. Chapter III covers the history of centre–staterelations from ‘ancient and medieval times’ to ‘centre–state relations during Britishrule’ and ‘centre–state relations since 1950’.

The next three chapters carry forward the argument. In Chapters IV, V and VI,Singh discusses ‘financial’, ‘agricultural’, and ‘industrial’ centre–state relations respec-tively. The argument of these three chapters is that in all these varied relations the centreoverpowers the states as a result of which Punjab has been rendered marginalised. Interms of industrial indices, Punjab stands as the most backward state of the IndianUnion.

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Pritam Singh’s argument is convincing but not without flaws. In Chapter II, he makes anunconvincing attempt to trace the linguistic politics of the 1950s back to the emergence ofSikhism. Many of his other propositions are untenable. For instance, Singh calls GuruNanak (1469–1539) the founder of a ‘Punjabi religion’ (p.21). Furthermore, his use of theterm ‘nationalism’ remains imprecise, evident in phrases such as ‘Punjabi Sikhnationalism’ (p.i), ‘regional Punjabi nationalism’ (p.3), ‘Punjabi and Sikh nationalism’(p.18), ‘Punjabi nationalism’ (p.22), and ‘composite Punjabi identity’ (p.27). Do Punjab,Punjabi language, and Sikhs mean the same thing? The Hindus’ and Muslims’contributions to, and claims over, Punjabi language remain unacknowledged. Finally,Singh’s contention about the centre’s stepmotherly treatment of industrial investment inPunjab would be convincing only if he had proved that industrial investment in Punjabcould be as profitable as in any other state of the Indian Union.

Pritam Singh writes in a style which is bold, clear, and persuasive. Unlike its title, the bookis an enjoyable read for anyone interested in the rugged history of post-colonial Punjab.This book compels us to answer a question of pivotal importance: how the fiscal despotismof the independent Indian state is different from that of the British colonial state.

Gagan Preet Singh

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi� 2011 Gagan Preet Singh

Chandra R. de Silva (ed.), Portuguese Encounters with Sri Lanka and the Maldives:Translated Texts from the Age of the Discoveries (Farnham, UK: Ashgate PublishingLimited, 2009), xxxivþ 248 pp., npg, hdbk.

Those who read only English will appreciate this valuable collection on earlyPortuguese contacts with Sri Lanka and the Maldive islands. Chandra de Silva hascollected and translated important sources in Portuguese, Sinhala, Arabic, Tamil andLatin. Many of these sources have been published and translated before, but this bookis very useful in having them collected in such an accessible manner. De Silva hasexcellent credentials for this task, for he is well known as a senior historian ofPortuguese contacts with Sri Lanka in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The main themes are political and economic. The Portuguese were attracted bycinnamon in Sri Lanka, and coir and cowry shells (an important humble currency) inthe Maldives. Not content with trying to trade peacefully, they usually tried to imposetheir own rule and then monopolise trade in these products. The first chapter deals withthe much-debated but somewhat inconsequential matter of when the Portuguese firstvisited Sri Lanka. There follows Portuguese accounts of the island and its people, oftenamusingly ethnocentric. Chapter 3 provides copious detail on their relations with thelowland kingdom of Kotte, the next with Kandy in the mountainous interior, and thenwith Jaffna in the north of the island. Chapter 6 describes the negotiations between

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Kandy and Portugal which resulted in a peace treaty in 1617, while the final chaptercovers Portuguese contacts with the Maldive islands.

Each chapter contains Portuguese accounts juxtaposed with indigenous ones in Sinhala,Tamil or Arabic. The fit between the two versions is often very limited, for each side sawthings from its own perspective. One example concerns the first contact between thePortuguese and the ruler of Kotte. An accord was reached, which the Sinhala rulerthought was an exchange of gifts and a promise of friendship, while the Portuguese sawthis as the offering of tribute and, therefore, the beginning of a subordinate relationship.

The Portuguese accounts, which are the ones most used by past historians, are writtenin a language and with conventions familiar to Western-trained scholars of history.They are easy for us to assimilate and ‘use’. The indigenous accounts come from verydifferent traditions of history writing, and it would be easy to dismiss them as‘inaccurate’, or ‘fanciful’. Yet they must be used, and their conventions respected, forthey give us very valuable perspectives to counter the familiar Western accounts.

A continuing theme is the way Portuguese political efforts were often hampered bytheir religious authorities. In the case of Kotte, the king traditionally patronised allreligions, including Christianity, but the missionaries insisted he not only reachagreement with the Portuguese, but also convert to Christianity. Similarly in Kandy,where the Portuguese offered the king assistance, but only if he converted. Theobduracy of the church authorities complicated matters for the secular political leaders.

Chandra de Silva provides copious background at the start of each chapter, skilfullyguiding the reader through the often-confusing detail contained in the actualdocuments. One good example is the long introduction to the chapter on the Maldives,which disentangles the very complex history of these islands in the sixteenth century.This chapter includes not only Portuguese accounts, but also a long extract from anArabic history which paints a very different picture from that of the Europeans. This isan exemplary publication which will be of great value for all interested in the earlyEuropean presence in the Indian Ocean.

Michael Pearson

University of New South Wales, Sydney� 2011 Michael Pearson

Sukanya Banerjee, Becoming Imperial Citizens: Indians in the Late-Victorian Empire(Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), ISBN 978-0-8223-4608-1, ixþ 272 pp., npg,pbk.

In this fascinating book Sukanya Banerjee examines claims made to citizenship withinthe British Empire during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Banerjee is

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interested in the ‘transformative potential’ (p.2) such claims had for colonial subjectswho lacked the civic rights available to British citizens, and the narrative pathwaysalong which these aspirations were played out. During the period covered by BecomingImperial Citizens, British imperialism was infused with lofty liberal notions of universalcitizenship; yet it also showed a marked reluctance to bestow such rights on the vastmajority of its subjects. Banerjee investigates this paradox by looking at how Indiansresiding in India, the Natal province of South Africa, and Victorian England sought tosecure the attributes of citizenship. Such desires pre-dated the civic formulationsassociated with nationalism and the construction of the unitary nation-state in India.As Banerjee points out, one should be wary of reading back into the past the triumphalprogress of Indian nationalism for there existed alternative forms of citizenship Indianssought to acquire, even if these yearnings proved, in the end, to be forlorn ones.

Banerjee explores the gaps in the dominant discourse on citizenship and nationhood byexamining the various civic modes that provided platforms for the idealistic strivings forthe approximation of citizenship within the rubric of colonial rule. These ‘sites’ wereutilised by Indians to assert claims over perceived rights associated with citizenship. Sitesdiscussed include electoral representation, professionalism, bureaucracy and bourgeoisvalues connected to labour, industriousness, credit, thrift, character and cleanliness.

Each of the book’s four chapters examines the lives, speeches and writings of four iconicIndians who Banerjee identifies as proponents of civic representation and advocates forthose deprived of citizenship status such as women and indentured labourers. Theseindividuals are Dadabhai Naoroji, a noted economist who later became the first Indianto be elected as a member of the British parliament; Mohandas Gandhi (Banerjeefocuses on the activities of Gandhi as a student in London and as a lawyer in SouthAfrica); Cornelia Sorabji, India’s first female lawyer; and Surendranath Banerjee, one ofthe earliest Indians to gain admission to the Indian Civil Service. Banerjee became oneof the most influential of those who, in the lexicon of nationalism, were labeled‘moderates’ because they favoured a gradual reform of the colonial structures ofgovernance. Interestingly, all these individuals came from privileged backgrounds giventheir elite status as Western-educated middle-class Indians. Two of the four individualsare even more unusual in that they belonged to minority religious communities—Naoroji was a Parsi and Sorabji, while also having Parsi ancestry, was a Christian. Onewonders what rights other elites, and for that matter non-elite Indians, aspired to at thetime. Indeed, one could legitimately ask what was so unique about the Parsis’contribution to the construction or imagining of citizenship. Banerjee offers oneexplanation. She quotes Joan Leopold who, with reference to Henry Maine’s depictionof the Parsis of Mumbai, suggests that they assumed the role of ‘an intellectual and[even] a racial bridge between the English and Hindus’ (p.68). But this seems to be asomewhat tentative observation and one that is not pursued.

This is an elegantly-written and well-constructed book. Extensive endnotes and an up-to-date bibliography support the text. While many of the arguments contained in Becoming

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Imperial Citizens are intricate and require close reading Banerjee, to her merit, guides thereader through the complexity. She is not afraid to recapitulate or expand upon herarguments if it serves to further illuminate the general thrust of her thesis. Theintroduction does an excellent job of setting the scene and defining what Banerjeeconsiders to be the essential character of imperial citizenship, while the book’s briefafterword looks at the evolving nature of citizenship and its limitations in the twentiethcentury and beyond. Banerjee’s book, forming part of the Next Wave: New Directions inWomen’s Studies series, will appeal to readers interested in gaining an insight into theinterconnected, shifting, and at times conflicting, social, cultural, political and economictrends and ideological debates that marked the trajectory of late-Victorian imperialism.

Troy Downs

Christchurch, New Zealand� 2011 Troy Downs

Keya Ganguly, Cinema, Emergence and the Films of Satyajit Ray (Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 2010), 240 pp., $US24.95, pbk; and John W. Hood, Beyond theWorld of Apu: The Films of Satyajit Ray (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2008), 457 pp.,Rs550, pbk.

These two publications review a number of the same films directed by Satyajit Ray.However, Ganguly and Hood differ in their approaches. Ganguly views Ray’s films asa contribution to world film aesthetics and employs critical techniques developed infilm studies, whereas Hood approaches his study of the films within Ray’s social andhistorical milieu.

In six chapters Ganguly studies six films, four of them—Charulata, Devi, Ghare Baireand Jalsaghar—set at the nexus of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when tensionsbetween the old and new orders were pronounced. Four of the films Ganguly haschosen address crises undergone by women, Mahanagar being an example of urbanmodernity’s demands. Two films focus on male dilemmas, Apur Sansar addressingmodern concerns. Ganguly assumes readers’ familiarity with Ray’s work. For example,in the chapter on Ghare Baire, the half-page plot summary occurs nine pages after thestart of the discussion. Occasionally the critical technique adopted may seemimpenetrable to those unfamiliar with the style. In the same chapter, Ganguly’s ‘laterinterpretations, usually offered on the hackneyed terms of the personal and/as thepolitical, women and/as the nation, and so on’ (p.35) is an example of what may beinaccessible to some.

Ganguly’s ten-page bibliography largely comprises secondary references on theories ofcinema and artistic reception. For enthusiasts of Ray’s work, these include manyinteresting critical works on him. Eleven of the fourteen contributions from Ray himself

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come from Our Films, Their Films. The omission of Ray’s My Years with Apu andShyam Benegal’s penetrating documentary on Ray, which includes extensive interviewfootage with Ray, is an oversight. This book, while acknowledging Ray’s place in worldcinema, may have benefited from looking at sources on Ray closer to home.

Over ten chapters, Hood thematically discusses Ray’s films. The first chapter deals withthe Apu trilogy, and the next with five early films. The following chapter deals with fourearly films in urban settings. One chapter is devoted to three films on Calcutta, andanother to three adaptations of Rabindranath Tagore’s writings. Two chapters are onfilms set in the past, the first dealing with two films exploring the Hindu tradition, andthe second with two films interpreting historical events. Hood groups together fourchildren’s films, while Ray’s last three films about contemporary corruption or moraldecline complete the survey. Hood observes that these last films share ‘their excessiveverbosity and their lack of artistic depth’ (p.10), a comment with which many mightdisagree.

Hood names Ghare Baire as Ray’s opus 26, including Sadgati, made for television in hisview. Yet, he does not include two earlier television films, Two and Pikoo. ShyamBenegal’s name appears in three footnotes, but not his documentary on Ray. Otherdocumentaries such as two that received the Indian award of the President’s GoldMedal are also omitted. This is surprising given that one of these was Ray’s tribute toTagore. Hood may have gained insight into Ray’s personality had he viewed thedocumentary made, shortly before his death, on his father. So much has been writtenabout Ray’s films that by not including a bibliography, Hood has lessened thesignificance of his work.

Ganguly’s academic study of Ray concentrates on six seminal films. In contrast, Hoodencompasses all of Ray’s film oeuvre and employs the more discursive style of a filmcritic. In combination, the two works cover most areas of interest to those who enjoyRay’s films.

Linda Hemphill

Melbourne� 2011 Linda Hemphill

Sumanta Banerjee, Logic in a Popular Form, Essays on Popular Religion in Bengal(London, New York, Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2010), ISBN 13-978-1-9064-9-755-2,viiþ 233 pp., npg., hdbk.

I first made my acquaintance with the work of Sumanta Banerjee by reading his TheParlour and the Street (1989), a study of nineteenth-century Bengali culture, in whichhe illuminates the often-overlooked popular culture of the lower castes as well as thatof the bhadralok elites. In this volume he continues these interests, focusing on the

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popular religion of the lower orders in particular ‘to reconstruct the mental world ofthe unheard populace and give voice to their usually unknown beliefs and customs’ (p.2), but never in isolation from that of the upper classes. This mental world is one inwhich lower orders use their beliefs and rituals to make sense of their experiences, copewith the vicissitudes of life and make sense of their existence.

In the ‘Introduction’ Banerjee contextualises the study with an outline of the history ofpopular sects andmovements in Bengal. He is particularly interested in the ways in whichsuch movements both persist and change—why, for example, does the worship ofShitala, the smallpox goddess, persist long after the elimination of the disease? Banerjeethen outlines some interesting features of popular religion: how it draws on prehistoricanimistic beliefs which predate the major religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam) withwhich they often become syncretised; the way these beliefs and customs changed overtime to suit particular circumstances and needs; the tensions between the traditional andthe modern; and the importance of the body as the site of the self, disease and death.

The many essays illustrate these themes. The first, ‘The Changing Role of Kali’, tracesher origins to prehistoric times when numerous goddesses were resorted to for aid andprotection. Over time these coalesced into one figure that, however, was appropriatedin different ways at different times to serve other needs. New ‘Kalis’ have emerged inliterature and iconography to satisfy sectional needs and inspire her devotees. In thelast essay, ‘The Ambiguities of Bharat Mata’, Banerjee returns to the theme ofthe goddess and discusses the way in which the bhadralok in turn adopted a form of thegoddess as Bharat Mata, identified with the land and the nation, to inspire theindependence movement and relieve this land/goddess from foreign oppression.

The second essay, ‘The ‘‘Pir’’ and the ‘‘Narayana’’’, treats the ‘syncretisticaccommodation in Bengali ritual and folklore’ (p.61), and shows how an animistictradition accommodates elements from both Hindu and Muslim beliefs, and is resortedto by both Hindu and Muslim folk. That such syncretism is frowned up on by the elitesof each religion shows the gap between the ‘great’ and ‘little’ traditions.

The third essay, ‘Radha and Krishna in a Colonial Metropolis’, continues this theme.The Radha and Krishna here are not those of the ‘great’ tradition, but popular figuresgiven lives and characters based on those of the poor and the uneducated. The ‘texts’for this tradition are the songs, stories and plays of the popular kobi-walas and the likewho selected elements of trickery, eroticism and despair at the separation of the loversto entertain their audiences, reflecting the changing mores of the city as peasantscrowded in from the countryside.

The fourth essay ‘From Aulchand to Sati-Ma’, deals with the Karta-bhaja sect, whichinstitutionalised many of the practices of the lower orders with ideas borrowed fromcolonial discourse such as mercantile imagery, while giving equality to all who joined,

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including women, with one of them, Sati-Ma, becoming the guru of the sect. She andothers also emphasised the link between religion and disease and healings were afeature of their rituals.

Healing is also the subject of the fifth essay, ‘Bamakshyapa of Tarapeeth’, who was afamous Tantric ascetic who responded to the widespread anxieties about the body,disease and death, and was resorted to by hundreds seeking healing and release fromtheir many anxieties.

In the ‘Conclusion’, Banerjee briefly examines a number of theories to explain popularfolk religion. The volume presents a fascinating, sympathetic and compelling study ofBengali religion which will be of interest not only to students of Bengal but also tostudents of Indian religion.

Malcolm McLean

Dunedin� 2011 Malcolm McLean

Anjali Arondekar, For the Record: On Sexuality and the Colonial Archive in India(Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2009), xiiþ 215 pp., £53.20 hdbk, £14.24pbk.

For the Record is a critical reading of selected South Asian archives. Anjali Arondekardraws attention to the politics of representation in colonial sexuality discourses, aimingto link colonial history and contemporary discourses on the Indian Penal Code. Thearchives are seen as visible artefacts or narratives which have made the acceptednotions of sexuality visible; however, the visibility may speak for the silence behind theunderlying realities. Arondekar’s approach to the archives is based on an analyticalscrutiny of the historical records vis-a-vis their construction, representation andpreservation. Each chapter is based on selected colonial archives and discusses howsexuality is constructed in anthropology, law, literature and pornography from 1843 to1920. Arondekar conceives sexuality as the central subject of the colonial archives,which she discusses as the sites for interrogating colonised India. Critical review of themethodological construction, and accessibility to and engagement with the colonialarchives, the author claims, bring forth the subject of sexuality as important tounderstanding British colonialism in India.

The book is divided into four chapters with an introduction and a brief conclusion. The‘Introduction’ refers to an excerpt from Norman Chevers’s discussion of a case againsta native Indian who had been reported as committing an ‘unnatural crime with a cow’(p.10). Arondekar highlights the claims of normality against those of nativeperversity. She notes that ‘unnatural crime’ was prevalent and unable to be controlled.

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The archives point towards missing information which, to Arondekar, is apparently‘the most empty’ (p.12) colonial archive. Yet this absence itself is meaningful. The‘Introduction’ explains that the colonial archives are visible resources from which ourdesire to know the past originates. However, the lost or missing information in thearchives is an even bigger realm of knowledge.

The first chapter is based on the scandal of the lost Karachi report on male brothelsproduced by Richard Burton. The missing report has been mentioned in other archivalresources, and certain references are made to the valuable information it containedregarding native pederasty. This chapter draws attention to the conquest of Sindh andthat its official reports were fabricated against the unjust and brutal invasion.Arondekar dwells on the mythical existence of the report as suggestive of beingevidence of the colonisers’ participation in the activities of the native male brothels. Shepoints to Burton’s other works where his personal orientation was visible viadescriptions of a famous female Naatch (Nautch) as a site of displeasure, juxtaposedwith two male mystics dancing as an ‘unholy spectacle’.

The second chapter includes selected archives of legal and medical cases to make apoint about the Penal Code, Article 377. It is based on scrutiny of the case QueenEmpress v. Khairati, and relates as well other cases of sodomy and their punishment,imposed with insufficient evidence and sometimes assumed knowledge. Arondekarexplains how the body of the supposed sodomite was seen as forensic evidence infavour of the allegation, which obviously went against the defendant. In the case ofmedical recognition of sodomy as a habitual practice, the alleged sodomite wasconfirmed as a criminal. The paradox of the ‘unnatural crime’ is that it was the mostprevalent practice among the natives of colonial India, yet sodomy was established andrepresented as a crime in the Indian Penal Code.

The third chapter explores two Victorian advertisements for an ‘Indian-rubber dildo’which is described in the context of pornographic Victorian fantasy. Arondekarinvokes the same idea of the unnatural as the most available, represented here not as acrime but as access to pleasure. This chapter also reads the advertisements with aflavour of fabricating realities. The archival text is from a category of popular culturewhere representations were seen as distinct from the discourses of legal/official colonialtexts. Arondekar directs attention towards the representation of the Indian racethrough British industrialisation, particularly evident from the Indian products thatwere traded illegally. The chapter builds on the representation of sexuality in thecolonial imagination of sex. As Arondekar argues, ‘Like the Indian-rubber dildo, theIndian male, too, becomes an agent of access to pleasure, but never the subject orobject of it’ (p.108).

The fourth chapter draws on Rudyard Kipling’s works. It reads them as a colonialarchive which needs to be seen ‘not as plenitude but as remainder, not as all that was,but rather as all that is left behind’ (p.139). Arondekar sees Kipling’s literary style

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adopting new ways of narration, showing men in social engagements with undertonesof attachments.

The ‘Coda’ brings the discussion back to the Indian Penal Code, Article 377, againstwhich a petition was filed in 2001 as a violation of the right to equality, freedom andlife. Arondekar elaborates the intent of the petition as a reflection of colonialdiscourses, which legally codified the native practices of Indians according to foreignstandards of morality and perceptions. The petition was dismissed on account of nothaving an alleged victim who could file the case. The book concludes with an assertionon the value of understanding the ‘cognitive failure at the heart of both our past andpresent’ (p.179).

For the Record is an interesting resource for the study of colonial archives containingfresh ideas to approach the subject of sexuality in colonial India. I have enjoyed thenarrative journey in the past of colonial India, and I feel that the book will be useful forscholars of colonial history, sexuality, queer studies and law. It is particularlyimportant for all those interested in exploring archival methodologies and histories.

Nadia Siddiqui

University of Birmingham� 2011 Nadia Siddiqui

Anindita Ghosh (ed.), Behind the Veil: Resistance, Women and the Everyday in ColonialSouth Asia (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), xþ 233 pp., $US85.00, hdbk.

Small is really meaningful when it comes to women’s everyday lives in a socio-politicalmilieu which, however, seem to characterise women as passive and subjugated,particularly in South Asia. The collection of essays edited by Anindita Ghosh bringsforth the magic of the mundane, buried in the silences in archives as Spivak suggested.The objective of the book is achieved to a great extent without resorting to thetypically-impeding dualism between structure and agency. The theoretical orientationof the volume is maintained by the strands from subaltern history, recent developmentsin gender studies, and James Scott’s thesis on hidden transcripts. Following NitaKumar’s suggestion of transcending the Cartesian dualism between subject and object,the volume aims at recovering South Asian women as socio-historical actors (p.15).Here subject and object interact in a discursive framework, thereby ensuring a fusion ofepistemology and ontology. The book contributes significantly to the contemporarydiscourse on gender studies, subaltern studies and the sociology of everyday life.

The eight chapters, including the ‘Introduction’, present an encyclopaedic view ofthemes pertaining to the worldviews of women in the colonial context. Broadly, thebook engages us at three levels. First, it discusses the methodology of doing women’s

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history and the subaltern collectivities. Second, it endeavours a fresh conceptualisationof terms such as resistance, often loosely used in social science, by locating thediscourse in the experiential realm of women. Third, it paves the way for feministscholarship by restoring the agency of women in partnership with men, rather than inunilateral opposition. The connecting thread throughout the book is the idea ofwomen’s resistance, their negotiations at various stages in a patriarchal order, theirattempts at redefinition of the stereotypes, as well as reconciliation with male folk andsocial institutions.

The book analyses the contributions of women in the colonial discourse on a widerange of issues. These women, however, did not cause a spectacular politicalmobilisation or a social coup d’etat. Nevertheless, their humble, yet decisive, might isreflected in the texts, archival records, vernacular publications, records of courtproceedings, and visuals/photographs. Padma Anagol reads the case of Marathiwomen and postulates three essential elements in the act of resistance: intent, aim ofintent and impact. Building on this, Geraldine Forbes enumerates the indicators fromsocial stratification such as caste, class, family culture, region, education and politicalaffiliation as determining factors in the nature and scope of women’s resistance. Forbesemphasises the visual rather than the textual in decoding the active domain of women.If text becomes absolute, the narratives of women will be divorced from the richness ofexperience. And the stories emerging from visual as well as textual sources do notsuggest a scenario of all women at loggerheads with all men: instead, they offer a senseof strategic ambiguities, emotional matrix, and interpersonal relationships. In TanikaSarkar’s analysis of debates in the nineteenth-century public sphere on the issue ofwicked widows, there is an orthodox group of men pitched against liberal menrepresented by Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar. Nita Varma Prasad offers the sense ofeveryday life of women by underlining the interaction between women and the law.Legal reform ushered in litigious widows in partnership with the judiciary, showingthat the victimology approach does not adequately help us understand women intotality (p.161). Hence, it makes sense that convict women in the penal settlements inSouth Asia offer us a different kind of penology whereby women’s resistance isexpressed by their refusal to abide by penal servitude. On a different note, with atincture of spectacle, Siobhan Lambert-Hurley informs us of ‘subtle subversions’ led bythe last female nawab of Bhopal, Begum Sultan Jahan, who strategically combined theindigenous Unani tibb with modern bio-medicine to help the former flourish. Lastly,Ghosh’s reflection on the gentle challenges to the patriarchal mind in the song ofBashar in Bengal adds to the large cultural repertoire in North India.

In spite of its intellectually-stimulating inclination, the book falls a little short ofdeveloping an adequate theory of resistance independent of the dominant reasoningbased on scientific objectivity. Hence the combination of intent, aim and impactbecome the precondition for an act to be considered ‘resistance’. In the ultimateanalysis, subjectivity is sacrificed to the pursuit of objectivity. Parenthetically, it shouldbe mentioned that the chapter arrangement is not very logical. These criticisms

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notwithstanding, Anindita Ghosh’s volume is one of the cornerstones of contemporaryscholarship on South Asian feminism.

Dev N. Pathak

South Asian University, New Delhi� 2011 Dev N. Pathak

Jonathan Holslag, China and India: Prospects for Peace (Columbia: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 2010), xxþ 234 pp., hdbk, npg.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Sino-Indian relationship is one of thehottest topics in the area of comparative political economy. Most literature focuses onthe economic growth of China and India, the prediction of when India might overtakeChina, environmental issues, the tale of ‘Chindia’, and so forth. Holslag uses a verydifferent approach. His focus is on Sino-Indian strategic security relations and bilateraltrade. Despite the trade between the two countries and their mutual economic gain,they have not neutralised the military security dilemma relating to their border dispute.The book explains why China and India have been in conflict, and why they will notgrow without coming into conflict despite their economic interdependence.

Holslag begins his book with a brief overview of the Sino-Indian honeymoon period inthe 1950s when both ‘Mao and Nehru assumed that internal differences, whether basedon ideology, language, religion, or caste would fade away with the onset ofmodernization’, and that ‘economic development was imperative for social coherence,and consequently for sustaining the young statehood’ (p.12). Holslag then takes a deepdive into the consequences of the 1962 border conflicts after which both countries werepractically shut off from each other. Both overcame various hurdles, China because ofthe Great Leap Forward (1958–1961) and the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), bothintroduced by Mao, and India in 1965 when it fought a war against Pakistan.

In Chapter 2, Holslag reviews the major milestones of the Sino-Indian relationshipduring the 1960s and 1970s. In addition to the border conflicts, both countriesstruggled with internal issues and not much bilateral progress was made. The turningpoint for Sino-Indian relations came after Deng Xiaoping’s statement in 1982. Whilereceiving a delegation from the Indian Council of Social Sciences Research, Deng said:‘The problem between China and India is not a serious one. . . . The problem we have issimply about border. . .’ (p.45). Eight rounds of border negotiations were held betweenDecember 1981 and November 1987, after which trade agreements were reached.Nevertheless prior to Indian Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s visit to China in 1993,bilateral trade was negligible. After his visit, it increased almost ten-fold. Interestingly,Holslag points out a similarity between China’s and India’s import tariffs which couldbe a catalyst to bilateral trade. China and India lowered their import tariffs from an

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average of 45 percent and 60 percent in 1992 to less than 10 percent and 15 percentrespectively in 2006.

In Chapter 3, Holslag turns his focus onto Chinese and Indian export patterns andtheir financial situations. He discusses Indian’s trade deficit position and points outthat in 2007 the Indian trade deficit was $US92 billion whereas China enjoyed a tradesurplus of $US160 billion. Between 2003 and 2007, India’s GDP growth was mainlydue to debt-funded consumption. He also analyses the influence of Foreign DirectInvestment and export trade on labour markets, manufacturing sectors, financialmarkets, infrastructure and IT industries in both countries. He highlights the ways inwhich Sino-Indian bilateral trade will become complementary. But he also points outthat the current international energy import competition between the two countries,and future export competition when Indian’s exports become more labour-intensive,will transform complementary relations into direct competition.

Chapter 4 analyses the Sino-Indian relationship at various levels. The author stressesthat the optimism shared by the officials and political leaders of both countries doesnot necessarily extend to their peoples. He highlights scepticism in the Indianparliament: ‘Between May 2004 and May 2007, thirty-one parliamentary questionspertaining to China were submitted to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. . .andthe Ministry of Defense and External Affairs. With ten questions, the militaryevolution of China received nearly as much attention as archrival Pakistan’ (p.108).Within the Indian intelligentsia the level of trust is even lower. According to AlkaAcharya, head of East Asian studies at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University,‘there is an abysmal lack of confidence in each other. There is just no trust’ (p.110).The author notes that ‘the Chinese opinion leaders also show concern over India’smilitary muscle flexing in the neighborhood. And some aspects of the Cold WarStructure were continuing in the form of a subtle proxy war and that India wouldlike to take advantage of ideas which were coming from America’ (p.115). Regardlessof this distrust, the bilateral relationship has improved substantially since NarasimhaRao visited China in 1993.

In Chapter 5, ‘The Military Security Dilemma’, the author provides a good overview ofthe military situation of the two countries, from their infantry and navy to their nuclearweaponry. He also gives a detailed account of the border conflict, especially of thedisputed areas. The author begins the chapter by portraying great prospects for Sino-Indian military stability focusing, for example, on the signing of the ‘Agreement onConfidence-Building Measures in the Military Field Along the Line of Actual Controlin the China-India Border Areas’ in 1996, and the Indian Minister of Defence GeorgeFernandes’ seven-day visit to Beijing in 2003 (the list is fairly long). But in the latterpart of the chapter, he paints a gloomier picture of the current and future Sino-Indianmilitary relationship. He discusses numerous cases of conflict, for instance the Indiannavy’s double digit budget increases to monitor the Indian Ocean and the Indian’sAgni-III nuclear technology which is not aimed at Pakistan but beyond. With this

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conflicting picture, the author concludes that ‘[i]n their order of security challenges,China and India rank each other far below domestic peril and Taiwan and Pakistan.This means that they take each other into account in their arms-developmentprograms, but it is not a matter of extreme responsiveness in which every slightmovement of one player is directly followed by an adjustment by the other’ (p.140).

In conclusion, Jonathan Holslag gives a great historical analysis of the Sino-Indianpolitical economy and security—a theme largely absent in existing writings. This bookshould serve as an excellent reference for anyone interested in the contemporary Sino-Indian relationship.

Annie K.Y. Chan

Monash University� 2011 Annie K.Y. Chan

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