HISTORY IN THE VERNACULAR

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History in the
Vernacular

edited by
Raziuddin Aquil &
Partha Chatterjee
Published by
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In memory of
PAPIYA GHOSH
 Contents

Preface
Notes on Contributors

1. Introduction: History in the Vernacular

PARTHA CHATTERJEE
2. History and Politics in the Vernacular: Reflections on Medieval
and Early Modern South India
VELCHERU NARAYANA RAO
AND SANJAY SUBRAHMANYAM

3. Eighteenth-Century Passages to a History of Mysore

JANAKI NAIR
4. e King of Controversy: History and Nation-Making in Late
Colonial India
KUMKUM CHATTERJEE
5. Gait’s Way: Writing History in Early-Twentieth-Century Assam
ARUPJYOTI SAIKIA
6. Restructuring the Past in Early-Twentieth-Century Assam:
Historiography and Surya Kumar Bhuyan
SUDESHNA PURKAYASTHA
7. System and History in Rajwade’s Grammar for the Dnyaneswari
MILIND WAKANKAR
8. Captives of Enchantment? Gender, Genre, and Transmemoration
INDRANI CHATTERJEE
9. Incredible Stories in the Time of Credible Histories: Colonial
Assam and Translations of Vernacular Geographies
 BODHISATTVA KAR
10. e Study of Islam and Indian History at the Darul Musannefin,
Azamgarh
RAZIUDDIN AQUIL
11. ‘Searching for Old Histories’: Social Movements and the Project of
Writing History in Twentieth-Century Kerala
SANAL MOHAN
12. History in Poetry: Nabinchandra Sen’s Palashir Yuddha(Battle of
Palashi) (1875) and the Question of Truth
ROSINKA CHAUDHURI
13. Autobiography as a Way of Writing History: Personal Narratives
from Kerala and the Inhabitation of Modernity
UDAYA KUMAR
14. A Nineteenth-Century Romance of Counterfactual Time
PRADIP KUMAR DATTA
 Preface

W
e at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
(CSSSC), have been trying for some time to take stock of the
place of history—both as an academic discipline and as a
mode of public representation of the past—in contemporary
India. An earlier volume on this theme, based on presentations at a
conference held in 1999, was edited by Partha Chatterjee and Anjan
Ghosh and published under the title History and the Present (Delhi:
Permanent Black, 2002). e present volume continues that project, this
time by specifically exploring the status of vernacular histories in
relation to academic histories written, almost exclusively in the English
language, by professional historians of India.
Most of the essays in this volume were discussed at a conference held
at the CSSSC in December 2004. We are immensely grateful to the Ford
Foundation, which provided financial support for the conference and
for preparing the manuscript of this volume under their grant to the
CSSSC project on 'Writing New Cultural Histories'. e conference is
still remembered for the astonishing range and intensity ofinformed
discussion on so many regions, periods, and genres of history writing in
India. We were fortunate to have had as participants, among others,
Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Sibaji Bandyopadhyay, Kunal Chakrabarti,
Avinash Kumar, Shail Mayaram, Gyanendra Pandey, Rajat Kanta Ray,
Tapan Raychaudhuri, Padmanabh Samarendra, Samita Sen, Jayanta
Sengupta, Lakshmi Subramanian, and A.R. Venkatachalapathy. Among
our CSSSC colleagues, we are especially grateful to Gautam Bha- dra,
Anjan Ghosh, and Tapati Guha-akurta for their help in putting
together this volume. Our special thanks also to Prabir Basu of the
CSSSC and Susanta Ghosh of the ICSSR Eastern Regional Centre for
providing logistical support.
As we were putting together this volume, news arrived in December
2006 of the brutal murder in Patna of Papiya Ghosh, historian, social
analyst, and dedicated teacher. Several of the contributors to this
volume had been associated with her work in various capacities, and
some indeed were her close friends. Given Papiya's lifelong
commitment to the encouragement of historical scholarship in
institutions far removed from the centres of metropolitan privilege, we
dedicate this volume to her memory.
Kolkata RAZIUDDIN AQUIL
1 January 2008 PARTHA CHATTERJEE
 Notes on Contributors

RAZIUDDIN AQUIL is Fellow in History at the Centre for Studies in

Social Sciences, Calcutta. He is the author of Sufism, Culture, and
Politics: Afghans and Islam in Medieval North India (2007). He is
completing another book manuscript entitled 'In the Name of Allah:
Islam in Indian History and Society'.
INDRANI CHATTERJEE is Associate Professor of History at Rutgers
University, New Brunswick. Her research interests include histories of
slavery, domesticity, and vernacular narratives. Besides publishing
journal articles and chapters in volumes on these themes, she is the
author of Gender, Slavery and Law in Colonial India (1999), editor of
Unfamiliar Relations: Family and History in South Asia (2004), and co-
editor (with Richard M. Eaton) of Slavery and South Asian History
(2006).
KUMKUM CHATTERJEE is Associate Professor ofHistory at
Pennsylvania State University. Her publications include Merchants,
Politics and Society in Early Modern India: Bihar 1733—1820 (1996),
and Europe Observed: e Reversed Gaze in Early Modern Encounters,
edited with Clement Hawes (forthcoming). She has recently completed
work on another book manuscript entitled 'e Cultures of History in
Early Modern Bengal: Persianisation and Mughal Culture in 17th and
18 th Century Bengal'.
PARTHA CHATTERJEE is Professor of Political Science at the Centre
for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, and Professor ofAnthropology
at Columbia University, New York. Among his published books are
Nationalist ought and the Colonial World (1986), e Nation and Its
Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (1993), and A Princely
Impostor? e Kumar ofBhawal and the Secret History oflndian
Nationalism (2002).
ROSINKA CHAUDHURI is Fellow in Cultural Studies at the Centre for
Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. She was Charles Wallace Visiting
Fellow at the Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge University, in
2005. She has published Gentlemen Poets in Colonial Bengal: Emergent
Nationalism and the Orientalist Project (2002), Derozio, Poet of India: A
Definitive Edition (2008), and many journal articles.
PRADIP KUMAR DATTA has published numerous articles on
literature, modern Indian history, and politics. He has authored Carving
Blocs (1999), co-authored Khaki Shorts, Saffron Flags (1993), and edited
a volume of essays, Rabindranath Tagore's 'e Home and the World'
(2002). His main interests lie in the fields of identity formation and
historiography. He teaches in the Department of Political Science at the
University of Delhi and is currently Senior Fellow in History at the
Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta.
BODHISATTVA KAR is Fellow in History at the Centre for Studies in
Social Sciences, Calcutta. He completed his doctoral dissertation,
'Framing Assam: Plantation Capital, Metropolitan Knowledge and a
Regime of Identities, 1790s-1930s', at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New
Delhi.
UDAYA KUMAR was Professor ofCultural Studies at the Centre for
Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, and is currently Professor of
English at the University of Delhi. He has earlier taught at the
universities of Pune and Lausanne. He is the author of Joycean
Labyrinth: Repetition, TimeandTradition in ' Ulysses' (1991) and articles
on modern Malayalam literature and literary theory. His current
research interests include autobiography, theories of subjectivity, and
the formation of a literary public sphere in modern Kerala. He is
completing a book on idioms of self-articulation in modern Malayalam
writing, entitled 'Styles of the Self: e Subject and the Act of Self-
articulation in Modern Malayalam Writing'.
SANAL MOHAN is Senior Lecturer in Ethnography at the School of
Social Sciences, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala. He was
formerly Charles Wallace Fellow in History at SOAS, University
ofLondon; Fellow in History at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences,
Calcutta; and Research Associate, Anthropology Programme, Massey
University, New Zealand. He is finishing a book on a Dalit Christian
movement in Kerala.
JANAKI NAIR is Professor of History at the Centre for Studies in Social
Sciences, Calcutta. She has most recently published e Promise ohe
Metropolis: Bangalore's Twentieth Century (2005) and is currently
completing a book of essays on Mysore's modern social and cultural
history.
SUDESHNA PURKAYASTHA is Senior Lecturer in History at
Rabindra Sadan Girls' College, Karimganj, under Assam University. She
is the author of Indigenous Industries of Assam, 1870—1925 (2006). Her
research interests include regional historiography, and she is currently
doing research on the reworking of indigenous sources in the modern
historiography of Assam.
VELCHERU NARAYANA RAO is Krishnadevaraya Professor ofSouth
Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison and the author of a number of books, including collaborative
works with David Shulman and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, such as
Textures of Time: Writing History in South India 1600—1800 (2001), and
Symbols of Substance: Court and State in Nayaka Period Tamilnadu
(1992).
ARUPJYOTI SAIKIA is Assistant Professor of History in the
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of
Technology, Guwahati. He received his PhD from the University of
Delhi for his thesis on the mid-twentieth-century peasant society of
Assam. His research interests include the social history of colonial
Assam. He has published Jungles, Reserves, Wildlife: A History of Forests
in Assam (2005), and edited a volume of the first Assamese literary
journal, Orunodoi, originally published in 1855-68 by the American
Baptist Missionaries (2002).
SANJAY SUBRAHMANYAM is Professor and Doshi Chair oflndian
History at the University of California at Los Angeles and Director of
UCLA's Center for India and South Asia. Earlier, he taught at Delhi,
Paris, and Oxford. He is author of a number of books, including (with
Muzaffar Alam) Indo-Persian Travels in the Age ofDiscoveries, 1400—
1800 (2006) and (with Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman)
Textures of Time: Writing History in South India 1600—1800 (2001).
MILIND WAKANKAR teaches in the Department of English at Stony
Brook University. He has finished writing a book on the subaltern
traditions of 'having found God' implicit in the work of Kabir, Tukaram,
and Dnyaneswara, and is now beginning work on a history of Marathi
dalit thought entitled 'Marx aer Dnyaneswara'.
 1

Introduction
History in the Vernacular

PARTHA CHATTERJEE

When was Vernacular History?

L
et us begin with an old and somewhat banal question and see if
we have any new answers: it may enable us to situate the subject
of vernacular histories in a new perspective. e question is: was
there history writing in India before the British colonial
intervention?
e old answer to this question, carried over from British colonial
times, is 'no'. Other than the much cited but little read Rajatarangini—
Kalhana's twelh-century chronicle of Kashmir kings—there is no text
in Sanskrit that resembles what we take to be a historical narrative.
What is called itihasa, of which the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are
the great texts, is largely indistinguishable from mythology because,
even if it contains a kernel of narratives about historical events and
characters, the conventions of reading those texts do not allow us to tell
the historical from the mythological. Indeed, in the Sanskrit literary
tradition, the itihasa is virtually indistinguishable from the purana
which is the usual name given to the large body of mythological
literature. e other genre for recording the past in Sanskrit is the
vamsavali, which is the collective name for genealogical chronicles of
ruling dynasties and families of distinction. Closely related to the
vamsavali is another genre called caritra, which consists of hagio-
graphical life histories of kings or saintly religious figures. ese, even
when they speak of relatively recent periods, cross over
unselfconsciously between mythic and historical time, make no appeal
to rules of evidence or procedures of verification of sources, do not care
to distinguish between the legendary and the historical, and do not feel
bound by the requirements of rational causation. ese genres of
narrating the past did percolate, over the past thousand years or so, into
the various regional languages of India. But, unlike the genres of Greek,
Latin, and Chinese literature, they did not offer a 'classical' tradition of
what could be properly called historiography.
e methods of proper historical writing came to India, according to
this old answer to the question, in the form of the court chronicles of
the Islamic rulers of the country. From the days of the Delhi Sultanate,
these were written in Persian and followed the conventions of history
writing established in the Turko-Afghan and Iranian political
traditions. e writing practices of their authors, acknowledging a
common classical source in the Greek tradition and sharing a more
recent history of political encounters during the Crusades, were much
closer to European conventions of history writing. But these Persian
histories of India, even though they comprised the overwhelming part
of 'the history of India as told by its own historians', were—or so it was
argued—a foreign implant, made necessary by the political technologies
of foreign conquerors and framed by the ethical principles of an
Islamic, i.e. 'foreign', political tradition. ese Persian chronicles
remained confined to the military and administrative activities of
sultans and their officials, and did not strike roots in the indigenous,
local, and vernacular traditions of retelling the past.
Does more recent scholarship suggest any new answers to this old
question? First, the characterization of Indo-Persian historiography as
'foreign' and disconnected with later practices of history writing in the
regional languages of India has been thoroughly criticized and rejected.
Persian histories of India did undoubtedly derive their con-ventions
from Arabic, Persian, and Turkish histories, and thus brought into India
many historiographical practices hitherto unknown in the country. But,
in writing their Indian histories, Indo-Persian chroniclers developed
their own body of practices, giving birth to a tradition of their own. A
major consideration here, as Muzaffar Alam has argued, was the
twofold narratological requirement of upholding the normative
authority of Islamic principles of government while, at the same time,
theorizing a ruling order in which the bulk of the subjects of the sultan
were non-Muslim. is necessarily meant that 'theory, orthodoxy and
fundamentalist positions' had to be questioned, and political doctrines
inherited from the dogmatic traditions of Islam modified.1 e result
was a body of historical writing and scholarship which, though written
in Persian, was distinctly Indian in its practices and sensibilities. It had
its own canonical texts that, by the seventeenth century, were part of the
required reading of all princes, bureaucrats, and persons of refined
courtly culture in northern as well as southern India.
C.A. Bayly has located the practices of Indo-Muslim history writing
in the eighteenth century within what he calls 'an Indian ecumene',
characterized by a distinct information order and an indigenous public
sphere. He identifies a series of people, from official letter-writers and
spies to scholar-bureaucrats, who participated in this information order
and processed the material that went into the production of numerous
Indo-Persian histories written in the eighteenth century. Bayly also
notes the emergence of certain distinctly 'modern' concerns in these
histories, which appear to come from entirely indigenous sources and
not from the promptings of a colonial education. us, a historian like
Ali Ibrahim Khan, who wrote about political events between 1757 and
1780, was, Bayly says, 'an unacknowledged founder of a consciously
modern Indian history'.2 Bayly's work has been influential in
demolishing prejudices against the existence of history in pre-colonial
India. However, notions such as 'ecumene' and 'information order' lack
theoretical clarity and analytic power, while the attribution of a
Habermasian public sphere to the literary world of eighteenth-century
northern India is too quick. Given the absence of meaningful
conceptual distinctions, Bayly's slide from the pre-colonial to the era of
colonial modernity in the nineteenth century seems far too smooth and
unproblematic. e elision is fatal for our understanding of the domain
of the vernacular under conditions of colonial and post- colonial
modernity.
Pursuing the question of the emergence of new literary forms in
India in the period of early modernity, V. Narayana Rao, David Shul-
man, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam have also explored the field of history
writing.3 ey question the facile but common assumption that there
was no history writing in India before the colonial encounter. ey
suggest that by employing more careful and appropriate techniques of
reading, we would be able to identify distinctly historical narratives—
factual, bound by secular causal explanations, informed by an
awareness of the credibility of sources, and largely having to do with the
life of the state. Such narratives, they argue, are embedded within non-
historical literary genres, such as poems, ballads, and works within the
larger itihasa-purana tradition, but are marked by discursive signs that
cause them to be recognized as historical narratives by the community
of readers or listeners. ey also argue that, from the sixteenth century
in southern India, a distinct group of literati, whom they broadly label
the karanam, produced these distinctly new historical narratives in the
languages of southern India as well as in Sanskrit and Persian. If history
is to be identified as a particularly receptive vehicle of the modern, then
the Rao—Shulman—Subrahmanyam argument is that it had already
appeared, at least quite certainly in the southern Indian languages, well
before British rule was established.
Elsewhere, in northern India, the 'men of the pen', known as mun-
shis, produced (as noted by Bayly as well) a form of history that, even
when written in Persian, was decidedly vernacular rather than classical
in style and sensibility, and which would trickle later in the nineteenth
century into various written forms of Hindustani, including Rajas-
thani. Further, in the Maratha territories of western India, a distinct
genre called the bakhar emerged, which recorded the history of a
lineage, or of a family of property or political distinction, or of a
significant event. Extensively described and analysed by Prachi Desh-
pande, these Marathi prose texts are indubitably historical in their
aspirations to factuality, secular causation, and political rationality.4
Rao—Shulman—Subrahmanyam close their book with the remarkable
example of the Dupati kaifiyatu, a Telugu text by an anonymous
karanam author of the early nineteenth century. It is a text that appears
to pass every test of modern historical writing, and yet it was produced
within a tradition outside the disciplinary grid of colonial education.

Historical Narrative in Eastern India

e common assumption is that the first historical narratives in Bengali
were produced under the auspices of Fort William College in the first
decade of the nineteenth century. e discursive antecedents of these
prose narratives have not yet been adequately investigated. It is
noteworthy that the first—Rajabali by Mrityunjay Vidyalankar— has
the form of a vamsavali, while the other two, by Ramram Basu and
Rajiblochan Mukhopadhyay, are called caritra. But the influence of
Persian historiography on these texts has not been studied closely. It is
improbable that these three texts were suddenly conjured out of thin air
at the beckoning of the missionary William Carey, which is what the
standard histories of Bengali literature would have us believe.
If we follow the Rao—Shulman—Subrahmanyam hypothesis, we do
not find any historical narrative embedded within the most well-
known literary work in Bengali of the early eighteenth century—the
Annadamangal by Bharatchandra Ray.5 Bharatchandra would have
perfectly fitted their description of the karanam: he was a revenue
official rising to the position of court poet to the Brahmin zamindar of
Nadia—a man who was to play a significant role in the power politics of
Bengal in the period leading up to the battle of Palashi. Annadamangal
describes the rise to fortune of Bhabananda Majumdar, the founder of
the Nadia dynasty, by virtue of the benevolence showered on him by the
goddess Annapurna. ere are passages in the poem dealing with real
historical events, such as the battle between the Mughal general Man
Singh and the rebel zamindar Pratapaditya of Jessore, in which
Bhabananda ingratiates himself with Man Singh by supplying his troops
—bogged down by the Bengal monsoon—with food and provisions.
Man Singh takes Bhabananda to Delhi to seek an audience with the
emperor Jahangir and plead for a zamindari. Jahangir launches into a
stock diatribe against infidel Brahmins who have no religion and who
try to scare people by talking about the miraculous powers of their false
gods and goddesses. at night, the goddess Annapurna lets loose her
army of demons and ghosts in the city of Delhi. e inhabitants are
terrified, and the emperor himself is driven mad with fright. Subdued at
last, Jahangir bows before the goddess, seeks her forgiveness, and
bestows the zamindari of Nadia on Bhabananda.
It is worth investigating if the notion of power in the so-called man-
gal kavya literature of Bengal reveals a certain amoral realism, since the
gods and goddesses themselves seem to respond most favourably to
flattery and calculations of self-interest. Yet there is little of the
historical narrative suggested by the Rao—Shulman—Subrahmanyam
hypothesis in the last great mangal kavya of Bengal.
ere are however other historical narratives from the eighteenth
century worth considering, which are far less acclaimed for their
literary merit. e best known is the Maharashta puran by Gangaram
(the 1751 manuscript preserved in the Calcutta University collections
apparently misspells it Maharashtra).6 Gangaram too fits the category
of karanam since he appears to have been a Kayastha of Kishoreganj
who worked as an officer in an East Bengal zamindari and, having been
sent to Murshidabad on official business, became caught up in the
tumultuous political events of Bengal in the 1740s. e text is in verse
but describes in graphic and realistic detail the Maratha raids on Bengal
led by Bhaskar Pant (known in Bengal as Bhaskar Pandit), and the
ultimate defeat of the Maratha forces at the hands of Ali Vardi Khan.
Rao—Shulman—Subrahmanyam note this text as a remarkable piece of
factual history placed within an ostensibly puranic frame, but in which
human actions turn out to be entirely autonomous, independent of that
frame.7 e dominant rhetorical mode is irony: there are no heroes in
the story and the moral order is not restored at the end.
 It has sometimes been said that the Maharashta puran is an
exceptional text in eighteenth-century Bengal. But Ahmed Sharif, in his
magisterial history of Bengali literature, mentions several other texts of
this kind: the Pathan prasamsa (1767) and Jorwarsimha prasasti (date
unknown) by Nawazish Khan, the famous author of Gulebaka- wali; the
De Barros prasasti (probably 1770s) by Etim Kasem; all the way down to
a verse account of the Kuki raids on Feni (Noakhali) in 1869.8 However,
this is little more than a somewhat detailed catalogue of manuscripts—
it awaits proper analysis. at leads us to the conclusion that the Rao—
Shulman—Subrahmanyam hypothesis about pre- colonial historical
narrative in the Indian vernaculars cannot be taken as a general
presumption: its applicability must be tested for each language region.
However, the question of traditions of history writing in eastern India
is complicated by the presence of a distinctly north-eastern genre called
the buranji. e tradition is little discussed in mainstream Indian
historiography. Yet it is present not only in Assam, where it has become
a central source for the writing of the history of pre-colonial Assam, but
also represents a significant body of written chronicles of ruling houses
in the supposedly peripheral regions of Koch Bihar, Cachar, Sylhet,
Manipur, and Tripura. Yasmin Saikia has shown the difficulties in
claiming any kind of unmediated access to the so-called Tai-Ahom
buranji tradition without dealing with the interventions of British
colonial officials and Assamese nationalist historians of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries.9 But the claim is that the buranji chronicles
began to be recorded from the thirteenth century in the Tai- Ahom
language as the history of Ahom rulers who came from Yunnan and
Upper Burma. Although, as Saikia points out, the earliest extant buranji
manuscripts come only from the late seventeenth century and seem to
be the work of Brahmin writers, there is nevertheless a strong case to be
made that this eastern Indian historiographical genre should be
identified as a distinct pre-colonial tradition, different from the
Sanskritic vamsavali as well as the Indo-Persian chronicle traditions.
is is a topic to which we will return shortly.
 e Early Modern and the Colonial Modern
To better deal with the problem of pre-colonial vernacular historical
traditions and what happens to them under conditions of modernity, it
is useful to make a conceptual distinction between the early modern
and the colonial modern in South Asia. e early modern is not
necessarily a 'period' with specific dates marking its beginning and end.
It is preferable to use the term to characterize elements of thought or
practice that have been identified as belonging to early modern
historical formations in other regions of the world, thus providing, at
least potentially, a comparative dimension with other modern histories.
ese early modern elements could appear in the South Asian historical
evidence at any time from the fieenth century to the present
(assuming that the historical trajectory of postcolonial modernity is still
incomplete). ey may be found in diverse regions of South Asia, as
innovative elements within traditional literary and cultural disciplines
that question previously held beliefs and practices, or that recognize
their passing because of the unstoppable sway of the new, or that
represent novel ways of comprehending or coping with the unfamiliar.
ey may arise at different social strata—among elite groups or the
literati, or among popular classes such as artisans and peasants.
e crucial historical point would be to distinguish such elements of
the early modern from the recognizable components of the colonial
modern. e latter might be dated from roughly the 1830s, achieving its
fully developed form in the historical period of the British Raj in the
second half of the nineteenth century. It is in this period that the Indian
economy acquires the form of a characteristically colonial economy.
Politically, the British power is established as paramount all over the
subcontinent—a violent process of warfare, conquest, suppression of
rebellions, and unequal treaties—with associated consequences in terms
of the symbols and practices of sovereignty and law, which bring about
a profound transformation in the character of government and politics.
Intellectually, the institutions of colonial education spread as the
breeding ground of new cultural styles and movements that create the
Indian middle classes and shape an entire range of nationalist responses
to colonial rule. e colonial modern has a recognized shape as a
formation and a period in South Asian history. It also exerts the full
weight of its dominance over all discussions of South Asian modernity
aer the middle of the nineteenth century.
V. Narayana Rao and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, in their essay in this
volume, address one such early modern theme and its transformation
under colonial and postcolonial modernity. e theme is that of nīti, as
distinct from dharma. Rao and Subrahmanyam trace the classical
antecedents of the nīti tradition in Sanskrit texts such as the Arthasastra
or even the celebrated Tamil Kural of Valluvar. But from around the
fieenth century, they argue, there is a distinct genre of nīti texts in
Telugu that are specifically devoted to statecra or political pragmatics.
ese texts do talk of right and wrong, but the guiding objective is
worldly success, and there is no homage paid to dharma at all. e key
point that Rao and Subrahmanyam make is that this is a literary
tradition that is vernacular rather than classical. It is concerned with the
life of the state and is thoroughly secular in its conception of pragmatic
reason. All of these, one would argue, are the conditions of modern
historiography, but they can be shown to have appeared, at least in
southern India, between the fieenth and the eighteenth centuries. ey
also show how, with the advent of colonial education in the nineteenth
century, nīti texts become confused with 'moral instruction' and are
ultimately replaced. It could also be argued that a major thrust of
nationalist political thinking from the late nineteenth century was to
reject nīti as a somewhat ignoble and Machiavellian aspect of the Indian
past and to install dharma as the true foundation of political ethics.
However, even if we accept the distinction between the early modern
and the colonial modern, that would still leave the earlier period of
British rule, from the middle of the eighteenth century to the 1820s or
so, open to reinterpretation. is reinterpretation was partially achieved
by revisionist histories in the now well-known debates of the 1980s and
1990s about India in the eighteenth century. ese histories contested
the old idea of the eighteenth century being a century of decline.10 But
there is now a further possibility of exploring this period for historical
possibilities of transition not teleologically predeter-mined by the
ascendancy of the colonial modern. is could mean early modern
elements that were simply erased and lost forever. But, more
interestingly, it could mean early modern tendencies that, despite being
suppressed or devalued by the rise of the colonial modern, continued to
live a peripheral or subterranean life in the domain of the vernacular.
However, there is no point in gesturing towards such elements of the
vernacular early modern in the abstract: to assess the usefulness of the
concept, we need to identify and evaluate specific cases.

Where is Vernacular History?

In looking for its difference with the colonial modern, there are many
shapes and forms in which we can discover the vernacular. e space of
the colonial modern is where the new disciplinary practices of modern
historiography emerge in South Asia. is space is characterized by
institutions such as the university and the archive, publication media
such as the professional historical journal and the academic
monograph, writing conventions such as the footnote and the
bibliography. It is the space where rational causation and scientific
methodology are the dominant sentiments. Its authority is derived
almost entirely from Western practices, communicated through
education in the English language. Indeed, it would seem that an
obvious index of the colonial modern in South Asia is that it is
produced in the English language, whereas vernacular histories are
produced in the vernacular. But that would be an inaccurate conclusion.
e missionary John Marshman, associated for most of his life with
the spread ofvernacular education and journalism in Bengal, predicted
with great prescience in 1853: 'English will, doubtless in the course of
time, become the classical language of Bengal, and every native of
respectability will endeavour to give a knowledge of it to his children;
but at the same time, the vernacular language of Bengal . . . and of the
other provinces throughout India, will continue to be used and to be
cultivated to an increasing degree.'11 As modern Western-style
education established its dominance in all regions of South Asia over
institutions of formal education and became a necessary precondition
for entry into the literate professions, English indeed took the place of
the classical literary language. In a curious twist to the idea of the
vernacular, all Indian languages—including hitherto 'classical'
languages such as Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian—were turned, in
relation to English, into vernaculars. English became the dominant
language of the modern, reducing the worlds inhabited by all Indian
languages into vernacular non-modernity.
But the story of South Asian modernity did not end there. As
Marshman already saw in the middle of the nineteenth century, the
vernaculars had begun to be 'cultivated'. Forms and styles made fami-
liar by colonial modernity began to enter the domain of the verna-
culars, setting new standards and giving new content to the idea of the
'modern'. at which had been practised only in the English language
now began to be emulated in the Indian languages. Modern history
writing in English, promoted through the nineteenth century by
colonial institutions and the new learned societies, had its impact on
new historical writing in the modern Indian languages too. It
proliferated most widely in textbook histories for students—books in
Indian languages that were oen modelled on English textbooks. But in
several Indian languages there also emerged a significant historical
literature based on original research that scrupulously followed the
modern academic practices of Western historiography. e aspiration
in these was nothing less than to produce in an Indian language a
modern historiography that could match the best global standards of
historical scholarship. If these writings were to be translated into a
European language, they would, in all probability, reveal few traces of
their vernacular origins. Instead of marking its difference from the
authorized forms of colonial or postcolonial modernity, this body of
writing wanted fully to participate in the formation of such modernity.
ough written in a vernacular, this is not vernacular history.
But this new order of modern conventions in the vernacular did not
entirely replace the older practices. ere also emerged a plethora of
historical writings that might be called a mixture or hybrid. But calling
them that does not begin to describe the variety of practices that came
to be followed. What were the elements from pre-modern discursive
formations that continued to thrive in the new? What of that ill defined,
barely recognized tendency that we have called the early modern? Do
the pre-modern and the early modern coexist within a new discursive
formation with the new elements engendered by the colonial modern?
Are there hierarchies within that new formation, with some practices
gaining greater authority than others? Or are there multiple discursive
formations that are produced within the field of the vernacular,
occupying distinct institutional spaces? ese are some of the questions
that need to be addressed today.
Janaki Nair, in her essay in this volume, looks at a range of vernacular
histories produced in Mysore in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries and compares them to the academic histories of Mysore
written in the twentieth century. e vernacular histories are various—
some written in the direct, matter-of-fact colloquial tradition of the
bakhar, others in the more rhetorically rich and sophisticated Persian
tradition, and one that is said to be written as a personal memoir by
Tipu Sultan himself (although the literary poverty of its language has
led some recent historians to doubt that it could have been composed
by such a distinguished monarch). Nair shows the varied claims to
historicity made by these texts—some claiming to be first-person
eyewitness accounts, others making moral or political judgements, still
others observing historical causality only at the immediate secular level
of political interests, while yet others seeing more transcendental moral
causes at work in the outcomes of battles and the rise and fall of
dynasties. Nair also notes that, even though colonial education was
introduced in the nineteenth century, Kannada histories continued to
be produced on the genealogical model of the vamsavali and the cari-
tra. e first major history of Mysore in English was, of course, by Mark
Wilks in the early nineteenth century. Wilks's history was 'colonial' not
only in following European conventions of writing on the basis of an
identifiable archive and the evaluation of sources, but also in its
overwhelming political urge to denigrate the regime of Hai- dar and
Tipu and establish the legitimacy of British suzerainty over Mysore. But
Wilks was also the first to turn the existing vernacular histories, or at
least the ones that he had access to, into 'sources' for the writing of what
he considered to be proper history. is is a relation between the
vernacular and academic modes of history writing that would become a
permanent feature until our time. e relation is well described in
Nair's discussion of Hayavadana Rao's modern nationalist history of
Mysore, which evaluated and used all the earlier vernacular histories as
'sources'. Vernacular histories, the argument would go, may be
distorted, false and wrong-headed, but, when read deploying the
appropriate methods, they can all be turned into useful sources for the
writing of academic history.
How did this structure emerge? Let us first consider the relations that
developed between the new vernacular formation and the various
'classical' traditions. One of the favourite modes of energizing
vernacular histories and giving them a deep content reaching back to an
ancient past, was to appropriate the available 'classical' resources
relevant for each region of South Asia. ese resources were oen
drawn from the itihasa-purana traditions, especially the RRamayana
and the Mahabha- rata, in which particular places, peoples, and their
rulers may have been mentioned. But the claims to modernity of the
new vernacular histories also required them to come to grips with the
new scientific methods that were coming into dominance in the
academic histories of India written in English. ese methods required
an evaluation of the literary evidence of the Sanskrit traditions in the
light of archaeo-logical and numismatic researches. e discovery,
reading, dating, and compilation of inscriptions on stone and metal
from every part of South Asia became a major preoccupation of
academic historical re-search in the nineteenth century. ese
frequently posed a challenge to literary narratives of the past inherited
through the itihasa-purana or the vamsavali traditions. Vernacular
histories, inasmuch as they participated in the discourses of modern
knowledge, could hardly avoid being dragged into these debates. e
essays by Indrani Chatterjee, Kumkum Chatterjee, Arupjyoti Saikia,
and Sudeshna Purkayastha in this volume describe some of these
struggles to recover for vernacular histories an ancient tradition of
cultural memory while, at the same time, staying within the bounds set
by the practices of rational scientific knowledge.
It was not only the itihasa and vamsavali traditions that served as a
resource. ere were also the vast resources of Indo-Persian
historiography. ere is evidence that, even before the emergence of
modern histories, genealogical traditions in the different regions of
northern India (and perhaps in the south as well) had incorporated the
relatively more rigorously compiled chronologies of the Indo-Persian
histories into the mythological or legendary time-frames of vamsavali
narratives. To the extent that the Indo-Persian historical material was
processed into the forms of modern academic history in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, these did not pose any particular problem for
the claims to modernity of the new vernacular histories. But it did
present a particular problem for Urdu historiography. As Raziuddin
Aquil shows in his essay here, it was not simply the ideological problem
of reconciling a religion-inspired view of history with a secular one (for
this is not an unfamiliar problem in many modern historiographical
formations in many parts of the world), but the specific question of the
actual historiographical conventions of the Indo-Persian tradition that
has cast its shadow over recent Urdu history writing. Are those
conventions to be discarded simply because they do not coincide with
the writing practices of Western academic history? Do they not have
equally strong claims to being rational historiographic practices?
Another interesting problem is posed by the example of modern
Assamese history. Here there were two alternative 'classical' traditions
available for appropriation. One was the ancient tradition of Kamarupa,
spoken of in the Mahabharata and puranic sources. e recovery of this
tradition could give considerable historical depth to the cultural
identity of Assam and also place it firmly within the ambit of the
Sanskritic cultures of Aryavarta. But there was also the other historical
tradition of the Ahom kingdom, recorded in buranji manuscripts. is
was a distinctly local tradition, unique to the region, and represented in
textually documented forms an undeniable capacity for historical rather
than mythological memory. e essays by Arupjyoti Saikia and
Sudeshna Purkayastha show how historians such as Kanaklal Baruah
would seek to trace Assam's past into ancient Kamarupa, making it an
integral part of the history of ancient India, while Surya Kumar Bhuyan
would want to highlight the distinctly historical legacy of the Ahom
past, with its links to the cultures of South East Asia, thus staking claims
to a distinct national identity.
e struggles between alternative classical pasts were no innocent
matter of choosing alternative time-frames or practices of memory. As
several essays in this volume show, these choices involved alternative
nationalist and other political agendas. Whether historians of Assam
would choose to depict the identity of their region and people as a
modern-day version of ancient Kamarupa, or one of the Ahom
kingdom, could have huge implications for contemporary cultural
politics. As we will soon see, the ideological and affective powers of
these representations would have much greater potency in the field of
the vernacular than they would within the professional forums of
academic history.
ere is yet another place where the relation between the classical
and the vernacular had to be negotiated: that was the history of the
vernacular language itself. Sheldon Pollock has made the point that,
contrary to its alleged indifference to history, the Sanskritic literary
tradition possessed a well-developed practice of providing at the
beginning of a new poetical work a reasonably accurate chronological
survey of previous notable works that the poet recognized as canonical
for his or her field.12 e practice entered the domain of poetry in the
vernaculars too, such that by the mid-nineteenth century, when printed
literature in the Indian languages began to flourish, traditional literary
scholars such as Narmad in Gujarati, Iswarchandra Gupta in Bengali,
and Sri Ramamurti in Telugu were able to publish biographical histories
of the great poets in those languages.13 Pollock has also pointed out
that, in languages such as Gujarati and Bengali, the first histories of
literature on the European model appeared not much later than the first
histories of European literatures themselves were published.14 But, as
Milind Wakankar discusses in detail in his essay, V.K. Rajwade, the
great Maharashtrian historiographer, went further to pose the question
of the history of the Marathi language itself. How was that history to be
established? Basing himself on what he claimed was the oldest surviving
manuscript of the great Varkari text Dnyaneswari and the oldest bakhar
describing the conquest of Maharashtra by Alauddin Khalji, Rajwade
insisted that the thirteenth-century Dnyaneswari represented the
pristine, uncontaminated Old Marathi which derived directly from
Sanskrit and followed a Paninian grammar. is old language reflected
the 'unmiscegenated and urbane' Marathi culture before it was
corrupted by Persianate influences. To bolster his claim, Rajwade made
use of 'the new science of the historical verification of a language'. As
Wakankar shows, the effort was to cleanse Marathi of its demotic and
foreign elements and restore it to its 'original urbanity' in Paninian
antiquity. Rajwade's agenda for nationalist cultural politics was clear.

e People as a Vernacular Construct

Rajwade's search for a pure and uncontaminated Marathi points to
another abiding tension in all vernacular histories of South Asia. is
concerns the place of 'the people', a key concept in every project of
nationalist modernity. e new academic histories written in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries attempted principally to lay
down more precise chronologies of dynastic and political changes in the
different regions of India, from the ancient to the more recent periods.
Not surprisingly, these histories attributed change most directly to wars,
conquests, and political domination exercised through structures of the
state. For the new cultural nationalists, on the other hand, these state-
centred histories seemed utterly inadequate in describing the
historically formed identity of 'the people'. How could one trace back in
time the literatures, languages, customs, festivals, food, clothing, and
artefacts of daily life of the people? is impulse led to two kinds of
results. One was the claim that whereas the rapidly changing currents of
political history may have been well documented by historians, the
changes they described were superficial, affecting only a thin layer of
elites located around the central structures of the state. e real history
of the people lay beyond the reach of archival documentation; the
methods of academic history were unsuited to recovering that history.
Indeed, the true history of the people resided, untouched by the
vagaries of political history, as a sort of timeless essence suffusing the
ordinary lives of people. One needed methods other than those of the
academic historian to uncover this true history.
Several versions of this claim were made in various parts of South
Asia. Kumkum Chatterjee, in her essay here, discusses in detail the
debates in Bengal between the protagonists of scientific academic
history and those who insisted that the true history of the nation must
be found among the living memories and practices of ordinary people.
Rabindranath Tagore, in particular, made a sophisticated plea to look
for Bengal's true history not in the history of kings and conquerors but
in the living history of the samaj.15 e argument was accompanied by
a powerful movement to collect, preserve, and document the evidence
of this deep cultural history of the people, in the form of artefacts,
folklore, stories, and artistic and performative practices, etc. Ethno-
graphy and folklore, rather than archival history, became the preferred
methods for studying the so-called true history of the people. It also
brought to the fore the oen uncomfortable evidence that the folk could
also be the site of corruption, violence, immorality, and op-pression,
and the concept 'folk' had thus to be cleaned and sanitized before it
could be endorsed as the repository of the national-popular.
e second response to academic political history, and indeed to the
political conditions created by colonial governance in the nineteenth
century, was what today may be called the 'old social history'.16 Kum-
kum Chatterjee also describes this genre of vernacular history in
Bengal, which depended for the most part on genealogical narratives.
is genre consisted of the vast corpus of writings which sought to
provide social-historical evidence to support one or the other side in
the many contentious battles over sectarian, caste, linguistic, ethnic, and
other claims. ese tracts were not, for the most part, written by
academic historians, but because they were oen intended to draw the
attention of the administration or the courts, they did frequently seek to
follow the authorized conventions of academic history. ese caste,
sectarian, ethnic, and local histories form a large part of the social
history literature in the vernaculars of South Asia. Even though they are
not endorsed by academic historians, they cannot be entirely ignored
either because they continue to serve as 'sources' that could be mined by
appropriately scientific methods to yield the material for academic
history. e old social history continues to be a very interesting form of
the production of vernacular histories, never entirely abjuring the
practices of academic history but always running at a tangent to it.
Bodhisattva Kar's essay in this volume offers a fascinating range of
vernacular attempts to assimilate the legends surrounding the famous
Kamakhya temple of Guwahati into the culture of Assamese modernity.
e sources of these legendary stories about the sexual prowess and
magical powers of the women of Kamakhya appear to go back to at least
the seventeenth century in the sectarian literature of the followers of
Guru Nanak in Punjab and in the Nath literature of Bengal. From the
nineteenth century, however, they recur in travel accounts, geographies,
and modern fiction—in both Hindi and Bengali, and probably in other
Indian languages as well—as marks of a mysterious frontier region
called Assam that is both magical and dangerous. ere are attempts to
rationalize these fabulous stories as the products of the marginality of,
and ignorance about, Assam in the rest of India. But, as Kar argues, they
keep recurring within vernacular modernity in the rhetorical form of
the allegory. is, once again, is a powerful mode of asserting difference
from the authorized forms of colonial and postcolonial modernity and
continues to thrive within the domain of vernacular histories.
Despite the efforts of academic historians to bring historical
causation under the firm regime of rational explanation, enchanted
histories continue to flourish within the spaces of the vernacular.
Indrani Chatterjee brings a particularly neglected region to light by
offering a comparative study of the accounts of a single event in the
writings of a Bengali historian, a Bengali poet, a British captive, and a
Mizo missionary. In the 1860s, a group of hill people (called Tipra Kuki
in contemporary accounts) from the Mizo hills raided some villages in
the Feni area of present-day Bangladesh. Accounts of this event are
available in prose in the writings of Kailash Chandra Singha, an
amateur historian and official of the Tripura court, and in verse in a
manuscript composed by the poet Gulbaksh.17 Singha's account does
not mention any women being captured by the raiders. Gulbaksh's
does, with much literary and imaginative embellishment, gesturing
towards the miraculous powers of Guna Ghazi, a local notable, in
driving out the Kuki raiders, and also referring to the incomparably
superior forces of the colonial government. e archival account in
English by a young British woman who had been taken captive, how-
ever, is not a story of violence and hardship at all but of comfort, affec-
tion, and playfulness. Finally, there is an account from 1963 in English
by a Mizo missionary which reclaims the memory of the captive Mary
Winchester as 'a daughter of the hills'. Apart from tracing the transfor-
mations of this narrative in its several tellings, Chatterjee also makes the
important point that for the modern cultures of the hill peoples of
north-east India, historical writing in English is as much a work of
producing vernacular histories as they are in the other Indian
languages.
It may seem as though state-centred academic histories, by adopting
the standpoint of the ruling elites, would induce marginal and
oppressed groups to opt out of history altogether. at is not the case,
however. Sanal Mohan writes of the remarkable case of a Dalit
community of Kerala that has made it an agenda of its own self-
assertion to produce a written history of its memories of slavery.
Structurally, this might seem analogous to the famous clarion call
sounded by Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay to his fellow Bengalis
suffering under colonial domination: 'We must have our own history.'
However, the history produced by the Kerala dalit group was not one of
vahubal, consisting of stories of valour and conquest. On the contrary,
they were stories of intense pain and suffering caused by the experience
of slavery. A written record, and repeated remembering, of their past
sufferings would, they believe, forge a new collective identity of the
community in this world, and bring them salvation aer death. Once
again, there is a difference from the authorized forms of modern history
writing. Mohan discusses at length how this written history could not
possibly look like the products of academic history. ere is both a
fictionalization of past events as well as a mythologization of past
experience for which the material is oen drawn from ethnographic
accounts le behind by foreign missionaries. Even as it moves from
orality to written history, the memory of the past is produced in its
difference from the authorized forms of academic history. e memory
of slavery is recorded, necessarily, as vernacular history. Mohan's essay
invites comparison with Badri Narayan's study of the recent movement
in Uttar Pradesh to memorialize the history of dalit women such as
Jhalkaribai and Udadevi as heroes of 1857. ese recent dalit histories
take the form of historical and literary narrative as well as visual media
such as prints and statuary, picking out fragments from archival and
academic sources in order to blend them with local community
memory and political imagination to produce new publicly circulating
narratives to rival those of the Brahmin Rani Lakshmibai, star of the
nationalist history of 1857.18

History in Other Genres

Let us repeat our main proposition. Vernacular histories exist in their
difference from the authorized forms of modern (colonial and
postcolonial) academic history. e generic form of academic history in
South Asia is that of discursive prose written, for the most part though
not exclusively, in the English language. Vernacular histories may, as we
have seen, mark their difference from academic history even when they
adopt the discursive prose form of the essay or the monograph. But
vernacular histories frequently use other literary genres, such as the
novel, drama, autobiography, and even poetry.
Rosinka Chaudhuri brings out several of the issues involved in the
writing of history in various literary genres by focusing on certain late-
nineteenth-century debates in Bengal. e broadside was launched by
the historian Akshaya Kumar Maitra, who criticized the poet Nabin-
chandra Sen for having distorted history in his dramatic account in
verse of the battle of Plassey. Sen's defence was that he was writing
poetry, not history. But Maitra insisted that Sen's readers, especially
young readers in school, would take his dramatic rendering as historical
truth; the protocols of reading poetry, as distinct from history, were not,
Maitra suggested, firmly established in the vernacular. On the other
hand, talking about Bankimchandra's historical novels—which also
drew criticism from Maitra for misrepresenting historical facts— the
historian Jadunath Sarkar argued that Bankim had with his artistry
achieved a higher level of truth than anything mere historians could
ever hope to accomplish. Sarkar, possibly the most celebrated academic
historian of his time in India, was, curiously enough, gesturing towards
a romantic conception of artistic truth that, he believed, was beyond the
reach of positivist historical writing. Interestingly, several academic
historians seemed to endorse this view by switching from their
academic historical writings in English to more imaginative and
rhetorically more adventurous compositions in the Indian languages. A
classic example of this was the archaeologist Rakhaldas Banerjee who,
as Tapati Guha-akurta has shown, moved from his research reports
in English, bound by the rules of 'stony evidence', to writing in Bengali
the reminiscences of a stone ruin.19 Similarly, as Sudeshna Purkayastha
points out in her essay, S.K. Bhuyan allowed himself far greater affective
play in his Assamese writings than he did in his English ones, indeed
switching to the old poetic language of the Assamese puthi to write the
stirring romance of the queen Jaymati.
Similarly, the genre of autobiography or reminiscence became a very
popular form for recording details of social change in the modern
history of every region of South Asia. As Udaya Kumar notes for Mala-
yalam, it was not only those who had achieved positions of leadership
or fame who turned to writing their life stories; even ordinary people
felt there was some value in documenting their experiences of the
changing times that they had witnessed. What was claimed on behalf of
these narratives was not their 'objective' value as historical truth, based
on scientifically evaluated evidence, but rather that they were accounts
'from the inside' by those who had directly witnessed social- historical
change in their own lives. In certain ways, then, the claim of
autobiographical or reminiscence literature was not so much that they
were history, but rather that they were primary accounts by direct
witnesses that might constitute an archive for future historians. Inte-
restingly, this claim reinforces the relation in which vernacular histories
are always 'sources' for the writing of proper academic history, but
never history in themselves.
ere is one other interesting genre: Pradip Kumar Datta writes
about it in his essay. is is counterfactual history—perhaps not very
widely practised, but significant nonetheless. Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay,
who otherwise wrote essays on social topics and history for school and
college students, wrote one remarkable piece called 'the history of India
as seen in a dream'. It is, as Datta explains, a counterfactual hist-ory that
turns around the outcome of the ird Battle of Panipat in 1761 and
installs the Maratha prince Ramchandra as the universally
acknowledged monarch of India. Bhudeb then goes on to describe in
detail the nature of the state and society under these counterfactual
conditions of 'national sovereignty', forestalling the history of British
rule in India. But even though it is a fantastic history 'as seen in a
dream', Bhudeb is scrupulous in avoiding the literary trope of historical
romance: he does not write a fiction. Bhudeb sticks to a genre offactual
and analytic reporting, as in academic history, or, as Datta suggests, an
administrative report. Yet it gives full play to a utopian political
imagination inserted within familiar historical time. It is vernacular
history at one of its most powerfully innovative moments, using the
tools of colonial modernity to subvert its very historical possibility.

e essays in this volume discuss a wide range of vernacular histories

drawn from many regions of South Asia. By bringing alongside Marathi
or Bengali or Kannada historiography an equally serious discussion of
the classical sources of Assamese history or the languages of history
writing in the north-eastern states, or the specific rhetorical forms of
dalit historiography in Malayalam, or indeed the histories produced in
the madrasa, we have deliberately sought here to capture the varieties of
vernacular histories that are still being produced. ese vernacular
histories are all marked by their difference from the authorized
practices of modern academic history. By introducing the idea of the
early modern, also marked by its difference from the colonial modern,
the range of examples has been expanded to include material from the
sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.
Taken as a corpus, vernacular histories have been, and continue to act
as, vehicles for a range of critiques of modern academic history. By
emphasizing the local or the regional, they challenge the national
framework of mainstream professional history. By celebrating the living
memory of the community, they question the state-centred logic of
modern historiography. By indulging in the fabulous and the en-
chanted, they mock the scientific rationality that is the ideology of the
academic historian. ey oen give voice to identities and aspirations
that find no place within the institutional structures of professional
history writing. ey do not always reject the practices laid down by
academic historians, but even in participating in those practices they
succeed in marking their difference.
In two recent articles, Dipesh Chakrabarty has emphasized the
emergence of the university as the crucial institutional site where the
practices of modern Western academic history writing were established
globally as the universal norm for professional historians, while leaving
other sites such as the news media, cinema, creative literature, art, etc.
open to other, more popular, forms of recounting the past. He has also
pointed out the resultant difficulties of history as practised by the
academic historian retaining an authoritative 'public' voice in the face of
the increasingly noisy politics of recognition that has come to dominate
forms of democratic debate.20 On the basis of our findings in this
volume we could say, pushing Chakrabarty's point a bit further, that
what has emerged is no longer a single unified public domain regulated
by agreed rules of discourse, but rather a heterogeneous formation of
several publics. Although heterogeneous, the different publics are not,
however, unconnected or sealed off from one another, for material from
one domain travels into the others. Some rules of evidence, arguments,
style, etc. may even be shared between different domains, or at least
some rules may have greater authority than others. Indeed, one might
even say that the domain of academic history enjoys greater social
prestige than others, so that the heterogeneous formation of publics
may even possess a certain hierarchical order. But the vibrant
productiveness of the other publics is proof that the authority of
academic history remains constantly under challenge.
It would be too quick to identify all vernacular histories as belonging
to the domain of the 'popular', but the hypothesis is certainly worth
more careful investigation. In any case, the politics of the 'popular', we
know, is oen contentious and not always worthy of approval. e
domain of vernacular history too has the same ambiguous quality.
Unlike academic history, in which ideological presuppositions make
their subtle appearance as debates over scientific methodology,
vernacular histories oen display their prejudices in the open.
Frequently, therefore, they are directly implicated in political battles.
But the invitation to make political choices is not a monopoly of the
domain of the vernacular, even though the gesture there may be
altogether more exaggerated and dramatic. Effective histories are being
made in the vernacular.

Notes
1 Muzaffar Alam, e Languages of Political Islam in India, c. 1200—1800 (Delhi:
Permanent Black, 2004).
2 C.A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social
Communication in India, 1780—1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996), p. 82.
3 Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Textures of
Time: Writing History in South India 1600—1800 (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001).
4 Prachi Deshpande, Creative Pasts: Historical Memory and Identity in Western
India, 1700-1960 (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007).
5 Bharatchandra granthabali, eds. Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay and Sajanikanta
Das (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, 1962), pp. 1-350.
6 e Maharashta Purana: An Eighteenth-Century Bengali Historical Text, tr. and
ed. by Edward C. Dimock and Pratul Chandra Gupta (Honolulu: East-West
Center, 1965).
7 Textures of Time, pp. 236-9.

8 Ahmed Sharif, Bangali o bangla sahitya (Dhaka: Bangla Academy, 1984), vol. 2,
pp. 944-66.
9 Yasmin Saikia, Assam and India: Fragmented Memories, Cultural Identity, and
the Tai-Ahom Struggle (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2005).
10 ere are two useful collections of these debates: Peter Marshall, ed., e
Eighteenth Century in Indian History: Evolution or Revolution? (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2003); and Seema Alavi, ed., e Eighteenth Century in India
(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002).
11 J.C. Marshman before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on
Indian Territories, 21 July 1853, quoted in B.D. Basu, History of Educa- tion in
India under the Rule of the East India Company (Calcutta: Modern Review Press,
1922), p. 125.
12 Sheldon Pollock, 'Sanskrit Literary Culture from the Inside Out', in Pol-lock,
ed., Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2003), p. 79.
13 Pollock cites Narmad in his 'Introduction' to Literary Cultures in History, p. 6.
Isvarchandra Gupta, Kabijibani (1853-5), ed. Bhabatosh Datta (Calcutta: Calcutta
Book House, 1958). Biographies of poets in Telugu are discussed in Lisa Mitchell,
'An Attachment to Language: BiographicalNarratives and the Telugu Language in
Late Nineteenth Century Southern India', in Manas Ray, ed., Space, Sexuality and
Postcolonial Cultures: Papers from the Cultural Studies Workshop (Calcutta: Centre
for Studies in Social Sciences, 2003), pp. 73-96.
14 Sheldon Pollock, 'Introduction', in Pollock, ed., Literary Cultures in History, p.
6.
15 Especially in his essay 'Bharatbarshe itihaser dhara', in Rabindranath a- kur,
Rabindra rachanabali (Calcutta: Government of West Bengal, 1961), vol. 13.
16 See Partha Chatterjee, 'Introduction: History and the Present', in Partha
Chatterjee and Anjan Ghosh, eds, History and thePresent(Delhi: Permanent Black,
2002), pp. 1-23.
17 e manuscript preserved in the University of Dhaka was collected by Abdul
Karim Sahityabisharad and is discussed by Ahmed Sharif in his chapter on
historical verse narratives in Bengali: Bangali o bangla sahitya, vol. 2, pp. 955-8.
18 Badri Narayan, Women Heroes and Dalit Assertion in North India: Culture,
Identity and Politics (New Delhi: Sage, 2006).
19 Tapati Guha-akurta, Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in
Colonial and Postcolonial India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004), pp. 132-9.
20 Dipesh Chakrabarty, 'A Global and Multicultural Discipline of History', History
and eory, 45 (February 2006); idem, 'A Public Place of History: An Argument
Out of India', Public Culture, Winter 2008.
 2

History and Politics in the Vernacular

Reflections on Medieval and Early Modern South
India *

VELCHERU NARAYANA RAO AND SANJAY

SUBRAHMANYAM

Introduction

T
he visitor to Tamilnadu in the past thirty and more years would
have frequently encountered, in a variety of public spaces
including even buses and local trains, aphoristic verses from a
celebrated text, the Kuṟaḷ ofValluvar. Variously attributed to an
author of Jain, Buddhist, agnostic, or other background, it is now widely
believed that the text was composed around 500 CE, although much
uncertainty remains regarding the exact period of composition as much
as the author's identity. Made up of 1330 verses in 130 (or, by some
measures, 133) chapters, the work has three broad sections: a first on
aṟam ('righteous conduct' akin to the Sanskrit dharma), a second on
poruḷ (akin to artha, or 'politics' in a wide sense), and a third on iṉpam
(or 'pleasure', close to but also somewhat distinct from kāma). e
current popularity and visibility of these verses are linked in part to
their interpretation by the DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) party
in its years of intermittent rule over the state. Unveiling a statue of
Valluvar in the waters off Kanyakumari in January 2000, the DMK
leader M. Karunanidhi thus declared:
I have meditated on Tiruvalluvar from childhood. I have ever remembered and
stressed the genius in the philosophy. I built Valluvar Kottam for him, and I
dedicated the day aer Ponkal [festival] to Tiruvalluvar. I displayed his poems
on buses and in bus-stations. I translated the 133 chapters of his Tirukkural. For
twenty-five years, I have waited, yearningly, for this installation.1
In order to explain the devotion shown to this particular figure by one
of the rare political leaders in India who is a self-defined atheist (an
identification which even many Marxist leaders shy away from), two
obvious factors need to be borne in mind. e first is that of language,
for Valluvar's text plays a crucial role in received histories of Tamil
language and literature. A second aspect lies in the fact that the work
possesses a character that would be particularly pleasing to
Karunanidhi's sensibilities, namely, what has been termed by a leading
modern-day Western specialist on Tamil literature as a 'decidedly this-
worldly orientation'.2 Less cautiously, the website of the 2005
International irukkural Conference held in Maryland assures us that
'the most important features of irukkural are: (1) it is secular in
nature, (2) it is universal and applicable to people living everywhere, (3)
it is everlasting and its messages transcend time. is secular, universal
and immortal nature of irukkural combined with its conciseness and
literary charm has been the pride of Tamil people for the past many
centuries.'3
It would be all-too-facile to simply dismiss this as another case of the
'invention of tradition', even if the received Kuṟaḷ has indeed varied
from time to time.4 For we are aware that the text did have a real life in
sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century South India, which
also helps to explain why it was already the object of a partial
translation into Latin by the Venetian Jesuit Costantino Beschi (1680—
1747).5 Christian missionaries, for their part, were inclined to think of
Valluvar's thought as having a particular affinity with Christianity, and
some even went so far as to claim that he had been directly influenced
by the Apostle St omas. In a more sober mode, the German
missionary Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg wrote in about 1708 (while
comparing Valluvar to Seneca):
e Malabaris [Tamils] think very highly of it [the Kuṟaḷ] and it is indeed
among the most learned and edifying books found amongst them. High-class
Malabaris oen make it their handbook and whenever one enters into a
discussion with them they are always ready to quote a few verses from it to
prove the validity of their words. It is the habit of educated Malabaris to
confirm and demonstrate everything with one or the other verse; to be able to
do so is considered a great art amongst them. erefore such books are not just
read but learned by heart.6
Whether or not we take the comparison with Seneca seriously, one
thing is certain: despite the massive attention devoted to Valluvar and
his text, it has rarely been studied in one of the most obvious contexts
that is available for it, namely, as part of the history of 'political thought'
in South Asia. Why is this so? To address this issue, our central strategy
in this essay will be to widen the rather narrow conception within
which 'political thought' has hitherto been studied in an Indian context.
We only caricature very slightly if we assert that the usual strategies
espoused by analysts are two: either they assume that modern politics
in India was a pure product of the interaction with colonialism and
colonial modernity, or, at best, they leap over the intervening centuries
to classical India and its materials in Sanskrit. In this context, we
welcome the development of interest in recent times in the Indo-
Persian corpus, and what it might tell us about both institutional
arrangements and political thought at the time of the Sultanate and the
Mughals. e problem does remain, however, of that part of India
where Persian was not the principal language in which such thought
was expressed. e example of the Maratha polity in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries brings this home, even though the Marathi
used in this region was heavily inflected by Persian. It is clear from the
researches of Hiroyuki Kotani and Narendra Wagle, however, that the
eighteenth-century Maratha Deccan continued to witness a strug-gle
between two sets of forces: that is, between proponents of what we shall
term nīti (or a non-sectarian politics) on the one hand, and those who
remained fiercely attached to a highly Brahmanical and dharmashāstra-
oriented vision of social ordering and political functioning. e
continued presence of terms such as dosha and prāyascitta in the
vocabulary of the Maratha polity possibly testify to the waning
influence of the nīti tradition in that system.7
A celebrated reflection on the 'history of concepts' written some
thirty-five years ago proposed to historians of Europe that they needed
to go beyond their preoccupation with social (and political) history to
look at both individual concepts, and groups of concepts, to clarify that
which underlay the functioning of the political and social systems in
the societies they studied. In that context, Reinhart Koselleck wrote:
e relationship between the history of concepts (Begriffsgeschichte) and social
history (Sozialgeschichte) appears at first sight to be very loose, or at least
difficult to determine, because the first of these disciplines primarily uses texts
and words whereas the latter only uses texts to deduce facts and movements
which are not contained in the texts themselves. It is thus that social history
analyses social movements and constitutional structures, the relations between
groups, social strata and classes; beyond the complex of events, it tries to come
to terms with medium- or long-term structures and their changes [. . .]. e
methods of the history of concepts are very different.8
We would hardly wish to be so immodest as to claim tout court to be
introducing the 'history of concepts' (Begriffsgeschichte) into the study
of the Indian past by means of this essay. However, in the present
collaboration between a historian and analyst of literature on the one
hand, and a social and economic historian on the other, we hope to
open a window into a neglected, and yet highly significant, corpus— the
corpus of so-called nīti texts in a vernacular tradition.
Past works on the nature and content of state-building in medieval
South India have focused largely on the inscriptional corpus, and a
limited set of narrative accounts, in order to support classic
formulations of such ideas as the 'segmentary state' and 'ritual
kingship'.9 In this essay, we return to some of the questions raised by
our colleagues and predecessors in the field, but with a view to looking
at ideological and ideational issues far more than concrete institutional
arrangements. We should note at the outset that the spectre of a
perpetually receding horizon of universal concepts—those that can be
used with equal confidence, say, for the analysis of pre-1800 societies in
Europe, Asia, and Africa—has taken something of a toll in recent
decades. Is it at all legitimate to assume that 'money' existed in all or
even most of these continents?10 What of the 'economy' itself, or even
'society'? Is the notion of 'art' applicable everywhere? Can 'religion' be
found in most societies?11 It is well known by now that many
postcolonial theorists wish to claim that 'history' was certainly not
present in any more than a tiny fraction of the societies they study, until
European colonial rule apparently created the conditions for its
worldwide spread as a hegemonic discourse. In other words, it is
claimed oen enough now that no fit whatsoever existed between these
and other '-etic' categories of the humanities and social sciences (with
their uniquely Western origins and genealogy) and the highly varied '-
emic' notions that may be found in different locales and times in the
world of the past: a claim that has become a source of anxiety for some,
a source of indifference for others, and a ground for rejoicing for still
others who see a positive virtue in 'incommensurability', which they
perhaps view as akin to a (necessarily virtuous) claim for species
diversity.12 Related to this is the recurrence of older formulae on the
notoriously difficult subject of translation, both from those historians
and social scientists who claim—at one extreme—that everything is
translatable, and those who are eager to sustain equally extreme claims
of 'malostension' or 'radical mistranslation' as a perpetual condition,
rather than a contingent (and even potentially reversible) consequence
of specific procedures and circumstances.13
It is of interest that even in this welter of relativistic claims, one
category that few have sought to challenge in its universal applicability
is that of 'politics'. Why has this been so, we may ask? Perhaps the
reasons lie not only in an embarrassment with the charged, patronizing,
and largely Marxist category of the 'pre-political', but in the fact that to
deny the existence of 'politics' would be tantamount to denying the
existence somewhere in collective human existence of 'power', a move
that few if any in the academy today would wish to risk.14 To be sure,
we could follow Benedict Anderson in relativizing power, and argue
that the 'idea of power' in, say, Java was not the same as that in the West;
but this would be quite different to denying its very existence or utility
as a concept for analysis.15 In the case of India, almost any universal
concept that one can mention has recently been challenged in its
applicability to the present or past situation of that area, with the
notable exception of 'politics'. Indeed, it is instructive in this regard to
turn to an essay produced by a leading relativist amongst Indian social
theorists, Ashis Nandy, who would argue that 'politics' is practically the
only category that one can use as a constant to speak of the past two
thousand years in India.16 Yet, this argument, first defended by him
over three decades ago, came paired with an important caveat. For
Nandy wished to argue that politics in twentieth-century India was in
fact a split field. If on the one hand there were those who practised
politics in the 'Western' mode, drawing upon concepts and notions that
were all too familiar to Western political scientists and theorists, others
continued to understand and practice politics through a deeply 'emic'
set of lenses, which is to say they were using concepts that had no
familiar equivalents in Western political vocabulary. To understand
these concepts, and the working of this other field, Nandy went on to
argue, it was necessary to return to a series of texts produced in the
Sanskrit language in ancient India, which alone could explicate this
deep-rooted and culturally specific vocabulary, involving (usually
substantive, and untranslatable) terms such as dharma, karma, kāma,
artha, sannyāsa, and the like.
In making this argument, Nandy was paradoxically drawing above all
upon a claim that was first set out in colonial India, namely, that the
only source of 'authentically indigenous' concepts could be found in
ancient texts in Sanskrit. To his credit, however, it must be stated that he
at least posed the problem of whether a possible field of political
thought or political theory may have existed in India before colonial
rule. Later writers, even those who were comfortable with the notion
that concepts of 'politics' could be applied to study moments in the pre-
colonial Indian past, have rarely returned to this problem.17 ose who
have done so have usually drawn upon Persian-language materials, and
a learned tradition that has consistently maintained that, in Islamic
societies at least, the idea of 'politics' had long existed under such heads
as siyāsat.18 is view is lent credence by a genealogical claim, wherein
the common Hellenic roots of Western and Islamic thinking on the
issue can be pointed to; the problem then arises with that part of India
where Arabic and Persian never dominated as the languages of
intellectual discourse.19
is is the heart of the issue that this essay seeks to address. We wish
to argue that in reality a quite substantial and varied body of material
can be found in South India between the fourteenth and the late
eighteenth centuries that attempts to theorize politics, while doing so
neither in Persian nor in Sanskrit, even if it may bear traces of contact
with bodies of material in these two 'classical' languages.20 ese
materials may be found instead in the Indian vernacular languages, of
which we shall focus on a particular body, that in Telugu (though a
similar exercise could easily be attempted with materials in Kannada or
Marathi).21 Secondly, we suggest that most writers who have looked
into the matter (and they are a mere handful, as noted above) have
usually misidentified the location of such materials by seeking it solely
in the corpus known as dharmashāstra. irdly, we will attempt to show
how the materials that we are fundamentally concerned with, and
which usually term themselves texts on nīti rather than dharma
(although there is some overlap in the two usages), changed over the
centuries with which we are concerned. Nīti may be glossed here by
such terms as 'pragmatics', 'politics', or 'statecra'.22 Finally, we shall
briefly rehearse an argument on how the status of these materials was
transformed in the nineteenth century, when British colonial rule
reclassified them in ways that were at odds with their place in the
universe of knowledge in India in earlier times.
We should begin perhaps with a rapid and schematic survey of the
political history of the region with which we are concerned, namely, the
south-eastern part of peninsular India, in which Telugu had emerged
already by 1300 CE as a major literary language. A series of kingdoms
can be found here, some of modest size and pretensions, others that can
be classified as veritable imperial structures. To summarize, the early
fourteenth century sees the demise of the rule of a fairly substantial
regional polity, that of the Kakatiyas of Warrangal, and the emergence
of a set of far smaller kingdoms.23 Aer a hiatus, the fieenth century
then sees the emergence of the great empire of Vijayanagara, which
dominates the region (as indeed much of peninsular India) until the
late sixteenth century.24 e collapse of Vijaya-nagara power means in
turn that the two centuries from 1600 to 1800 are marked by a complex
period of contestation, without a single stable and hegemonic polity.
e Mughals eventually come to play a substantial role in the region,
but indirectly rather than as a centralized political structure.25 In short,
we can see an alternation, with two cycles of fragmented political
formations sandwiching an extended central moment of a century and a
half of imperial consolidation associated with Vijayanagara.
ough it was famously termed a 'forgotten empire' by Robert Sewell
in 1900, it is clear that the memory of Vijayanagara remained very alive
in South India as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century.26
However, the lack of adequate lines of communication between a
society that already possessed a centuries'-long set of continuous
intellectual traditions, and a new political power that had assumed the
role of 'civilizing' a group of ostensibly uncivilized or partially civilized
nations, was never more striking than at this early juncture of colonial
Indian history. For the traditionally educated Indian intellectual of the
early nineteenth century whom the East India Company might have
consulted, India certainly had a sophisticated discipline termed nīti,
beginning from early texts such as the Arthashāstra and continuing
until their time. ere was a whole range of texts on dharma, beginning
with Manu's Dharmashāstra (and dating perhaps from the early
centuries CE), and also continuing through the medieval period both in
terms of a manuscript tradition and by way of extensive
commentaries.27 But the British administrators and their native
assistants in early colonial South India were primarily looking for
'moral instruction'.28 Of the two concepts in the Indian tradition that
come close to the idea of morals—dharma and nīti—dharma was seen
as somewhat unsuitable for moral instruction because it was too close
to the religious world. Manu's celebrated Dharmashāstra was also
deeply embedded in the varṇa and jāti order, and discussed legal
matters relating to marriages, property rights, and so on. Law courts
needed these texts to administer justice to Indians according to their
indigenous laws. e story of Sir William Jones's efforts in this direction
and Henry omas Colebrooke's translation of legal digests for use in
the British courts is too well known to be repeated here.29
At the same time, it was also easy enough to argue that there was a
direct line of ascent between the medieval regional-language nīti texts
and the Arthashāstra of Kautilya, and thus to conclude that the regional
language texts were derivative and, if anything, bad copies of an original
(however elusive that original was in purely philological terms)—and
therefore not particularly interesting. Another problem was that, since
the authors of nīti texts invariably claimed to be poets, literary scholars
of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, influenced by
notions deriving from Western literary models, began by rejecting any
formal literary merit in their texts and then showed no interest in
analysing them seriously for their content. Doubly neglected, the
regional-language nīti texts were relegated to a sort of intellectual no-
man's land. Yet, as noted above, native schools still needed moral
instruction, and in the absence of an Indian equivalent of the Ten
Commandments, or similar codes of virtue, teachers oen turned to
nīti texts to fill the need.
e principal focus of this essay is the transformation and deve-
lopment of nīti discourse from classical Sanskrit texts to early modern
Telugu texts and their later use in the colonial period. Our interest is to
show, first, that these texts demonstrate a lively change with time and
context as guides to practical wisdom, and strategies of success; and
second, that they are not concerned with religion and are therefore
mostly 'this-worldly' (laukika) or 'secular' in character. A third point
that is developed in the analysis is of how the late nineteenth century
colonial interest in teaching morals in schools gave selective, and one
might say distorted, attention to some nīti texts while ignoring the bulk
of the others. e sources of the discussion are mainly from Telugu,
with a few examples from Sanskrit and Persian.

Some Ur-Texts
No Indian text from ancient times has arguably been as used and
misused in the context of the twentieth century as the Arthashāstra of
Kautilya.30 e first edition of this text, from 1909, was produced in
Mysore by R. Shama Sastri from a single manuscript (with a
commentary by a certain Bhattasvamin) originating in the Tanjavur
region. It had already been preceded by a first translation (in the pages
of the Indian Antiquary) from 1905 by the same scholar. e text
quickly attracted massive attention, and a number of other manuscripts
came to light, mostly in southern India (in Grantha and Malayalam
characters), with one of the rare northern Indian manuscripts being
from Patan, from a Jain collection. e confident initial assertion that
the text's author was 'the famous Brahman Kautilya, also named
Vishnugupta, and known from other sources by the patronymic
Chanakya', and that the text was written at the time of the foundation of
the Maurya dynasty, has of course been considerably eroded over the
course of the twentieth century. Despite the relative rarity of
manuscripts, it is clear that the text was known to the medieval
tradition in various forms, and that its author was considered to be one
of a series of important ancient authors of nīti texts. e Vijayanagara-
period work Rāyavācakamu tells us that the king Vira Narasimha Raya
in the early sixteenth century was accustomed to hearing recitations
from various texts, including Canura's Nīti, with 'Canura' being a
distortion of Canakya.31
e text of the Arthashāstra in its modern critical edition, which was
not necessarily the received version in the medieval tradition, is of
course quite astonishing in its ambition and coverage.32 It is a highly
detailed text, and not one that simply contents itselo enunciate vague
general principles. e text also quotes earlier authors, oen pointing to
the difference between its author's own opinions (in the third person, as
'Kautilya') and those of others. A striking and o-remarked aspect of
the work is that a great deal of its content is markedly 'secular'. To be
sure, in the initial part, the text invokes Sukra and Brahaspati, and then
the Vedas; but thereaer, such location devices or references seem to
disappear from the text. e first chapter discusses the overall contents,
and Chapter 2 (adhyakshapracārah) then begins by noting that there are
normally four vidyas: philosophy; the three Vedas; agriculture, cattle-
rearing, and trade (collectively vārtā); and law-and- order (daṇḍa-nīti).
According to Kautilya, there are however those who follow the
Brahaspati line of thinking, believing that there are only three
disciplines (vidyas) and the Vedas are really a mere façade. We then get
a version of the āshrama system of social ordering, followed by a
description of material life, with no reference thereaer in this extensive
chapter to anything that might be understood as 'religion'. is is once
again the case in later chapters on judicial and legal matters, criminals
and how to deal with them, secret matters (yogavrittam), and the
manner of dealing with other kings and kingdoms (the themes of
Chapters 6 and 7, respectively maṇḍalayonih and shāḍguṇyam). e
highly circumscribed place of dharma in the text has been summed up
as follows by Charles Malamoud:
e originality of the Arthashāstra is that the science of government, the
doctrine of royal conduct, is set out there in a perspective where artha appears
in a highly limited form and not, as in the Epics or the Laws of Manu for
example, where it is assimilated to the perspective of 'duty' (dharma). e
question in the Arthashāstra, is not that of knowing how, while obeying his
'duty of state', the king contributes to order in the world and in society, or even
how he guarantees it, but rather of what he should do to attain his ends:
conquer territory and hold on to it. To be sure the two perspectives are not
wholly incompatible, and many of the 'Machiavellian' precepts of the
Arthashāstra also appear in texts that lay out the norms of dharma; and there
are even some passages in the Arthashāstra that recall some principles
regarding the final ends which are dharmic in nature. But all in all, the
Arthashāstra does not justify the means by the ends: the means and the ends
appear at the same level, and each means is a provisional end. e treatise sets
itselhe task of laying out in detail the modalities of royal action and to evaluate
them in relation to its sole objective: to succeed.33
Unfortunately, we do not know a great deal about the history of the
book's subsequent use until far later. e speculation of the past few
decades is that it may date from the fourth century CE, but it is really
quite difficult to make a definitive pronouncement on the matter.
Buddhist sources seem to have been quite negatively disposed both to
the text—on account of its alleged amorality—and to its author as a
personage.34 We may note that the Kāmandaka or Nītisāra also comes
from broadly the same period, but slightly later, and that its author
Kamanda states that he knows the Arthashāstra, specifying that the
text's author was Kautilya, also known as Vishnugupta. Kamanda also
appears to be the source for the confusing claim that Kautilya was the
one who broke the power of the Nandas. In a similar vein, the author of
the Mudrārākshasa, the Sanskrit play of Vishakhadatta from about 600
CE, seems to have known and used the Arthashāstra.
Unlike later medieval texts which we will discuss below, the
Arthashāstra is not aphoristic in nature. Its literary quality is in fact
rather interesting, the text being written mostly in short prose sentences
with some occasional shlokas in the middle, and one or sometimes
more than one shloka at the end of each chapter; and yet it is composed
in a way that does not lend itself to easy oral transmission in this form.
It seems largely meant for readers from a written book, and once more
demarcates itself from later texts in the fact that 'Kautilya' himself,
whoever he is, still poses and is regarded as an authoritative author. We
shall have occasion to contrast this with the strategy of later texts,
which seek legitimacy from their acceptability rather than invoking and
using a notion of authority.
A second text from the early period that merits some mention, and
seems to slightly postdate the Arthashāstra, is Kamanda's Nītisāra,
briefly noted above. is work is shorter and also far less detailed than
that of Kautilya, but follows it largely in terms of tone and general
content, being partly advisory and partly authoritative.35 Again, this
text is written in the form of Sanskrit shlokas, not particularly easy for
memorization or oral transmission, but perhaps intended more for
reading. is text survived far more clearly into the medieval tradition,
appearing in a Telugu version in the later sixteenth century (about
1584) as the Āndhra Kāmandaka, with some additional material that
the Sanskrit 'original' does not contain.

Nīti and its Opponents during the Medieval Period

A very active interest in creating nīti texts is found in Telugu from the
Kakatiya period in Andhra, which is to say the period from about the
twelh to the mid-fourteenth centuries.36 e emergence of a powerful
dynasty of major rulers from the great centre of Warrangal and the
conditions that existed for a general upward mobility among many
communities in the Deccan apparently motivated many writers to
produce such works in Telugu. Some of the authors of nīti books of this
period were themselves kings or their ministers, and many were
associated with people of power in some manner or the other. e
Sakala-nīti-sammatamu (hereaer SNS), a major anthology of
selections from a number of nīti texts in Telugu, is of particular interest
to us because it demonstrates the popularity of nīti as a subject in
medieval Andhra.37 e compiler of this anthology, Madiki Singana,
was a poet in his own right. In his preface to the book, he declares that
nīti should have equal circulation everywhere like a coin with the stamp
of the sultan (suratāṇi), and appropriately enough he calls his book Nīti
acceptable to everyone'.
Singana lived in a period when a number of nīti texts were already
popular, perhaps each one in a different sub-region or community. In
his preface to the anthology, he therefore expresses a desire to produce a
digest of nīti, and lists the names of books from which he has collected
his selections. He thus notes that his compilation is of some 982
selections from around seventeen nīti texts by known authors (we may
note in passing that many of the texts that were available to Singana are
now lost), several verses from oral tradition, some verses by unknown
authors, and his own verses as well. Among the known authors from
whom Singana quotes, some are either kings themselves or ministers
closely associated with kings. Rudradeva I (1150—95), who wrote Nīti-
sāramu, was a king of the Kakatiya dynasty; Sivadevayya (1250—1300),
who wrote Purushârthasāramu, was the adviser and minister of
Kakatiya king Ganapatideva; and Baddena, also known as
Bhadrabhupala, who wrote a particularly celebrated book called Nīti-
shāstra-muktāvaḷi—better known as Baddenīti—is considered by
modern Telugu scholarship to have been a king from the Telugu Cola
family.38 Not much is known about this last poet-savant who addresses
himself in his verses with royal epithets, except that he lived sometime
before Singana (who himself flourished in about 1420), and that by the
early fieenth century his book had acquired considerable popularity,
as is indicated by the short title which Singana uses when he quotes
from it.39 e other nīti writers whom Singana quotes are mostly
unknown, with the exception of Appappamantri, who wrote a Telugu
version of Bhoja's Cārucarya, a book of advice about healthy habits for
wealthy people to follow.
Singana classifies his selections under forty-seven categories covering
a range of topics related to kings as well as commoners—courtiers,
physicians, pundits, and of course accountants and scribes (karaṇams).
Two things stand out within Singana's anthology. In the first place, it
nowhere invokes an other-worldly authority. e goal is mundane, this-
worldly, and the only thing that counts is success in any profession.
However, it is not an 'amoral' text, as the desire for success is considered
acceptable as part of a good human life, and it is implicit that success
should be achieved within the framework of ethical conduct. e only
concept that might suggest a Hindu 'worldview' of some sort is that a
certain number of the verses refer to the scheme of the four goals of life,
the caturvidha purushârthas (that is, dharma, artha, kāma, and
moksha), of which artha and kāma, profit and pleasure, are the most
significant areas upon which nīti texts focus. Even this reference, from
the tone of its use, does not seem to be particularly religious in the
context. While we do not have access to Sivadevayya's text in its entirety
to see if it deals with the other two purushârthas, i.e. dharma and
moksha, we know that no other extant nīti text deals with them, and in
the use of later texts—for instance, the Sumati-shatakamu—the phrase
purushârtha-paruḍu simply means a successful person.
 It should also be noted that SNS for its part does not include even a
single verse from the thirteenth-century dharmashāstra work, Ketana's
Vijñāneshvaramu, a Telugu work based on the Sanskrit mitākshara
commentary of Vijnanesvara to the Yajñavalkyasmriti.is, we suggest,
emphasizes the conceptual separation that already operated in these
authors' minds of nīti from dharma.40 For, Ketana's work, we should
note, followed in the standard, rather Brahmanic, dharmashāstra
tradition of normative texts. Its author was a close relative (probably the
nephew) of the celebrated Tikkana, who seems to have instructed him
and guided him in writing this text.41 Ketana was also the author of two
other texts, the first an entertaining book of stories, Dashakumara-
caritramu; the second a grammar of Telugu, Āndhra-
bhāshābhūshaṇamu. He, like Tikkana, seems to have been creating an
intellectual culture of a conservative and 'revivalist' kind, as we see from
a close reading of the huge Mahābhārata that Tikkana produced at
much the same time in Telugu.
To gain a sense of Ketana's Vijñāneshvaramu it may be useful to turn
to the vyavahārakāṇḍa section of his text, which—though a relatively
short section of the whole—starkly brings out the contrast we wish to
develop between dharma and nīti texts. Here is a passage where he sets
out his conception of rulership.
A king, without becoming greedy or angry,
with dharma in his own heart,
should decide issues of dharma,
in the company of competent, well-known and scholarly Brahmins.
In that group, he should have those
learned in Veda, truthful,
versed in the dharmashāstras,
and not given to love or hatred.
Such Brahmins should be members of his council.
In number, they should be seven,
or five, or three,
and if the king cannot attend,
he should send a scholar of the dharmashāstra,
 who is a good judge.
And if the king does something unjust,
and is supported by his council,
they will be drowned in sin (pāpambuna munuguduru).42
So we see here the clear evocation of the idea of pāpa (sin) as the
ultimate punishment for incorrect action even in the context of
statecra. At times, however, as noted by Malamoud in the classical
context, the texts of nīti and dharma do converge, as when certain
procedures are discussed (for example, on how to collect evidence in
the context of a trial, or some other practical affairs). However, oen
enough, even the flavour of judicial considerations matters
considerably, since texts like that of Ketana imply a strong caste
variation in trials and punishments, and even seem directly to echo
ideas from the Manu Dharmashāstra. us, we have the following
example.
If a Brahmin commits a crime
deserving capital punishment,
this is what should be done:
Shave his head,
Mark his forehead with the sign of a dog's paw,
Confiscate his money,
sit him on a donkey,
and drive him out of town.
is is as good as killing him.
But if a lower-caste person commits a crime
that deserves capital punishment,
taking his life
is quite appropriate.43
Where then, may we ask, do dharma and nīti texts in fact overlap
without great deal of tension? is is on those rare occasions when
dharma texts deal with rather concrete commercial matters, such as the
passage in Ketana dealing with how to write a promissory note (patra).
Mark the year, month, the fortnight,
the number and name of the day,
 and the place.
Write the name of the lender,
Along with his father's name,
en that of the borrower,
with his father's name too.
en write the sum of the loan,
And the rate of interest,
And the witnesses must then write:
at they know and certify the facts.
e borrower should sign his name,
Saying that he has received the money,
and agrees to the conditions.
At last, the executor of the note must sign
to make what civilised people (nāgarika) call a trustworthy note.44
In general, however, Ketana's text is everywhere marked by a manner of
thinking that reflects the dharmashāstras, and is consequently anxious
above all to protect and defend the caste hierarchy as the most
important aspect of the functioning of the polity. Nowhere is this
clearer than in the passages where he gives ways of testing the four
varṇas, to see if they are telling the truth or not.
If it is a Brahmin,
first weigh him in scales
with a certain number of bricks.
Save the bricks,
and on the day of the test,
bring them back,
worship the scales,
invoke the lords (dikpālas) of the eight directions,
and have him sit facing east.
Put the same bricks back,
and call upon the gods (daivambulāra) saying:
If he speaks the truth, li him up,
and if he lies, pull him down.
And when the judge says this, if the pan rises,
he does not lie.
In contrast to this somewhat so treatment, Kshatriyas are to be tested
by fire, Vaishyas by water, and Shudras by poison. us, for Kshatriyas:
An iron ball of a certain weight
should be properly worshipped.
e person to be tested
and should stand facing east.
In his palms, seven pīpal leaves should be placed,
and tied with seven twists.
e red hot iron ball should be brought with tongs,
and placed in his hands by a judge,
who all the while chants mantras.
If on account of the leaves,
his hands are not burnt,
the man is truthful.45
It is hence clear that different tests are to be administered to different
castes, a feature that markedly does not appear in nīti texts. e division
of property among children finds extensive mention in Ketana, as well
as the circumstances in which it goes to other kin.
If someone wishes to dig a well,
or build a tank,
on someone else's land,
for the welfare of the people,
he still must ask the owner's permission.
and if the owner refuses,
he is obliged to stop.46
us, the difference between the vyavahārakāṇḍa of a dharma text like
that of Ketana, and sections dealing with similar matters in a typical nīti
text, are rather clear. Divine intervention (daivas) is constantly invoked
in the former, the notion of sin (pāpa) is brought in, and punishments
are explicitly hierarchized by caste. Even judgement is a ritual, requiring
the chanting ofmantras. In general, we may note that, in this vision of
things, punishments suggested with regard to castes lower down in the
hierarchy (including scribal groups) are very heavy, and most of the
discussions, including even those on how murders should be
investigated, wind up having a strongly dharmic flavour about them.
e example below demonstrates this amply:
If a person of a low caste
forces himself on the wife
of a man of higher caste
he should be killed for it.
at is the dharma of a king.
If a man forces himself
on a housewife of his own caste
fine him a thousand paṇas.
But if a man of high caste
makes love to a woman of lower caste
fine him five hundred paṇas.
If a lower-caste man
makes love to a higher-caste virgin
he should be killed.
But if he is a higher-caste man
and the virgin loves him,
the two should be married.47
e role of the king is hence clear enough; he is, in large measure, the
guarantor of the caste hierarchy and the protector of upper-caste males,
but also the defender of their virtue—even against themselves. e
examples below make this perfectly clear, and reinforce our notion that
we are dealing with a socially conservative text.
If a Brahmin makes love to an untouchable (caṇḍāla) woman,
the drawing of a vagina should be inscribed on his body,
he should be fined,
and driven out of the country.
at's appropriate for a king to do.48
e text does occasionally adopt a mildly humorous—or if one pre-fers,
'realistic'—tone, but this is far more an exception than the rule. One
example of this appears in the same section.
 If a woman is found with an illegitimate lover,
and tries to claim that he is a burglar,
he should still be fined five hundred
as an illegitimate lover.49
At the same time, Ketana is a strong defender of royal authority, which
he sees as requiring defence with an iron hand and the most severe of
deterrent punishments. So:
If someone insults the king,
Or reveals the royal secrets,
His tongue should be cut out
And he should be driven out of town.50
All in all, then, this is a text that is remarkable for its censorious tone,
and marked desire to regulate the moral life of society, rather than the
harmonious combination of its parts in some form of social
equilibrium. Virtue, for Ketana, must be produced, and if that
production requires pain—whether physical or financial—so be it. Even
gossip and malicious speech are seen by him as requiring regulation in
some form, and that too by the king.
If a person lacks one limb,
or if he has a deformed limb,
or if one limb is badly diseased,
one should not talk ill of them.
And those who ridicule them by saying:
'How well formed he is',
'No one compares to him',
should pay a fine of three mkas.51
In a similar vein, ethnic slurs, or insults based on caste, are not to be
allowed in this most 'politically correct' of utopias.
If someone says that people from Murikinadu are stupid,
that the Arava [Tamil] people are quarrelsome (penaparulu),
or that Brahmins are greedy,
 and abuses people by country, language, or caste,
such a person should be fined a hundred paṇas.52
In other sections, notably the ācāra-kāṇḍa, many passages seem to bear
a close resemblance to Manu's Dharmasāstra, at times literally and at
other times in spirit. A great preoccupation of the author, Ketana, is
with the mixing of castes and the potentially negative effects of this
phenomenon. Further, gender roles are distinctly asymmetrical in this
vision of things, all the more so in the context of inter-caste relations.
us:
If a high-caste woman
Makes love to a Shūdra man,
She may become pure again
by penance (prāyascitta).
But if she becomes pregnant,
her husband should leave her.
Further, unlike what we find in nīti texts, it is understood that the rights
of women are far more limited, and that they can be unilaterally
disciplined for a number of faults, oen merely on the basis of
accusation. A last verse from Ketana below demonstrates how
thoroughgoing and consistent a vision he embodies.
If a woman drinks,
and has a sharp tongue,
if she wastes all the money,
if she hates men,
or if she is barren,
or if she only has female children,
if she is sick,
if she is a termagant,
then the man can leave her, and marry again.
ere is nothing wrong in that.53
To develop the contrast—and the opposed visions that we have been
suggesting inhere in the different genres—we should now turn to the
nīti tradition of roughly the same period. In the nīti texts that were
written during the Kakatiya period, by such writers as Sivadevayya and
Rudradeva, the localized nature of the king and his kingship is quite
evident. Even though the king they address is portrayed as a strong
monarch, he is not an emperor ruling over multiple regions or extensive
domains. e advice given relating to the protection of durgas
(fortresses), for dealing with spies, for invading the enemy's territory,
the conduct of battle, and so on, is nowhere on a scale suggesting a large
empire. Yet the advice is practical and clearly derived from real
experience of the administration of a kingdom. We may take, for
instance, the following excerpts from Singana:

A king who does not command, is like a king in a painting (good

only for looks). If a king doesn't punish anyone who defies his
command—even if the wrongdoer is his own son—he does not
rule long.
To allow merchants to take as much as they want is to ruin your
people.
If you don't make scales and measures uniform, it means you ef-
fectively permit thieves to go scot-free.
If a king increases taxes, that effectively prevents (foreign) goods
from entering his country.
Wherever a letter might come from, a king should never disregard
it. It is only through letters that a king knows everything—from
alliances to enmities.
Not killing a criminal amounts to killing a host of gentle people.
All that you need to do in order to kill cows is spare a tiger.

Some of the quotations in the SNS are clearly influenced by a traditional

Sanskrit model of kingship, for example when the king is equated with
god, quoting Manu's Dharmashāstra.

e king is godly, and that is what Manu says, and he should be

treated as such, and wise people should not treat him otherwise.
Even if he is a boy, a king should not be treated like an ordinary
mortal. He is god, and that's how he should be treated.
e king may be bad, but the servant should serve his interests.
 If he [the servant] should leave his master for another to make a
better living, the new master will never respect him for his loyalty.

However, in the same anthology we find some advice regarding bad

kings. It is interesting to note that this advice comes from writers who
perhaps served kings themselves in various capacities, such as scribes
(karaṇams) or soldiers.

If anyone has caused you harm, go and complain to the king. But if
the king himself harms you, who can you complain to?
If serving a ruler causes incessant pain to the servant, the servant
should leave such a master right away.
He may be rich, born in a good caste, a strong warrior beyond
comparison, but if a king is an ignoramus, his servants will no
doubt leave him.
If a king does not distinguish between the right hand and the le, a
precious diamond and a piece of glass, it is humiliating to serve
such a king—no matter how great a warrior you are.
A bad king surrounded by good people turns out to be good. But
even a good king is difficult to serve if his advisers are bad.
A king who enjoys hearing stories of others' faults, who enjoys
putting people through trouble, and steals other men's wives,
brings calamity to his people.

e authoritative figure of Baddena is generously quoted in the SNS,

and has some fascinating instructions to a king in his
Nītishāstramuktāvaḷi. Contrary to the later importance karaṇams
acquired in managing the affairs of the kingdom as ministers and
scribes, Baddena strikes a note of caution against too much dependence
on the minister. In his words:

A king should not direct his people and his servants to his minister
for all their needs. e king should be his own minister and treat
the minister as an assistant.
e major writers on nīti whom Singana quotes in his SNS are already
aware of the whole nīti tradition before them, including the Sanskrit
Arthashāstra text. Besides, closer to hand, we find medieval texts from
the Deccan, such as the Mānasollāsa of the twelh-century Calukya
king Someshvara III.54 Such works as these can certainly be seen to
participate in a culture of political realism, and thus give the lie to those
who have argued that pre-colonial politics in India was conceived along
purely idealist lines. At the same time, the genre of the 'Mirror for
Princes' is well known in the Indo-Islamic context, where a number of
such texts exist both from the time of the Sultanate of Delhi, under the
later Mughals, and from the regional sultanates such as those of the
Deccan.55 Such texts, oen written in Persian, are themselves at times
influenced by Indic models such as the Pañcatantra, known in the
Islamic world through its translation as the Kalila wa Dimna. Yet they
also bear the clear imprint of the non-theological perspective on
kingship that had emerged in the Islamic lands in the aermath of the
Mongol conquests, when Muslim advisers and wazīrs struggled with the
problem of how to advise kāfir rulers and princes on the matter of
government, without taking them into murky and controversial
theological waters.56 e 'Mirror for Princes' genre ranges wide, and
attempts to do everything from forming the prince's musical tastes to
refining his table manners. But the core of the matter is usually politics,
both in the sense of diplomatic relations between states, and relations
between a prince and his companions, or between different elements in
a courtly setting.57
e authors included in the SNS appear to be aware of these different
traditions, and even draw upon them quite explicitly.58 Yet, in contrast
to the typical 'Mirror for Princes', these authors offer a top-down
hands-on vision, partly rooted in pragmatic experience, partly
creatively adapting the existing literature of nīti-statecra. is is no
armchair pontificating but a largely practical synthesis reflecting the
political, economic, and institutional changes of the fieenth century.
Still, highly individualized statements that can be attributed directly to
the book's author, Singana, do alternate with verses that seem to be
lied from standard nīti texts about politics and kingship. Nonetheless,
we are le with a total impression of a unique concoction of pragmatic
wisdom, specific constraints, and inherited normative politics.

An Imperial Interlude: Krishnadevaraya

Singana wrote in the fieenth century, and the immediate textual
heritage he had available to him came from the period of the Kakatiyas.
ese were rulers who had dominated a relatively well-defined regional
space in the eastern Deccan, and their preoccupations were very much
reflective of that fact. In the case of Singana, we may suspect that the
political landscape had fragmented even further, and that the kings he
referred to were ruling over domains that would qualify a few centuries
later as no more than zamīndārīs. But this was certainly not the case by
the latter half of the fieenth century, when a new, diverse, and complex
polity had emerged to control much of peninsular India south of the
Tunghabhadra river, namely, the state that is normally known as
Vijayanagara (from the name of its capital city).
Normative texts on kingship, or statecra, are hard to come by for
fieenth-century Vijayanagara. But we are far better served for the
sixteenth century, and the times of the ird ('Tuluva') and Fourth
('Aravidu') Dynasties that ruled over Vijayanagara. A particular high
point in terms of literary production, including that within the nīti
genre, is the reign of the Tuluva monarch Krishnadevaraya (d. 1529).59
When Krishnadevaraya ascended the throne in 1509 it is clear that a
number of crucial problems regarding political management still re-
mained to be resolved.60 One major concern in the mind of the king
was to make himself generally acceptable, and secure an area that
encompassed more than one region, one language and one religion. e
king's self-perception, given to us eloquently in his major work
Āmuktamālyada, suggests that he sees himself as a Kannada Raya, a
Kannada king, while the god to whom he dedicated his book was a
Telugu Raya, a Telugu king. Without anachronistically invoking regio-
nal nationalisms and language loyalties in the context of the sixteenth-
century Deccan, we can still see local polities conflicting with each
other and being wary of dominance by someone from the outside.
Another way to formulate the dilemma that this king confronted is in
terms of an enduring tension between local and trans-local forces.
ere is a consistent effort to conceptualize some basis for a trans-local
polity that could extricate the state from its constant re-submergence in
diffuse local contexts. A striking element in this conceptual effort lies in
the king's own dynastic origins in one of the most marginal and
recently conquered localities—the western coastal plain of Tulunad. A
kind of upstart, whose own family inheritance dictated that he prove
himself outside the family context, finds himself articulating, at times
somewhat inchoately, a vision of trans-regional, highly personalized
loyalties.
Once a trans-regional state system is conceivable, its ruler runs up
against its external boundaries. e manyam forest regions (especially
the northern and north-eastern frontiers but also implicitly to the
south-west in Kodagu, or Coorg, and the Western Ghats) thus figure
prominently in the Āmuktamālyada's section on rāaja-nīti and require
special treatment. External boundaries, however, coexist with the
internal wilderness, as we see in a verse about a farmer marking off his
field and then slowly making it free of stones and other impediments.
But the text is also marked by a consistent suspicion, at times bordering
on hostility or even contempt, for peoples like the Boyas and the Bhils,
who could be found both at the border regions of the empire (in the
north-east) and at the internal frontier. A prose passage within the nīti
section thus advises the listener: Allay the fears of the hill folk, and
bring them into your army. Since they are a small people, their loyalty
or faithlessness, their enmity or friendship, their favour or disfavour,
can all easily be managed.' Another passage, this one in verse, runs as
follows:
Trying to clean up the forest folk
is like trying to wash a mud wall.
ere's no end to it. No point in getting angry.
Make promises that you can keep and win them over.
 ey'll be useful for invasions, or plundering an enemy land.
It's irrational for a ruler to punish a thousand
When a hundred are at fault.
is then is rāja-nīti for building an empire, composed by a rather
introspective yet by now quite experienced king who has been on the
throne for perhaps a decade. In certain key respects, the author departs
from conventional wisdom. For example, he recommends posting
Brahmins as commanders of forts, durga, and the fact that this was
practical advice is shown by studies of the prosopography of the
notables of the empire in that time.61
Make trustworthy Brahmins
e commanders of your forts
And give them just enough troops,
to protect these strongholds,
lest they become too threatening.
Brahmins, in this view, have certain clear advantages over non-Brah-
mins, even though this caste is theoretically at least not to be associated
with warrior functions (though numerous exceptions, both in the epics
and earlier historical instances, could be found):
e king will oen benefit by putting a Brahmin in charge, for he
knows both the laws of Manu and his own dharma.
And from fear of being mocked
by Kshatriyas and Shudras,
he will stand up to all difficulties.
Beyond this, however, lies the Brahmin's relative freedom from local
attachments. At the same time, these Brahmins are clearly trained by
now in military ways and engaged in worldly activities.
e potential for conflict between kings and ministers, that would be
a staple of the histories and treatises produced by the karaṇams—the
class from which the ministers themselves came—is also ever- present
here, though its resolution is rather more to the king's advantage. e
following extended passage makes this clear enough.
 Employ Brahmins who are learned in statecra,
who fear the unethical, and accept the king's authority,
who are between fiy and seventy,
from healthy families,
not too proud, willing to be ministers,
capable of discharging their duties well.
A king with such Brahmins for just a day
can strengthen the kingdom in all its departments.
If such ministers are not available,
a king must act on his own,
and do whatever he can.
If not, a bad minister can become
like a pearl as large as a pumpkin—
an ornament impossible to wear.
e minister will be out of control,
and the king will live under his thumb.

Early Modern Variations

e post-Krishnadevaraya period in Vijayanagara changes the context
of such writings, in particular once we enter the period of the
dominance of the Aravidu family. e growing role of Aravidu ('Aliya')
Ramaraya's relatives and his extended family, spread out in smaller
kingdoms all over the Deccan, already marks a significant shi in this
respect. e nīti of the empire, articulated by Krishnadevaraya, again
gives way to the nīti of small kingdoms, most of which survive with the
help of kinship relations and support from the extended family. While
this also creates the usual family intrigues, rivalries, and battles, the new
political conditions also give rise to opportunities for upward mobility.
e emergence of the Nayakas from the flexible and uncertain political
conditions in the post-Krishnadevaraya period is reflected in the nīti
texts of this time.62
e Āndhra Kāmandakamu by Jakkaraju Venkatakavi was written in
1584, and is of crucial interest to us in this context. Venkatakavi was
employed in the court of Kondaraju Venkataraju, himself a small king
from the Aravidu family. e personal history of this Venkata- raju is
interesting, especially because he is reputed to have renovated the
Ahobilam temple when it had been ruined by the Turks (turakalu).
Even so, the nīti book Venkataraju has authored does not have any
mention of Muslims, either disapproving or approving. What is instead
noteworthy for us now is the regional and 'secular' (in the sense of non-
sectarian) nature of nīti in the Āndhra Kāmandakamu. Even though the
author states that his work is a translation of the earlier Sanskrit
Kāmandakiya or Nītisāra, the later work in fact includes a number of
nīti statements that are not to be found in the original, making it more
an early modern nīti text rather than a simple restatement of a classical
nīti vision. For instance, here is a passage concerning the treatment of
relatives and other political allies.
Sons of your maternal uncle and aunt, and your nephews and your
maternal uncle himself, sons of your mother's sister's sons—these
people are allies by blood (aurasa-mitrulu).
Your sons-in-law, brothers-in-law, your wife's brothers and sisters,
are allies by marriage (sambandha-mitrulu).
Kings of the lands on the other side of the country with which you
share a border are allies from a related foreign land
(deshakramagatulu).
Kings who seek your protection in time of need are protected allies
(rakshita-mitrulu).
A king should take note of these four kinds of allies and nurture
their friendship.63
We have already noted that the relationship between kings and their
ministers had been a matter of concern for both Baddena and Krishna-
devaraya, both of whom have some words of caution to the king re-
garding the choice of his ministers. Venkatakavi goes a step further and
describes the corrupt practices that bad ministers could adopt in order
to enrich themselves. e verse below gives several kinds of bribes a
minister could take:
 If the minister comes to a festival, what he gets is called kāṇuka.
What he receives by way of things he appropriates from people is
called porabaḍi.
If he gets kickback in cash it is called paṭṭubaḍi. e money he gets
privately in return for taking care of their business is called lañcam.
A king should make sure that his minister does not take any of the
above, and such a person should work for the king and receive his
livelihood only from the king.64

Niti and karaṇam Culture

e political landscape we have described changes again from the
seventeenth century onwards. A new group of people who made
writing their profession emerged as a politically and culturally
important group. In Andhra, Karnataka, and Orissa these people were
oen cal-led karaṇams, and they were considered to be the
counterparts of munshīs in northern India.65 Oen seeing themselves
as mantris or ministers of kings, karaṇams perceive themselves broadly
as managers of public affairs. Most members of this group were not
connected with major empires or powerful kings, but they nevertheless
had enormous influence in running small kingdoms, zamīndārīs, and
petty principalities. ey were also successful managers of properties,
accountants, poets, and historians. ey prided themselves in their
multiple language skills, their ability to read the scripts of many
languages, and above all their skill at calligraphy. ey were also at the
same time accomplished at writing a highly unintelligible cursive script
decipherable only by other karaṇams. ey came mostly from Brahmin
castes, and in Andhra they were mostly Niyogi Brahmins—as opposed
to the Vaidikis.66 e former managed public affairs while the latter
specialized in ritual texts and ritual performances, even though both
wrote poetry. Karaṇams used the pen for their power and prestige. ey
were writers in the true sense of the word, as we understand it today.
e self-image of the karaṇams is fascinating. ey have le behind a
large body of writings about themselves, and their code of conduct and
training, in addition to a number of historical texts. Here is what one of
the verses tells us about a karaṇam.
By good fortune a person becomes intelligent.
By his intelligence, he receives the king's respect.
When the king respects him, he becomes his adviser,
and begins to manage public affairs.
And when he becomes his chief adviser, he runs the kingdom.
He writes, reads and speaks intelligently.
He listens to what people say.
He interprets foreign languages to the king, and
calms the assembly when it is out of control.
He says the right words at the right time, and brings people
together,
and sees, right away, honesty from trickery.
He is capable of bringing people together and separating them too.
Or favouring enemies and offering them the throne.
He is humble, dignified, skilled and giving.
at's what a good mantri should be.
When the king is against you,
You need to make friends with the scribe.
When the god of death, Yama was angry and declared a person
dead,
gatāyu, didn't Citragupta, his scribe, make him live a hundred
years, a
shatāyu, by changing ga to sha?
Included in a list of thirty-two legendary ministers is a certain Rayani
Bhaskarudu, who appears most frequently in manuscript sources. Here
are a few poems about him from tradition.67

ere should be twelve bhāskaras (suns) in the sky, Why do I see

only eleven?
One of them is now serving as a minister on earth.
You mean the famous minister Bhaskara? I don't see a thousand
hands (rays) on him.
 You see them when he gives to people, when he kills enemies, and
when he writes.

When Rayani Bhacadu writes,

sitting in front of his king Kataya Vema,
the sound of his pen gives
chills to his enemies
and shivers of joy to the poets.
Even when he was learning his alphabet,
Rayani Bhacadu did not join la and its e-curve
or write da and make a loop on its side.
e letters together would make, ledu, which means 'no'.
at was how generous he was to those who asked him for help.68
We also find a verse concerning another minister inscribed on the front
gate of the Gopinathasvami temple in Kondavidu.
He built the town of Gopinathapuram
with incomparable walls on all sides.
Compelling in gentle power, he conquered
the Yavanas and all their armies.
He installed the deity, Gopika-vallabha and
organized his worship in a regular order.
He ruled over the Andhra mandala area
with a name for law and justice.
He is the one who is praised among
the best of mantris of the best of kings,
who worked for the honour and good of Acyutadevaraya
He is Ramayabhaskara, brilliant as the mid-day sun.
We can see that a number of developments led to the growing
importance of karaṇams in affairs of state. e increased use of Persian
as a language of administration, the existence of several languages in
which smaller kings had to correspond with their political allies and
neighbours, the availability of pen and paper, and elaborate new
accounting responsibilities made the position of scribes far more
important in society than it had been before. Now, scribes were
employed in jobs of higher status and power than simply serving to take
dictation or copy manuscripts. 'Reality' is now what is written down,
and not, as earlier, what is uttered. We can see a corresponding change
in popular mythology and Hindu iconography. e goddess of language
and the arts, Sarasvati, is now endowed with a book in one of her hands,
in addition to a vīṇa, the stringed musical instrument. Yama, the god of
death, acquires an assistant, Citragupta, who keeps accounts of living
beings in separate files, and, as in the poem quoted earlier, can even
become more powerful than Yama himself.
People who called themselves ministers (mantris) were not always the
ministers of a ruling king. Mantri was in a sense more an honorific
caste title rather than a fixed position or office. Oen these 'ministers'
were themselves independent chiefs of a locality, or even a village.
However, in keeping with the convention that a king should be a
warrior, the minister who has taken independent control of an area also
describes himself in military terms. But by the seventeenth century
there was a significant shi in the values of peninsular Indian society.
Greater importance was given to dāna, charity, rather than to vīra,
valour in battle. e possibility of acquiring wealth in the form of cash
created conditions of upward mobility that were different from those
created by simple military conquest. e emergence of the le-hand
caste Balijas as trader-warrior-kings, as evident in the Nayaka period, is
a consequence of such conditions of new wealth. is produces a
collapsing of two varṇas, Kshatriya and Vaishya, into one. Acquired
wealth, rather than status by birth in a family, now leads to an entirely
new value system where money talks. e Sumatishatakamu records
this change rather cynically:
Never mind if he is born in a low caste,
never mind if he is timid,
never mind if he is son of a whore.
If he has money, he is king.
e presence of cash also generates charity. Members of the nobility are
now constantly advised to excel in charity. In keeping with changes in
social values, nīti is no longer regarded as a matter that simply concerns
kings and courtiers. It is for everyone, and in particular for anyone who
desires status and social recognition. Nīti is now told in the form of
stories rather than aphorisms and shāstrik statements. Kuciraju Errana's
Sakala-nīti-kathā-nidhānam, a book of stories that teaches nīti,
indicates an early recognition of this change.69 Errana adopts a number
of stories from Betāla-pañca-vimshati and other kathā sources, both
from Sanskrit and Telugu. e main thrust of the stories is to teach the
individual wise and tactful ways of handling oneself, and thus of
maximizing one's chances of success.
One book that codifies the conduct of karaṇams is the Sumati
shatakamu70 Written by an unknown author, probably in the eighteenth
century, this book is variously attributed to Baddena and to an even
more ancient Bhimana. Perhaps both authorships were ascribed by
karaṇams to make the text serve two different purposes. Baddena's
authorship serves the interests of the karaṇams in claiming political
legitimacy among kings and other aspirants to rule an area, and the
Bhimana authorship makes the text speak with the voice of authority of
an ancient, god-like poet to serve the interests of the same community
when they desire legitimacy among people in general. e Sumati
shatakamu elevates the role of the minister (karaṇamu) and treats it as
more crucial for the maintenance of the order of the kingdom than that
of the king himself.
A kingdom with a minister runs smoothly with its strategy intact.
And a kingdom without a minister breaks down like a machine
with a critical part missing.
A king without a minister is like an elephant without a trunk.
It also gives practical wisdom for ordinary people such as the following:
Don't live in a village where you don't have a moneylender, a
doctor, and a river that does not dry up.
If you don't spend the money you earn for your pleasures, part of it
goes to the king and the other part is lost into the earth.
at's very much like the honey that bees gather in the forest—
part of it goes to people who collect honey and part of it falls to
 earth.
e lord of the wealth Kubera is his friend, but Siva still begs for his
living.
What you have is your wealth, not what your friends or relatives
have.
Don't ever trust the tax-collector, the gambler, the goldsmith, or
the whore. Don't trust a merchant or a le-handed person, that is
not good for you.
Listen to everyone, but wait to think through what they say.
Only one who accepts things aer ascertaining truth or falsehood,
is a wise man.
A wise man is stronger than a man who is only physically strong.
A slim rider controls an elephant big as a mountain.
A snake has poison in its head.
A scorpion has poison in its tail.
An evil person has poison all over his body, head to toe.
Despite such practical advice, the Sumati shatakamu is at bottom a
cynical (rather than simply an amoral) text, which believes women are
not trustworthy, that kings never keep their word, and that friends last
only as long as you have money. In the hard world it depicts, you have
to take care of yourself—no one else helps.

Conclusion
When the British government and its native employees wanted 'morals'
to be taught in the early nineteenth century, the Telugu equivalent that
their pundit-informants could find was nīti. is was based on a rather
curious misunderstanding: for even ihere are some ethical teachings
and moral statements in these texts, they are not exactly the kind of
moral code that one would apply to all people. Vennelakanti Subbarao
(1784-1839), translator for the Sadr 'adālat of the Madras Presidency (a
Telugu Niyogi Brahmin who rose to the highest post a native could
aspire to in the East India Company administration at the time, and
who commanded competence in about half a dozen Indian languages in
addition to English), was one of the more prominent of the Company's
interlocutors already from an early time. When he was appointed
member of the Madras School Book Society, he submitted a report in
1820 on the state of teaching in schools, in which he wrote that children
in schools were taught neither adequate grammar nor morals. So they
came out of their schools with no real ability in using the language and
they were not trained to become upright members of their society
either. erefore, he recommended—addressing the need for teaching
morals—that 'tales extracted from different books composed chiefly of
morals written in modern languages' be prescribed for study.71
In this context, Ravipati Gurumurti Sastri also put the Pañcatantra
stories into Telugu prose and taught them at the College of Fort St
George in Madras. is was soon followed by another translation of
Pañcatantra by the very influential Paravastu Cinnaya Suri.72 Now the
Pañcatantra was not in fact a 'Book of Morals'; rather, it was statecra
taught by means of animal fables. When the first generation of colonial
schoolboys needed a textbook, Puduri Sitarama Sastri, a pundit in
Madras, wrote a text called Pedda Bāla Siksha ('e Big Book of Lessons
for Children'), which was published in 1847. is work contains a
number of items—such as basic arithmetic, the names of weekdays,
months, and years according to the traditional lunar calendar, many
items of conventional wisdom, a few stories, and aphorisms modelled
aer the statements from nīti texts—to teach 'nīti' (now translated in an
unproblematized way as 'morals') to schoolboys. To be sure, in every
nīti text there were occasional statements that looked like teachings of
virtue, which were carefully selected and included in school textbooks.
Verses from Bhartrahari, which were translated into Telugu by several
poets during the medieval period, came in handy. Even the Sumati
shatakamu, which, as we have seen, is actually a handbook for
karaṇams, yielded some nice and acceptable moral state-ments.73
Because of the simple language in which the Sumati shatakamu was
written, it came to be particularly popular in school moral curricula.
Soon enough, lines from these verses came to adorn classroom walls
and copybooks. us, in the end, books on statecra and worldly
wisdom could serve as acceptable substitutes for the Ten
Commandments.
We may be seen here, rightly or wrongly, to be lamenting the loss of
importance suffered by the nīti tradition in recent times. If this were the
case, we would not be alone, for an echo of this viewpoint may be found
from no less a political figure in twentieth-century India than B.R.
Ambedkar who was, we are aware, a keen student of the Indian past,
and who had studied with R.P. Kangle, an authority on the
Arthashāstra.74 An o-quoted remark by him refers precisely to the
tension between the nīti- and dharma-oriented traditions that has lain
at the heart of this essay. He glossed these respectively as 'secular law'
and 'ecclesiastical law', and there are many—especially among the
growing number of 'anti-secularist' intellectuals in India—who would
immediately object to these translations.75 But perhaps Ambedkar was
not so wrong aer all in his use of the term 'secular' (however
problematic the word 'ecclesiastical' might be). Not as cavalier in his
disregard of the Indian past—or dismissive of history—as writers such
as T.N. Madan and Ashis Nandy have usually been, it may well be that
his view of a struggle between different conceptions of political and
social arrangements in pre-colonial India might shed light on the
deeper roots and more profound purchase that 'Indian secularism' has,
than that of a mere transplant from distant climes. If such a reading
were indeed correct, how would one explain the long-lasting appeal of a
text like the Kuṟaḷ, with which we began our inquiry? To explore that
line of investigation would take us, however, beyond the confines of a
mere essay such as this. But it would certainly help us think our way
beyond some of the shibboleths and cliches that have gained so much
ground in recent times.

Notes
* Early versions of this essay have been presented at St Antony's College (Oxford),
the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences,
Calcutta, the University of British Columbia, the EHESS (Paris), the Humanities
Institute (Wisconsin-Madison), and the Center for India and South Asia (UCLA).
For critical comments and suggestions, we are particularly grateful to Partha
Chatterjee, Sudipta Kaviraj, and S.R. Sarma.
1 As cited in Mary E. Hancock, 'Modernities Remade: Hindu Temples and their
Publics in Southern India', City & Society, 14, 1 (2002), p. 12.
2 Stuart Blackburn, 'Corruption and Redemption: e Legend of Valluvar and
Tamil Literary History', Modern Asian Studies, 34, 2 (2000), p. 453.
3 http://www.thirukkural2005.org. is is merely one of a vast number of websites
devoted to this text and its author.
4 Norman Cutler, 'Interpreting Tirukkuṟaḷ: e Role of Commentary in the
Creation of a Text', Journal of the American Oriental Society, 112, 4 (1992), pp.
549-66.
5 G.U. Pope, Tiruvaluvananya arulicceyta Tirrukkuṟaḷḷ: e 'Sacred'Kurral of
Tiruvalluva-Nayanar, with Introduction, Grammar, Translation Notes, Lexicon, and
Concordance (in which are reprinted Fr. Beschi's and F.W. Ellis's versions) (reprint,
New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1980).
6 As cited in Blackburn, 'Corruption and Redemption', p. 455.

7 Hiroyuki Kotani, 'Doṣa (sin)-Prāyascitta (Penance): e Predominating

Ideology in the Later Medieval Deccan', in Hiroyuki Kotani, Western India in
Historical Transition: Seventeenth to Early Twentieth Centuries (New Delhi:
Manohar, 2002); N.K. Wagle, 'e Government, the Jati, and the Individual:
Rights, Discipline and Control in the Pune Kotwal Papers, 1766-94', Contributions
to Indian Sociology, N.S., 34 (2000), pp. 321-60. Cf. the earlier pioneering work of
V.T. Gune, e Judicial System of the Marathas (Pune: Deccan College, 1953). Also
of interest to this discussion is Sumit Guha, 'An Indian Penal Regime:
Maharashtra in the Eighteenth Century', Past and Present, 147 (1995), pp. 101-26.
8 'Begriffsgeschichte und Sozialgeschichte', Kölner Zeitschrif für Sociologie, 16
(1972), translated in Reinhart Koselleck, Le Futur Passé: Contribution à la
sémantique des temps historiques, tr. Jochen Hoock and Marie-Claire Hoock
(Paris: Éditions EHESS, 1990), p. 99.
9 Burton Stein, 'All the King's Mana: Perspectives on Kingship in Medieval South
India', in J.F. Richards, ed., Kingship and Authority in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1998), pp. 133-88 (with a brief mention of some Jaina nīti texts
on pp. 144-5). For a succinct critique of Stein's formulations on the period under
consideration here, see Sanjay Subrah- manyam, 'Agreeing to Disagree: Burton
Stein on Vijayanagara', South Asia Research, 17, 2 (1997), pp. 127-39.
10 For anthropological perspectives, see Jonathan Parry and Maurice Bloch, eds,
Money and the Morality of Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1989); C.A. Gregory, Savage Money: e Anthropology and Politics of Commodity
Exchange (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997); Stephane Breton,
'Social Body and Icon of the Person: A Symbolic Analysis of Shell Money among
the Wodani, Western Highlands of Irian Jaya', American Ethnologist, 26, 3 (1999),
pp. 558-82.
11 On the problem of religion, see Talal Asad, 'e Construction of Religion as an
Anthropological Category', in Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and
Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: e Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1993), pp. 27-54; perhaps drawing (though not explicitly) on the
earlier work by Wilfred Cantwell Smith, e Meaning and End of Religion: A New
Approach to the Religious Traditions of Mankind (New York: New American
Library, 1964).
12 omas N. Headland, Kenneth L. Pike, and Marvin Harris, eds, Emics and
Etics: e Insider/Outsider Debate (Newbury Park: Sage, 1990).
13 See the useful discussion in Ian Hacking, Historical Ontology (Cambridge,
Mass: Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 152-8.
14 e category of the 'pre-political' appears most famously in Eric Hobsbawm,
Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th
Centuries (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959).
15 Benedict R. Anderson, ' e Idea of Power in Javanese Culture', in Claire Holt,
Benedict R. Anderson, and James T. Siegel, eds, Culture and Politics in Indonesia
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972), pp. 1-69; also the earlier essay by
Benedict R. Anderson, 'e Languages of Indonesian Politics', Indonesia, 1 (April
1966), pp. 89-116.
16 Ashis Nandy, 'e Culture of Indian Politics: A Stock Taking', Journal of Asian
Studies, 30, 1 (1970), pp. 57-79. Also see Nandy, 'e Political Culture of the
Indian State', Dqdalus, 118, 4 (1989), pp. 1-26.
17 For example, see V.R. Mehta and omas Pantham, eds, Political Ideas in
Modern India: ematic Explorations (New Delhi: Sage, 2006).
18 Patricia Crone, MedievalIslamic Politicalought, c. 650—1250(Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2004). e most important recent exercise on Indo-
Islamic polities, and exploring the genre termed aḵẖlāq, is that of Muzaffar Alam,
e Languages of Political Islam: India 1200—1800 (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2004).
19 Our problem thus parallels in some measure the one faced by historians of
political thought in China. For some examples, see Roger T. Ames, e Art of
Rulership: A Study in Ancient Chinese Political ought (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 1983), and Hsiao Kung-chuan, A History of Chinese Political
ought, Volume 1, From the Beginnings to the Sixth Century A.D., tr. F.W Mote
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).
20 By focusing on the vernacular traditions, we seek to distinguish ourselves from
a few earlier attempts which remain focused on Sanskrit; see, for example,
Upendra Nath Ghoshal, A History of Indian Political Ideas: e Ancient Period and
the Period of Transition to the Middle Ages (Bombay: Oxford University Press,
1959); and more recently the disappointing essay (again deriving from a
secondary literature, but referring to Sanskrit materials) by Bhikhu Parekh, 'Some
Reflections on the Hindu Tradition of Political ought', in omas Pantham and
Kenneth L. Deutsch, eds, Political ought in Modern India (New Delhi: Sage,
1986).
21 See, for example, Ramacandra Pant Amatya, Ajñapatra, ed. Vilas Khole (Pune,
1988).
22 We should note in passing that the word nīti is etymologically related to netā,
the most common North Indian word in use today for 'politician'.
23 For a recent examination of this period, see Cynthia Talbot, Precolonial India in
Practice: Society, Region, and Identity in Medieval Andhra (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2001).
24 For Vijayanagara's relationship to (and memory of) earlier polities in the
region, see Hermann Kulke, 'Maharajas, Mahants and Historians: Reflections on
the Historiography of Early Vijayanagara and Sringeri', in A.L. Dallapiccola and S.
Zingel-Avé Lallemant, eds, Vijayanagara—City and Empire: New Currents of
Research, 2 vols (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1985), vol. i, pp. 120-43.
25 On Mughal involvement in the region, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Penumbral
Visions: Making Polities in Early Modern South India (Delhi/ Ann Arbor: Oxford
University Press/University of Michigan Press, 2001).
26 Robert Sewell, A Forgotten Empire—Vijayanagar: A Contribution to the History
of India (London, 1900; reprint, Delhi,1962).
27 Patrick Olivelle, e Law Code of Manu (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2004), p. xxiii: 'the composition of the MDh may be placed closer to the second
century ce.'
28 On this early interaction, also see the essay by Phillip Wagoner, 'Precolonial
Intellectuals and the Production of Colonial Knowledge', Comparative Studies in
Society and History, 45, 4 (2003), pp. 783-814, which however appears to us far too
influenced by the model of 'dialogic interaction' put forward in Eugene F. Irschick,
Dialogue and History: Constructing South India, 1795-1895 (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1994).
29 e classic study remains J.D.M. Derrett, Religion, Law and the State in India
(New York: Free Press, 1968). Also see, more recently, Richard W. Lariviere,
'Dharmaśāstra, Custom, "Real Law" and "Apocryphal" Smrtis', in B. Koelver, ed.,
Recht, Staat und Verwaltung in klassischen Indien (Wiesbaden, 1997), pp. 97-110.
30 e standard work is R.P. Kangle, ed. and trans., Kautilya's Arthaśāstra, 3 vols
(Bombay, 1965-72), but there is a vast secondary literature.
31 Phillip B. Wagoner, Tidings of the King: A Translation and Ethnohistorical
Analysis of the 'Rāyavācakamu' (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993), pp.
182, 197. is Telugu text bears a close and interesting resemblance to a Kannada
text of the same period, Shrīkrishṇadevarāya dinacari, ed. V.S. Sampatkumara
Acarya (Bangalore, 1983).
32 We have used Kautilya, Arthashāstram, ed. Pullela Sriramacandrudu
(Hyderabad, 2004) with Balanandini commentary, in the Telugu script.
33 Charles Malamoud, 'Croyance, crédulité, calcul politique: Présentation et
traduction commentée de l'Arthçâstra de Kautilya, livre XIII, chapitres I et III',
Multitudes, 1997 (http://multitudes.samizdat.net/Croyance- credulite-
calcul.html).
34 omas Trautmann has in particular attempted to date the text from linguistic
evidence. See omas R. Trautmann, Kautilya andthe Arthaśāstra: A Statistical
Investigation ohe Authorship andEvolution ohe Text (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1971).
Also see K.J. Shah, 'Of Artha and the Arthaśāstra , Contributions to Indian
Sociology, N.S., 15 (1982), pp. 55-73, and H. Scharfe, Investigations in Kautilya's
Manual of Political Science (Wiesbaden, 1993).
35 Kamanda, Nīti-sāra, ed. with a Telugu translation by Tadakamalla Venkata
Krishna Rao (Madras, 1960).
36 See Talbot, Precolonial India in Practice.

37 Madiki Singana, Sakala-nīti-sammatamu, eds Nidudavolu Venkataravu and

P.S.R. Apparao (Hyderabad, 1970; this includes a facsimile of the 1923 edition by
M. Ramakrishna Kavi).
38 38.Baddena, Nīti-shāstra-muktāvali, ed. M. Ramakrishna Kavi (Tanuku, 1962).

39 We follow the dating system for Singana given by Nidudavolu Venkataravu in

his preface to Sakala-nīti sammatamu. He in fact proposes a range of dates from
1400 to 1440.
40 Ketana, Vijñāneshvaramu, ed. C.V. Ramachandra Rao (Nellore, 1977).
Ramachandra Rao, in his preface to the work, already notes that Singana does not
include Ketana's work in his anthology, but assumes this to be due to the lack of
'popularity' of the latter during his time. Also see Ketana, Vijñāneshvaramu, ed. C.
Vasundhara (Nellore, 1989).
41 On Tikkana, see V. Narayana Rao and David Shulman, Classical Telugu Poetry:
An Anthology (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002).
42 Ketana, Vijñāneshvaramu, ed. Ramachandra Rao, p. 24, verses 1-4.

43 Ibid., verse 42, p. 27.

44 Ibid., verse 109, p. 32.

45 Ibid., verses 117-19, p. 33.

46 Ibid., verse 149, p. 36.

47 Ibid., verses 107, 108 and 110, pp. 21-2.

48 Ibid., verse 126, p. 23.

49 Ibid., verse 129, p. 23.

50 Ibid., verse 134, p. 23.

51 Ibid., verse 42, p. 16.

52 Ibid., verse 56, p. 17.

53 Ibid., verse 113, p. 10.

54 See Someshvara, Mānasollāsa, 3 vols, ed. Gajanan K. Shrigondekar (Baroda,

1925-61).
55 Linda T. Darling, ''Do Justice, Do Justice, for at is Paradise': Middle Eastern
Advice for Indian Muslim Rulers', Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and
the Middle East, 23, 1-2 (2002), pp. 3-19. Also see Wagoner, Tidings of the King, pp.
182, 197; and especially his 'Iqta and Nayankara: Military Service Tenures and
Political eory from Saljuq Iran to Vijayanagara South India', unpublished paper
presented at the 25th Annual Conference on South Asia, Madison, WI, 18-20
October 1996. In this latter essay, Wagoner presents convincing evidence for the
influence of Persian-Islamic political thought on Baddena.
56 On this thorny issue, see Jean Aubin, Émirs mongols et vizirspersans dans les
remous de l'acculturation (Paris, 1995).
57 For a stimulating reconsideration of the genre, see Jocelyne Dakhlia, 'Les
Miroirs des princes islamiques: Une modernite sourde?', Annales HSS, 57, 5
(2002), pp. 1191-1206.
58 For an earlier translation, see A. Rangasvami Sarasvati, 'Political Maxims of the
Emperor-Poet Krishnadeva Raya', Journal of Indian History, 4, 3 (1926), pp. 61-88;
also the later rendition (with the Telugu text of the rāja-nīti section) in K.A.
Nilakanta Sastri and N. Venkataramanayya, eds, Further Sources of Vijayanagara
History, 3 vols (Madras: University of Madras Press, 1946). We have already dealt
at length with this text in V. Nara- yana Rao, David Shulman, and Sanjay
Subrahmanyam, 'A New Imperial Idiom in the Sixteenth Century: Krishnadeva
Raya and his Political eory of Vijayanagara', in Jean-Luc Chevillard and Eva
Wilden, eds, South Indian Horizons: Felicitation Volume for François Gros on the
Occasion of His 70th Birthday (Pondicherry: Institut Français and EFEO, 2004),
pp. 597-625.
59 ere is, unfortunately, no recent biography of this monarch. See, however, the
works of Oruganti Ramachandraiya, Studies on Krṣṇadevarāya of Vijayanagara
(Wiltair, 1953), and N. Venkataramanayya, Krishṇadevarāyalu (Hyderabad, 1972).
60 For the succession dates of Krishnadevaraya and his coronation, see P. Sree
Rama Sarma, A History of Vijayanagar Empire (Hyderabad, 1992), p. 133.
61 Cynthia Talbot, 'e Nayakas of Vijayanagara Andhra: A Preliminary
Prosopography', in Kenneth R. Hall, ed., Structure and Society in Early South
India: Essays in Honour of Noboru Karashima (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
2001), pp. 251-75.
62 On the emergence of the Nayaka polities, see Velcheru Narayana Rao, David
Shulman, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Symbols of Substance: Court and State in
Nayaka-Period Tamilnadu (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992); and for a study
based on the inscriptional record, Noboru Karashima, A Concordance of Nayakas:
e Vijayanagar Inscriptions in South India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002).
63 Jakkaraju Venkatakavi, Āndhra Kāmandakamu, ed. Veturi Prabhakara Sastri
(Tanjore, 1950), verse 2.112.
64 Ibid., verse 2.82.
65 We return here to a set of themes treated in Velcheru Narayana Rao, David
Shulman, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Textures of Time: Writing History in South
India, 1600-1800 (Delhi: New York: Permanent Black and Other Books, 2003).
66 Komararaju Venkata Lakshmana Rao, 'Āndhra brāhmanulaloni niyogi-
vaidika-bheda-kāla-nirnayamu', in Lakshmaṇarāya vyāsāvaḷi, 2nd edn
(Vijayawada, 1965), pp. 1-17.
67 Veturi Prabhakara Sastri, ed., Cāṭu-padya-maṇi-mañjari (Hyderabad, 1988)
(reprint of the 1913 edition), vol. ii, section entitled mantrulu, pp. 251-308. Also
see the section on Sabhapati-vacanamu, in Cāṭu-padya-maṇi-mañjari, vol. i, pp.
283-9.
68 Prabhakara Sastri, ed. Cāṭu-padya-maṇi-mañjari, vol. ii, p. 257. e
combinations of vowels and consonants are now described in their graphic terms
such as ětvamu, kommu, rather than as phonological terms such as ěkāra and
ukāra.
69 Errayya, Sakala-nīti-kathā-nidhānamu, ed. T. Chandrasekharan (Madras,
1951). e exact date of Erramyya (or Errana) is not known and the suggestion by
the editor Chandrasekharan that he belongs to the late fieenth century seems to
be too early.
70 e text of the Sumati shatakamu has been printed many times with a number
of variations, some of them indicating that the text itself changed with time,
including a bowdlerized edition by Vavilla Ramasvami Shastrulu & Sons
(Madras), and reprinted many times. e edition we have used is dated 1962. But
also see Macca Haridasu, Tathyamu Sumati (Hyderabad, 1984). In the nineteenth
century, C.P. Brown collated a number of verses from manuscripts and translated
them, for which see C.P. Brown, Sumati shatakam, ed. C.R. Sarma (Hyderabad,
1973).
71 Vennelakanti Subbarao, e Life of Vennelacunty Soobarow (Native of Ongole)
As Written by Himself (Madras, 1873), pp. 65-75.
72 On Cinnaya Suri, see Velcheru Narayana Rao, 'Print and Prose: Pandits,
karaṇams, and the East India Company in the Making of Modern Telugu', in
Stuart Blackburn and Vasudha Dalmia, eds, India's Literary History: Essays on the
Nineteenth Century (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004), pp. 14666.
73 For instance, the following verse:
A good deed in return for another—
at's nothing special.
Doing good in return for harm—
ink about it: that's really good strategy.
is verse, actually stated as a form of political strategy, is now interpreted as an
altruistic moral statement.
74 Cf. B.R. Ambedkar: 'is country has seen the conflict between ecclesiastical
law and secular law long before Europeans sought to challenge the authority of the
Pope. Kautilya's Arthashāstra lays down the foundation of secular law. In India
unfortunately ecclesiastical law triumphed over secular law. In my opinion this
was one of the greatest disasters in the country.'
75 Most notable amongst these are Ashis Nandy, 'An Anti-Secularist Manifesto',
Seminar, 314 (1985), pp. 14-24; T.N. Madan, 'Secularism in its Place', Journal of
Asian Studies, 46, 4 (1987), pp. 747-59. e debate is summed up in Rajeev
Bhargava, ed., Secularism and Its Critics (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998).
 3
Eighteenth-Century Passages to a History of Mysore*

JANAKI NAIR

Introduction

B
ringing forty years of labour on the history of Mysore to a close
in the early 1940s, the eminent historian C. Hayavadana Rao
wrote, 'e history of eighteenth century Mysore shows that it
put forth its wealth of men and money to retain the south to [sir]
those it justly belonged, and it seems that this attempt at local freedom
should be recorded in a manner worthy of the theme.'1 He duly
acknowledged the pioneering effort of Mark Wilks's Historical Sketches
of South India, which had fashioned both the region of Mysore and its
history out of varied chronicles, biographies, commissioned memoirs,
and eyewitness accounts.2 Yet that work was deficient, for 'it belongs to
periods too close to Haidar Ali to be full or free from doubt' and
reflected only the British view.3 Moreover, it was dated, he declared, 'in
view of the advance made by modern research, archaeological and
other.' His own attempt to correct the imbalances of Wilks's account,
particularly for the period of Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan, not only drew
on a range of additional vernacular materials, records, and genealogies,
some of which were produced in the nineteenth century, but privileged
the local 'annalists of the period', such as 'the anonymous author of
HaidarNama, Hussain Ali Khan Kirmani, Mirza Ikbal', and others. of
them, Rao preferred the 'colourless and chronologically accurate
account of the earliest chronicle Haidar Nama' to Kirmani's 'loose
sequence of events', which was 'a curious medley of fact and fiction and
fulsome eulogy'. In many ways, Rao was even stricter than Wilks in his
adherence to the unvarnished account as more reliable; furthermore,
the biographer's Hindu background and his unflinching fidelity to the
truth of his Muslim hero's pursuit of power added credence to the
Haidar Nama.
Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman, and Sanjay Subrahman-yam
have questioned such a privileging of 'realism' as a mark of historical
practice, for 'Realism by itself is no guarantee of historicity.'4 ey
suggest that many literary and performative productions of the pre-
colonial period in South India have been the work of historians, though
they have been written or performed in a variety of genres. e attempt
to provide a 'history of regimes of historicity'5 leads them to conclude:
'History is not a matter of verisimilitude tout court. It is much more a
matter of texture . . .'6 Developing a sensitivity to the many forms taken
by history in the period before colonialism (which set the standard for
professional historical practice to follow) is more important than
dismissing the mythic, fantastic, or poetic elements of such writing.
However, the proliferation of writings in the eighteenth century
marked a distinct shi, some recalling the older productions studied by
Rao et al., others anticipating the 'secular' genres of historical writing
that were to take firmer root with colonialism. Kumkum Chatterjee's
discussion of a reconstructed historiographical tradition in late-
eighteenth-century eastern India reveals the strong focus on indi-
genous political traditions that simultaneously contained the seeds of a
political critique of colonial rule.7 ese Persian histories, largely
addressed to the East India Company, sought to explain the reasons for
the decline of the Mughal empire using the framework of a moral-
ethical norm of good government, by which yardstick even British rule
was considered a failure.
 A different set of concerns marked the historical productions of the
crucial late-eighteenth-century period in Mysore. If, as Partha
Chatterjee suggests, the 'ascendancy of the colonial modern needs to be
explained in each instance' vis-à-vis the many possibilities that were
generated within India itself, we may detect, in late-eighteenth-century
Mysore, a unique instance of this period of transition.8 e usurpation
of power from the Wodeyar dynasty by Haidar Ali in Mysore, his
brilliant successes, and the embattled and eventually doomed reign of
his son and successor Tipu Sultan engendered a range of historical
productions. Some of these sought to legitimize the usurpation, others
sought new sources for a princely authority that had already been lost,
while the most prominent strand of colonial historiography in English
aimed to discredit and 'defeat' the new rulers. Heterogeneous in style
and content, only some texts in Kannada, Marathi, and Persian shared
the literary accomplishments of the Persian and karanam writers.
Although the ambitions of the British were amply evident by this time,
moreover, there was, unlike the Persian histories of eastern India, no
full-fledged critique of colonial rule. If anything, as we shall see, the
English were but one of many powers battling for power in southern
India, and at least in some accounts, were feared less for their economic
ambitions than for the cultural transformations that would follow in
their wake.
Referring to the generous sprinkling of 'semi-historical narratives
and narrative poems' which were written during the eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries, M. Chidananda Murthy says they constitute
the first phase of Karnataka historiography testifying to a historical
awareness, though 'they are mere source books to a modern researcher'.
e flowering of historical narratives that verged on 'devotion', he
continues, occurred with the restitution of the Wodeyar dynasty in the
early nineteenth century, and largely during the rule of Krishna Raja
Wodeyar III.9 e class of writers of the Mysore court, D.R. Nagaraj has
maintained, was 'not only conventional in its literary tastes but also
socially conservative.'10 e pronounced social conservatism of
Kannada literary cultures was broken only by those who freed
themselves from the claustrophobic environs of the matha (religious
institution) and the court.
By the nineteenth century, then, colonial historiographical efforts to
discredit the achievements of the implacable enemy, Tipu Sultan, were
matched by a revived demand for genealogies and hagiographies that
followed the installation of the Wodeyars on the throne of Mysore and
which set the tone for a wide range of histories written by professional
historians well into the twentieth century. A new nationalist history, in
some accounts, emerged fully formed only in the twentieth century in
response to the impetus of linguistic nationalism,11 though this too was
marked by its 'laudatory' qualities.
In all its formal respects—examination of multiple sources,
meticulous footnoting, and a rare sensitivity to the many historical
actors who had been wronged by earlier historians—Rao's mid-
twentieth-century work had come a long way from the many modes of
recalling the past that were current in Mysore in the latter half of the
eighteenth century and the historical productions of the nineteenth.
Still, the period of flux before colonial rule must be examined for the
clues that it might provide on the sharp breaks signalled by such
historical writings with earlier modes of historicity, though their
trajectories were curtailed by the arrival of the 'colonial modern'.
Tarikh, bakhar, caritra, or vamsavali, or English eyewitness account,
there was as yet no single narrative style and methodology that was
privileged or hegemonic in this period in Mysore.
For instance, the Haidar Nama (completed in 1784) was written in
colloquial Kannada in the bakhar style, so well described by Ian Raeside
as breathless prose liberally peppered with Persianate and Marathi
phrases and terms.12 Sumit Guha has noted that the Marathi bakhar
was a form of historical construction of the period between 1400 and
1800 that aided, variously, the judicial case, the administrative inquest,
and the need for a glorious past.13 e Haidar Nama appears to fit no
such identifiable pattern. Largely shorn of the trappings of literary
distinction, it shares a commitment to verisimilitude with other
productions of the bakhar genre. e work does not stray from a strictly
chronological rendering of political and other events, and is far from
being a eulogy to Haidar Ali. e poetic flourish of Husain Ali Khan
Kirmani's Nishan-i-Haidari (completed in 1802), its reliance on the
production of affect, and its reluctance to relinquish the cosmo-
temporal frame for understanding historical events—all these are
elements conspicuously absent in the historically prior Nallappa
narrative.
But neither does the Haidar Nama reduce the account of Haidar's
reign to the remarkably terse chronicle written by Ramachandra Rao
'Punganuri' (completed upon Tipu's death in 1799, and found in 1801),
though both accounts adopt the use of a secular 'time line' that has
already extracted itself from the coils of epic time.14 To take yet another
instance, the large and unwieldy corpus of texts called kaifiyats,
produced at the behest of Colin Mackenzie in the early nineteenth
century, well aer the fall of Srirangapatna, reveals the marks of a
violent wrenching—from sometimes reluctant informants—of a
reconstructed style of sthalapuranas/ sthalamahatme, to provide places
a respectable mythical antiquity while including details of crop patterns,
irrigation systems, revenue settlements, and other matters of everyday
life.15 e 'Haidara Kaifiyatu', for instance, is stitched together from the
kaifiyats of various places to become a discontinuous, repetitive,
multilingual historical geography.
Most of these accounts, however, lack the moral charge of Tipu's own
Tarikh-i-Khudadadi (c. 1783-7), which clearly declares its intention of
not just instructing and informing, but of striving for more than just a
record of his rule by spelling out a vision of what the khudadadi sarkar
(god-given government) might achieve.16
Many of these texts became the raw materials of Wilks's history, but
all were put, along with Wilks's work, to even closer scrutiny by
Hayavadana Rao more than a hundred years later. Clearly, the battle
over representations of Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan, as I have elsewhere
argued, was more protracted than the military engagements.17 e
prodigious efforts of British officials to exorcize the ghosts of Tipu
Sultan and celebrate their eventual triumph over a resolute enemy
turned all indigenous productions of the eighteenth century into
sources. However, the effort of remaining in control of, and of
eventually transforming, the representational practices of the
overthrown regime was occasioned by the very success with which this
indigenous power had adopted and deployed many techniques of
modernity to its advantage.18
is essay focuses on two examples of writing from late-eighteenth-
century Mysore: the Haidar Nama and Tipu Sultan's Tarikh-i-Khuda-
dadi. Little is known about the conditions of their production or their
intended audiences, so what follows is purposeful speculation on the
basis of the texts themselves. My interest in the Haidar Nama is not in
order to reinforce the claim that the author was among one of the
region's early historians, but in its achievements as a chronicle of the
contemporary, produced at a time when the British victory was far from
certain, and when the establishment (not the impending defeat) of a
new regime of power in South India was far more fascinating to record.
Similarly, my interest in the Tarikh-i-Khudadadi is in its achievements
as an autobiography, as a pedagogical tool for dynasts to follow, and as a
'text of power' to one who was striving to forge the moral and ethical
horizon of a new social, economic, and cultural order.
What were the ways in which a preoccupation with the uncertainties
of political power in late-eighteenth-century southern India caused the
fashioning of new modes of historicizing the present or recounting the
recent past? Both texts stake their claim to the historical truth by
asserting themselves as eyewitnesses, even participants, though the
Haidar Nama does this only indirectly. Yet it is clear that the Haidar
Nama, at least, could not have been written without other sources or
records. I shall discuss three related moments within these texts as they
grapple with questions of power and legitimacy, and describe the
strategies of , on the one hand a usurper, and on the other the heir of a
usurper building the foundations of a dynasty, though on completely
new terms.19 Section I begins with a brief discussion of the ways in
which these texts were/are received and used by historians right up to
the present day. Section II compares moments from the early life of
Haidar Ali where these texts revel in his ability to combine innovative
military strategies with supple movements between tact, diplomacy, and
deceit in extending his kingdom. In comparison, Tipu Sultan's early
preoccupations were with systematizing and regularizing his
inheritance, and, as Burton Stein has pointed out, to develop a
centralized fiscal system to serve his military needs.20 Haidar's
unhesitating engagement with the micro politics of power in the
Karnataka country was evident in questions relating to caste/gender,
while Tipu's concern was to bring stricter Islamic norms to the practice
of power (Section III). What were the ways in which these two texts,
biography and autobiography respectively, discussed the macro politics
of power in the peninsula, particularly in relation to the emerging
hegemony of Europeans (Section IV)? By way of conclusion I suggest
that in its very moment of ascendance, colonial historiography was
matched by a flourishing genre of genealogical and hagiographic
history writing sponsored by the court in the nineteenth century. Even
this corpus was not without its anomalies, though they remained far
less influential as histories, turning into sources for works such as Rao's
History of Mysore.

I
'Why add another history to those already written of Hyder and Tipu?'
is was the opening remark of C.P. Brown's 1849 translation of
Ramachandra Rao Punganuri's Marathi history of the Mysore sultans.21
Punganuri's turn-of the century account was unique precisely because it
provided a much-needed perspective on the period from among those
'Hindus' who suffered.22 While admitting that 'until I had met with this
volume I had no clear idea of the history of Hyder and Tippoo', Brown
annotated his translation largely with reference to Wilks's Historical
Sketches.
Similarly, nearly a hundred years later, the 'discovery' in 1930 of a
Kannada manuscript entitled Haidar Nama Bakhairu was reported as a
triumph by M.H. Krishna, then the director of the Mysore
Archaeological Department, not necessarily because it contained
information hitherto unknown, but for its perspective—as the work of a
'true historian, and not in any sense, an apologist or eulogist', and as a
welcome corrective to the excesses of both '[Haidar's] enemies or of his
own Moslem secretaries'.23 Hayavadana Rao, as we have already noted,
shared these sentiments, and was quick to make extensive use of this
text for his History of Mysore, always referring to it as 'the earliest
history' of the eighteenth-century period. Pride in the newly discovered
biography showed up again in the 1960s' prefatory note of T.T. Shar-
man, who published the entire Kannada text in e Quarterly Journal of
the Mythic Society. Here, he noted, was an important indigenous source
that had been unnoticed in the scrupulous search by several
nineteenth-century British administrator-scholars—Francis Buchanan,
Colin Mackenzie, Mark Wilks, Lewis Rice—for historical records of
Mysore.24
Obtained in 1930 from the descendants of Nallappa—a supplier of
foodgrains to the Haidari army who came from a family of karniks and
rose to become a trusted courtier—the Haidar Nama was subtitled 'e
affairs of the court of Nawab Hyder Ali Khan Bahadur, who established
his rule at Srirangapatna'.25 Nallappa was the son of Kacheri
Krishnappa, who was a karnik, though the family before long turned to
commerce and trade. Nallappa and two of his brothers were among
those who served as of ficers in the new regime of Krishnaraja Wodeyar
III (1799-1868).26 e Haidar Nama was, as noted, completed in 1784,
when Tipu's reign had just begun.
e debate over historical representations of Haidar and Tipu stirred
to life with the discovery of the Nallappa manuscript, with Krishna
pointing to the major silences of Wilks's account that were revealed by
the eighteenth-century Mysore text. of the author himself and his
motivations, little was known.
Was the Haidar Nama commissioned by Haidar Ali himself as part of
an effort to justify the usurpation? is would be an unduly narrow
reading of this text, and certainly there is neither direct nor indirect
evidence of such an of fering within the text itself. ere are other much
stronger claimants from this period to the title of 'interested' histories:
for instance, a manuscript written in 1799, aer the death of Tipu
Sultan, set out the achievements of the Kalale chiefs from the time they
became Dalawais at the Mysore court, in an attempt to show the Dala-
wais as the principal military chiefs and ruling along with the kings in
the history of Mysore.27 e work was no doubt produced to stake a
claim within the emerging political order. Similarly, the Mysore Rajara
Charitre, written c. 1800 by Venkatramanaiya, extolled the virtues of the
Kalale family and upheld their achievements.28 Keladi Nripa Vijayam, a
long poem written by Linganna Kavi in the late eighteenth century,
chose to discuss the lineages of the Keladi kings and queens from the
point of view of their patronage of Veerashaivism.29 Meanwhile the
Wodeyar family, faced with the disappearance of real power from the
mid-eighteenth century, showed an obsessive preoccupation with
genealogies, whose production was taken to new heights in the nine-
teenth century.
Alternatively, was the Haidar Nama written as a tribute to the dead
ruler, and as a dark warning to his son and successor Tipu Sultan—
whose slighter presence is of ten further undermined by the number of
times he is admonished by his father—a warning not to squander the
hard-won legacy? e latter reading is tempting, for it is to the methods
by which Haidar gains and secures his power, whether through war,
diplomacy, terror, or deceit, that the author turns his approving
attention. e book's last line is enigmatic: 'Just as a thousand pictures
are spoilt by a single ink-blot, the [reign of Haidar Ali] did not last long
('saavira chitra vondu mashi nungidopadiyalli daulat saswithavagade
hoyithu).30
Still, it is less useful to speculate on the intentions of the author than
on the achievements of the text, especially when read together with that
other powerful comment on events that were unfolding in Mysore in
the decade of the 1780s, namely Tipu's Tarikh-i-Khudadadi. e
tantalizing fragment of Tipu's purported autobiography that remains
with us today begins where the Haidar Nama ends: with Tipu's wresting
of Bidanur from British occupation in 1783. is document marks
another direction taken by eighteenth-century historical production,
since it reveals the anxieties of an heir to a usurper regime for a form of
legitimation that went beyond the demonstration of sheer talent,
though without relying on the cosmo-temporal frames that were
favoured by the Persian and assorted Indian vernacular historical
accounts. Once more, little is known of the conditions of its production,
though many have speculated on its authorship.
e Tarikh-i-Khudadadi was among the manuscripts found at Sri-
rangapatna in 1799 and was called 'highly interesting', since it was 'a
Memoir of Tipu Sultan written by himself ' and revealed a surprising
dimension to the person of whom little was known except as an
adversary in war.31 e original memoir was incomplete, beginning
abruptly with Tipu's siege of Bidanur in 1783 and ending equally
abruptly with an account of his campaigns against the Marathas in
1787. It appears to have formed the basis for a longer work, entitled
Sultan-ut-Tawarikh, purportedly written by Zainal Abdin Shusteree, the
brother of Mir Alam, Tipu's ambassador at Hyderabad.32
It was impossible for the victors to dismiss the hyperbolic
productions of Tipu's court, whether in written or visual form, since the
sultan's own words suited the narratives of excess that the British were
compelled to build around this figure. Admitting the accuracy of his
accounts of successes against the British allowed colonial historians to
take his claims of conversion and torture quite literally. Selections from
Tipu's autobiography were strategically interspersed between the letters
and injunctions so assiduously translated by William Kirkpatrick: they
provided an embarrassment of riches on the caprices of the monarch. In
those moments he was allowed to represent himself. Otherwise, the
eyewitness account, which came to be among the most privileged of
sources in the British historiographical struggle against Tipu, especially
when they were records of his many real and imagined atrocities,33 was
clearly unreliable when it recorded, from the perspective of the enemy, a
triumph over the British forces.
 e status of this text as a historical source, far from remaining
stable, is an important indicator of the vicissitudes through which every
assessment of Tipu has passed from 1799 up to the present day.34 e
Tarikh, according to William Kirkpatrick, was unquestionably the work
of the sultan, judging from its style: 'It is written throughout in the first
person; and while it states some facts which could be known only to the
sultan, it everywhere breathes the same overweening spirit which so
strongly distinguishes every production of his pen.'35 Mark Wilks
rested his conviction that the Sultan-ut-Tawarikh was the authorized
history of Tipu Sultan on even slighter evidence, although he found
both the works 'equally remote from the truth: and in the narratives of
transactions from 1783 to 1789, although some of his successful
military operations are related with a respectable degree of clearness
and precision, those in which his arms were unfortunate can scarcely be
recognized, in the turgid and fabulous shape which the Sultaun has
assigned to them.'36
e first post-Independence biography of Tipu Sultan by Mohibbul
Hasan, however, rejected the authenticity of the Tarikh as Tipu's
autobiography on the very same grounds of veracity, erudition, and
style. Hasan found particularly unconvincing the excessive devotion of
this text to military campaigns against the Marathas and British. In
addition to providing no account of court life, Hasan said, it contained
too much 'unrefined language' impossible to link with Tipu, given
Tipu's obvious concern with posterity.37 us:
Being interested in the study of history and biography he must have read
Tukuk-i-Jahangari [sic], Babar Namah and other similar works. Yet, unlike
these, the Tarikh does not describe anything except the dull unedifying events
of Tipu's campaigns against the 'unworthy and accursed infidels' . . . e picture
of Tipu which emerges from the study of the Tarikh is that of a religious maniac
who was perpetually engaged in killing non-Muslims, or forcibly converting
them to Islam. Besides the Tarikh abounds with indecent and impolite words
and phrases. . . . Tipu was cultured and polite and he could not have expressed
himself in such an unrefined language.
Tipu has today once more been assigned authorship of the document,
despite its unrestrained style, on the grounds that it was meant as a
private record. Irfan Habib says that Tipu, 'who must have composed
this account sometime aer the Treaty of Mangalore in 1784, wrote it as
a private document and so is uninhibited in his expressions . . .'38
It is striking that the language of the document has been the cause of
much discussion, especially as it has to be explained, or explained away.
Mahmud Hussain, the translator of the dreams of Tipu Sultan, is
perhaps among the more pragmatic scholars when, despite noting that
'Tipu's language is defective and ungrammatical' and even full of
'spelling mistakes', he concludes that literary talents need not have been
among Tipu's many exemplary accomplishments.39 at Kirmani
declares Tipu a 'genius for literary acquirement' need not detain us,
though his insights into Tipu's daily self-education appear far more
plausible: 'He was accustomed on most occasions to speak Persian and
while he was eating his dinner, two hours were devoted by him to the
perusal (from standard historical works), of the actions of the Kings of
Persia and Arabia, religious works, traditions and biography.'40
Nearly all scholars begin their evaluation of the Tarikh as a historical
source which has to be judged for its truth claims. Yet we may ask what
the text achieves, like the Haidar Nama, not so much as a historical
record, but as an exegesis on power. Tipu's yearning to instruct and
shape, expand and control the world that he had inherited is evident in
the whole body of texts that were written under his authority. e
Tarikh-i-Khudadadi is a revealing account of events in which the author
alternates between accurate descriptions of battle tactics and
exaggerations. It is therefore necessary to read this text as more than
just a memoir. In this text Tipu commands a multi-dimensional
universe, and his campaigns and projects constitute a conception of the
world that is neither reducible to his ambition of realizing the abode of
Islam nor of a singular pursuit of secular power. In this Tipu was not,
however, as Kate Brittlebank suggests, a typical product of the 'non-
modern societies [where] there was no separation between spirit and
power.' Rather, he was an interested observer of the claims, designs, and
ways of new imperial powers, and was not averse to considering the use
of similar tactics by the 'God-given government' or khudadadi sarkar to
realize very different ideals.
As exegeses on power, neither the Haidar Nama nor the Tarikh-i-
Khudadadi mourn the justly deserved decline of Wodeyar power, or the
dispossession of the Dalawais. e narrative of decline did not occupy
the same centrality in their accounts as among their contemporaries in
eastern India, discussed by Kumkum Chatterjee.41 Rather, it is the trials
and triumphs of the new rulers, and the possibility of a new ethical
ground of power, that is discussed.

II
e Haidar Nama follows the structure of Indo-Persian biographies in
beginning with the social origins of Haidar's family and ending with his
death, taking the reader through a series of events that sometimes
appear unrelated, except in the strictly chronological sense. It is now
well acknowledged that the Tarikh tradition, in particular the
biographies of rulers (including their doings and sayings), the nobility,
and institutions of government were long in circulation amongst the
scholars/bureaucracy from the period of the Delhi Sultanate and in the
regions that came under the influence of Sultanate/Mughal traditions.42
Yet there is no compulsion in the Haidar Nama—equal to that under
which the author of the Karnama-i-Haidari laboured—to insert Haidar
as a brave warrior related to the family of the Prophet.43 ere are other
familiar aspects to this biography, such as providing a represent-ative
sample of camp and court life, and ending with a character
assessment.44 e author's familiarity with the court of Haidar is
evident, and it is likely that he marshalled the details of troop
deployments of every engagement between 1760 and 1782 from other
members of the court.
Yet, unlike the Tarikh in which Tipu is no dispassionate observer but
its central, self-righteous and masterly anchor of all that he relates, the
author of the Haidar Nama scrupulously avoids mention of himself
even as an eyewitness, favouring the more objective third person
account. We know well how important the eyewitness account became
in successive retellings of this turbulent period: Punganuri's account is
continually assessed by his translator in relation to whether it is based
on his own memories or 'mere hearsay'. But other writers too were not
unconcerned with the veracity of their accounts: consider for instance
Kirmani's very claim to truth, which was predicated on his having been
an eyewitness.45
e Haidar Nama resists such a claim even when 'reporting' lively
conversations between Haidar and his confidants, conforming to the
traditions of bakhars. Bakhars, says Ian Raeside, 'are full of dialogue,
giving the speeches and even the inner ruminations of the main
protagonists without admitting that these must be conjectural.'46 e
author of the Haidar Nama does nothing to conceal his admiration for
one who rose to power on the sheer strength of purpose, and yet he
does not flinch from reporting on the many and varied methods of
grasping and staying in power.
e Haidar Nama, moreover, pays equal attention to Mysore's wars
with the Marathas and the British, since the ultimate British victory has
not been foretold. ere is no sign that the author is particularly
enamoured of the British successes and the British appear in this
account as one among several contenders for power in the peninsula.
Battles and place names remain unspecified, even when they are
significant victories—as between the Haidari army and the British at
Poli- lur in 1780.47 Indeed, it is the Marathas who are portrayed as the
more valiant, and sometimes cray, enemies, while Haidar himself is
admired for his role in expanding the territories of the Mysore kings.
Meer Husain Ali Kirmani's account of the reigns of Haidar and Tipu,
written around 1800, on the other hand, bears many marks of his
acquaintance with the necessity of developing the 'linearity of secular
time'48 while accommodating divine interventions which affect the
fortunes of the Haidari army, as in his account of the battle of
Vaniambadi in 1767.49 His reluctance to report the Haidari army's
setbacks, and above all his attention to prose rather than accuracy,
rendered his perspective 'unreliable' to the new colonial masters, even
though in terms of structure and chronological sequence he should
have amply satisfied the discerning reader.
e Haidar Nama emphasizes the ways in which this soldier-
extraordinaire seizes the opportunity provided by the fractious politics
of king and Dalawai. ey readily relinquish power faced with the
difficulties of keeping the troops, ever on the verge of mutiny or
desertion, in good humour. When, following the death of Dalawai
Devarajaiah in 1758, the unpaid commanders of the Mysore troops,
facing fresh onslaughts from the Marathas, gherao the quarters of king
and Dalawai Nanjarajaiah at Srirangapatna, 'without allowing even
water into their homes', Haidar salvages the situation and indeed their
honour:
Aer this, the Kartar [Chikka Krishna Raja Wodeyar II] and the Arasu
[Karachuri Nanjarajaiah] tried in many ways to persuade Hyder Ali Khan [to]
'Quell the soldiers' revolt and take whatever action is necessary to manage the
situation', to which he replied, 'ese are difficult times. Being the commander,
it is better that you take action rather than servants like me. Even ifI take up
this task, it will result in universal hatred and it will generate a feeling of
disappointment. at's all that's going to happen.' To which both commanders
reassured him, 'Nothing of the kind will happen. You who are like our son
should undertake this task', to which Hyder Ali Khan asked for the order to be
given in writing which they complied with, and [they] wrote the following
karnama [order] which said that, barring their own selves, families and
children, 'we will not stand in the way of your taking any kind of action against
others'. is was signed by both leaders and was accepted by Hyder Ali Khan.50
Similar 'exchanges' between members of Haidar's court, other political
opponents, and formal and informal agreements in the course of a
steady rise to power, form the staple of this account. Yet, there are
parallel stories of people's rise to power that Nallappa reveals: the steady
rise of Pradhan Venkappaiya, Purnaiya, or Mir Ali Raza Khan are
embedded in the broader narrative of Haidar's own fortunes.
ere are moments when Nallappa takes on the style of an annalist,
telling us, in three successive sentences:
 In the same Khara samvats Vaisakha [1771] Pradhan Venkappaiya was sent to
speak to the Kodagu palegars to procure rice, ghee etc. and he prepared the
granary with the Kodagu ....
In Vikrutu samvats [1770] the chariot of the Ranganathaswamy temple at
[Sriranga]pattana was burnt in a fire and the festival idols were burnt.
In Khara samvats kartika/margarshira months, the nawab joined in the
celebrations of Pradhan Venkappaiya's second wedding on one day, and
honoured him with a Nowbhat before his house.51
Yet these do not remain discrete 'time instants', to recall Peter Hardy's
phrase, for they become readable as related biographies of those who
gained power within a new regime. Figures like Venkappaiya gain the
confidence and trust of the nawab, though only to subsequently lose it,
as we shall see.52
Indeed, the term charitre (history), when used in Nallappa's account
at all, occurs only when the author begins his final assessment of the
achievements of Haidar's reign. Here he gives much space to recounting
Haidar's plans for and execution of two gardens with palaces at Dariya
Daulat and Lal Bagh in Srirangapatna;53 to his collection of not just
plants but women from many lands in order to lend the exotic touch to
garden and harem alike; and to the building of Shahar Ganjam, a new
town at Srirangapatna. In fact these are given as much space as is
devoted to Haidar's development of a string of forts, and to the reforms
of the revenue and financial administration of the newly annexed
territories.54 In most other instances, as in his description of the
conquest of Bidanur, Nallappa is content to use the word details
(vivara). Such details could be embedded in long and imaginative
reconstructions of conversations between various actors, lending an air
of authenticity to the account. Reporting on Haidar's early conquest of
Bidanur, the author leaves no doubts as to where his own sympathies
lie, dismissing the claims of Chenna Basavappa Nayaka to the throne at
Bidanur as those of a liar-pretender (gaibu sullumathina raja). His
retelling of the conquest of Bidanur, which was a valuable addition to
the Haidari crown, illustrates the author's commitment to the most
deserving of the contestants for power, namely Haidar Ali. is was not
however the perspective advanced by the many colourful accounts of
this important event in Haidar's early career.

III
Versions of the events that surrounded the conquest by Haidar Ali of
Bidanur in 1763 were as numerous as its historians, with few agreeing
on some of the bare historical facts of the time.55 Hayavadana Rao
therefore felt the unusual compulsion to include six different versions in
a separate appendix to his History of Mysore, despite a long and
thorough treatment of the theme in his main text. 'Where versions
relating to a historical event differ', he said, 'as in the present case, a
mere interpretation of sources may not help to solve the most
important problem.'56 erefore, it was necessary to compare the oldest
preserved versions with later ones, and 'such a confrontation of
versions' would help extract the kernel of historical truth.
e conquest of the city of Bidanur in the Western Ghats, 'the most
important commercial town of the east', was spoken of by Haidar 'as the
foundation of all his subsequent greatness'.57 It was a site coveted not
just by Haidar and Tipu but also the English, for its natural beauty,
extraordinary wealth, and strategic commercial importance as another
route or access to the sea. To Haidar it also held a powerful symbolic
meaning as the seat of power of another dynasty, the Nayakas of
Keladi/Ikkeri, among the successor states of Vijayanagara that had
eclipsed the Wodeyars. Bidanur was the capital of the Ikkeri kingdom
for at least 123 years. Upon the death of Budi Basavappa Nayaka II
(1739-54), a minor adopted son Chikka (or Chenna) Basavappa
Nayaka, ruled under the regency of the queen, Virammaji. In 1757 the
queen replaced him with another adopted son, Somasekhara Nayaka,
and continued to hold power.
Whether Chenna Basavappa Nayaka was strangled to death, and
artfully 'recreated' by the palegar of Chitradurga, or survived the
attempt on his life, or was quietly spirited away to be raised in oblivion
was the point of contention in accounts of the period.58 e fabled
beauty and wealth of Bidanur was clouded in an obsessive focus on
Virammaji's regency as a period of intrigue, moral depravity, and
dangerous treachery, though some sources also spoke of her rule as
having been beneficent and just, and 'in accordance with the standard
of true dharma'.59 Chikka Basavappa Nayaka, we are told in the
'Haidara Kaifiyatu', earned the displeasure of the queen for the
following reasons:
One day, his mother Chennamaji [Virammaji] took over the kingdom aer her
husband's death. At this time, seeing her lying with her lover, Nambaiah,
Chenna [Chikka] Basavappa Nayaka threw the cloth from his shoulder over
them. ey were cautious: they realized that he knew about them, and the
queen decided that the son had to be eliminated so she arranged to have him
strangled by the jetties (masseurs) while being oiled, and a pit was dug in which
he was buried.
Chenna Basavappa Nayaka's friends heard about this and arrived immediately
to remove the mud, take him out of the pit, and since he had a little life in him,
he survived. en he was taken to Srirangapatna and lived there.
en Chennamaji appointed Virabhadra as the Pradhan and continued to
rule.60
e fact that Virammaji was a woman, that she was a loose woman, or
that she was a loose woman who dared to defy the new dispensation at
Srirangapatna—all of these would form the justification for Haidar's
raid on, and eventual capture of, this prized location in the Western
Ghats. What role does the question of moral rectitude play in successive
historical accounts of the takeover of Bidanur? And how does
Nallappa's account in particular allow us to trace a micropolitics of
caste and gender, so crucial to the ways in which Haidar became an
adept at making allies and breaking stable polities?
At least one version of these incidents speaks only of an old woman
and her child who were placed on the Masnad of Bidanur.61 Virammaji
invites Haidar's attention in some accounts simply because she is a
woman. 'When she was ruling like this', the 'Haidara Kaifiyatu'
continues, 'in AD 1762 [Isavi] Chitrabhanu of the Saka era Nawab
Hyderali Khan, saying that a woman is ruling Nagar, came from
Srirangapatna with troops, created disorder and took over the
kingdom.'62 No causal link is suggested between sexuality and disorder;
ifanything, we may note, disorder was the result, not the cause of
Haidar's intervention.
e queen's sexuality does take on a central causal role in the work of
Kirmani, who discusses Haidar's capture of power in Srirangapatna and
the takeover of Bidanur as homologous and morally just actions. How
could the raja of Srirangapatna, 'inexperienced and low minded and an
example that rank does not confer capacity',63 deny Haidar his right to
the seat of power when he had entirely through his exertions 'restored
the country of Mysore, already half dead, to new life and vigour'?64 e
takeover of Bidanur, however, called for other skills from the
biographer, for aer all Nagar, 'a rich and populous town',65 was 'full of
great mansions inhabited by prosperous people who lived at ease'66 and
was the 'envy of Kashmir for on it depended many cities pleasant and
rich'.67 Kirmani's dystopic portrayal of the rule of Virammaji was no
doubt aided by the circulation of many popular tales of her sexual
misdemeanours. e people of Bidanur, he said, 'had looked anxiously
for the conquest of their country by some just and distinguished
chieffor this reason that that delightful country had fallen into the
hands of a wild race, and a low minded fearless woman, wearing the
dress of a man, exercised unlimited authority there . . .' But even more
disturbing was the 'illicit connexion' she had formed with a slave, a
matter that led to moral disorder:
sounds of complaint and grief were heard on every street and market, that on
all sides thieves and robbers laid hold on the property of the poor, that the men
were ashamed of obeying their ruler and had shut themselves up in their houses
and the women, licentious, fearless and drunk with the wine of immodesty,
ornamenting their hair and painting their faces gave themselves up to
sensuality and men had no power to correct or reprove them, even the women
of their own families, and that they gave themselves up to dalliance in the open
streets and markets and walked about in eager expectation of their lovers . . .68
Cause enough for intervention, for it was 'improper that the
government of such a fine province should be held by such a woman',
though even this author admits that the rebellious queen 'behaved with
as much steadfastness and courage as a man'.69
Far more pragmatic reasons are provided by Nallappa for why Haidar
invaded Bidanur, though he too recounts the story of Virammaji's illicit
liaisons and attempts on her son's life. He takes the reader through the
complex negotiations that Haidar would have to make with local
chieains of varying lower castes in his attempt to bring Bidanur under
his control. Haidar was encouraged to invade Nagar (Bidanur) by the
Bedar chief Medakere Nayaka of Chitradurga, since the Bidanur dewan,
Nanjiah/Nirvanaiah, showed his reluctance to honour Haidar's request
for help, claiming that, under the new dispensation at Srirangapatna,
old ties stood annulled. e dewan was corrected by the
leader of the Gollas [cowherd caste], Bhadra imma who said 'this is not the
appropriate way to answer. He [Haidar] is the head of the state when he has
taken over power from the king of [Sriranga]pattana how can we write such a
letter?' whereupon the scribe of Nagara got angry and said 'when it has come to
such a pass that even Gollas have risen in status, what role is there for me?
Everybody liked that base born's [scribe's] words and they wrote a low worded
report . . .70
Furthermore, Haidar turned to the weakness of the lightly guarded state
as the reason for an easy conquest: 'that state is a woman's state. e
leadership is not strong.'71 Medakere Nayaka, in response, pleaded the
case of Chenna Basavappa Nayaka, then under the protection of the
palegar of Chitrakal, to seek Haidar's help in reclaiming his throne.
Nallappa makes no disguise of his contempt for the 'liar-pretender raja'
(gaibu sullumathina raja) who, along with Medakere Nayaka, and aided
by the disaffected former dewan Mudbidre Lingappa, accompanies
Haidar as he marches through Benkipura, Shivamogge, Kumsi, Aynur,
Ananthpur, and Murangadi, before they arrive at the gates of Bidanur.
Virammaji's attempts to set the palace on fire, and her escape from
Bidanur to Ballarayadurga, are noted while discussing without
comment the way in which Haidar resolves the issue of who should
now take over the kingdom of Bidanur: 'who is the appropriate
authority [in Bidanur] Rani Viramma or Chennabasappanayaka, decide
this in a panchayat, which should be convened at Maddagiri, so saying
he wrote a note to Mir Ali Raza Khan and sent the two under guard to
Maddagiri.' We do not hear of the results of this 'panchayat', which was
no more than a euphemism for imprisonment. Here, too, Haidar's
assumption of control is considered natural, even if he used the name
and face of the wronged son and heir in order to conquer Bidanur and
its people.72
But the invader cannot rest: he is immediately beset by the revolt of
disaffected chiefs led by Mudbidre Lingappa and the Agumbe and
ingala Heggades, which is ruthlessly suppressed. Meanwhile, it is to
the Golla chief Bhadrana immaiah that Haidar turns in order to
suppress another revolt, for which the former is amply rewarded with
honours and titles.73 Haidar's willingness to deploy loyal chieains
from a lower caste, even if it meant displacing such pedigreed of ficials
as Venkappaiya, became evident in his appointment of Ujjanappa, a
Kuruba, as Pradhan of Nagar in 1770.74
In addition to the economic rewards of Haidar's gaining control of
the wealth of Bidanur, which he renamed Hydernagar, were the
symbolic returns of having gained an alternative capital to
Srirangapatna, and of having defeated a power (Ikkeri Nayaka) that was
equal if not superior to the Mysore kingdom. e location also gave
Haidar new access to the ports of the west coast.75 Suffice it to say that
Haidar's decision to set up a mint at this location, and the minting of
the Haidari huna, were not unrelated to the wealth yielded by
plunder,76 and his quest for a prominent seat of power independent of
and un- threatened by the intrigues of the powerless Mysore family.77
More pertinent to our discussion are the detailed accounts of
transactions between contending forces in the region. ese add up to
an optic on a region where the micro politics of caste and gender are
crucial to the taking and maintenance of power. e author of the
Nallappa manuscript paid attention to these realms of power to
illustrate the multiple levels at which Haidar had to work in order to
gain power and legitimacy in these regions. Here, the presence of the
British, which would occupy the obsessive attention of many historians
of Mysore following the regime change of 1799, is noted only
marginally.

IV
e Haidar Nama is not then an account dominated by details of
Haidar's engagement with the British. As Colonel Miles, translator of
Kirmani's Nishan-i-Haidari rightly noted about that work, 'there is . . .
only a partial resemblance between the English histories of the wars in
the Karnatic and this, only a small part of this relating to the English
wars, while on the contrary the English histories contain very little
else'.78 Many important victories of the Haidari army, at Polilur for
instance, and treaties, though they are only briefly mentioned in the
Haidar Nama, are instructive. ey show 'the one-sided nature of
Wilks's account of the wars in which the English were concerned.'79
e British absorption with Haidar's and Tipu's death is a case in
point: the topic does not appear to have been a central concern of the
Indian writers. Brown records surprise that Punganuri passed over the
death of Haidar in relative silence and attributed it to orders from
Tipu.80 Neither is Punganuri under any compulsion to celebrate the
death of Tipu Sultan, or the discovery of his body, so what he says is
stripped of the bathos so characteristic of British historical accounts: 'In
the year Siddharti (AD 1799) in the month of Chaitra on the third day
of the full moon the English army came from Madras and slew Tippoo
Sultan; they captured Seringapatam and enthroned Kishun Raj
Wodeyar. ey appointed Purnaya to be his minister while Jaya Muni
the mutsaddi clerk was made governor of Seringapatam' (Book IV, para
56). is refusal to focus on death allowed for a dry-eyed recognition of
the new regime which removed or installed the rulers of Mysore at will.
Brown, however, was compelled to make up for this 'plain unvarnished
tale' by including, in his postscript, an extract from Alexander Beatson's
memoirs on the death of Tipu Sultan!81
 In his last moments, as they are discussed in the Haidar Nama,
Haidar expresses concern that Tipu be appointed king before the word
of his death spreads among his enemies. At first violently punishing
those who spread rumours of his death when he was only weakened by
a carbuncle on his back, Haidar summons to his bedside his confidants
Abdul Mohammad Mirdhe, Mir Mohammad Sadak, Toshekhane
Krishna Rao, Purnaiah, Gurikara Shyamaiah: ' "if this kingdom must
stand, then it must be led by Tipu Sultan, since Karim Sahib is not as
capable, so without leaving this place and without letting the news
spread, summon Tipu urgently and make him king and serve him well",
so saying the Nawab passed away.'82
But not before he has had at least one discussion, in the midst of the
battles with the British in 1781, over the most effective way of stopping
the British.
Details of a consultation that the nawab had with his confidantes. Despite all
efforts we have been unable to sof ten up the firangis. When asked what should
be done about this, the sultan said in reply that 'e word is that God has come
down on the side of the English' to which the nawab addressing the seated
sardars made the following statement. 'Our Sultan['s] thinking seems to be that
while he is capable of effectively fighting back the enemy; we on the other hand
are too scared' and then was urged to say the following:
'We engaged in battle with one Colonel [Bailley] and his army from
Chennapatna and pushed them back but the fresh battalions keep coming from
Chennapatna. In spite of innumerable such occasions when we defeated them
they keep coming. Once we defeated them and took Chennapatna. Several
times this has been done. Fresh replacements are coming from Bombay and
Calcutta. Even if we were to take Bombay and Bengal, they would keep getting
troops in their ships and their replacements would not be exhausted.
'In the midst of such battles if I was to take a bullet and die, is there man
enough (is there another sultan's father in me) to come from Srirangapatna to
take charge? Tell me', he said, to which everybody got up and asked for
forgiveness.83
en the nawab once more spoke as follows.
'If we are to weaken the English we have to bring about a huge conflict between
them and French in Europe. Iran and Kandahar should be made to fight
Calcutta and Bengal, Marathas should attack Bombay, and take a huge army
 then get the French to come to our support make sure that the Tommy
battalions don't support each other, create conflicts between them make it
difficult for them to find help from any fort, make them talk, destroy the enemy
in this way, so that our army has no more obstacles and is triumphant and this
kingdom comes under our control.
'But our son proved to be not intelligent enough to come up with such a plan,
his stupidity remains stable throughout. He failed to become wise even for a
short while. It is a sign of self absorption or narcissism, these three things are
standing in the way.' And becoming angry with his son he called Appaji Rama,
sent him on a mission to gather fiy thousand cavalry. Promising as much
money as he needed, he sent him of fwith orders towards Dharwar, Koppala,
Gajendragada, Badami, etc. And this Appaji Rama, by the time the nawab died,
was in Amingad and sent six to seven thousand cavalry.84
e low opinion of Tipu's abilities was, needless to say, not borne out by
his career, though the Haidar Nama has occasion to record rebukes to
Tipu by his father.85 Tipu's own analysis of the events unfolding around
him in the Tarikh bears none of the marks of an inferior ego; if
anything, in his arguments in favour of adopting new tactics and
technologies in warfare and defence,86 there is valorization of human
forethought and preparedness as the most important factors that
explain military success. ere were no signs either of 'too easy a traffic
between the secular and the supernatural', to adapt Ranajit Guha's
words in this context.87 Tipu provided a detailed account of new tactics
and skills that were successfully deployed against his enemies. An
example is his description of the campaign against 'Shanoor' [Savanoor]
in 1787, when the Mughal governor Mahabat Jung was deserted by the
Marathas:
About nine o' clock in the forenoon, the whole of the unbelievers, reassembling
like so many gnats and flies, advanced towards us . . . On my part, I forbade my
people to throw away their ammunition in this manner, directing that the short
light guns attached to the different divisions should alone fire upon such of the
enemy as approached extremely near, and even in this case they were ordered to
discharge only a single shot at a time, and that very deliberately. My object in
this manoeuvre was to make the infidels believe that I had none but short field
pieces with me. is notion, would encourage them, [I thought] to draw nearer
to us when suddenly opening a heavy fire upon them from our long guns, we
 should be sure to put them completely to the rout. It happened exactly as I
foresaw. e infidels came close up to our line, in the manner of crows when all
four divisions of the army opening their long guns together, gave them
agreeably to my instructions, such a general discharge, as instantly made them
disperse on all sides, and fly in despair, like a flock of the same crows, in the
midst of which a stone has been thrown.88
Similarly, there is a clearly prescriptive quality to his record of the
daring attack on the Maratha forces under Hari Pandit Pharkia and
those of the nizam during the Mysore-Maratha war of 1786-7. Against
the better counsel of his commanders, who advised against crossing the
swollen Tunghabhadra river, Tipu successfully managed this
manoeuvre: 'Hereaer, let whosoever shall happen to be similarly
circumstanced, proceed in the same manner, viz., by crossing the
infantry in force, and aerwards the cavalry and others.'89
Tipu more than matched Haidar's awareness of the threat posed by
the British, but had a keen sense of the process by which Europeans
made themselves masters of parts of the subcontinent. Unlike his father,
however, he looked beyond the mere necessity of military victory over
such a formidable foe. e long-term vision that he spells out conforms
to the dictates of protecting Islam in the territories of Mysore. Indeed,
in his letter to the 'Grand Seignior', sultan of Turkey, Zaman Shah, king
of Kabul, and to Fath Ali Khan, king of Iran, on 10 February 1799, Tipu
wrote a defence of why he sought French assistance despite the recent
invasion of Egypt: All Hindustan is over-run with infidels and
polytheists excepting the dominions of the Khudadad Sarkar, which like
the Ark of Noah, are safe under the protection and bounteous aid of
God.' He then proceeded to provide a detailed account of why the
British (Christians) were much more dangerous to the practice of Islam
in India.90
He was amply aware of the inexorable drive of universal religions to
convert by force. e Portuguese, he noted, aer the conquest of
Mangalore, arrived on the coast 'on the pretext of trading' but were
quick to resort to conversion.
 e Portuguese Nazarenes established themselves about three hundred years
ago, in a factory situated near the sea shore, and on the banks of a large river.
is place they obtained of the Rajah of Soondah, under the pretext of trading
[with his subjects] and here, availing themselves of the opportunities which
arose in the course of time, they acquired possession of a territory, yielding a
yearly revenue of three or four lacks of rupees, throughout which they equally
prohibited fasts and prayers among the Mussulman inhabitants and the worship
of idols among the Hindoos; finally expelling from thence all who refused to
embrace their religion, which the Hindoos were required to do within three
days, under pain if they remained in the country aer that time, of being
forcibly converted to it. Some of the people alarmed at this proceeding,
abandoned their property and homes, and took refuge in other countries, but
the greater part considering the threatened danger as improbable and not
possessing the means of removing their effects, preferred remaining;
whereupon these infidel Nazarenes, at the end of the appointed time, obliged
them all to embrace their false religion . . .
Yet he showed no reluctance in using similar tactics, including the use
of the census, to reverse their influence when he got an opportunity to
exercise power over newly conquered Mangalore:
[when] the odious proceedings of these accursed padries becoming fully known
to us, and causing our zeal for the faith to boil over, we instantly directed the
Dewan of the Huzoor Kucherry to prepare a list of all houses occupied by the
Christians, taking care not to omit a single habitation . . . Aer this we caused
an of ficer and some soldiers to be stationed in every place inhabited by the
Christians, signifying to them that at the end of a certain time, they would
receive further orders, which they were then to carry to full effect . . . the whole
of the Christian male and female without the exception of a single individual to
the number of sixty thousand, [were] dispatched to our Presence from whence
we caused them aer furnishing them duly with provisions to be conveyed
under proper guards to Seringapatam . . . [directing] that they should be
divided into risalas or corps of five hundred men, and a person of reputable and
upright character placed, as a Risaladar, at the head of each. of these Risalas,
four together with their women and children were directed to be stationed at
each of the following places, where they were duly fed and clothed, and
ultimately admitted to the honor of Islamism and the appellation of Ahmedy
was bestowed upon the collective body.91
ese aspects of the document struck a chord among those British
translators and historians looking for signs that would confirm that the
sultan lacked good taste, that he was single-mindedly opposed to the
British and that above all, if unchecked, he would have converted the
whole of Mysore to Islam.
e question of conversions has understandably positioned
historians on the side of either affirming or denying what appears to be
an obsession with Tipu Sultan.92 Neither the colonial nor the Persian
histories are to be trusted, says Hasan, since the former was
propagandist, and the latter 'also had a tendency to exaggerate, distort,
falsify'. ese accounts, according to Hasan, served another purpose
altogether: 'ey are intended to create effect, to surround Tipu with a
religious halo and exalt him to the position of a religious hero.'93
Instead these conversions should be seen as rooted in a desire to
subjugate and control recalcitrant political enemies.
ere is, of course, enough evidence that this was indeed the case, if
we take the stern warning given by Tipu to the rebellious Coorgs.94
Such an understanding of Tipu's approach to conversion is repeated by
Nikhilesh Guha, who looks at questions of legitimacy.95 Kate
Brittlebank largely avoids reference to the phenomenon of conversion,
even though in the realm of symbols this would count as an exercise of
kingly power. To Irfan Habib, Tipu's aggressive assertion of Islamic
ideals was an instrumental pursuit not of legitimacy but of the fighting
spirit needed to combat the British. us, 'Islam . . . suddenly becomes
for Tipu . . . one great ideological prop for his power... by invoking
Islam, Tipu was trying to appeal to the holy war (ghazwa) spirit of his
followers.'96 I.G. Khan, who has translated a series of orders issued by
Tipu in the period 1795-8, acknowledges that Tipu was trying to
'posi[t] an entirely different concept of kingship' from prevailing
eighteenth-century notions, 'namely, the idea of the Sultanat-i-Khuda-
dad in which he was merely an instrument in the hands of God, doing
his bidding vis-à-vis the poor and the needy'.97 But once more this
conceptualization is subordinated to the material compulsions of
'fashioning the Sultanat-i-Khudadad as a bulwark against the British
occupation of the country', so that even 'the severity of Islamic
injunctions against conspiracy and sedition' follows naturally from his
recent defeat by the British.98 Tipu is thus portrayed as making an
instrumental use of Islam in the face of not just defeat but treachery and
betrayal.
Khan's suggestion that Tipu did not need a 'lashkar-i-dua' or army of
scholars on religion, but needed to build up his own understanding of
Islam, rests on the breadth of the sultan's interests, evident from his
large collection of books on secular matters, including regional
histories. Yet there are large numbers of texts that testify to Tipu's
abiding interest in defining more generally the rules of correct Islamic
behaviour. FathulMujahadin is of course the most well known and cited
of these texts, which has been analysed as a military manual and
detailed instruction to holy warriors. Other treatises which expound on
religious systems, jurisprudence, fatawa or religious decrees on jihad
and kafirs, proper food and drinking habits, making the Prophet
Muhammad an exemplar, and so on, which were commissioned by or
dedicated to Tipu, remain unexplored as a source of these notions of
power and authority.99 Further, there are moments when Tipu calls for
a tender treatment of converts, who are to be treated 'as more precious
even than their own souls'.100
If British scholars persisted in reading the Tarikh-i-Khudadadi as a
historical record and tested it for its veracity, the same frame has been
used by historians anxious to establish that Tipu's religious zeal was
subordinated to his dream of vanquishing the British. e present essay
points to the necessity of reading these texts as reflections on the ideals
of kingship and statecra with which Tipu was struggling. As Muzaffar
Alam has suggested in his recent discussion of political Islam of an
earlier period, such texts may be read as 'idioms of power . . . [which]
were neither a perfect reflection of realities nor a matrix that wholly
determined the functioning of institutions'. Alam therefore calls
attention to both the tensions and original insights that were generated
by such accounts.101
 It is possible to read the Tarikh-i-Khudadadi, which is not concerned
with filling out a narrow time line, as an attempt to reconstruct
historical events and explanations of measures taken for a long and
stable dynastic rule as a treatise on power and authority in a time of
great flux. e historical events are thus subordinated to the greater task
of constructing a new political order. 'ere is no Regulation issued by
us', Tipu famously said in 1795 to Raja Ram Chander, Faujdar of
Bangalore, who questioned the wisdom of establishing state-run shops,
'that does not cost us in the framing of it, the deliberation of five
hundred years'.102 us Tipu writes of the time when he returns to
Srirangapatna aer the siege of Adoni in 1786:
Here with a view to the [proper] arrangement of affairs great and small I
framed various Hukm-namahs [or ordinances] and numerous other things; all
in the very best manner and comprehending institutes civil and fiscal, general
as well as particular rules for war and peace [literally battle and banquet] and
regulations for the government of the people at large. ey moreover treated of
the proper mode of dealing with the noble and the ignoble or the high and the
low, or taking or levying tributes from the subject and of affording protection to
the people, of making progress through the country and inspecting the
fortresses, and of duly guarding the kingdom on all sides. In fine, they
comprised numerous new inventions and fresh contrivances without measure .
. . erefore whatever ruler, not being of our line, shall surreptitiously adopt these
our ordinances and institutes will in consequence thereof be reckoned as one of
our of fspring.103
Both Tipu and the author of the Nallappa manuscript recognized the
opportunities of fered by the period of flux to enunciate a new
conception of power that drew from contemporary military and
administrative practice, and, at least in the period aer the 1780s, on an
understanding of the nature of the colonial enterprise, not only to
defeat it but to imitate its ways. e latter question is of less concern to
Kannada history, which for the most part focuses on the micropolitics
of regions that were falling under Haidar's control. Tipu's Tarikh, on the
contrary, concerns itself overwhelmingly, even when it records battle
tactics and strategies, with a vision of power that extends beyond his
lifetime.
 V
e variety of possible ways of historicizing the present that emerged in
the late eighteenth century, some of which are discussed above, soon
gave way to two distinct modes of historical writing, though they both
served the demands of a new colonial political order. On the one hand
there was the magisterial work of Mark Wilks, whose hold on the
'History of Mysore' has not quite been loosened even by the far more
rigorous and voluminous writing of Hayavadana Rao. ough
separated by more than a century, both writers conformed to all the
requirements of a distinctly new historical method, critically evaluating
varied sources, attempting causal explanations that privileged human
agency, providing an ordered temporal sequence. Both historians
focused rather strongly on the political history of a well-defined region,
principally written from the perspective of its leaders, though Rao's
work, inflected as it was by his previous experience as the compiler of
the voluminous Mysore Gazetteer, was more attentive to administrative
and social or cultural detail.104
Aer Wilks, however, the Mysore court returned to and revived the
genealogy form with obsessive zeal. is was prompted in part by the
political uncertainties of the first half of the nineteenth century,
following the unusual restitution of power by the emerging colonial
regime, to a dynasty that had all but been marginalized well before the
time of Haidar and Tipu. Krishnaraja Wodeyar III's court produced in
writing as well as in pictorial form the genealogy of the Wodeyar kings
that had been rudely interrupted by the Muslim interregnum. us, in
addition to the brass-plated Santanambhuja (progeny lotus) which
detailed the genealogy of the Wodeyar kings from the time of the
earliest ancestor, Yadu Raya (b. 1293),105 there were elaborate murals
that emphasized continuity through tracing the ancestors and the
descendants of KrishnarajaWodeyar III on the walls of the Jaganmohan
Palace106 and of the Chitra Mantapa of the Prasanna Venkatramana
swami Temple (where twelve Mysore kings from Raja Wodeyar to
Khasa Chamaraja Wodeyar, father of KRW III, are depicted along with
detailed calculations of their regnal years).107 In the two groups of
portraits that are painted on the western wall of the Jaganmohan Palace,
both of which are made to face the Santanambhuja, are included both
Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan, only tangential to the genealogy of the
Mysore kings.108 Similarly, the Nallappa family undertook the
establishment and decoration of the Narasimhaswamy temple at Sibi in
Tumkur district in the early nineteenth century, bringing old and new
regimes into posthumous dialogue. Both Haidar and Krishnaraja
Wodeyar III are depicted on the walls of this temple by those, such as
Nallappa and his brothers, who survived this regime change. It is vital
to examine these pictorial traditions alongside written histories for
what they tell us about forms of 'practical memory'.109
Colin Mackenzie's relentless exertions for materials on which a
'History of Mysore' could be based also yielded a large and luxuriant
archive of materials, much of which is yet to be used by historians. As
Nicholas Dirks has pointed out, the collection (and even production) of
vamsavalis, and even non- or quasi-historical narratives, was prompted
by the colonial state's interest in disentangling competing political and
economic claims.110 Mackenzie's distrust of 'tradition' as a source of
only scanty historical knowledge, and his doubts about the veracity of
many of the accounts he collected, were nevertheless overcome in his
determination to cast the net wide. A cluster of vamsavalis, in addition
to assorted kaifiyats, was produced within less than a year aer the
assumption of British rule.111 Not long aer, the hagiographic mode
was favoured: Chidananda Murthy lists the hagiographic works of
Dyavalapurada Nanjunda on Krishnaraja Wodeyar III in the first half of
the nineteenth century.112 By the time of M. Singraiya's
Srimanmaharajadhiraja Sri Chamarajendra Odeyavara Charitre, written
in 1905, there were signs that the thoroughly reconstructed monarchy
of Chamarajendra Wodeyar X did little to stem the tide of flattering
tributes to the maharaja.113
One nineteenth-century text disturbed this emerging dichotomy,
though it failed to supply the needs of colonial administrators and
address the anxieties of the Wodeyar dynasty in its most endangered
moments. e protracted birth of Devachandra's Rajavalli Kathasara
(1807-38) revealed the perils of unstable patronage. Mackenzie's survey
of Mysore, and his work in the peninsula generally between 1796 and
1821, brought him into contact with several literati who would become
his principal assistants.114 Devachandra, a Jain scholar from Kanakgiri
(who lived between 1770 and 1841), was first approached by Mackenzie
and asked whether there were local histories he could narrate
('sthalapuranamunte'). In response, Devachandra established his
credentials as the author of Pujyapada charitre, a biography of a Jain
religious head. He was immediately draed to Mackenzie's
establishment and commissioned to produce an account of all the
'happenings in the Karnataka-world' within a month, for which he was
promised a large sum of money. Devachandra's inability to contact
Mackenzie aer his departure to Calcutta in 1815 and before his death
in 1818 did not deter the Jain from continuing with this project.115 But
his destitution led him to seek the help of another patron, Soori-
pandita, a scholar of the Mysore court.116 ough he failed to make
contact with the chief patron of the Mysore court, Krishnaraja Wodeyar
III, Devachandra won the appreciation and support of fered by the
queen mother. She urged him to add a chapter to his existing eleven
chapters that would extol the virtues of the Wodeyar dynasty.117 He
went on to add a thirteenth chapter on caste, though the impetus for
this addition is not clear.
Rajavalli Kathasara has been hailed by several contemporary scholars
as an extraordinary cultural document.118 Devachandra's work is a
compendium of caste histories, folktales, religious histories, political/
dynastic chronicles, and historical geography, though he faced no
compulsion to relinquish mythic time in his narrative. His discussion of
the time of Haidar and Tipu is brief, and largely dwells on their
excesses. Above all, he willingly laces his text with short poems to all his
benefactors, and the British are not exempt from his praise for their
valour, their kindness, and the stability of their rule.119 Rahamath
Tarikere has taken this, as well as his disparaging treatment of
Karnataka's social reformers such as Male Madeshwara and Basavanna,
and his slight discussion of Haidar and Tipu, as the sign of a 'status-
quoist' historian, a historian of the ruling class.120 Whether this makes
it truly a colonial production is less certain. ough it is marked by
Devachandra's unapologetic admiration of British rule, RRajavalli
Kathasara was not made to yield, in either content or form, to the
regime of historicity inaugurated by British rule. Nor did the text
become a paean to Krishnaraja Wodeyar III, thereby occupying a
unique place in the historiography of the nineteenth century.
Indeed, even Hayavadana Rao's monumental twentieth-century
history of Mysore, despite adhering to the positivist evidentiary
protocols of professional historians, and despite being more thorough
than Wilks's early effort (though not as free of self-doubt), was not able
to shake free of the nineteenth-century legacy of genealogy. He
subordinated the Haidar-Tipu interregnum to a continuous narrative of
Wodeyar 'rule'. Rao acknowledged his patron Jayachamarajendra
Wodeyar Bahadur's 'deep and abiding interest in the scientific study of
history and the pursuit of Historical Research along modern lines', by
making the history of the Wadeyar Dynasty of kings' coextensive with
the region of Mysore.121 us, his treatment of the period 1761-99,
dominated by Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan, and spanning more than a
1000 pages of his three-volume work, was subordinated to the list of
Wodeyar kings, even when the latter were no longer the de facto rulers.
e genealogy thus framed the effort of producing a new History of
Mysore. But, at least in the eighteenth century, as we have seen, this was
certainly not the only possible mode of historicizing the present.

Notes
* is essay has benefited from extensive conversations that I have had with
Raziuddin Aquil, and long hours spent with him at the Asiatic Society Library.
Comments from Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Rajat Ray, and many in the audience at
the Vernacular History Conference, where a very preliminary dra of this essay
was presented, also helped me in its rewriting. Many thanks also to Ali Zahir for
graciously helping with Persian translations at short notice, and to Madhava
Prasad for his comments.
1. C. Hayavadana Rao, History of Mysore Under the Wodeyar Dynasty of Kings
(1399-1799) (1399-1704) (Bangalore: Mysore Government Press, 1943), vol. 1, p.
xvii. Emphasis added.
2. Mark Wilks, Historical Sketches of the South of lndia in an Attempt to Trace the
History of Mysoor from the Origin of the Hindoo Government of that State to the
Extinction of the Mohammedan Dynasty in 1799, vols 1-3 (London: Longman,
Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1810).
3. Wilks himself, said Rao, was conscious of the tentative nature of his enquiries
when he chose to call it Historical Sketches rather than a full-fledged history!
4. V. Narayana Rao, David Shulman, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Textures of Time:
Writing History in South India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001), p. 259.
5. To borrow the words of Daud Ali, in Daud Ali, ed., Invoking the Past: e Uses
of History in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 4.
6. Rao, et al., Textures of Time, p. 260.

7. Kumkum Chatterjee, 'History as Self-Representation: e Recasting of a

Political Tradition in Late Eighteenth Century Eastern India', Modern Asian
Studies, 32, 4 (1998), pp. 913-48.
8. Partha Chatterjee, 'e Early Modern and Colonial Modern in South Asia: A
Proposal for a Distinction' (lecture given at the Centre for Studies in Social
Sciences, Calcutta, 12 July 2004). Also, Raziuddin Aquil, 'Man of the Moment: e
Intellectual Trajectory of a Persianate Mughal Gentleman in an Era of Transition:
Ghulam Husain Tabatabai and his Sair- ul-Muta'akhkhirin (unpublished ms).
Aquil argues that there is a long tradition ofprofessional history writers in Persian,
to which Ghulam Husain Tabatabai is an illustrious, though innovative, legatee. It
must be pointed out that Rao et al. are far from indifferent to the alternative
trajectory traced by Persian historiography in India and even acknowledge the
widespread circulation of these genres among the literati: Textures of Time, pp.
223-6.
9. M. Chidananda Murthy, 'Historiography in Kannada During the Nine-teenth
Century', in Tarashankar Banerjee, ed., Historiography in Modern Indian
Languages 1800-1947 (Calcutta: Naya Prakash, 1988), pp. 15370.
10. D.R. Nagaraj, 'Tensions in Kannada Literary Culture', in Sheldon Pollock, ed.,
Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2003), pp. 323-82, esp. p. 379.
11. See R.S. Sastry, 'Historiography in Kannada, 1900-1947', in Banerjee, ed.,
Historiography in Modern Indian Languages, pp. 171-84, esp. p. 173.
12. 'e Bakhars, like all Marathi Prose, is written pele-mele; without stops,
without breath, with abrupt and dramatic change of tense, with copious use of
direct speech whose boundaries are of ten not clear; with speakers sometimes
unidentified and sometimes identified twice-at both beginning and end; sentences
in which the antecedent of a relative clause sometimes emerges half a page aer
the reader has given up the effort.' Ian Raeside, e Decade of Panipat, 1751-1761,
translated from Marathi (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1984), p. xi.
13. Sumit Guha, 'Speaking Historically: e Changing Voices of Historical
Narration in Western India, 1400-1900', Amercian Historical Review, 109, 4
(October 2004), pp. 1084-1103.
14. It is very likely that Punganuri's account draws on 'Haidar Nama', since there
are passages that are remarkably similar. See, for instance, Ramachandra Rao
'Punganuri', Memoirs of Hyder and Tipu, translated into English and illustrated
with annotations by C.P. Brown (Madras: Simkins and Co., 1849), p. 23. See also
the description of Haidar's reorganization of the army in 'Haidar Nama or
Bakhair', e Quarterly Journal of the Mythic Society, lvii, 1-4 (April 1966-January
1967), p. 87. Punganuri's text was translated into Telugu in the early nineteenth
century as Hydaru Charitra, though without a few concluding passages. N.
Venkataramanayya, ed., Hydaru Charitra: Critically Edited with Introduction
English Translation andNotes (Madras: Government Oriental Manuscripts Library,
1956). is text has been wrongly attributed to a Mahratta Krishnayya and is also
wrongly dated as belonging to the late eighteenth century in Rao, et al., Textures of
Time, p. 251.
15. M.M. Kalburgi, Karnatakada Kaifiyatugalu (Hampi: Kannada Vishwa-
vidyalaya, 1994), p. xiii.
16. e Tarikh-i-Khudadadi is partially translated and interspersed throughout
William Kirkpatrick, Select Letters of Tippoo Sultan to Various Public Functionaries
(London: Black, Parry and Kingsbury, 1811). Hereaer, Select Letters. A portion of
Kirkpatrick's translation has been reproduced, virtually unchanged, in Irfan
Habib, ed., State and Diplomacy under Tipu Sultan: Documents and Essays (Delhi:
Indian History Congress/Tulika, 2001), pp. 3-18. A more complete translation has
not thus far been published. I have relied partially on the translation of some parts
by Ali Zahir, to whom I am very grateful. Kirkpatrick says the term 'Khodadadi
Sarkar' was among the various appellations of the Mysore state. Kirkpatrick, Select
Letters, p. xix. Hayavadana Rao has suggested that the term Sarkar- i-Khodadad
(the government given by God) was adopted by Haidar Ali himself to show 'that it
was a trust in his hands to be discharged loyally and dutifully in the interests of its
Ruler, his sovereign.' Rao, History of Mysore, vol. ii, p. 284. is was also the view
of K.N.V. Sastri, who said: 'Chikka Devaraja Wodeyar had described his kingdom
as "service to Lord Vishnu" which Tipu translated as Khuda-dad-Sarkar.' See 'e
Muzrai System under Mysore Maharajas' (IHRC, Jadavpur, 1967), as cited in
Kabir Kausar, Secret Correspondence of Tipu Sultan (Bangalore: Karnataka State
Archives, 1998), p. 45. Others, such as Mohibbul Hasan and Kate Brittlebank,
suggest that the term was adopted by Tipu following his defeat in the ird
Mysore War (1792) when his turn to a proselytizing Islam was more pronounced.
In his letter of 25 December 1798 to Governor General Lord Mornington,
Marquess Richard Wellesley, there is the assertion (probably by the translator) that
'this title [Khudadadi Sarkar] was assigned by the sultan to his Government in
1792 ad', Kausar, Secret Correspondence, p. 244. I would like to thank Rajat Ray for
suggestive questions on this term that have led to this footnote.
17. Janaki Nair, 'Tipu Sultan, History Painting and the Battle for "Perspective" ',
Studies in History 22, 1, n.s. (2006), pp. 96-143.
18. See for instance Asok Sen, 'A Pre-British Economic Formation in India of the
Late Eighteenth Century: Tipu Sultan's Mysore', in Barun De, ed., Perspectives in
Social Sciences (Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1977), vol. i.
19. I am grateful to Sanjay Subrahmanyam for a suggestive question that pushed
me to think about this.
20. Burton Stein, 'Tipu Sultan's Mysore: State Formation and Economy Re-
considered', Modern Asian Studies 19, 3 (1985), pp. 387-413.
21. Punganuri, Memoirs of Hyder and Tipu, p. 1.

22. Ibid., p. 1.

23. Annual Report of the Mysore Archaeological Department for the year 1930
(Bangalore: 1934), p. 97. Another manuscript, obtained from karanik
Lakshminarasaiah in 1936, called the Mahisuru Samstanada Doregala Parampare,
was described as a 'mere list of the Mysore rulers and their conquests and is
lacking in chronological precision and historical detail.' Annual Report of the
Mysore Archaeological Department for the Year 1936 (Bangalore: 1937), p. 54.
24. 'On the morning of Krodhi Samvatsara Ashada 11 Tuesday [29 June 1784] this
Haidar Nama Bakhairu was completed'-so ends the text. T.T. Sharman, however,
chose to title it 'Haidar Nama or Bakhair by Nallappa'. e Quarterly Journal of the
Mythic Society, lvi, 1-4 (April 1965-January 1966), pp. 25-34, 68-77, and 100-9;
lvii, 1-4 (April 1966-January 1967), pp. 83-112; LVIII, 1-4 (April 1967-January
1968), pp. 25-40, 65-80, 109-20, 137-41. is was subsequently republished in i
a Sharma, Charitrika Dakhalegalu (Bengaluru: Kannada Sahitya Parishat,
1999), pp. 115-16. All quotations are taken from this printed version.
25. T.T. Sharman, 'Prefatory Note', 'Haidar Nama', e Quarterly Journal of the
Mythic Society, lvi, 1, p. 29. ough Hayavadana Rao everywhere refers to it as an
anonymous work, Sharman attributes the authorship of the manuscript to
Nallappa. ere is nothing in the text itself that suggests Nallappa is its author.
26. e small Narasimhaswamy temple at Sibi, Tumkur district, was built through
the efforts of Nallappa, and his brothers Lakshminarasaiah and Puttanaiah. Begun
in 1795 and completed in 1811, the temple was dedicated to the memory of the
mother Alamelamma. See Veena Shekhar, Mural Paintings of Sibi (Bangalore:
Keladi Museum and Historical Research Bureau, Keladi, and International Centre
for Indian Art and Cultural Studies, 1999), pp. 13-14.
27. Annual Report of the Mysore Archaeological Department for the Year 1942
(Mysore: 1943): 'e Dynasty of Kalale', pp. 78-99. Tipu is discussed briefly here,
and only in death, but by restoring Mysore to Krishnaraja Wodeyar III, says the
text, 'the English attained everlasting fame throughout India'. A line-drawing in
the manuscript showed Krishnaraja Wodeyar II flanked by his Dalawais
Nanjarajaiah and Devarajaiah, though the Dala- wais are given greater visual
prominence than the king. As the report noted: 'e Manuscript assumes that the
Kalale family took part in all the military campaigns of the Mysore kings, so that
in a few cases, particularly those pertaining to earlier periods, wars which could
not have been fought by the Dalvoys have been fathered on them' (p. 80).
28. Rao, History of Mysore, vol. ii, p. 63.

29. Ibid. On the achievements of Linganna Kavi as a poet-historian, Chidananda

Murthy says, 'At a time when our people were anything but history minded, it is a
wonder how Linganna could evince such interest in collecting historical data . . .
this looks to us entirely modern.' Further on he suggests that the Keladi Nripa
Vijayam is less poetry and more history. M. Chidananda Murthy,
'Keladinripavijayam: A Historical Poem', pp. 119-23, in G.S. Dikshit, ed., Studies
in Keladi History (Bangalore: Mythic Society, 1981).
30. Charitrika Dakhalegalu, p. 116.

31. Kirkpatrick, Select Letters.

32. Wilks, Historical Sketches, p. xvii. It is interesting that Mohibbul Hasan says
exactly the reverse, namely that the first-person account is derived from the
Sultan-ut-Tawarikh. Mohibbul Hasan, History of Tipu Sultan (Calcutta: World
Press, 1971), p. 402.
33. A very large number of eyewitness accounts were written by British prisoners
held in Haidar and Tipu's prisons and published in the late eighteenth century.
ey formed an important historical source for both writers and history painters.
For an analysis of these captivity narratives, see Linda Colley, Captives: Britain,
Empire and the World, 1600-1850 (London: Jonathan Cape, 2002), esp. pp. 269-
307.
34. e historiography on Tipu Sultan is broadly divided between colonial
accounts which continued to vanquish him in print, and secular nationalist
writings which herald him as a frustrated modernizer. Burton Stein regards as
important the sharp break made by Tipu in the organization of his finances, and
of his army, to make him contemporaneous as a modernizer with the later
attempts of the British. Brittlebank has attempted to shi attention to a somewhat
neglected field of study, namely the actions and symbols of Tipu that were forged
in the process of acquiring legitimacy amidst a predominantly Hindu population.
See Kate Brittlebank, Tipu Sultan and the Search for Legitimacy (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1997). Overall, however, Brittlebank tends to see Tipu's actions
as determined by, rather than determining, the expectations of an eighteenth
century South Indian king.
35. Kirkpatrick, Select Letters, p. xviii.

36. Wilks says of Sultan-ut-Tawarikh, 'A zealous adherent of the late dynasty, of
whose veracity in this instance I cannot doubt, in a visit to Zain-al-ab-din
observed the book and asked as matter of conversation, what it was. Zain-al-ab-
din excused himself from giving a direct answer, and referred the enquirer to an
indorsement on its cover in the Persian language ... It is generally known that
Zain-al-ab-din and the Sultaun were engaged in such a work, and that no other
person was permitted to see it.' Wilks, Historical Sketches, pp. xxi-xxii.
37. Hasan, History of Tipu Sultan, p. 403.

38. Habib, ed., State and Diplomacy under Tipu Sultan, p. 5. Kirkpatrick dates the
document 1792.
39. Mahmud Husain, e Dreams of Tipu Sultan (Karachi: Pakistan Historical
Society, 1952), pp. 10-11.
40. Meer Husain Ali Kirmani, History of Tipu Sultan, Being a Continuation of
Neshani Hyduri, translation from the Persian by Col. W Miles (1864; rpnt. New
Delhi: Asia Educational Services, 1997). Indeed, the books discovered in his
library included those such as ' Tarikh Rozet al Suffa' [ Tarikh Rauzat us Suffa]
whose introduction stressed 'the utility of history in general and more especially
to sovereigns and rulers'. Kirmani, History of Tipu Sultan, p. 173.
41. Chatterjee, 'History as Self-Representation', pp. 923-6.

42. Kumkum Chatterjee, 'Pre-Colonial Historiography in Early Modern Bengal:

Late Seventeenth to Eighteenth Centuries', lecture given at American Institute of
Indian Studies, Kolkata, 12 December 2004.
43. Maulvi Abdul Rahim, Karnama-i-Haidari (Calcutta: 1848); commissioned by
Ghulam Mohammed, and translated into Urdu as Hamlat-i- Haidari
(Achievements of Hyder) by Ahmad Ali Gopamawi (Calcutta, 1849), p. 1. I am
grateful to Raziuddin Aquil for help in reading this text.
44. Charitrika Dakhalegalu, pp. 105-16.

45. Kirmani, History of Hydur Naik, p. xxvii

46. Raeside, e Decade of Panipat, p. x.

47. Charitrika Dakhalegalu, p. 81.

48. Ranajit Guha, An Indian Historiography of India: A Nineteenth Century Agenda

and its Implications (Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1988), p. 2.
49. Kirmani, e History of Hydur Naik, p. 261.

50. Charitrika Dakhalegalu, pp. 27-8.

51. Ibid., p. 63.

52. Peter Hardy, 'Some Studies in Pre-Mughal Muslim Historiography', in C.H.

Phillips, ed., Historians of India, Pakistan and Ceylon (London: Oxford University
Press, 1961), pp. 115-27, esp. p. 126.
53. From the inscription in front of the Dariya Daulat, however, it appears to have
been completed only in 1784, i.e. when Haidar Ali had died and Tipu had taken
over power.
54. Charitrika Dakhalegalu, p. 63.

55. In a footnote, C.P. Brown noted, 'In every narrative the story is very obscure'.
Punganuri, Memoirs of Hydur and Tipu, p. xii.
56. Rao, History of Mysore, vol. ii, pp. 792-804, esp. p. 801.

57. Wilks, Historical Sketches, vol. ii, p. 451.

58. is is the conclusion drawn by Rao aer siing through the accounts of the
event. Rao, History of Mysore, vol. ii, p. 803.
59. Rao, History of Mysore, vol. ii, citing KeladiNripa Vijayam, p. 432. Keladi Nripa
Vijayam, a hale Kannada champu poem written in the late eighteenth century,
does not dwell on the loss of the kingdom, since, as Rao points out, the author is
more interested in chronicling 'the deeds of charity done by the kings [sic] of
Keladi who were pious devotees of Siva', p. 800. Rao makes his own effort at
clearing the name of Virammaji from 'tradition' that 'has come down to us
through not very disinterested Muslim sources' and 'unfortunately perpetuated by
Wilks', p. 454. A similar historio-graphical retrieval is in B. Sheik Ali, 'Factors
Responsible for Haider's Conquest of Bidanur', in G.S. Dikshit, ed., Studies in
Keladi History (Bangalore: Mythic Society, 1981), pp. 69-74.
60. 'Haidara Kaifiyatu', Karnatakada Kaifiyatgalu, p. 199. e conquest of Bidanur
is recounted in several of the kaifiyats of the surrounding regions. See, for
instance, 'Vasudhaare Gramada Kaifiyatu', p. 119ff.; 'Tuluvadesha Kadaba
Samsthanada Kaifiyatu', p. 303ff.
61. Memoir of the Life of Hyder Naik (Mackenzie Manuscript).

62. 'Haidara Kaifiyatu', Karnatakada Kaifiyatgalu, pp. 199-200.

63. Kirmani, e History of Hydur Naik, p. 72.

64. Ibid., p. 98.

65. Wilks, Historical Sketches, vol. ii, p. 451.

66. Punganuri, Memoirs of Hyder and Tipu, p. 19.

67. Kirmani, e History of Hydur Naik, p. 98.

68. Ibid., p. 128.

69. Ibid., p. 135.

70. Charitrika Dakhalegalu, pp. 39-40.

71. Ibid., p. 40.

72. Hayavadana Rao was convinced that Haidar made good use of the presence of
the 'pretender' to ease his passage through the territory and enhance the justness
of his cause. Rao, History of Mysore, pp. 440, 804. e 'pretender' would return to
haunt Mysore in 1831, as Budi Basavappa Nayaka, leader of the Nagar Rebellion,
who styled himself as the 'Raja of Nagar', and claimed to be the adopted son of
Rani Virammaji. e Nagar rebellion prompted the British to assume direct rule
of Mysore. Report on 'e Origins, Progress and Suppression of the Recent
Disturbances in Mysore' (Bangalore: 1833), pp. 24-5.
73. Charitrika Dakhalegalu, p. 43.

74. Rao, History of Mysore,vol. ii, p. 467, fn 202.

75. Ali, 'Factors Responsible for Haider's Conquest of Bidanur'.

76. For instance, Wilks estimates the booty from the capture of Bidanur at twelve
million sterling. Historical Sketches.
77. Rao, History of Mysore, vol. ii, pp. 463-4.

78. Kirmani, e History of Hydur Naik, p. xvi.

79. Annual Report of the Mysore Archaeological Department, 1930, p. 89.

80. Punganuri, Memoirs of Hyder and Tipu, p. 63, fn 3.

81. Ibid., Postscript. e morbid absorption of colonial accounts and histories

with the death of Tipu Sultan, we well know, found echoes in the work of
earlyprofessional historians: it is appropriate to remember that Jadu- nath Sarkar's
first historical essay in English, published in three parts in Suhrid in 1894, dwelt
for the most part on the death, and search for the body, of Tipu Sultan. I am
grateful to Gautam Bhadra for this reference.
82. Charitrika Dakhalegalu, p. 95.

83. e words that are italicized are transliterated from English in the original.
84. Charitrika Dakhalegalu, p. 88. On an interpretation of this passage as having
been reported by Purnaiya to Wilks, leading the historian to see this as a sign of
Haidar Ali's despair about ever being able to defeat the seafaring British, see D.S.
Achuta Rau, 'Did Haidar Ali turn Defeatist in 1782?', in Irfan Habib, ed.,
Confronting Colonialism: Resistance and Modernisation under Haidar Ali and Tipu
Sultan (Delhi: Tulika, 2001), pp. 49-52.
85. Charitrika Dakhalegalu, pp. 62, 70.

86. Kirkpatrick, Select Letters, pp. 387-9.

87. Guha, An Indian Historiography of India, p. 32.

88. Kirkpatrick, Select Letters, p. 428.

89. Ibid., p. 388. is was the tone that convinced Kirkpatrick that the text was
written for the 'exclusive benefit' of the sultan's family.
90. Kausar, Secret Correspondence of Tipu Sultan, p. 152.

91. Kirkpatrick, Select Letters, pp. 57-8.

92. Many of the dreams, for instance, reveal an obsession with the theme of
conversion. Husain, e Dreams of Tipu Sultan.
93. Hasan, History of Tipu Sultan, pp. 362-3.

94. Kirkpatrick, Select Letters, p. 207.

95. Nikhilesh Guha, 'Tipu Sultan's Quest for Legitimacy and his Commercial
Measures', in Habib, ed., State and Diplomacy under Tipu Sultan, pp. 111-19, esp.
p. 113.
96. Habib, Confronting Colonialism, p. xxv.

97. I.G. Khan, 'State Intervention in the Economy: Tipu's Orders to Revenue
Collectors, 1792-97, A Calendar', in Habib, ed., State and Diplomacy under Tipu
Sultan, pp. 66-81, esp. p. 67.
98. Ibid., p. 69.
99. A partial list would include such texts-now housed at the Asiatic Society
Library-as Muayyidu'l Mujahidin (collection of khutbas), Jawahirul Quran
(commentary on sections of the Quran), Majmua (dealing with the Prophet's food
and drink), Fatawa-i-Muhammadi (on jihad and kafirs), Fakhrush Shuyukh (an
exposition of the Muslim religious system written in 1786 by Ali Razaq Sharif),
Fiqh-i-Muhammadi (Muhammadan Jurisprudence), Za'adulMujahidin (onjihad),
in addition to texts on the following of Sunni Islam, marriage rituals, etc. Among
Tipu's orders to the Mir Asafs, Order no. 34 is the injunction that the children of
the of ficers and soldiers in the forts be taught from 'Zad al Mujahidin and Murid
al Mujahidin', and further that the qazis 'ensure the lighting of the lamps'
presumably of Islam. Khan, 'State Intervention in the Economy', p. 76.
100. Kirkpatrick, Select Letters, p. 60.

101. Muzaffar Alam, e Languages of Political Islam, c. 1200-1800 (New Delhi:

Permanent Black, 2004), p. 195; see also his discussion of Ziya-ud- Din Barani's
Fatawa-i-Jahandari and its construction of the past, pp. 3143. Although Alam
does not consider texts in Tipu's region, his insights suggest modes by which we
may make sense of these productions.
102. Kirkpatrick, Select Letters, p. 130

103. Ibid., p. 326.

104. Hayavadana Rao was born in 1865 and trained as a lawyer, though he made
his mark as a journalist in Mysore. He was called upon to edit e Mysore
Economic Journal by Dewan Visvesvaraya in 1915. He went on to edit the massive
eight-volume Mysore Gazetteer in the 1930s, and the Sreekara Bhashya. He was
awarded the title 'Rajacaritavisarada'. e Quarterly Journal of the Mythic Society,
lvi, 1 (April 1965), pp. 96-9.
105. Annual Report of the Mysore Archeological Department, 1918, pp. 62-3.

106. Annual Report of the Mysore Archeological Department, 1938, pp. 47-71, esp.
pp. 46-58, 67-70.
107. Annual Report of the Mysore Archeological Department, 1920, p. 2.
108. Brittlebank suggests that Tipu's omission from the brass Santanambhuja and
Haidar's inclusion in it uphold the fiction of Haidar's subordination to the Mysore
kings, and Tipu's success in destroying that illusion. Tipu Sultan and the Search for
Legitimacy, p. 61. Clearly, the Wodeyar court was not averse to including Tipu
among his contemporaries, as is evident from his portrait on the west wall of the
Jaganmohan Palace mural, where the arrangement of ancestors, contemporaries,
and lineages of kings was configured quite differently. Pictorially at least, Tipu is
made subservient to Krishna Raja Wodeyar III and his ancestors, by being made
to face the central Santanambhuja, which prominently features the king.
109. I have undertaken a preliminary investigation on the question of legitimacy
and pictorial representation, particularly in the nineteenth- and twentieth-
century courtly traditions, in 'Visualising Legitimacy: Srirangapatna to Mysore',
UGC lecture to the Fine Arts Department of the MS University, Baroda, 19
August 2005.
110. Nicholas B. Dirks, 'Colonial Histories and Native Informants: e Bio-graphy
of an Archive', in Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer, eds, Orientalism
and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1994), pp. 279-313, esp. p. 289. Phillip Wagoner argues that the
Cavelly brothers, and the host of others on whom Mackenzie relied as 'native
informants', were more properly collaborators in knowledge production. He
emphasizes their skills and training, though these are nowhere disputed by writers
such as Dirks. See Wagoner, 'Precolonial Intellectuals and the Production of
Colonial Knowledge', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 45, 4 (2003), pp.
783-814.
111. Hayavadana Rao lists 'Mysore Dhoregala Vamsavali' (c. 1800), 'Mysore Rajara
Charitre' (c. 1800), 'Kalale Arasugala Vamsavali' (c. 1800), in addition to
'Haidarana Kaifiyat' and 'Nagarada Kaifiyat', among the principal sources for his
work, besides inscriptions, archaeological reports, and other materials. Rao,
History of Mysore, vol. i, p. xxi. e Mahisuru Samsthanada Doregala Parampare
Kaiphiyatu, similarly, was produced in about ad 1800 and breaks of f in its account
of the rule of Krishnaraja Wodeyar II (the time of Haidar Ali). Annual Report of
the Mysore Archaeological Department for the Year 1936, p. 54.
Srimanmaharajaravara Vamshavali was first compiled in 1864-5, when
Krishnaraja Wodeyar III was making fervent appeals to the British for the return
of direct rule over his realm. It was published during the reign of his son
Chamarajendra Wodeyar X as Vamsaratnakara, and was revised and republished
in two parts by B. Ramakrishna Row, the Palace Controller, vols i-ii (Mysore:
Government Press, 1916 and 1922).
112. Chidananda Murthy, 'Historiography in Kannada', p. 158.

113. M. Singraiya, Srimanmaharajadhiraja Sri Chamarajendra Odeyavara Charitre

(Mysore: Mysore Government Press, 1927, fourth edition, revised and enlarged).
is work is a detailed chronicle of a thoroughly reconstructed monarchy in
Mysore aer the rendition of 1881. It begins by tracing a sacred geography and
does not hesitate to combine the man-ner in which 'many maharishis came to this
territory and settled in many places and purified the place with their deeds' and
descriptions of the abodes of the asuras, with the detailed itinerary of
Chamarajendra Wode- yar's travels through India.
114. See Dirks, 'Colonial Histories and Native Informants', p. 207.

115. B.S. Sannaiah, ed., Devachandra Viruchita Rajavalli Kathasara (Mysore:

Kannada Adhyayana Samsthe, 1988), pp. 314-15. See also Nicholas B. Dirks,
Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Delhi: Permanent
Black, 2001), pp. 81-106.
116. Sannaiah, ed., Devachandra Viruchita Rajavalli Kathasara, p. 314.

117. Ibid., pp. 317, 361.

118. Venkatesh Indvadi, ed., Devachandrana Rajavalli Kathe: Samskritika

Mukhamukhi (Hampi: Kannada Vishwavidhyalaya, 2003).
119. Sannaiah, ed., Rajavalli Kathasara, p. 313.

120. See Tarikere, 'Rajavallikathe Kaanisuva Karnatakada Prapanchagalu', in

Indvadi, ed., Devachandrana Rajavalli Kathe, pp. 35-7.
121. In this he was adhering to the pattern of the court-commissioned genealogy
of the mid-nineteenth century which was revised and published as Row, ed.
Srimanmaharajaravara Vamshavali.
 4

e King of Controversy
History and Nation-Making in
Late Colonial India*

KUMKUM CHATTERJEE

T
he later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed the
emergence and definition of nation-states across large parts of
Asia and the Middle East. History was widely pressed into the
service of this phenomenon in regions such as China, Japan,
Turkey, Iran, Algeria, and elsewhere.1 Aer all, as Hobsbawm
remarked, 'Nations without pasts are contradictions in terms. What
makes a nation is the past.'2 In India too, history had become a public
passion during this period and had come to be seen as a major site
through which and on which critically important issues of Indian
nationhood and tradition were articulated. In most of these regions,
public debates about history and nationalism also generated intense
discussions about the nature and function of history, and the definition
and nature of community, culture, and related issues. e central focus
of this essay is a public debate among Indian intellectuals in the early
twentieth century which underscores the critically important role
played by history in the articulation of nationhood. Secondly, it
highlights sharp debates and contestations about the definition and
function of history in colonial civil society. Finally, it aims to draw
attention to the need to conceptualize history not exclusively in terms of
the classic nineteenth/early-twentieth- century notion of it as a rational-
positivist discipline, but rather as a broader spectrum of historical
cultures.
e specific debate which comprises the core of this essay was carried
out in Bengal and among the Bengali literati. While most issues which
arose in the course of this debate were framed in regional Bengali
terms, these were understood most oen as subsets of a broader
concern with Indian nationhood and the perceived urgency to
determine the type of history which could serve it. Similar concerns
with defining and underscoring the relationship between history and
nationalism were also apparent among the Indian nationalist
intelligentsia in other parts of the Indian subcontinent around the later
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. e specific forms assumed by
such regional conversations and arguments were frequently couched in
regional idioms, and the spectrum of views behind such expressions
ranged from positions which advocated the region-as-nation (for
instance, in certain types of Tamil nationalist ideologies and debates in
southern India),3 to those which valorized the region and its identity
and culture as important but essential components within a broader
Indian nation. In the discussion at hand, the latter position was
implicitly predominant.
e particular controversy which comprises my central focus
assumed the shape of an intense and acrimonious debate about a king
named Adisur who was believed to have reigned several centuries ago.4
is debate divided a segment of Bengal's scholarly world into two
mutually antagonistic camps during the 1920s and 1930s. e debate
was not a discreet disagreement among scholars, but an extremely
public controversy, conducted primarily through the medium of print
and accessible therefore to a literate, middle-class reading public. e
controversial king Adisur thus serves as an entry point into a dispute
which allows us to explore the connections between history and nation-
making in a colonized society on the one hand, and engage with
relationships among different visions of history on the other.
In the Indian nationalist culture of the early twentieth century there
was a strong perception that knowledge of the past was indispensable
for the building of a modern nation. e Bengali literati acknowledged
that their British colonial masters had taken the first step towards
presenting India's history in a format and manner suited to modern
sensibilities. But, they were also convinced that a proper telling of the
narrative of India's past could only be accomplished via the agency of
Indians, since they were the natives of the land. ere was therefore a
sense of urgency and excitement about the collective endeavour to
(re)construct a connected account of India's/Bengal's past. e heated
charges and counter-charges which were traded among the scholarly
protagonists of the Adisur debate actually underscore the point that this
controversy can be understood only in the context of the passion,
excitement, and collective stakes that were perceived to be associated
with this historical project.
King Adisur was undoubtedly one of the central figures in this
controversy. He also served as a key to many associated issues, of which
the single most important revolved around the historicity of a mass of
genealogical materials called kulagranthas, kulajis, or kulapanjis.
Genealogical literature constituted one of the most well-known and
ubiquitous forms assumed by historical documents practically all over
the world. In India, a strong genealogical tradition with specific
regional variations and significations had existed since very early
times.5 Royal dynasties paid careful attention to the creation and
updating of their genealogies, as did very many socially and politically
eminent families. e kulajis which are the subject of discussion here
refer to the Bengali tradition of genealogical literature. In its most
commonly understood and general sense, the term kula meant family
or clan; the terms grantha (book) and panji/panjika (chronicle) indicate
that these materials were essentially genealogies of kulas or lineages
which recorded the generational descent of the patrilineal Hindu family
and clan over many centuries. e kulagranthas also claimed to
commemorate the story of developments which were believed to have
shaped the social and normative structure of Hindu Brahmanical
society in Bengal over hundreds of years.
e term kula, although generally denoting clan or lineage, had also
in Bengal a somewhat unique meaning, that is, kula status also denoted
an elite position within what is commonly understood as the caste
system. A person possessing this elite status was described as a kulin—
literally, one who belonged to a high status kula, i.e. lineage. Such high
or elite status, which was essential in order to become a kulin, was
believed to be derived from the spiritual and ritual purity manifest in
the practices and inner qualities of those deemed qualified to be kulins.
e status of being a kulin, and the entire Bengali institution of
kulinism, needs of course to be understood in the context of the
varna/jati arrangements and hierarchies (i.e. the caste system) which
had been a characteristic feature of South Asian society for many
centuries.6
e kulagranthas/genealogies told the story of how the institution of
kulinism came to be created in Bengal and tracked the developments in
it over several centuries. King Adisur figured frequently as the hero in
most kulagranthas since he was represented as the founding father of
the institution of kulinism. e central reason for Adisur's claim to fame
in the kulagranthas lay in the fact that he was believed to have invited
five ritually and spiritually purer Brahmins from Kanauj in northern
India to migrate to Bengal and, subsequently, to settle there. e
descendants of some of these Brahmins, who were believed to have
come to Bengal from Kanauj, came to be designated kulins, as did some
descendants of the five Kayasthas who, according to many of the
genealogies, had accompanied the five original Kanaujiya Brahmins to
Bengal. Subsequently, the institution of kulinism was modified and
regulated by kings like Vallal Sen and Lakshman Sen of the Sen dynasty,
and by later potentates with varying degrees of power and authority,
and with very sharply varying social and political jurisdictions.7
Bengal's society was believed to have been dominated for several
centuries by the three jatis or castes represented by the Brahmins, the
Kayasthas, and the Baidyas.8 Each of these broad jati/caste categories
was broken up into innumerable jati subdivisions (subcastes). Kulinism
resulted in the creation of a stratum of very elite lineages within each of
these groups. ese came to represent the highest pinnacle of status,
prestige, and respect within their respective groups and in the region's
society at large. e institution of kulinism, with its associated
modifications and shis, continued to exert a fair amount of influence
over the politics and 'reality' of status and influence in Bengal even into
the middle of the nineteenth century—and, in cases, beyond it as well.9
A view generally articulated in the kulaji literature was that the
strengthening and formalization of the institution of kulinism by the
kings Vallal Sen and Lakshman Sen, in the twelh century, ushered in
the practice of compiling and maintaining genealogies of kulin lineages
associated primarily with the Brahmin, Kayastha, and Baidya jatis,
respectively. ese genealogies tracked not merely male generational
succession within each kulin family, but paid special attention to
recording the family's history of social interaction—particularly its
marriage practices. A kulin Brahmin family, for example, was expected
to arrange the marriage alliances of its sons only with other kulin
Brahmin families. Failure to observe this principle could result in the
lowering of kula status, or even a total expulsion from kulin society—
which effectively meant loss of social rank and prestige.
e Sen monarchs are believed to have appointed learned men, well
versed in the principles of kulinism and the histories of kulin families, to
hold the of fice of kulacharya and discharge the important task of
creating and maintaining elaborate genealogical accounts of various
kulin lineages. is was with a view to building a fund of social and
communal memory about the social behaviour (mainly intermarriage)
of these lineages. us was born the practice of composing kulajis or
kulapanjis, i.e. the genealogies which generated so much heat and
acrimony in the twentieth century. e kulacharyas, also known as
ghataks, functioned as chroniclers and archivists of various kulin
communities and also occupied leadership positions within such
communities. With the demise of a paramount Hindu kingship in
Bengal following the Turkish/Muslim conquest of Bengal in the early
thirteenth century, smaller Hindu landed potentates, and Hindus who
held high administrative of fice under the Muslim rulers of Bengal,
assumed the role of presiding over kulin society—oen through
kulacharyas appointed and/or supported by them. us, through many
centuries of Muslim rule in Bengal the of fice of kulacharya and the
practice of writing kulagranthas continued unabated.
Although these genealogies had circulated in Bengali for centuries,
there was renewed interest in them during the later nineteenth century
—particularly in recovering 'ancient' kulagranthas, preserving them,
and interpreting them in order to arrive at conclusions regarding the
history of Bengali society. is new interest was in part a consequence
of an overarching enthusiasm for history evident among the colonial
bourgeoisie in Bengal during this period. Secondly, the operations of
the colonial census served to trigger what are called caste movements in
various parts of India, and produced a variety of caste-based politics
primarily aimed at claiming a higher status in the caste /jati hierarchy of
specific regions. e prof essed aim of the census to create a permanent
record of varna/jati/kula hierarchies, it has been argued, was seen as a
move which would foreclose whatever opportunities of upward social
mobility were possible within these hierarchies. e resulting anxieties
were largely instrumental in producing a spate of caste movements.10
e renewed interest in recovering old genealogies and editing and
publicizing them thus became an integral aspect of caste politics in
Bengal.
is new surge of interest in 'caste affairs' among middle-class
Bengalis was probably at its strongest from 1850 till about 1930.11
During this period, numerous caste associations were founded for the
ostensible purpose of producing contemporary accounts about the past
history of specific varnas/jatis.12 Individual families also took the
initiative to publish chronicles detailing their lineage histories.13 Many
Bengali scholars—professional academics as well as public intellectuals
—joined the quest to unearth kulagranthas, oen travelling to remote
villages to seek these materials.14 e medium of print—popular
journals, scholarly publications, etc.—became saturated with essays and
articles on Bengal's history generally, and kulagranthas specifically.15 It
needs to be understood, however, that the kulajis were now being
regarded as artefacts from the past which could be pressed into the
service of primarily late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century
agendas. e protagonists in the kulagrantha debate represented a
spectrum of opinions. e majority of them, no matter what stand they
took, were not attempting to use these chronicles for the primary
purpose for which they had historically been composed, since such
jati/kula-based considerations—a subset of broader considerations of
caste categories—had largely died out and become irrelevant by the
later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the marriage practices
of the urban, educated middle class.16 All the participants in this
debate, as well as its audience, were essentially drawn from just such an
urban bourgeois milieu. Historically, kulajis also served as records of
pride and honour for particular lineages vis-à-vis others. is
dimension of the kulajis surfaced occasionally during the twentieth-
century controversy among Bengali intellectuals, thus serving as a
reminder that past sensitivities about jati and kula-related status had
not been totally obliterated. Nevertheless, it is true that the primary
thrust of the kulagrantha debate in the twentieth century was not over
such questions, but rather about whether it was valid to regard these
materials as history. One group of scholars involved in the Adisur/kulaji
debate adopted the position that these materials did not qualify as
history, and in doing so ended up elaborating and articulating what in
their opinion distinguished history from other modes of
commemorating the past, as well as the appropriate methodologies
requisite for its construction. e following segment engages in a
discussion about these aspects of the controversy.
Among those who were strongly sceptical about the historicity of
kulagranthas were scholars like Ramesh Chandra Majumdar,
Ramaprasad Chanda, Akshaya Kumar Maitra, Rakhaldas
Bandyopadhyaya (also referred to here as R.D. Banerjee—as he
himselfdid at times), and some others. Ramesh Chandra Majumdar
issued a warning about the need to be wary of conclusions relating to
Bengal's past which were based solely on the evidence of kulagranthas,
since these materials contradicted each other so frequently. Actually, so
many of the issues entangled with the kulaji controversy, that is, the
existence or not of a king named Adisur and the exact dates of his reign,
the dates and chronology of the kings of the Pal and Sen dynasties, the
dates and authenticity of the actual kulaji texts, their authorship, etc.,
were purportedly based on the evidence of kulagranthas. So it was
indeed important to try to disentangle the glaring inconsistencies and
contradictions among kulaji texts regarding these subjects.
Actually, the milieu in which the genealogies had been produced and
circulated could not but create the situation which Majumdar found so
problematic. Print technology did not catch on in Bengal until the very
beginning of the nineteenth century. Any textual materials produced
prior to this were necessarily associated with conditions prevailing in a
pre-print, manuscript culture. One of the foremost aspects of the debate
under discussion here revolved around the determination of the period
when these kulagranthas had been composed. All views on this matter
were unanimous in agreeing that the genealogies had been composed
and/or copied well before the advent of print. us, no matter what the
disagreements regarding the dating of these kulajis, their production
and circulation were governed by conditions characteristic of any
manuscript economy. Manuscript texts of the genealogies were copied
and re-copied repeatedly by scribes—discrepancies in copies made
from the 'original' manuscripts were therefore common. Composers of
genealogies sometimes claimed to be re-producing a pre-existing kulaji,
but inserted new materials into it, or omitted to incorporate sections
from an 'original' kulaji and did not always mention that changes had
been made in the work being copied. of course, also in keeping with the
norms undergirding such a pre-print culture, it was not the convention
—for the most part—for composers/compilers of kulapanjikas to
inform readers about the 'sources' on which the work was based; why
they chose to incorporate some materials and not others, etc. But it was
what I call the 'porousness' of manuscript texts, i.e. the practice of
segments of particular works migrating into other texts without explicit
acknowledgement that such a phenomenon was in fact occurring,
which appeared to pose the biggest problem for sceptics like R.C.
Majumdar. e interpenetration of the materials of one manuscript text
into another took place quite unrestrictedly, since the much more
modern notion (associated with the advent of print culture) of the
author's prerogative and right to exclusive ownership and
proprietorship of his/her composition, and the associated notion that
no other author or compiler should make free use (that is, without
permission and/or acknowledgement) of it, was practically unknown.17
In fact, most of these features relate to the absence of what Foucault
described as the 'author-function',18 that is, the attribution of proper
name/s to a work. In the case of the Bengal kulajis and much of the
literature produced prior to the advent of print culture, there were
indeed cases where a specific author or compiler laid a clear claim to
the authorship or compilation of a particular text. But it was equally
true that, in many other cases, no clear author-function could be
constructed. ese characteristics stemmed from the prevailing culture
in which the individuality of the author was oen subordinated to the
perceived need to adhere to the conventions, and to stylistic and other
traditions governing the production of certain types of works.19 ese
features frustrated and confounded scholars like Majumdar, to whom
the credibility of any historical material was in doubt if its author-
function, sources, etc. could not be clearly established. As a
distinguished body of scholarly work associated with Jack Goody, Jan
Vansina, Roger Chartier, Robert Darnton, and many others indicates,
Majumdar's frustration actually reflects a much wider tension between
oral traditions and the written word on the one hand and between
manuscript culture and print culture on the other.20
Kulajis were typically owned by particular families and by ghataks
and kulacharyas. e decline in the importance and relevance of
kulacharyas meant that by the mid-nineteenth century or so they were
functioning purely as match-makers and kulagranthas were no longer
maintained and updated with as much care as before. e relative
decline too in the social relevance of kula-based distinctions among
Bengali Brahmins, Kayasthas, and Baidyas by the nineteenth century
resulted in families sometimes not taking good care of kulaji
manuscripts they might possess.21 us, the hunt for genealogies in the
late nineteenth and twentieth centuries frequently turned up fragments
only of kulaji manuscripts and oen these bore evidence of insect
damage, and water-damage. In any case, professional historians like
Majumdar came to the conclusion that such unstable materials as
kulajis did not qualify as rational history, which to scholars like him
comprised the only proper definition of history. 'True history', he wrote
with devastating bluntness, 'has only one version, but imaginary history
[which to Majumdar was not history at all] has several.'22
e problems stemming from kulaji texts having been produced in a
pre-print milieu formed an important plank in the critique of
genealogies as works of history in themselves. But the centrepiece of
this critique was associated with much more substantive
methodological issues. is methodology, which Bonnie Smith
characterized as 'history professionalized in the nineteenth century west
as a science of facts and details',23 was transmitted to India via the
colonial connection. e institutions of colonial education had
produced by the later nineteenth century a generation of Indian
scholars—typified by R.C. Majumdar, R.D. Banerjee, and others—for
whom the practice of history was associated inexorably with rational-
positivist history grounded in verifiable facts. For them, not to hold
history to these new, modern standards meant a relapse into the state of
history-writing in pre-colonial India, which they now regarded as not
history at all, but rather as uncritical myths and stories. Together with
this faith in rational analysis, this group of scholars also came to be
united by a common faith in the primacy of 'hard (material) evidence',
that is, archaeological, numismatic, and epigraphic evidence over
textual evidence for purposes of historical analysis.24 Hard evidence
was supposed to be far more reliable than textual or oral evidence and a
resort to it came to characterize the brunt of the attack on the historical
value of genealogies.
Archaeology represented a new knowledge-discipline in the later
nineteenth century, and it was being pressed into service in many
emergent nation-states as a resource indispensable to the practice of
rational-positivist history. As Ian Hodder points out, in the later
nineteenth and twentieth centuries nationalism and identity provided a
self-evident context for the study of cultural sequence through archa-
eology. e cases of Japan, Hispanic South America, and Indonesia
provide good examples of this, as do many parts of Europe which were
characterized in this period with the struggles of nation-states and
ethnic groups.25 In Egypt and in the Ottoman territories, too,
archaeology as well as its 'auxiliary sciences', that is, numismatics,
epigraphy, etc., were being deployed to produce histories different from
what were now being perceived as medieval narratives about the past
which had not had the benefit of being based on the probings of science
and reason.26 For India, the value of archaeology for the reconstruction
of India's past had been recently validated by many important
discoveries, foremost among them probably the discovery of the cities
of Mohenjodaro and Harappa in 1924.27 Many of the scholars—such as
R.D. Banerjee and Ramaprasad Chanda—among those sceptical about
the historical value of genealogies were professional archaeologists. For
them archaeology, naturally, occupied a vantage position among the
multiple tools available (e.g. textual analysis) for the reconstruction of
history. During the early twentieth century, professional historians in
India, including Majumdar, showed a clear preference for evidence
furnished by archaeology and related 'hard evidence' over textual
evidence.
e principal argument in favour of privileging 'hard evidence' vis-à-
vis kulagranthas as accurate reflections of historical conditions at the
time when they were produced ultimately came down to the issue of
what was described as 'authenticity'. ese scholars were firm in their
conviction that inscriptions and coins did not fabricate or exaggerate
facts—whereas genealogical texts associated with sensitive issues such
as social rank and status were clearly vulnerable to exaggerations or to
the gross misrepresentation of 'true' conditions. Some critics of the
kulagranthas were willing to concede the value of certain kinds of
historical texts—for instance, Sanskrit biographies of kings like
Bilhana's Vikramankadevacharita or Sandhyakar Nandi's Ramcharita,
or the well-known Persian histories of India as well as Bengal,28 which
too were receiving attention from modern scholars at the time.29 But
kula-granthas clearly did not fall into the category of texts which could
be seriously accorded the status of history. In the case of the textual
materials which were considered to be somewhat reliable by rationalist,
objectivist scholars, there was more or less credible information about
the authors of these works, their backgrounds, the circumstances in
which they composed their works, etc.30 Aer all, a careful scrutiny of
the credentials of authors of several centuries earlier was also necessary
in order to evaluate the credibility of their works. erefore, according
to this line of thinking, if textual materials had to be used at all to
reconstruct the past, then it had to be based on materials like these, as
against the disorganized and mutually contradictory genealogies
characterized by instability and disarray.
Much of the 'hard evidence' on which the history of Bengal and India
was reconstructed in accordance with such modern sensibilities was in
fact being unearthed precisely during the later nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. Among other things, many stone inscriptions,
copperplate inscriptions, coins, and sculptural pieces were brought to
light. e inscriptional evidence found in Bengal for the period from
roughly the eighth to the eleventh centuries was used by scholars like
Majumdar, Banerjee, Chanda, and others to write the chronological,
political/dynastic history of Bengal for those periods of time.31 As
pointed out by practically every one of these scholars, none of the
inscriptions, coins, etc. recently unearthed made any mention at all of a
king named Adisur. e conspicuous absence of any reference to this
king dealt a blow not only to any value which the kulajis may have
possessed as history, but also to the entire narrative about the origins of
Bengal's social structure as told by these genealogies. us, every one of
the major critics of the historicity of the kulagranthas took the position
that since information about a king named Adisur—and several other
facts which were key to the story of Bengal's social history as presented
by the genealogical discourse—was not corroborated by epigraphic,
numismatic, or archaeological data, or for that matter by other textual
sources, there was every reason to either totally reject or be sceptical
about these traditions.32
Indeed, this emphasis on corroborative evidence actually formed an
important part of the methodological critique of the genealogies. As
Ramaprasad Chanda wrote in his Gaudarajamala, the two most
important methodological steps in historical research were, first, a
meticulous search for 'sources', and second, use of the right kind of
scrutiny to si out elements that could not be verified as facts.33 e
tendency to take at face value the claims made by a body of discourse
like the kulagranthas as factual history was not acceptable as proper
historical methodology. Akshaya Kumar Maitra asserted that historians
needed to maintain professional objectivity and detached impartiality
from the subjects of their research. In fact the metaphor used by Maitra
was that of a judge—a historian was required to be a disinterested judge
of the sources of history at his/her disposal. ere could be no room for
feelings and emotion in the process of historical analysis.34 Maitra felt
that existing public controversies about the origins of Bengal's social
structure, Adisur, etc. were thoroughly inappropriate for scholarly,
historical discussion. In his view, they were sometimes emotionally
charged and tainted by caste rivalries and chauvinism, and in no way
came close to an impartial, detached quest for the truth.
Finally, the style of the kulagranthas, that is, the fact that they were in
verse, condemned them in the eyes of rationalist scholars. As Marchand
and Lunbeck write: 'style was a crucial element by which authority was
asserted and readers badgered to assert the authors' claims.'35 In this
case, the verse/sloka style was identified as yet another important
element which removed kulajis from the realm of proper history. As
scholars have shown, written prose narratives were associated with a
certain sense of dialogue, and with gaining readers' assent. e concern
regarding methodology—that is, the evaluation and critical questioning
of evidence—gave the author the right to claim authority for his/her
text by representing 'the process of research' on which it rested.36 e
poet or storyteller, by contrast, was believed to give much greater
weight (particularly in oral performance) to the effort to 'suspend his
hearers' disbelief and engage them in his created world'.37 In the case of
the kulagrantha debates, their verse form deepened the unease about
genealogies as historical documents. In Maitra's words, they were
'imperfect annals of civilization'.38
But for a fairly large group of intellectuals of the time—among whom
were Lalmohan Bidyanidhi, Nagendranath Basu, Dinesh Chandra Sen,
Kshitindranath akur, Durgachandra Sanyal—the kulagranthas, far
from being objects of dubious historicity, represented an invaluable
tradition of indigenous regional social history.39 To say the very least,
this point of view derived from a concept of history fundamentally
different from the rationalist-positivist. Among almost all these
scholars, history was understood as far more than the systematic and
dry marshalling of verifiable facts or the objective, analytic scrutiny of
them. Dinesh Chandra Sen and other like-minded scholars tended to
understand history in its broadest possible sense to denote what I call
impressions of the past. ese impressions were manifest and in turn
drawn from a wide range of sources, such as myths, legends, ballads,
genealogies, architectural remains, sculpture, cra traditions, customs,
material culture (that is, styles of attire, language, food, etc.), and so on.
In other words, history was constituted by culture—not any culture, but
the culture of the 'people'. Such culture was perceived to constitute an
important seed-bed of tradition and heritage—a seed-bed from which
ordinary people derived their perceptions regarding their traditions.
History, thus, was synonymous with tradition rather than a
circumscribed academic discipline preoccupied with the application of
a rational-positivist methodology to artefacts and texts from the past.
History was to be discovered in impressions or essences of the past as
cherished and valued by a specific people—in this case, the people of
Bengal. Dinesh Sen claimed that his ambitious project, embodied by the
two volumes of Brihat Banga, symbolized his effort to capture this
concept of history through telling the story of the past experiences of
the Bengali people.40 According to this view, the genealogical literature
which produced the firestorm of arguments and name-calling among
scholars deserved to be regarded as history precisely because the
'people' had seen in it a pool of trustworthy accounts which explained
the evolution of the region's social organization over many centuries.
is concept of history, as the story of the traditions and culture of
the people, was intimately associated with an ethnographic dimension:
that is, this was an indigenous Bengali view, rooted in the land and
culture of Bengal, and was therefore distinctively different and unique
from several other concepts of history. Its validity derived from the fact
that it was a native tradition and therefore uncompromisingly
authentic. Other existing historical traditions could not be accepted
primarily because they had been formed by what were seen as 'outside
influences'. Persian histories were to be rejected, first, because they were
composed by Muslims, who (as 'outsiders') could not understand the
indigenous Hindu, Bengali view of history.41 e modern rational-
positivist concept of history was to be avoided too: this was seen
unambiguously as a 'Western' concept brought to India by a colonial
regime. Its acceptance would therefore lead to the alienation of
Indians/Bengalis from their own traditions and ways of thinking.42
In a manner not uncharacteristic of colonial intellectuals who had
developed the tendency to use Europe and European traditions as
constant reference points, some of the scholars who articulated this
folk-oriented tradition of history chose to deliberately position such
endeavours in the German romantic tradition associated with Herder
and Fichte. Actually, these Bengali intellectuals were also participating
in practices of indigenous, and in cases nationalist, ethnography which
were evident during the same period and later in emergent and/ or
modernizing nation-states across Asia and elsewhere. e cases of
Japan and Vietnam, for example, provide excellent comparative
perspectives on the connections between ethnography, nationalism, and
history. In Japan the ethnographic and folkloric studies of Yanagita
Kunio, Origuchi Shinobu, Yanagi Soetsu, and others underline the
immense need felt by a segment of Meiji intellectuals to capture and
commemorate customs and beliefs of the 'real' Japanese people.43 eir
effort was to rescue what Harootunian describes as a 'submerged
authenticity',44 which was under pressure from the hectic pace of
modernization. To many of these intellectuals, Japan's history was to be
found in the practices and customs of the ordinary rural people of
Japan, for such people reflected older cultural practices and were
believed to be still capable of communicating 'an authentic experience
of the people.'45 In post-1945, and specially post-1952, Vietnam,
ethnographic explorations into the culture of the rural and presumed
'real' people were also aimed at resuscitating genuinely Vietnamese
cultural traits perceived still to be in circulation among them. is in
turn would illuminate a truly national culture—untouched by Chinese
or French cultural influences—which could then be made the
foundation on which a national history of Vietnam could rest.46
is nexus between ethnography, nationalism, and history in places
like India, Japan, and Vietnam, further, draws attention to theories of
nationalism,47 and particularly to Anderson's notion that a modular
formula of nationalism had been developed and tried in the Western
world during the later eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries; and
that these then became available to anti-colonial nationalisms in Asia
and Africa.48 e processes of nation-making and history-writing in
colonial and formerly colonial regions such as India and Vietnam un-
derline instead Partha Chatterjee's rebuttal of the Andersonian model
and his refusal to concede that anti-colonial nationalisms in Asia and
Africa were derivative and based on a conscious emulation of modes
and methods which had been tried out in the West. As Chatterjee
demonstrates, anti-colonial nationalisms in many parts of the world
drew strength from articulating their own cultural distinctiveness and
authenticity vis-à-vis their colonizers.49 In the examples given above,
the proclivity among groups of intellectuals in Japan (here the tension
was not with colonialism per se, but rather with the phenomenon of
modernity and its uneasy association with what was perceived to be the
'West'), or India or Vietnam, to identify value and authenticity with
what was supposedly distinctive and unique to a particular language,
culture, or history underscores the tendency of these nationalisms to
attempt to articulate their indigenous distinctiveness vis-à-vis
colonial/Western traditions. To return to the main focus of this essay,
the proclivity to emphasize 'colonial difference' among a certain group
of Indian/Bengali intellectuals produced a strongly nativist theory of
history accompanied by an explicit disavowal of not universalist, but
rather 'Western', notions of scientific history.
In this indigenous Bengali concept of history, the civil institutions of
society, that is, the community or samaj, was also upheld as the primary
locus of interest and attention, as distinguished from both the Islamic
or Indo-Persian tradition, as well as the modern Western notion of
history as a rational-positivist discipline. Persian histories were
devalued by the proponents of a Bengali, indigenist vision of history as
'histories of the state' (rashtra) rather than histories of the 'people'. e
modern rational-positivist concept of history associated with the West
was also characterized as one which preoccupied itself mainly with
accounts of governmental regimes and their activities rather than
commemorating the life and customs of the people. As Kshitindranath
akur remarked, Europeans had taught some Indians to believe that
only books which discussed past wars and conquests deserved to be
regarded as history. akur supported a broader, holistic concept of
history which was distinctively different from kings and war-centric
histories. He also linked the absence of a tradition of war-centric
histories in Bengal to the superior cultural values and attributes
possessed by the Bengali people, that is, their aversion to warfare and
violence.50 Bengalis instead emphasized the importance of social
institutions such as the jati/kula-based samaj or community. Kulajis,
which comprised the ostensible subjects of the controversy, were
valuable histories since they recounted the story not of war-mongering
governmental regimes but rather of the social entity represented by the
samaj. 'I proclaim with pride', wrote Nagendranath Basu, 'that hundreds
of Xenophons and hundreds of ucydideses had been born in
Bengal.'51 But these Bengali Xenophons had concentrated their
geniuses on writing about the development of the community and its
customs rather than on battles and military exercises. In fact, some of
the discomfort exhibited by scholars like R.D. Banerjee and R.C.
Majumdar to these views may have been connected to their very
deliberate turning away from the chronological, dynastic history of
monarchical governments to narratives about languages, cras, and
poetic traditions among the people. e ethnographic, nativist impulse
noticed above in Japan also had inherent in it a tendency to valorize
Japanese folk and the rural communities which provided a framework
for their culture vis-à-vis the centrality of the emperor and the state as
the primary sources of Japanese nationhood.52 But the implications of a
people and community-oriented vision of nationhood and history had
different connotations in different contexts. In Vietnam the quest for a
genuinely indigenous community and culture as embodied by the
peasantry also highlighted traditions of political corporatism and
opposition to a centralized state, which were important components of
peasant or folk culture, and these were of course not palatable to a state-
supported project of national history.53
In the case of colonial Bengal, the romantic/nativist concept of
history generated an impulse towards what Sumit Sarkar describes as a
'precocious' agenda to write a social history of the land, which came to
be regularly counterposed to the rashtra or rajshakti (the state, the
political domain).54 e primacy of the civil sphere in recounting the
past experiences of a people was reiterated in the writings of public
figures and intellectuals like Satish Mukherjee and, above all, Rabindra
nath Tagore at the turn of the twentieth century. Both insisted that
privileging the community as the main subject of history over tales of
war and conquest distinguished the quintessentially Bengali worldview
of history as opposed to the preoccupation of rational-positivist
academic history with dynastic narratives of territorial expansion and
wars.55 e possibility of links between community and state (the latter
was conceived of here as a military/administrative apparatus) was not
acknowledged by these scholars. Instead, they sought to idealize the
community or samaj as a sphere of peaceful quotidian activities, which
they ideologically isolated from the state as a governmental regime
preoccupied with wars and conquests.56
A powerful idea, shared among scholars advocating the nativist
concept of history, was to be found in their critiques, both explicit and
implicit, of Western education in India. ey believed that this
education, by teaching its adherents to believe that only the Western
style of writing history was valid, had succeeded in alienating some
Bengali intellectuals from their own cultural traditions.57 Clearly, R.D.
Banerjee, R.C. Majumdar, and others were being taken to task for
becoming alienated from the indigenous Bengali way of
commemorating the past. Dinesh Sen, in particular, formulated the
hypothesis that the only people in Bengal who had not suffered a
cultural alienation from their own traditions were ordinary, poor
people living in Bengal's rural areas.58 us, the strictly professional
rational/positivist view of history propagated by Majumdar and his ilk
also created a gulf between the Bengali upper class and the poor,
humble people of the region. e latter, according to this point of view,
were the real custodians of Bengal's past. ose hypothesizing an
'indigenist' Bengali concept of history thus made a very important
claim, that is, history was not an exclusive academic preserve for
professional archaeologists and historians, but a sphere to which non-
specialists had as strong a claim. us, most of the methodological
criticisms levelled by professionalists at those professing a nativist
concept of history were deemed irrelevant by the latter. Dinesh Sen, for
example, clearly stated in his preface to Brihat Banga that he had not
written his work for professional historians, but for ordinary people,
and in doing so had deliberately chosen not to use detached scientific
language or to separate myths and legends from facts.59 us, the need
to analyse and scrutinize evidence, to look for corroboration from other
sources, and to evaluate the 'truth' versus 'mythic' nature of information
relating to the past—all these were either declared unnecessary or, at
best, assigned low priority by the indigenists. Interestingly, the
proponents of this concept of history, while eschewing positivist history
because they identified it as being Western in origin, also betrayed a
lack of awareness and interest in classical Indian intellectual traditions,
particularly those pertaining to theories of verifying evidence and the
criteria for ascertaining the truth of a statement or a story.60
 In effect, the notion of history extolled by Dinesh Sen and others
rebelled against formal methodology, whether Western—this they made
explicit; or indigenous—this they implied by their total silence on the
subject. What these scholars valorized was rather an instinctive, non-
formalized manner of recovering the past, unfettered by structured
methodology or criteria and evaluation. In taking such a stand, these
Bengali intellectuals were echoing the distinction between history and
memory articulated by Halbwachs and, more recently, by Yarushalmi,
Nora, and others.61 In the context of the kulagrantha debate, Dinesh
Sen and Nagendranath Basu expressed their preference for
spontaneous, free-form memory as a mode of retrieving the past than
professional history with its preoccupation with 'abstract frameworks of
chronology and factual detail'.62 Memory was to be further reinforced
by conjoining it to emotion. us, instead of being a deterrent to
research about the past, emotion was in fact its underlying bedrock.
Many of the ideas discussed above had in fact been reinforced by the
anti-partition, Swadeshi agitation (1905-1910/11) in Bengal. e
association of emotionalism with patriotism and the celebration of
people's culture as the true substance of history found full flowering
during and aer the anti-partition turmoil. e kulagrantha controversy
antedated the Swadeshi movement; but many of the core ideas and
concepts characterizing it—particularly arguments and ideas
articulated by proponents of an emotional and nativist vision of history
—were invigorated and actualized by it. e strongly emotive, romantic
conceptualizations of the land as the mother, and as the goddess in
popular, patriotic poetry, plays, and visual representations, already in
evidence from the later nineteenth century, peaked during this period.
e embodiment of the land as mother also provided a matrix of bonds
based on love, affection, and familiality which bound people with the
land/mother as well as with each other.63
e Swadeshi years were also instrumental in strengthening the
already strong interest in and awareness of history among the Bengali
literati. e celebration of the 'peoples' culture'—an integral feature of
the Swadeshi movement and of the kulagrantha controversy—was
embodied in the collection and systematization of folk ballads and
folk/fairy tales in a trend reminiscent of the efforts of Japanese
folklorists such as Yanagita Kunio and others during the same period.
ese represented efforts to valorize folk traditions as indigenous and
untouched by 'outside' or 'new' influences—whether colonial, Western,
or industrial. In Bengal, Dinesh Chandra Sen and Dakshina Ranjan
Mitra-Majumdar pioneered the collection and systematization of folk
ballads and folk/fairy tales.64
Another important manifestation of the urge to preserve peoples'
culture was manifest in the deluge of local histories which were
authored during this period by the Bengali gentry.65 In fact, studies of
local places, however defined, were oen far more typical of the
romantic, non-professional, historical impulse than the larger
transcendental entity of the nation. Yet, as Celia Applegate points out,
the tendency to place exclusive emphasis on the modern nation-state as
the subject of history has resulted in the neglect of conceptualizations of
the region or the locality, both in terms of their relationship to the
nation and as subjects of history.66 Duara's work demonstrates that
historical discourses emphasizing a primary identification with the
province/ region existed in the interstices of nationalist historiography
in early-twentieth-century China.67 us, perhaps, an awareness that
historical discourse could also articulate itself via the locality or the
region can serve to open up discussions about the region and the
nation, their mutual relationships and their histories.
In the case of Bengal this growing interest in the redemption,
recovery, and preservation of peoples' culture as an indispensable plank
in the history-writing project found a more permanent and institutional
form in the activities of many organizations which emerged in Bengal
before, during, and aer the Swadeshi movement. e best known of
these organizations was undoubtedly the Bangiya Sahitya Parishat,
founded in 1895, as well as a host of local organizations.68 e term
sahitya most commonly meant literature; but the Bangiya Sahitya
Parishat, as well as many other organizations of this type, tended to
understand the term in the broadest possible manner. Akshay Kumar
Maitra described it once as the 'the wellspring of all possible types of
intellectual and developmental powers' which could benefit human
society.69 us defined, the term sahitya could well accommodate
within it the category of 'history' as understood by its members. In the
pursuit of this kind of history, the study of the language, customs, past
achievements, etc. of people comprised essentially related activities.
Dedicated gentleman enthusiasts associated with many of these
organizations undertook walking tours devoted to photographing
extant historical buildings and monuments, made notes of local
traditions, and tried to look for hoards of old manuscripts in rural
homes. Indeed, descriptions of these 'history' tours were imbued with
an infectious energy and enthusiasm that indicate, more than anything
else, the long reach and power of history as understood by non-
specialist amateurs.70
e limitations inherent in the romantic celebration of 'peoples'
history' need to be kept in mind. e masses were eulogized as the
custodians of the region's history and customs. But it required urban,
upper-class, oen upper-caste, educated scholars to speak up for and
represent village traditions in a bourgeois public sphere shaped by print.
It was perhaps inevitable too that the perception of what was considered
to be peoples' culture would be coloured by class, caste, and other
cultural considerations unique to the urban Bengali literati.71 ese
types of writings also tended to idealize and view the culture, beliefs,
and practices of 'people' as fully formed, enduring and in a sense almost
timeless prior to the onset of the present—which had brought the
problems of colonialism, nationalism, the dilemmas of negotiating
modernity, and the predicament of producing appropriate histories in
such situations. ey were, in fact, involved in the invention of a
tradition regarding what they considered to be the peoples' culture
against the encroachments of an alienating colonial modernity.72 e
significance here of this strand of romantic, nativist, popular history lies
in its potential to of fer a view of history significantly different from the
academic history practised by professional historians.
 e debate among the two groups of scholars suggests that the battle
lines, discursively at least, were pretty clearly drawn between them.
However, despite the battle lines and the significant disagreements, for
the most part all scholars involved in the kulagrantha controversy
shared certain important concerns and objectives. Nor did they, for the
most part, adopt rigidly absolutist positions. e most important shared
concern uniting both groups of scholars lay of course in the common
conviction that a (re)discovery of the past via Indian/Bengali agency
was in fact an essential prerequisite to nation-building. But here, too, as
the discussion above has demonstrated, significant distinctions
separated the protagonists of the two groups.
Interestingly enough, these two opposing concepts of history came
closest to an uneasy consensus on the question of what they described
as janashruti (literally, 'what the people heard'), or the oral tradition.73
Umesh Chandra Gupta, an advocate of the historicity of the kulajis,
insisted that oral tradition as a typology of knowledge was not to be
taken lightly. He believed that all hearsay grew out of a kernel of truth,
and, without this grounding in truth, hearsay could not originate,
expand, and spread.74
Predictably, scholars ranged on the opposite side were deeply
troubled at the prospect that haphazardly written and compiled
genealogies could be considered sources of history. Yet, despite such
weighty objections, the proponents of 'objectivist' history ultimately and
somewhat paradoxically agreed with the romanticists—although not
without reservations—that kulagranthas could be accorded some
historical value. Majumdar and Chanda conceded that kulagranthas,
although of suspicious historicity, could not be totally brushed away as
fabrications. Majumdar, and much later Inden, rejected the contention
of scholars like Nagendranath Basu that kulagranthas were dateable to a
time between the eighth and ninth centuries on the one hand, and the
eleventh and twelh centuries on the other. Both believed that
palaeographic and other evidence suggested that most extant kulajis
had either been composed or re-copied from earlier chronicles during
the fieenth and sixteenth centuries.75 R.C. Majumdar and R.D.
Banerjee categorized kulagranthas as janashruti from the fieenth and
sixteenth centuries.76 Kulagranthas thus embodied memories and
impressions of particular segments of Bengali society regarding the
origin and development of the jati/kula rankings of the region. But the
solitary reason these could be accorded some consideration by
historians stemmed from two related factors: namely, first, the
persistence and power of certain types of janashruti, and second, their
overall uniformity. Both Banerjee and Majumdar felt that a few specific
stories included in the larger mass of oral tradition embodied in the
kulagranthas could be accorded cautious and limited acceptance: for
example, the possible existence of a king called Adisur. Majumdar said
he found this specific story somewhat acceptable because it was
repeated in almost all kulagranthas and in practically identical terms.
ese attributes, thus, were sufficient for a professional historian to
accord grudging acceptance to the historical value of kulagranthas .77
But neither Banerjee nor Majumdar assigned kulagranthas the status of
history; at best, they could be treated with caution as 'sources' of
history. ese materials had to be subjected to scrutiny and analysis by
modern scholars, who alone possessed the intellectual training to write
proper history. Other objectivist historians refused outright to give even
grudging recognition to the possible historical value of kulajis.
At one level, disagreements among participants in the kulagrantha
debate can be attributed to differences in academic specialization and
professional standing. Most of those who spoke for the need to deploy
rational, objective modes of analysis, a completely detached attitude,
and highly specialized expertise such as that needed in archaeology,
epigraphy, etc. were professional historians, that is, they were prof
essors of history and researchers attached to institutions of higher
education (for example, universities) or with museums, or with the
Archaeological Survey of India, or with semi-professional organizations
such as the Asiatic Society of Bengal. ose articulating the
romantic/nativist view of history were not, despite their generally
acknowledged scholarship and erudition, professional historians or
archaeologists. Both Nagendranath Basu and Dinesh Sen, in their foray
into history, saw history as a public concern, not the concern of a few
specialists.
Notwithstanding their opposed positions, the lines separating the
two groups did, as mentioned, blur at times. e conviction that
historical research had to be completely free of emotion, and that any
desire to bolster national, sectarian pride ought to be anathema to
professional historians, came in fact to be a charge levelled against such
historians. ey were seen as having succumbed to precisely the
emotions and feelings that they decried. R.C. Majumdar's view, for
example, of the existence of strong Indian cultural influences over
South East Asia during the seventh-eighth centuries until the eleventh-
twelh centuries, was seen as proof of the operation of an Indian
imperialism in South East Asia and was interpreted by later scholars as
an effort to glorify Indian achievements in the historical past by
describing such Indians and their achievements as imperialist.78 Even
the work of H.C. Raychaudhuri, author of one of the early classic works
on ancient Indian history, was not seen as free from the impetus to find
in ancient Indian history the lineages of an Indian nation- state which
nationalists in the early twentieth century dreamed of re-establishing.79
e claim that 'hard evidence' was completely truthful and impartial
since it was impervious to cultural/national/sectarian politics has also
of course been punctured. Tapati Guha-akurta has shown that, in
disputes over architectural monuments, myth and memory could
infiltrate the fields of history and archaeology, disrupting their methods
and procedures, challenging their evidentiary logic, refusing to keep
apart 'proven fact' from 'imagined truths'.80
In the case of the kulagrantha controversy, in particular, it needs to be
kept in mind that some professional historians and archaeologists
associated with it were also practitioners of what is regarded as popular
history or romantic history. As a rich literature on the topic of romantic
history reminds us, historical narratives constructed in accordance with
the principles of rational-positivism were but one important mode of
representing the past. ere could be—and indeed there were—other
modes of representing the past as well: for example, through spectacles
(like wax-works), historical novels, plays, etc. Hayden White's postulate
of the incestuous relationship between history and fiction is well
known.81 e work of scholars like Stephen Bann, Ann Rigney,
Maurice Samuels, and others on the close connections between
academic history and romantic/popular history in nineteenth-century
Britain and France demonstrates convincingly that a broader
environment of historical awareness or interest had in fact been created
by and was at the same time manifest in cultural productions such as
the ones mentioned above.82 e novels of Sir Walter Scott and French
romantics like Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas enjoyed a
phenomenal popularity which underscored their ability to entertain
and provide pleasure to a much larger audience than only to highly
educated and trained professional historians or archaeologists. us,
the historical cultures of a given society encapsulated academic history
or 'historiography proper',83 as many of them described it, and
extended to include within it phenomena such as the visual arts,
historical novels, historical spectacles, museums, etc. In fact, romantic,
popular history, with its ability to reach out to larger numbers of people,
may well have been of critical importance in creating an overall
environment of interest about the past, and professional history could
come into being and function only against this backdrop.
Yet, much of the scholarship on the emergence of history in late-
nineteenth and early-twentieth-century India overlooks the potency
and significance of romantic history.84 e historical novels of Scott
actually allow us to establish a link to the intelligentsia of colonial
India/Bengal. e later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in
Bengal saw the production of large numbers of historical novels and
plays, and Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya, indisputably the most
celebrated historical novelist of late-nineteenth-century Bengal,
acknowledged his direct debt and inspiration to the novels of Scott. is
sphere of imaginary, romantic, or popular history in colonial Bengal
shared with the nativist conception of history the character of being a
non-specialist field in which emotion, imagination, and romance were
central. Several proponents of scientific history—including R.D.
Banerjee and Akshaya Kumar Maitra, both actively engaged in
denouncing the historicity of kulagranthas—were also authors of
historical romances, both plays and novels.85 So the genre of imaginary
history could be created thereby as a sphere in which 'real' historical
personalities were endowed with the nobility and virtues that rational,
credible sources of history made difficult or impossible in academic
history. Similarly, real historical events could be endowed with
imaginary but more desirable outcomes.86
Yet there is a need to be careful, to not completely blur the
boundaries between professional history and archaeology on the one
hand, and popular, non-specialist, romantic history on the other.
Despite the existence of this 'intermediary zone—a space not quite
history nor entirely fiction',87 professional historians and
archaeologists, when writing for specialist scholarly audiences, worked
within the methodologies prescribed by their academic disciplines.
ey evaluated evidence, sought corroboration for discovered facts, and
attempted to explain why one kind of evidence was more reliable than
others. Even when some among them wrote 'imaginary' history, such
works were kept separate from their scholarly historical work.
e emergence of the modern nation-state and of history as a
rational-positivist discipline occurred in tandem in post-Revolutionary
Europe, and this is believed to have endowed history from the inception
of its professionalization with the tendency of becoming a narrative of
the state. is feature has been emphasized for India by several
influential scholars.88 For China, Duara agrees that this was
undoubtedly a predominant tendency; but he also makes a persuasive
case for other visions of history which existed in twentieth-century
China. In these visions, it was not the state but other forms of
community, such as civil society, or local affiliations, which had
primacy.89 e kulagrantha controversy compels us to conceive of
history and its cultures in broader and more complex terms, and to
acknowledge that professional history did not exhaust other, sometimes
competing, modes and genres of representing the past. e analysis in
this essay of a romantic, indigenist concept of history belies the claim
that nationalist historiography was essentially state-centric. is vision
of history emphasized the samaj'/community as its subject, rather than
the state, and authorized the use of emotion and its constituent
elements, that is, love, pride, nostalgia, etc., as legitimate tools for the
articulation of such a history. ese tendencies, emphasizing the
expression of non- state-centric visions of history, are also found in
Japan, China, and elsewhere during the later nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. In short the multiple, intersecting, and
contradicting strands within national historiographies of India and
other regions need to be more fully acknowledged. To characterize the
history of this period as 'statist' is to denude it of some of its richness,
variety, and complexity.
In the case of the kulagrantha controversy, the battle between
professional history and romantic history remained unresolved. In the
long run, rational-positivist history probably captured what it perceived
to be the academic high ground. But the resonance and appeal of
popular history beyond the academy continued to be equally
significant.

Notes
* e research for this essay was supported by a fellowship from the Institute of
Arts and Humanities (IAH), Penn State University. Earlier versions were
presented at the IAH seminar series, Fall 2003, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en
Sciences Sociales, Paris, Summer 2004, and the conference on 'History in the
Vernacular' at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, December 2004.
I thank all those who offered comments at these venues. I also thank Dipesh
Chakrabarty, Rochona Majumdar, Claude Markovits, Mark Munn, Mrinalini
Sinha, and Greg Smits for comments on earlier dras, as well as Alan Christy and
the anonymous referees of the American Historical Review for their excellent
suggestions. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Gautam Bhadra not only for
commenting on this essay, but for getting me interested in this subject initially, his
extreme generosity in allowing me access to his personal library, and for very
many hours of discussion on various issues which figure here. An earlier version
of this essay was published in the American Historical Review, vol. 110, no. 5
(December 2005), pp. 1454-75.
1. David C. Gordon, Self-Determination and History in the ird World
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971); Bernard Lewis and P.M. Holt, eds,
Historians of the Middle-East (New York, London and Toronto: Oxford University
Press, 1962); Margaret Mehl, History and the State in Nineteenth Century Japan
(New York: St Martin's Press, 1998); Prasenjit Duara, Rescuing History From the
Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1995); Patricia M. Pelley, Postcolonial Vietnam: New Histories of the National
Past (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002).
2. Eric J. Hobsbawm, 'Ethnicity and Nationalism in Europe', in Gopal Bala-
krishnan, ed., Mapping the Nation (London and New York: Verso, 1996), p. 255.
3. Sumathi Ramaswamy, Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India,
1891-1970 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
4. Gautam Bhadra, 'Itihase Smriti, Smritite Itihasa', Biswabharati Patrika, Sraban-
Ashwin: 1401 bs, pp. 134–42 contains a brief reference to this debate.
5. Mahamahopadhyaya Haraprasad Shastri, Preliminary Report on the Operation
in Search of Bardic Chronicles (rpnt. Calcutta: 1963); Romila apar, 'Genealogy as
a Source of Social History', in Romila apar, Ancient Indian Social History (New
Delhi: Penguin, 1990).
6. For an analysis of the caste system, see Murray J. Milner, Jr., Status and
Sacredness: A General eory of Status Relations and an Analysis of Indian Culture
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); for an analysis of the system of
kulinism in Bengal, see Ronald B. Inden, Marriage and Rank in Bengali Culture: A
History of Caste and Clan in Middle Period Bengal (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1976).
7. e principal features of this account are mentioned in actual genealogies: for
instance, the Sanskrit manuscript of the Rajabali, housed in the Dhaka University
Library (Accession No. K577A), or in family chronicles which were edited and
published in the modern period, as for instance Kedar Nath Datta, Datta
Vamsavali (Calcutta: 1282 bs); Jnanendranath Kumar, Vamsa Parichay (Calcutta,
1350 B.S.); Mahimachandra Guha-akurta, Kayastha Kulachandrika (Barisal:
1915), as well as in secondary literature concerned with debating the historical
value of such genealogies, such as Ramesh Chandra Majumdar, Bangiya
Kulashastra (Calcutta: 1973), Umesh Chandra Gupta, Jati Tattva Baridhi, vol. 1,
or, Baidyakayastha-moha- mudgar (rpnt. edn, Calcutta: 1912), vol. 2 or, Ballal-
moha-mudgar (Calcutta, 1905) and above all in Nagendranath Basu, Banger Jatiya
Itihasa, many volumes (Calcutta: 1318 to 1340). For details of individual volumes,
see endnote 17 below.
8. Brahmins (whose occupational specialization was supposed to be the
priesthood and scholarship) represented the topmost status group in the hierarchy
of the caste system; Kayasthas (specializing in scribal/literate occupations) and
Baidyas (medical practitioners) were supposed to be 'mixed'jatis/subcastes. For
explanations, see Nagendranath Basu (compiled) Bishvakosh, many vols (rpnt.
edn, Delhi: 1988); Gupta,JatiTattvaBaridhi, 2 vols. For British colonial
ethnographical explanations, see H.H. Risley, Tribes and Castes of Bengal (rpnt.
edn, Calcutta: 1981).
9. Pradip Sinha, Calcutta in Urban History (Calcutta: Firma K.L.M., 1978), pp. 86–
94.
10. Sekhar Bandyopadhyaya, Caste, Politics and the Raj: Bengal, 1872-1937
(Calcutta: 1990). For caste movements in other parts of India triggered by census
operations, see Eugene Irschik, Politics and Social Conflict in South India: e
Non-Brahman Movement and Tamil Separatism (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1969); Gerald N. Barrier, ed., e Census in British India: New Perspectives
(New Delhi: Manohar, 1981); Bernard S. Cohn, 'e Census, Social Structure and
Objectification in South Asia', An Anthropologist Among the Historians and Other
Essays (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 224–54; Rosalind O'Hanlon,
Caste, Conflict and Ideology: Mahatma Jyotirao Phule and Low Caste Protest in
Nineteenth Century Western India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1985); Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern
India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
11. Inden, Marriage and Rank in Bengali Culture, p. 4.
12. Examples of caste associations include, for instance, the Bangiya Tili Samaj
and the Mahisya Samaj. Publications directly/indirectly commissioned and/or
encouraged by these associations include Harakishore Adhikary, Rajbansi
Kulapradip (Calcutta, 1314 bs); Narendranath Laha, Subarnabanik Katha O Kirti,
2 vols (Calcutta: 1940–1).
13. For instance, see Kedar Nath Datta, Datta Vamsavali; Jnanendranath Kumar,
Vamsa Parichay.
14. Basu, Banger Jatiya Itihas: Barendra Brahman Bibaran (Calcutta: 1334 bs), pp.
1–4; Gupta, Jati Tattva Baridhi, vol.2, pp. 381–2.
15. e group of five articles published by Majumdar on the topic of kulagran-
thas/genealogies in the journal Bharatbarsha during the years 1346–7 bs is a good
example of this, as are Dinesh Chandra Sarkar, 'Adisurer Kahini', Bishwabharati
Patrika, Kartik-Paus, 1371 bs, pp. 131–4; Ramesh Chandra Majumdar, 'Alochana:
Adisurer Kahini', Biswabharati Patrika, Baishakh- Ashadh, 1372 bs, pp. 337–40.
16. Rochona Majumdar, 'Looking for Brides and Grooms: Ghataks, Matrimonials
and the Marriage Market in Colonial Calcutta', Journal of Asian Studies, 63, 4
(2004), pp. 911–35.
17. My statements regarding the nature of manuscript culture are based on the
study of actual genealogical chronicles, both in manuscript (for instance the
Dhaka University 'Rajabali') and printed form (for instance, Datta, Datta
Vamsamala), as well as on genealogies excerpted in Basu, Banger Jatiya Itihas,
many vols.; Gupta, Jati Tattva Baridhi, 2 vols; Lalmohan Bidyanidhi, Sambandha
Nirnaya, 4th edition, 5 vols, including appendix vols (Calcutta: 1355 bs). An
excellent discussion is also to be found in Ramesh Chandra Majumdar, 'Sanskrita
Rajabali Grantha', Sahitya Parishat Patrika, 4 (1346 bs), pp. 233–9. For a general
description of manuscript culture, see M.T. Clancy, From Memory to Written
Records: England, 10661307 (Oxford: 1979).
18. Michel Foucault, 'What is an Author?', in Donald F. Bouchard, ed., Language,
Counter-Memory, Practice (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 113–
38. See also Roger Chartier, e Order of Books (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1994), pp. 27–33; Martha Woodmansee, 'e Genius and the Copyright:
Economic and Legal Conditions of the Emergence of the "Author"', Eighteenth
Century Studies, 17, 4 (1984), pp. 425– 48; Mark Rose, 'e Author as Proprietor:
Donaldson v. Becket and the Genealogy of Modern Authorship', Representations,
23 (1988), pp. 51–85; Carla Hesse, 'Enlightenment Epistemology and the Laws of
Authorship in Revolutionary France, 1777–1793', Representations, 30 (1990), pp.
109– 37.
19. I reiterate that there are many examples from pre-modern Bengal where
individual authors claimed sole authorship of a text–for instance, Mukundaram
Chakrabarti in his celebrated work Chandimangal (see Sukumar Sen, ed.,
KabikankanBirachita Chandimangal [Calcutta, rpnt. edn, 1993]). But there were
very many other cases where authors either did not reveal their identities or
presented themselves as following earlier writers of the same genre or tradition.
20. Some selective examples include Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History
(Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985); Jack Goody, e
Interface Between the Written and the Oral (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987) and idem, e Power of the Written Tradition (Washington D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000); Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: e
Technologizing of the World (London, New York, 1988); Roger Chartier, e
Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1989), and idem, e Order of Books; Robert Darnton,
Revolution in Print: e Press in France, 1775-1800 (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1989).
21. Rochona Majumdar, 'Looking for Brides and Grooms'.

22. Ramesh Chandra Majumdar, Bangiya Kulashastra, p. 106.

23. Bonnie Smith, 'Facts, Politics and the Gender of History', in Suzanne
Marchand and Elizabeth Lunbeck, eds, Proof and Persuasion: Essays on Authority,
Objectivity and Evidence (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1996), p. 60. See also
Bonnie Smith, e Gender of History: Men, Women and Historical Practice
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).
24. I use the term 'hard (material) evidence' following the usage by Tapati Guha-
akurta in 'Archaeology as Evidence: Looking Back from the Ayo- dhya Debate',
Occasional Paper No. 159, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
(Calcutta: 1997).
25. Ian Hodder, 'Archaeological eory', in Barry Cunliffe, Wendy Davies, and
Colin Renfrew, eds, Archaeology: e Widening Debate (Oxford: 2002), p. 81.
26. Bernard Lewis and P.M. Holt, Historians of the Middle-East, p. 417.

27. Dilip K. Chakrabarti, A History of Indian Archaeology from the Beginning to

1947(New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1988); and 'Indian Archaeology: e
First Phase, 1784–1861', in Glyn Daniel, ed., Towards a History of Archaeology
(London: ames and Hudson, 1981), pp. 169–85.
28. 'Persian histories' refers here to a large body of Indo-Islamic chronicles which
were produced in India from the 12th–13th centuries till about the late 18th–early
19 th centuries. ese texts were of ten in Persian, the of ficial/courtly language of
many Muslim dynasties which ruled India, and embodied features reminiscent of
classic Islamic historiography produced in the Middle East. ese features
included careful attention to chronology, identification of authorities on whose
testimonies the work was based, and a clearer identification of author/s etc. For
the nature and character of Indo-Islamic historiography, see Peter Hardy,
Historians of Medieval India: Studies in Indo-Muslim Historiography (rpnt. Delhi:
1997); Harbans Mukhia, Historians and Historiography During the Reign of Akbar
(New Delhi: Vikas, 1976).
29. Akshaya Kumar Maitra, Antiquities of Orissa (Calcutta, 1879), vol. 1, pp. 1–2,
11; Ramaprasad Chanda, Gaudarajamala (Rajshahi, 1319 bs), pp. 1–4, also
preface to this work by Akshaya Kumar Maitra (no page number); Majumdar,
Bangiya Kulashastra, pp. 3, 5–6, 8–9, 92–3.
30. Haraprasad Shastri, ed., Ramacharita by Sandhyakar Nandy (1910, rpnt. edn,
Calcutta: 1910: revised, with English trans. and notes by Radhagobinda Basak).
31. Representative examples include Rakhaldas Bandyopadhyaya, Banglar Itihas, 2
vols (Calcutta: 1324 bs); Chanda, Gaudarajamala.
32. Majumdar, Bangiya Kulashastra, pp. 49, 88–9, 91–7; Chanda, Gaudarajamala,
pp. 56–9; Bandyopadhyaya, Banglar Itihas, vol. 1, pp. 117–24, 186–7, 188–9.
33. Chanda, Gaudarajamala, pp. 1–4.
34. Chanda, Gaudarajamala, see preface by Akshay Kumar Maitra (no page
number).
35. Marchand and Lunbeck, Proof and Persuasion, p. x1.

36. S.C. Humphreys, 'From Riddle to Rigor: Satisfactions of Scientific Prose in

Ancient Greece', in Lunbeck & Marchand, eds, Proof & Persuasion, pp. 5, 9. See
also Gabrielle Spiegel, Romancing the Past: e Rise of Vernacular Prose
Historiography in irteenth Century France (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1993), pp. 53–98.
37. Humphreys, 'From Riddle to Rigor', p. 7.

38. Maitra, e Antiquities of Orissa, vol. 1.

39. Durgachandra Sanyal, Banglar Samajik Itihas (Calcutta: 1317 bs);

Nagendranath Basu, Banger Jatiya Itihas, all vols; and Basu, 'Bangiya Purabritter
Upakaran', Sahitya Parishat Patrika, 1, 1314 bs., pp. 1–24; Dinesh Chandra Sen,
Brihat Banga, 2 vols (rpnt. Calcutta: 1999); Lalmohan Bidyanidhi, Sambandha
Nirnaya, 5 vols (4th rpnt. edn, Calcutta: 1355 bs); Kshitindranath akur, Adisur
OBhattanarayan (Calcutta: 1933); Umesh Chandra Gupta, Jati Tattva Baridhi, 2
vols.
40. Sen, Brihat Banga, vol. 1, preface (no page number).

41. Ibid., vol. 1, preface (no page number).

42. Ibid., 2 vols. is idea runs like a recurrent theme through both volumes of
this work; representative samples occur for example in vol. 1, pp. 26, 460–1.
43. Ronald A. Morse, Yanagita Kunio andthe Folklore Movement: e Search for
Japan's National Character and Distinctiveness (New York and London: Garland
Publishing, 1990); Alan S. Christy, 'e Making of Imperial Subjects', in Tani E.
Barlow, ed., Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia (Durham, N.C.: Duke
University Press, 1997), pp. 141–69; Margaret Mehl, History and the State in
Nineteenth Century Japan (New York: St Martin's Press, 1998); Gerald A Figal,
Civilization and Monsters: Spirits of Modernity in Meiji Japan (Durham and
London: Duke University Press, 1999).
44. Harry Harootunian, Overcome By Modernity: History, Culture and Community
in Interwar Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. xxvi.
45. Ibid.

46. Pelley, Postcolonial Vietnam, pp. 69–112.

47. E.g. Hans Kohn, e Idea of Nationalism (New York: e Macmillan Company,
1944); John Plamenatz, 'Two Types of Nationalism', in Eugene Kamenka, ed.,
Nationalism: e Nature and Evolution of an Idea (London: Edward Arnold, 1976),
pp. 23–6; Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers,
1983); Eric J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth,
Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
48. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism (London and New York: Verso, 1991).
49. Partha Chatterjee, e Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial
Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 1–13.
50. akur, Adisur O Bhattanarayan, pp. 113–16.

51. Nagendranath Basu, 'Bangiya Purabritter Upakaran', Sahitya Parishat Patrika,

vol.1, 1314 bs, pp. 1–24.
52. Christy, 'e Making of Imperial Subjects'; Harootunian, Overcome By
Modernity.
53. Pelley, Postcolonial Vietnam.

54. Sumit Sarkar, 'e Many Worlds of Indian History', in Sumit Sarkar, Writing
Social History (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 20–6.
55. Satish Mukherjee's advocacy of a communitarian ideology is cited in Sarkar,
'e Many Worlds of Indian History', pp. 28–9. For Tagore's views, see Rabindra
Rachanabali, eds R.K. Dasgupta et al. (Calcutta: 1990), vol. 12, pp. 37–9, 40–3, 44–
60.
56. I am grateful to Dipesh Chakrabarty for drawing my attention to this point.
57. Sen, Brihat Banga, vol. 1, pp. 251–2; akur, Adisur O Bhattanarayan, pp. 113–
16; Gupta, Jati Tattva Baridhi, vol. 2, preface (no page number).
58. Sen, Brihat Banga, vol.1, pp. 252, 262–3, 274.

59. Sen, Brihat Banga, Preface (no page number).

60. e literature on classical Indian intellectual traditions is very large.

Representative examples of standard surveys of Indian intellectual/philosophical
traditions include Surendranath Dasgupta, History of Indian Philosophy, 5 vols
(Cambridge: 1922–5); Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, 2 vols
(London: 1923–7). Gautam Bhadra, Jaal Rajar Katha: Bardhamaner Pratapchand
(Calcutta, 2002), contains an insightful discussion of Indian theories of verifying
evidence. See also Felipe Fernandez- Armesto, Truth: A History and a Guide for
the Perplexed (New York: 1997).
61. Maurice Halbwachs, e Collective Memory (New York: Harper and Row,
1980); YosefHayim Yarushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish Memory and Jewish History
(Seattle: 1982); Pierre Nora, 'Between Memory and History: Les Lieux De
Memoire', Representations, Spring 1989, pp. 7–25. e literature on history and
memory is large. Here I refer only to those works mentioned directly in the text.
62. Susan A. Crane, 'Writing the Individual Back into Collective Memory',
American Historical Review, AHR Forum on History and Memory, 102, no. 5
(1997).
63. Sumit Sarkar, e Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903-1908 (New Delhi:
People's Publishing House, 1973); Tapati Guha-akurta, e Making of a New
'Indian'Art: Artists, Aesthetics and Nationalism in Bengal, c. 1850- 1920
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Sugata Bose, 'Nation as Mother:
Representations and Contestations of "India" in Bengali Literature and Culture', in
Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, eds, Nationalism, Democracy and Development:
State and Politics in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997); Tanika
Sarkar, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion and Cultural Nationalism
(Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001).
64. Dinesh Chandra Sen, Folk Literature of Bengal (Calcutta: 1920); Maimansimha
Gitika, vol. 1, pt 1 (Calcutta: 1923); Dakshina Ranjan Mitra- Majumdar,
akumaar Jhuli (Calcutta: 1908). See also Jack Zipes, e Brothers Grimm: From
Enchanted Forests to the Modern World (New York and London: Routledge, 1988).
65. Typical examples include Rasiklal Gupta, MaharajRajballabh Sen (Calcutta: no
date); Nabinkrishna Bandyopadhyaya, Bhadrapurer Itibritta (Murshidabad: 1910–
11); Saradacharan Dhara, Nabab Harekrishna (Calcutta: 1910).
66. Celia Applegate, 'A Europe of Regions: Reflections on the Historiography of
Sub-National Places in Modern Times', AHR Forum 'Bringing Regionalism Back
to History', American Historical Review, 104, 4 (October 1999), pp. 1157–82. See
also Karen Wigan, 'Culture, Power and Place: e New Landscapes of East Asian
Regionalism', pp. 1183–1201, in ibid.
67. Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation, ch. 6.

68. Amarnath Karan, Sahitya Sammilaner Itibritta, 1900-1903 (Calcutta: 1994);

Sahitya Parishat Panjika O Bangiya Sahitya Parishader Unabingsha Sambatsarik
Karya Bibarani, 1913-14 (Calcutta: 1320 bs); Gautam Bhadra and Dipa De,
'Chintar Chalchitra: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat', Sahitya Parishat Patrika, 1401–2
bs, pp. 39–68.
69. Karan, Sahitya Sammilaner Itibritta, p. 186.

70. Nagendranath Basu, Bardhamaner Itikatha (Bardhaman: 1915); Kumu-

dbandhu Basu, 'Amader Aitihasik Bhandar', Bharati, Kartik, 1311 bs, pp. 700–18.
71. Sarkar, 'e Many Worlds of Indian History', pp. 22–4.

72. Eric J. Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, e Invention of Tradition (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1993).
73. A large secondary literature exists on the subject of oral traditions in India.
Examples include Stuart Blackburn, Singing of Birth and Death: Texts in
Performance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988) and idem,
MoralFictions: TamilFolklore from OralTraditions (Helsinki: Academia
Scientiarum Fennica, 2001); Philip Lutgendorf, e Life of a Text: Performing the
Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Kirin
Narayan, Storytellers, Saints and Scoundrels: Folk Narrative in Hindu Religious
Teaching (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989); Gautam Bhadra,
'Kathakatar Nana Katha', Jogasutra (October– December 1993), pp. 169–278.
74. akur, Adisur O Bhattanarayan, pp. 10–12, Gupta, Jati Tattva Baridhi, vol. 2,
p. 6.
75. Chanda, Gaudarajamala, pp. 56–9; Majumdar, Bangiya Kulashastra, pp. 23–6;
Inden, Marriage and Rank in Bengali Culture, p. 4.
76. Bandyopadhyaya, Banglar Itihas, vol. 1, p. 124; Majumdar, Bangiya
Kulashastra, p. 26.
77. Bandyopadhyaya, Banglar Itihas, vol. 1: appendix, 'Shur Rajbangsha', pp. 209–
14; Majumdar, Bangiya Kulashastra, pp. 88–91.
78. R.C. Majumdar, Ancient Indian Colonization in South-East Asia (Baroda,
1955), pp. 6–7; Dietmar Rothermund and Herman Kulke, A History of India
(1986, rpnt. edn, New York, London: 1990), pp. 152–3.
79. H.C. Raychaudhuri, e Political History of Ancient India From the Accession of
Parikshitto the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty with a Commentary by B.N.
Mukherjee (1923, rpnt. edn, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. xi–xii.
80. Tapati Guha-akurta, 'Archaeology as Evidence', p. 15, and 'Archaeology and
the Monument: On Two Contentious Sites of Faith and History' (unpublished).
81. Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), and idem, Content of the Form: Narrative
Discourse and HistoricalRepresentation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1990). Also, Carlo Ginzberg, 'Fiction as Evidence', Yale Journal of Criticism,
5, 2 (1992), pp. 165–78.
82. e literature on this subject is large. I refer here to works I found the most
useful. ese are Stephen Bann, e Clothing of Clio: A Study of the Representation
of History in 19th Century Britain and France (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1984), and idem, e Inventions of History: Essays on the Representation of
the Past (Manchester and New York: Man-chester University Press, 1990); Lionel
Gossman, Between History and Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1990); Ann Rigney, Imperfect Histories: e Elusive Past and the Legacy of
Romantic Historicism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001); Maurice Samuels,
e Spectacular Past: Popular History and the Novel in 19th Century France
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004).
83. For instance, Bann, e Clothing of Clio, p. 3.

84. Such omissions are noticeable, for example, in Guha, An Indian Historiography
of India; Chatterjee, e Nation and its Fragments; Gyanendra Pandey, 'e Prose
of Otherness', in David Arnold and David Hardiman, eds, Subaltern Studies VIII.
Essays in Honour of Ranajit Guha (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994); the
exceptions to this are Sudipta Kaviraj, e Unhappy Consciousness:
Bankimchandra Chattopadhyaya and the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in
India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), and Tapati Guha-akurta,
Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial
India (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2004).
85. A.K. Bandyopadhyaya and B.N. Mukhopadhyaya, eds, RakhaldasBandy-
opadhyaya Rachanabali, 2 vols (Calcutta: 1988, 1990); Akshay Kumar Maitra, Mir
Qasim (Calcutta: 1906) and Phiringi Banik (Calcutta: 1922).
86. Kaviraj, e Unhappy Consciousness, pp. 107–57; Guha-akurta, Monuments,
Objects, Histories, pp. 132–9.
87. Guha-akurta, Monuments, Objects, Histories, p. 133.

88. For instance, Kaviraj, 'e Imaginary Institution of India', in Partha Chatterjee
and Gyanendra Pandey, eds, Subaltern Studies VII: Writings on South Asian
History and Society (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992); Partha
Chatterjee, e Nation and Its Fragments; Pandey, 'e Prose of Otherness'.
89. Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation.
 5

Gait's Way
Writing History in
Early-Twentieth-Century Assam *

ARUPJYOTI SAIKIA

T
he publication of Edward Gait's History of Assam in the early
twentieth century heralded the beginning of a tradition of
history writing in English in Assam.1is was recognized by
later Indian scholars as the pursuit of history that deployed a
scientific method. Soon, Indian writers took up the project of writing
the history of the region, and the Early History of Kamarupa was one
such venture.2 is essay locates the intellectual biography of the
History of Assam and the Early History of Kamarupa, two seminal texts
representing modern historical scholarship on Assam in the early
twentieth century. Represented as the standard historical texts of
Assam's history, these volumes have become the entry point into
historical scholarship on Assam.
e early part of the present essay focuses on the works of Edward
Gait and his use of vernacular sources. Gait's importance in the regional
history of Assam should be seen from the perspective of his use of a set
of vernacular historical literature, called buranji. In fact, within colonial
intellectual circles buranjis had by Gait's time already gained
prominence as an 'authentic' representation of the past. e concluding
part of my essay discusses how Indian historians contested Gait's
historical narrative. In that contestation, various institutions played a
crucial role in relocating the ancient past of Assam, and a significant
role was played by the non-Assamese intellectual tradition of the time.

Retelling the Past in the Nineteenth Century

By the early twentieth century, history writing, both in Assamese and
English, had gained significant appreciation in Assam.3 Even earlier, in
the nineteenth century, writing about the past was not an unfamiliar
activity in the state. Two important aspects of this process are
noticeable. First, the pre-colonial elite continued its tradition of
buranjis.4 It retained its close connection with Ahom cultural life,
though the culture was now in decline. While it is difficult to estimate
their readership and function, in style and content these works marked
no major break from the pre-colonial buranjis. Some of them gained
new literary prominence, and a few even came to be called 'buranji-
literature' on account of the editorial intervention of twentieth-century
professional historians.
On the other hand, the new colonial elites produced by the colonial
state also began to write about the past—but in a new style.5 ey broke
away from the tradition of chroniclers and represented a major break
with the pre-colonial tradition of writing history using multiple sources.
A classic representative of this category is the writing of Hali- ram
Dhekial Phukan, whose work encompasses both past and present.6
Haliram was impressed by the achievements of the Bengal renaissance.
Writing in a hybrid of Assamese, Sanskrit, and Bengali, Haliram drew
heavily from the contemporary oral traditions of Assam and Bengal,
though he was aware of the Indo-Persian tradition too. Simon Digby
argues that the use of names and their refinement precisely reveal the
way in which Haliram tried to come to terms with the renaissance-
trained reading public of Bengal.7
 It is difficult to fix the identity of Assam Buranji as either buranji or
history. But even as he drew profusely from the prevalent buranji
tradition of Assam and the Ahom period, Haliram was attentive to the
cultural world of contemporary Bengal. e arrangement of his themes
came closer to the buranji, but his treatment of the distant past rested
undoubtedly on the foundations of the early-nineteenth-century
historical tradition. His later chapters provide rather dense information
on the geography and other aspects of the region over the very recent
period. e need to write on these topics stemmed directly from his
belief that the intellectual world of Bengal was sadly unaware of the
facts and figures of Assam-Kamrupa.
Apart from Indian scholars, a number of Company officials produced
works on the history of the region.8 Lacking in popular appeal, what
these works failed equally to do was give a substantive idea of the re-
gion. Many of these works remained in manuscript form, leaving the
Company authorities in the dark about the political genealogy of pre-
colonial Assam. So it became all the more necessary for officials of the
colonial administration to seek out some work that would offer a
reliable idea of pre-colonial Assam.

'We Need a History'

In July 1894 Charles Lyall,9 the area's chief commissioner, while
preparing a note on the future of historical research in Assam, spelled
out the fear within the colonial administration of losing historical
documents belonging primarily to the Ahom period: various natural
conditions were hostile. Edward Gait had already prepared a synopsis of
books in the possession of the Deodhais—the Ahom royal priests— and
this attracted the attention of Lyall. It is worth mentioning what he
thought of them:
It appears that these books, which have hitherto been supposed to be
exclusively religious in their purport, contain also historical records relating to
the time before the Ahom rulers were converted to Hinduism. ey were
utilised in the history. . . but since that they have been entirely neglected, and
the Ahom language, in which they are written has gradually passed out of living
 knowledge . . . but so far as is known none of the original texts has been
published; it cannot be doubted that exposed as they are to the ravages of time
in a climate like that of the Assam valley. . . the number of those extant must be
rapidly decreasing, and the original materials for the study of the history and
vicissitudes of one of the most interesting portions of the Indian empire be thus
passing forever beyond our reach.10
Early colonial administrators were sceptical about the value of pre-
colonial written documents for writing the history of Assam. In 1841
William Robinson, in A Descriptive Account of Assam, was convinced
that though Assam had a few chronicles and other works of 'native
composition', most of their narrations of ancient history were
'intimately blended with what is fabulous and uncertain'. Now, armed
with the great possibilities of the Ahom chronicles as a 'historical
source', Lyall admitted that the 'time has come for a sustained and
systematic endeavour to arrest the process of destruction of such
historical manuscripts as still survived in the province.'11 Apart from an
urge to collect old manuscripts, or puthis, the chief commissioner
stressed that the most urgent work was 'to catalogue and rescue from
oblivion the historical records of Assam'. Lyall prepared a guideline on
how to go ahead. First, there had to be an enquiry into the 'manuscripts
which exist, and the places where they are to be found'. Second, these
collected manuscripts had to be examined with the owner's permission.
A competent scholar had to be entrusted with the task of preparing a
list of such manuscripts.12 Lyall differentiated between the Vaishnav
literature and the varied historical sources, but confirmed his
willingness to collect and copy them too. He was sceptical of the way
Gait was trying to copy the Ahom chronicles and argued that the
Deodhais should be persuaded to part with the original texts so that
they could be saved for posterity. Lyall had no doubt that the availability
of such historical documents was not limited to the Ahom territory;
other regions, such as Cachar and Sylhet, also had enormous
possibilities. He was quite positive that, in terms of historical research,
there could be no better model than the works of the Asiatic Society of
Bengal and all that was happening in neighbouring Bengal.
 Edward Gait, an officer of the Indian Civil Service, was initially
posted as extra assistant commissioner at Mangaldai in Darrang
district, where he encountered the legacy of the Darrang royal house
and their Koch lineage. He began his historical researches on Assam
from here and also collected documents related to the Koch kingdom.
In his search to trace the royal genealogy of the Koch kingdom in
Darrang, he took great care to investigate its local history. e first task
was to locate authoritative pre-colonial texts.13
e Government ofIndia had asked Gait to carry out ethnographical
research in Assam.14 Lyall admired him as a historian. He was already
regarded as an emerging historian of the region for his publication in
the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (JASB).15 At the time, Gait
was director of the Department of Land Records and Agriculture in
Assam. us, the modern beginnings of the historical discipline had in
Assam a close link with ethnographic research in the late nineteenth
century. For Gait, the basic model of ethnographic research was Ris-
ley's Tribes and Castes of Bengal: it was the inspiration for Gait taking
up historical research in Assam. Lyall appealed to district officers and
other authorities to help Gait in his efforts.
Gait was unsparing in his effort to establish himself as a scholar of
Indology and would send his works on Assamese history to the JASB.16
When he became director of ethnography and census commissioner in
the last decade of the nineteenth century, he gained an unparalleled
vantage point to understand society and polity in Assam. He played an
important part in the 1891 Indian census;17 in 1893 he published his
first piece on the history of Assam in the JASB. In the meantime he also
prepared a report on the various Ahom puthis which were available in
the custody of the Ahom Bailungs.18 He argued that 'further enquiry
into the history of Assam should be combined with the ethnographical
researches with which he [Gait himself] has been entrusted.'19 William
Ward, chief commissioner of the province at the time, readily approved
this suggestion.
 Armed with these qualifications towards becoming the official
historian of Assam in the early twentieth century, Gait submitted a
proposal to the chief commissioner of Assam in 1894.20 Entitled
Historical Research in Assam, the proposal can be termed a prelude to
Gait's infamous report of 1897. e proposal was divided into two main
sections. In the first, Gait spelt out the various types of historical
sources for the study of the history of Assam; the other section worked
out the methodology of research.21 Gait identified nineteen specific
works as essential for the project.22
In October 1894 P.G. Melitus, officiating secretary of the chief
commissioner of Assam, wrote to various officials of the Assam valley
districts and Manipur informing them about a memorandum by Gait,
who was then the honorary provincial director of ethnography.23
Melitus noted that the memorandum had put forward a proposal for
'carrying out, in a sustained and systematic manner an enquiry into the
materials for a history of the province and for procuring and preserving
either the originals or copies of such historical documents as may be
found to exist.' He also informed them of the chief commissioner's
order asking Gait to proceed immediately with 'copying of the Ahom
puthies'. e secretary said henceforth all communication be addressed
to Gait, who was to arrange for publication of the procured material
through the Asiatic Society of Bengal. is would lead ultimately to a
report on the progress of research on the history of the province. e
entire provincial administration was thus put into service to enquire
into the historical past of Assam.

In Pursuit of a Scientific Methodology

Armed with official sanction, Gait created an elaborate scheme to
collect Assam's historical documents. He divided the historical sources
into six categories, viz. coins, inscriptions, historical documents, quasi-
historical writings, religious works, and traditions. For coins, he
planned work in three phases. First, old Ahom coins would be read,
followed by a search for coins not yet found. A catalogue oflater Ahom
coins was also planned. Second, there would be a thorough search for
coins of the Koch kings and earlier dynasties. ird, the political agent
would undertake the task of collecting and describing Manipuri coins.
Gait also made an elaborate scheme for different types of inscriptions.
ere would be a search for copperplate grants by Jaintia and other
Sylhet rulers, a collation of Ahom land grant plates, and a collection of
Ahom temple inscriptions. Apart from this, there was a specific plan to
photograph the inscriptions on rocks at Tezpur and Maibong. ese
were then to be sent to a competent scholar to be deciphered.
Gait gave importance to historical documents, including the Mani-
pur state records and Ahom historical puthis. For the copying and
translation of puthis in the old Ahom language, he prepared a detailed
list of available puthis and arranged the appointment of an intelligent
young Assamese who would learn the Ahom language and, with the aid
of the Deodhais, copy and translate the more important puthis. Another
interesting category consisted of quasi-historical documents called
vamcavali, arimatta puthi, kumara-harana. He also thought it
important to check the libraries of the satras, i.e.Vaishnava monasteries,
for they might contain works of historical importance.24 Finally, Gait
was mindful of local traditions which, he thought, should be recorded
'whenever heard of '. He argued: 'We come to the still unwritten
traditions of the people. It is doubtful how far these will serve our
purpose, but there is no doubt that they will sometimes be of use'.25
Gait documented the work done over the next couple of years in his
progress report.26 e report indicated the collection of various types of
historical sources in Assam and was divided into two parts. In the first
part was narrated a general summary of what had been done. In the
second were four appendices: the first was a list of cannons, i.e. guns
mounted on carriages, found in Assam. e next was a detailed
catalogue of writings relating to Assam; these included both printed
and non-printed texts. ere was also a comprehensive list of writings
by colonial administrators and missionaries.
Primary importance was given to coins, an authentic source for Gait
in trying to locate the political lineage of Assam. To learn about coins in
a scientific way, a register of Ahom coins was opened at Sib- sagar. e
register was supposed to comprise the list of all coins minted by the
Ahom kings. An ambitious plan, it never attained fruition. Coins dating
from the rule of Cuklenmung (1539-52) till the coins of Chandra Kanta
Simha (1810-27) were listed, and the register did contain information
on the coins of sixteen Ahom kings during this period. It also
mentioned the approximate date of the coins, for most of them were
easily available. Coins of the Ahom period recorded in Marsden's
Numismata Orientalia were also incorporated in the register. e
Asiatic Society of Bengal had also collected Ahom coins: these too were
recorded. In fact, these coins had been sent by the society to Gait to be
deciphered. Interestingly, Gait found no coin of any period before the
thirteenth century!
Gait referred to two categories of Ahom coins. One cluster belonged
to those that were inscribed in the Sanskrit language in Devanagari or
Bengali characters. Gait was uneasy with this type of coin. e other
group were inscribed with legends in the old Ahom language and
character. e newly appointed Ahom translator could, according to
Gait, read these Ahom coins. He came now to the conclusion that the
late Ahom buranji was reliable, for the chronology he ascertained aer
reading the Ahom coins corresponded with dates given in the buranji.
Gait was obviously referring here to the buranji written by Kasinath
Tamuli Phukan.
Gait also ventured to collect Koch coins. us, a search was con-
ducted in Barpeta and parts of Eastern Duars. Coins dating to the times
of the Koch king Raghu Rai were found in Barpeta. Gradually, coins
belonging to the reign of other Koch kings also came to light, giving
Gait confidence enough to narrate the history of the Koch kings. He
also claimed to have removed existing doubts over the veracity of the
few coins in the British Museum collection that were labelled either
'Bhotan' or 'Kachar'. He obtained possession of coins of the Jaintia
kings; his collaborator, Babu Giris Chandra Das, an assistant settlement
officer at Jaintia, helped him collect these coins. ese coin clusters
were sent to the Asiatic Society of Bengal. Coins belonging to the
Tippera kings also came into his possession. However, coins of the
Kachari and Manipuri kings could not be found before the 1897 report.
Gait noted that the pre-colonial state of Manipur coined money, which
was mentioned by Marsden as though he was sceptical about the coins
of the Kachari kings. And finally, the settlement officer of Cachar found
a seal in the possession of a local resident of Kachipur.
Gait described most elaborately the various inscriptions found
scattered in the Brahmaputra valley. He categorized the inscriptions
into several types. e major types included pre-Ahom inscriptions,
Ahom inscriptions, Koch inscriptions, Musalman inscriptions,
inscriptions on cannons, and miscellaneous inscriptions. He mentioned
two inscriptions belonging to the pre-Ahom period. e first, which
Gait enthused over, was the rock inscription in Tezpur close to the
Brahmaputra. Gait photographed it and sent it to Hoernle to decipher.
His preliminary observation suggested that the rock inscription
belonged to a king of a local dynasty. An undated rock inscription was
also found near Umatemani in Darrang, written by Haladhar, son of the
commander of the army of the king of Pratappur. Gait did not give this
much importance. He identified a total of eleven rock inscriptions
belonging to the Ahom period, but thought the number small.
Distributed throughout the Brahmaputra valley, they were either in the
Nagari or Assamese script. Most belonged to the later phase of Ahom
rule.
Another variety of Ahom inscriptions was found in temples. Gait
recorded twenty-eight such inscriptions, dating from 1608 to 1691 of
the Saka era. He then prepared a table of these, providing their dates,
the names of contemporary kings, the dates ofeach king in accord with
Kashinath Tamuli Phukan, an abstract of the inscriptions, their
location, and his occasional remarks. Except the one found in Darrang,
and two in Nowgong, all the other inscriptions were found in the major
temples of Guwahati. Like the previous category, these were written in
Sanskrit or Assamese, with only one in Bengali.
e other important source was a set of buranjis, to which Gait
attributed great value. ough he mentioned buranjis belonging to CE
568, he argued that only those dating from CE 1228 onwards were
trustworthy. He divided the buranjis into two language groups: Ahom
and Assamese. Regarding the historicity of the buranjis, he suggested 'it
was proved not only by the way in which they support each other, but
also by the confirmation which is afforded by the narratives of
Muhamaddan writers wherever these are available for comparison.'27
Gait noted that he preferred to accept the dates given in the buranjis
because they 'are the original records, and are all in complete accord.'28
Other archaeological records, such as coins and rock inscriptions, also
proved, he said, the historicity of buranjis.
Some texts were noted as quasi-historical writings, such as Genealogy
of the Rajas in the Kamrup District, Chutiya Buranji, Bhuiynar Puthi,
Adi Carita Rana Candi and Hara-gauri Bilas. Most of these texts dated
to pre-colonial times. On why he placed them in the category of quasi-
historical texts, Gait argued that they were written much aer the actual
event took place and thus there was every chance of their having lost
authenticity or historicity. For Gait, this was an important yardstick of
what was historical.
Gait took note of eight religious works in which 'stray references' to
historical matters could be found. ese were written either in Ahom or
Assamese. ree were located in the Manipur State Library. Gait took
special note of another work by Haliram Dhekial Phukan, entitled
Kamrupa Jatra Paddhati, which described elaborately the details of
what needed to be known by a pilgrim visiting Kamakhya, the Hindu
temple in Assam.29 He was surprised at the circulation of the text and
by its recovery from the Manipur State Library: 'It is interesting to find
that a puthi written by an Assamese only sixty-five years ago should
have found its way to the library of the Raja of Manipur.'
e section on folklore and mythology is Gait's most important
contribution to the collection of historical sources. He mentioned three
texts, Malikha (an Ahom puthi), Anadipatan (a text describing the
creation of the world), and Laitu (an Ahom puthi, also known as the
story of the flood) falling into the category of folklore and mythology
(though it is not clear how Gait defined that category). By the late
nineteenth century, various colonial officials as well as Indians had
taken to collecting folklore, but the activity had never attained the
status given it by Gait.
By the close of the nineteenth century Gait was in possession of a
large repository of historical sources for his History of Assam. It was to
be a political biography of Assam, with considerable importance given
to the Ahom period. A breakthrough in itself, the book also created an
atmosphere for modern historical research. Its schematic method
continued to influence historians of Assam into the twentieth century,
being visible in school textbooks as well as other historical works. In
sharp contrast to his colonial contemporaries, Gait had a sympathetic
and positive understanding of the Ahom buranjis. He acknowledged the
medieval tradition of historical writings in Assam and the capacity of
medieval Ahom writers to comprehend their society. e road map for
his magnum opus was prepared by Gait with his 1891 report on the
Assam census, which provided a comprehensive framework for
understanding the social and cultural history of Assam.

A History of Assam
Gait completed the book at the turn of the twentieth century. First
published in London by acker, Spink and Company in 1906, it was
meant for English-speaking readers. e next revised edition, published
in 1926, addressed criticisms raised against the first edition. It also
incorporated new historical evidence and brought the chronology down
to recent times. In 1912 the copperplate of Bhaskar Varman had been
found in Sylhet; soon translated by Padmanath Bhattacharya, it was
used by Gait. e Harsha-Carita of Bana, also now translated, gave
further scope to Gait to elaborate his formulations about pre- Ahom
polity. e historian Jadunath Sarkar meanwhile translated Baharistan-
i-Ghaibi and Fathiyya-i-Ibriya, which contained Mughal narratives of
Assam. Gait had used Blochmann's commentary on Fathiyya-i-Ibriya,
but found Sarkar's translation, sent to him by the historian himself,
much more helpful. John Peter Wade's work, An Account of Assam, was
known by this time.30 Gait was aware of the flaws in Wade, but used it
all the same in his second edition.
 e revised History of Assam was divided into sixteen chapters and
covered a long span of the Assamese past, starting with prehistoric
times and bringing the narrative all the way down to the growth of the
tea industry. e racial history of the people of Assam was narrated
with confidence. A colonial administrator in love with ethnographic
practice, Gait proclaimed that philology could not be a 'real test of race'.
He drew attention to numerous examples where either one language
had supplanted another, or where conquerors adopted the language of
the vanquished. Here he provided the example of the Ahom, who
abandoned their 'tribal dialect' in favour of Assamese. But caste, in his
opinion, continued to 'preserve a distinct physical type'.
is led Gait to take account of what was happening to Assam in the
pre-Ahom period. Before his big jump into the seventh century, he
narrated the history of Assam from the mythological period—how
stories relating to Kamrupa or Pragjyotishpur were 'inserted' into
Hindu epics, and how Pauranic and Tantrik knowledge might
illuminate notions on the geographical location of Assam as well as its
origin. He carried his discussion up to Arimatta,31 the legendary king,
but soon tired of the mythologies: 'many legends cluster round
Arimatta but it would serve no purpose to discuss them further, as it is
quite impossible to unravel the truth from the various conflicting
stories that are current amongst the people.' is was a serious problem
for Gait because 'the Rajas of Rani and Dimarua both claim to be
descended from him'. Gait wanted to be convinced of the historicity of
his narrative, for which he deployed references from 'Muhammadan
sources', considered to be more reliable and authentic. To do so he went
back to Elliot and Dowson's popular History of India as Told by its Own
Historians. Gait also had a fascination for historical monuments,
especially Hindu temples, and was worried by their disappearance: 'the
reason is that nature has vied with man in destroying them'. His
memory of the Assam earthquake of 1897 was fresh, and he had
completed a report on the devastation caused.
Since exact dates and names could be found only aer the Chinese
traveller Hiuen Tsang came to Assam, Gait briefly spelled out the period
covering the seventh to the fieenth centuries in two chapters. ough
this period overlaps with the rise of Ahom, Gait wanted to discuss the
latter subject exhaustively in separate chapters, for 'seven sets of copper
plates have been found which record grants of land made by the kings
of ancient Kamrup.' What could be more reliable than this? Gait put his
scientific acumen to the test before writing on the basis of the newly
discovered material; an authentic narration of the history of Assam was
possible only aer Ahom rule. Eight chapters of his book were thus
devoted to Ahom rule alone, primarily because Gait was largely
dismissive of pre-Ahom historical sources.
e art of narrating the past was known to the early inhabitants of
Assam, but Gait, the scientific historian, believed it was not until the
Ahom invasion of CE 1228 that one could obtain anything at all ap-
proaching a connected account of the people and their rulers. He
argued that, prior to this, for several hundred years some scattered
information might be gleaned from a few ancient inscriptions and from
the observations of a Chinese traveller, but beyond this nothing definite
was known, and the only information available consisted of some
'dubious and fragmentary references' in the Mahabharata, in the
Puranas and Tantras, and in other similar texts. e stories culled from
such sources could not legitimately pass as history. ey were at best
ancient traditions, but even this could not be asserted with certainty, for
some of them might have been interpolated by interested copyists in
comparatively recent times.32
e lack of reliable historical material blurred the possibility of a pre-
Ahom political history of Assam, so discussion on this period had to be
limited. is limitation was rectified by the post-independence revision
of A History of Assam33Padmanath Bhattacharya had made a scathing
attack on Gait for this 'lapse'. e question to which Gait had given a
very ambiguous answer was—'what was the pre-colonial state structure
in Assam?' e ambiguity was removed and the answer given firm
shape by Surya Kumar Bhuyan. Gait's portrayal of the Ahom kingdom
began with its 'rise' and ended with its 'downfall'. e downfall
confirmed, according to Gait, the end of an era and the legitimate
arrival of the British. More fascinating is his detailed observation on the
Ahom system of administration, particularly on the pyke, the institution
of the Ahom peasant-militia. is was in his view the most important
component of the Ahom political system.
Gait did not forget to mention the phases of interruption in Ahom
rule, such as those by the 'Muhammadan' wars, the Moamoria revolt,
and Burmese aggressions. Hesitation about the Ahom as the only
political authority had obliged Gait not to miss out the Kacharies, the
Jaintias, and Sylhet and Manipur. However, he made it clear that there
was a dearth of historical material which prevented extended discussion
of these other formations. He countered the shortcoming by writing
about them from the time the buranjis referred to them.
Gait naturally did not ignore the arrival of the British. is led him to
describe the Burmese war at length. He began by reminding his reader:
'it is impossible to say what would have been the ultimate fate of the
unhappy Assamese, had they been le unaided to the tender mercies of
the Burmese.'34 His narrative of the way the British became the new
ruling authority is most detailed: there was no dearth of sour-ces. One
Writers' Building had already come up in Bengal to record the relevant
events in detail.
Gait's sympathetic appreciation and appropriation of vernacular
historical sources is remarkable in being sharply opposed to the pow-
erful colonial mode of history writing of the time. His historical
periodization differed from that in the existing colonial model. In fact,
Gait completely discarded Mill's notion of the temporal phases of
Indian history and avoided periodization in terms of ancient, medieval,
and modern. His time frame was linear, without a break, and followed
the chronology of ruling dynasties.
Gait argued that 'prior to the advent of the Muhammadans the
inhabitants of other parts of India had no idea of history; and our
knowledge of them is limited to what can be laboriously pieced together
from old inscriptions, the accounts of foreign invaders or travellers, and
incidental references in religious writings.'35 In Assam, on the other
hand, he said there existed historical evidence on which modern
historians could rely. However, he doubted that there was any historical
consciousness among the people of Assam.
e 'great distance'—for which Mill and Macaulay have been attacked
—seems less of a distance in Gait.36 e nineteenth century was not
devoid of historical knowledge in Assam, with native scholars such as
Haliram Dhekial Phukan, Maniram Dewan, and Gunabhi- ram Baruah
taking the lead. e transitory phase, however, still remains unclear.
is was evident in Robinson's A Descriptive Account of Assam,37 a
work which asked how to categorize a text like Maniram's
BuranjiBibekRatna (BBR):38 was it new 'history' or still written in the
traditional mode, that is, as a buranji? e title of the work was different
from the conventional and traditional title used in buranjis, giving the
text a secular character. e reading public was also different. Its use of
a mixed language was, in all probability, meant for a wider reading
public. In the pre-colonial period, the basic function of the buranji was
to strengthen the character of the Ahom state, but this was not the
function of BBR. Maniram probably knew that writing a buranji would
provide him a better social space. BBR not only widened the historical
consciousness of his readers, but also gave Maniram social prestige as a
historical scholar.
We can only speculate on the preparatory phase leading to the
writing of BBR. What were the sources used in its compilation?39 Did
Maniram read the available chronicles or did he rely on oral traditions
from recent memory? Perhaps he knew how professional chroniclers of
the Ahom period worked: Haliram Dhekial Phukan had already shown
the way. ere was a shi in the pattern of historical consciousness, and
BBR borrowed many new practices created by colonial writers—as
evident in the use of categories of caste.
Maniram was a confidant of colonial administrators, and it was his
responsibility to inform them about the political practices of the Ahom
state. BBR attributed a political structure to the Ahom state which was
needed as a term of reference in the context of Maniram's own time. To
a large extent, this was informed by his personal experi-ence in both
lower and upper Assam. Despite many conjectures, rang-ing from
BBR's limited use of new historical methods to its value for
understanding the native sociology of nineteenth-century Assam
(making Maniram himself a problematic character for the Assamese
intelligentsia), BBR became a reference point in the debate over the
newness of Assamese language, literature, and history in the nineteenth
century.40

Gait and his Native Collaborators

Gait's local collaboration in search of his historical sources is well
known, but needs more critical examination. Gait had requisitioned the
service of many of his juniors to help him in the collection and
translation of local historical records. Hem Chandra Goswami, Golap
Chandra Barua, Gunahash Goswami, Madhab Chandra Bordoloi, and
Rajani Kanta Bordoloi were some of these close associates. Most
collaborators worked in the colonial administration, but had a very
different social 'commitment'. As far as Gait was concerned, their
responsibility was confined to the identification, collection, and,
whenever necessary, translation of such texts into English. Benudhar
Sarma, himself a popular historian of the twentieth century, took pride
in the service rendered by Hem Chandra Goswami as Gait's
collaborator. He was convinced that it would have been impossible for
Gait to write his book without Goswami's assistance. e latter was
appointed a clerk in the Assam secretariat in 1895 and began collecting
historical chronicles. Soon, these were translated into English. e use
of vernacular sources, as noted earlier, significantly reduced the
'colonial distance' evident in the writings of other contemporary
colonial historians.
Gait's limited knowledge of native languages later came under severe
attack from the local intelligentsia. Golap Chandra Barua,41 in the
office of the deputy commissioner of Lakhimpur, was selected to learn
Ahom and translate the chronicles into English.42 Chandra Kanta Sen
brought the Jaintia Settlement Report of 1839 prepared by Loch to
Gait's attention while working on the Jaintia Settlement of 1897. Yet
Gait did not rely completely on the work of his native collaborators: an
instance is his disapproval of Phanidhar Chaliha's work. Chaliha was a
sub-deputy collector in Sibsagar who had prepared a catalogue of
Ahom puthis found in Sibsagar. Aer going through his list of twenty-
eightputhis, Gait came to the conclusion that 'the list is admittedly
incomplete, even for the extant records of the Deodhais of Sibsagar
sadar, and there must be more puthies in existence not only there but
also in Jorhat.'43
How far did this collaboration result in a new understanding of
Assam's history? Did Gait's native collaboration help in the birth of a
new history, different from the model laid down by Mill and Macaulay?
is question is closely connected with the earlier point about a new
colonial regime of history writing, with Gait being its new avatar. His
training in ethnography certainly put Gait in a different category from
that of his predecessors. His arrangement and notion of the distribution
of pre-colonial political history diverged significantly from that of Mill's
ancient—medieval—modern paradigm, and in this marked a departure
from the early-nineteenth-century tradition of colonial history writing.

A History of Assam: A Note on the History of Criticism

A History of Assam was received warmly in Britain, but its appreciation
in Assam was gradual and restricted.44 With time, however, this work
seeped into the historical consciousness of modern Assam. It provided
materials with which to recover the dark phase of Assam's history and
served as a source of pride in Assam's historical past. A History of
Assam made easier the work of nationalist historians. e typical
response to Gait's work is represented in a comment by Benudhar
Sarma, a nationalist historian and product of the nationalist movement.
Writing of Hem Chandra Goswami, Sarma says:
Till now, there was no detailed narrative history of Assam which the Assamese
could have identified as a reliable history book for those who did not know the
Assamese language, and through which eager foreign historians could have
 benefited. is [book] will only help in proving our independence45 from those
who have controlled us . . . though it has taken more than twelve years . . . and
there may be some disagreement about its historical authenticity, I must admit
it has elevated the status of Assam. And, for all these reasons, the Assamese
people describe Gait as Mahamati.46

Padmanath Bhattacharya,47 a teacher of Sanskrit and History in the

newly established Cotton College, was also all praise for Gait. e
publication of A History of Assam was an immense relief from the
representation that Assam faced, particularly from the neighbouring
Bengal intelligentsia.48 Bhattacharya said:
e people of Assam ought to be grateful to Mr Gait. It bespeaks well of a
hardworking officer of Mr Gait's stamp that he could make time to devote
himself to researches . . . there is no other part of India, the history of which is
so less known to the outside world . . . anks of the people of Assam are,
therefore, due to Mr. Gait in as much as by compiling a history of Assam he has
informed the civilized world that even an outlying province in the north-east
corner of India has a history worth reading like that of any other civilized part
of world.49
Assam's vernacular history writing tradition continued in the twentieth
century to acknowledge its debt to Gait. Padmanath Gohain Barua
acknowledged his work in 1899 in his Asomar Buranji,50 which was
published as a school textbook. He strengthened his debt in a revised
edition, adding thirty-five footnotes that referred to Gait. Chintaharan
Patgiri, in his Prachin Barnagar,51 engaged critically with various
writings by Gait, including A History of Assam. Another history,
entitled Lukir Buranji,52 borrowed extensively from Gait as well. And in
the late twentieth century, once various ethnic movements arose in the
region, with a corresponding interest in their historical past, most such
ethnic groups began to read Gait with a new interest.
At the same time, there emerged a powerful critique of Gait. Padma-
nath Bhattacharya was one of the first critics of A History of
Assam53e importance of critiques such as his is, first, that it
represented the early phase of the critique of coloniality. Some of the
basic flaws in Gait's use of evidence were pinpointed. e critique also
refuted some ofGait's fundamental historical assumptions. ough for
Bhattacharya A History of Assam represented a cultural defence of
Assam in face of a 'haughty' Bengali intelligentsia, he also took a
position against Gait because of his own mastery of Sanskrit.
Second, Gait's work was seen as authoritative yet in need of sup-
plements. In 1963, as mentioned earlier, A History of Assam was revised
with permission from the original publisher.54 is new edition
incorporated two chapters highlighting the significance of pre-Ahom
history. ese were intended to fill the gap in Gait's work on the fourth
and fih centuries in Assam. e revision supposedly reduced the gap
between medieval and ancient Assam.55 A few photos were also in-
serted, corroborating claims made about ancient Assam. e demand
for this text remains to this day, and several publishing houses have
reprinted the 1963 edition.
Gait's influence on Assamese historians continued, in short, long
aer the publication of his book. Surya Kumar Bhuyan remained in
touch with Gait till his death and used to send his work to the latter for
his comments.56 Bhuyan considered Gait's History of Assam the most
important guide in the scientific pursuit of historical research on the
region: Gait's 'historical investigation inspired a number of Assamese
scholars who followed in his glorious track. e existence of an
abundance of materials for Assamese history, specially in the shape of
the old Assamese buranjis or chronicles was first brought home to the
scholars, and the zeal and inspiration which his labours awakened will
ever remain a fitting memorial to the untiring energy of Sir Edward
Gait.'57 Public support went further: the powerful Nalbari Pandit Sabha
awarded the honorary title 'Vidyasagar' to Gait in recognition of his
work.58
Gait transformed the pre-colonial buranjis into trusted and reliable
historical documents on the basis of which any European historian
could work.59 Before him, throughout the nineteenth century, attempts
to write the history of the region had been based on buranjis, but never
had these acquired the renown and authority that was provided by
Gait's initiative. e first encounter of any amateur European historian
with buranjis went back to the late eighteenth century, when J.P Wade
accompanied Captain Welsh on his eighteen-month stay in Assam and
invited local chroniclers to his residence.60Wade listened to these
informants and, on his request, many buranjis were translated into
English. Decades later, when missionaries began to take an interest in
the history of Assam, they too collected old buranjis.61 A few were
translated and published in the missionary journal Orunodoi, in the
middle of the nineteenth century.62
e intellectual transformation of the buranji from a dormant
chronicle to an authoritative text that spoke for the 'nation' took
concrete shape with the establishment of the Department of Historical
and Antiquarian Studies (DHAS) in 1928.63 Before that, despite the
patronage of George Grierson, buranjis had not become national
icons.64 Writing of missing aspects in buranjis, Golap Chandra Barua,
Gait's close collaborator, says:
is buranji as well as Ahom Buranjis (both in Ahom and in Assamese) which I
have come across till now supply very little information on many very
important points regarding great personages such as (1) Lachit Barphukan, (2)
Ramani Gabharu ... (4) Jayamati Kuari and others; and also relating to religious
reformers, and poets, such as (1) Sankardeva . . . nowhere in any of the buranjis
can we get accounts of the establishment of various satras . . . In order to
compile a complete Assam Buranji, a writer will have to collect information on
all the above points from Bangsabalis [family histories].65
e DHAS, mostly under the stewardship of S.K. Bhuyan, began to
collect buranjis systematically. Bhuyan took up the work of editing and
subsequent publication of these as well. It was during this process that
the most important transformation occurred, creating the buranji as an
authoritative historical source. Other academic interventions in the
twentieth century further helped consolidate the buranji as a reliable
narrative of the past.66 Subsequently, when Golap Chandra Barua
lamented the limitations of the buranji, Bhuyan claimed that buranjis
'have conserved the feelings, customs and manners and institution of
the people of Assam, and couched as they are in a natural and racy
prose style, they constitute an unrivalled monument of national
literature which few other peoples of India possess.'67

Nationalist Claims: Early History of Kamarupa

Gait had largely disappointed nationalists because of his lack of
attention to the ancient past of Kamrup. is perceived neglect of
Assam's ancient past soon spurred new institutional efforts. In 1912, in
the annual general conference of the Uttar Bangia Sahitya Parisad, a
group of Assamese scholars formed the Kamrup Anusandhan Samiti,
whose primary responsibility was to unearth the golden past of
Assam.68 e Samiti soon began its work of finding archaeological
remains and inscriptions, and of deciphering them in order to recreate
the glory of ancient Assam. e Journal of Assam Research Society
further strengthened the claim to glorious ancient Assam.
e political structure of ancient Kamrup had been the subject of
scholarly evaluation ever since the publication of Kamarupa Sasanawali
by Padmanath Bhattacharya. Published in 1931, this work presented the
rationale for studying the history of Kamrup.69 Bhattacharya
deciphered the Nidhanpur inscription and published it in Epigraphica
Indica. Much of the later historical emphasis on Bhaskar Varman was
drawn from this work. A little earlier, in 1906, T. Bloch had published a
detailed report on archaeological findings in Assam. Many scholars now
became associated with the Kamrupa Anusandhan Samiti and busied
themselves with the discovery of ancient sites, coins, relics, and
inscriptions.
Early History of Kamarupa (EHK) was an authoritative work that
contested many of the claims made by Gait. Brought up within the
ethos of satras, Kanaklal Baruah, who held the rank of extra-assistant
commissioner, worked on this project for many years before his
death.70 Kanaklal began his internship in historical scholarship in
Calcutta, where along with his friends pursuing higher studies, he was
part of a strong nationalist student group that launched an Assamese
literary movement.71 Many of these students began their scholarly life
in the antiquarian search of Assamese literature and other ancient
glories. Kanaklal also presided over the fourth session of the Assam
Sahitya Sabha, the powerful literary body of Assam. His focus of
research was the historical geography of Kamrup. He studied the
Sanskrit inscriptions, religious texts, and copper inscriptions which
contributed to his pioneering work entitled Early History of Kamarupa.
It marked a departure from the representation of the history of Assam
found in the pages of Gait's History. e book not only claimed to
rectify the wrongs done by Gait but also gave Assam a long-awaited
place in the larger narrative of Indian cultural and political history.
Aer its publication, the ancient kingdom of Kamrup acquired a
significant presence in the ancient political history of India.
Interestingly, this opened a political line of division in nationalist
historiography in twentieth-century Assam, because Surya Kumar
Bhuyan's projection of Ahom's history as the golden age of pre-colonial
Assam was in opposition to Kanaklal's portrayal of the history of
Kamrup. Kanaklal connected Assam's historical past with the
Bharatvarsha in the sixth and seventh centuries. He devoted great care
in reconstructing the political alliance between Harsha and Bhaskar
Varman, destined to become the famous king of Kamrup, thus raising
the latter to a position of equality with a great ruler of Aryavarta.
Early History of Kamarupa was a political biography of Assam written
with a sense of historical pride. e tribal genealogy of the region
remained outside the purview of this historical reconstruction. Rather,
the chronology on which it focused implied the linear growth of a
Hindu past. Myths and legends culled from the Mahabharata gave
credence to the ancient past of Kamrup.72 In this respect, Kanaklal
made a major departure from Gait. To understand Kanaklal within the
historical temper of the time, we cannot ignore the social history of the
Assamese middle class in the early twentieth century. is period saw
the consolidation of an Assamese nationalist ethos through the complex
of reactions to colonial ideology and its institutions.73 is was
particularly true in relation to the intricate juxtaposition of myths
associated with the temple of Kamakhya.74
 Early History of Kamarupa is thus a history of the process of Aryan-
ization of the Brahmaputra valley; it is also, simultaneously, a
comparison of the grandeur of the Kamrup kingdom with that of the
Maurya kingdom. Kanaklal's temporal range in Early History of
Kamarupa is vast, beginning with an undefined point of origin to a
political date in the sixteenth century. Criticizing Gait for his limited
attention to the political geography of Assam, Kanaklal complained that
only fourteen pages had been devoted in that book to the history of the
period from the fourth to the twelh century AD. Yet 'twenty pages
have been devoted to the history of the rule of the Koch kings' who
flourished for a comparatively brief period during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries.
In an attempt to give a new dimension to the study of ancient Kam-
rup, Kanaklal extensively used Sanskrit inscriptions and religious texts,
displacing the pre-eminence of the buranjis in the study of the history
of Assam. He thereby invented a new method for the study of the
Kamrup kingdom, while bestowing primacy upon the Kamrup- centric
state formation of Assamese society and connecting the history of this
region with the history of Bharatvarsha. In fact, most nationalist
historians continued to hold to Kanaklal's model until the late twentieth
century, when the federal structure of Indian democracy was
questioned. In an effort to engage critically with Gait, Kanaklal argued
that the real theatre of Assam's history lay in the pre-Ahom period: and
in this lies his significance.
e necessary historical material to provide Kamrup with a political
structure was supplied by Kamarupa Sasanawali by Padmanath
Bhattacharya.75 Baruah praised the latter and argued that 'students of
history must be indebted to him'. Bhattacharya spelled out the political
structure of Kamrup and also invented 'Kamrupi literature'. He was
aware of the implication of the use of the term Kamrupi and justified its
use, arguing he had used the word quite deliberately. He did not ignore
the unwritten phase of literary history and instead gave canonical
importance to folk literature. e study of Kamrupi literature created a
new opportunity to look for the connections between Kamrupi and
Bengali cultural areas.76 is compelled historians to explore, further,
the possibility of the political primacy of Kamrup over parts of
northern Bengal. Assam was, at this time, under the spell of intense
literary nationalism. e study of Vaishnavism and Vaishnav literature,
along with the hagiography of Sankardev, had just been given a new
lease of life.77 Further, the study of language and literature in the
cultural context of the lower Assam districts—Kamrup in particular—
had already gained considerable popularity in academic circles. Pandit
Pratap Chandra Goswami was writing about various ahila-pati (tools)
needed for the study of the history of Kamrup.78 Closely associated
with the Assam Sahitya Sabha,79 Kanaklal had succeeded in creating a
classical past for Assam. In giving it the political structure of a Hindu
state, he had connected Kamrup, synonymous with Assam, with
'mainland' India and contested colonial knowledge in the cause of
nationalism.
Kanaklal continued his historical research in a much more spirited
style aer his publication of Early History of Kamarupa. Many of his
later writings were intended for a more popular audience, but the tone
and nature of his historical enquiry remained the same, i.e. the search
for ancient Kamrup. e publication of a journal entitled Journal of
Assam Research Society (JARS) gave Kanaklal a much-needed platform
to place his findings and arguments.80 Essays published in JARS also
gave him the professional image of a historian.
Surya Kumar Bhuyan, who was junior to Kanaklal, wrote successfully
in both Assamese and English, and for both popular and serious
readerships. In fact, both Kanaklal and S.K. Bhuyan took vernacular
research to national platforms, carving out a space for nationalist
historical research in Assam amidst competition from other scholarly
debates.81
For all this, ever since its publication, Gait's History of Assam has
retained its dominance in the world of historical research in Assam and
continues to determine post-Independence agendas of historical
research on the pre-colonial period. In several post-Independence
ethnic movements, particularly in the last decades of the twentieth
century, communities and castes continue to refer to Gait's History to
support their ethnic claims. It was Gait's professional research, his
passion for the scientific method and historical truth, that made his
work invulnerable both with popular and serious reading publics. His
cultural distance as one belonging to the West—and thus occupying a
position of centrality with respect to rival cultural claims within the
region—gave him finally a supremely elevated position in the historical
scholarship on Assam. Kanaklal Baruah is also read alongside other
vernacular historians, but he still plays second fiddle to Gait.

Notes
*Many ideas developed in this essay came out of my discussion with Bodhi- sattva
Kar, Kishore Bhattacharjee, and others who participated in a workshop organized
in Cotton College, Guwahati, in 2004. I am especially grateful to Guatam Bhadra,
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Partha Chatterjee, Tapati Guha-a- kurta, and Razi
Aquil for their comments and suggestions in the Vernacular History Conference
at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata, in 2004. I am also grateful to
Pradeep Khataniar for sharing his views and helping locate various sources on the
history and society of Assam in the nineteenth century.
1 Edward Gait, A History of Assam (1906; rpnt. Calcutta and London: ackers,
Spink and Company, 1926). In this essay I have used only the revised second
edition. For a biographical sketch of Edward Gait, see Prafulla Datta Goswami,
'Sir Edward Gait: Scholar-Administrator', Journal of Assam Research Society, 14
(1978). Also see Jogendra Narayan Bhuyan, ed., 'Sir Edward Gait', in Surya Kumar
Bibidh Prabandha (Guwahati: Lawyer's Book Stall, hereaer LBS, 2005).
2 K.L. Barua, Early History of Kamarupa: From the Earliest Times to the End of the
Sixteenth Century (1933; rpnt, 2nd edn, Guwahati: LBS, 1966).
3 In 1955 Surya Kumar Bhuyan prepared a report on historical articles published
from Assam since the mid-nineteenth century. See S.K. Bhuyan, Buranji Mulak
Prabandhar Talika (Jorhat: Assam Sahitya Sabha, 1955).
4 In the first category we can place the works of Kashinath Tamuli Phukan,
Dutiram Hazarika, and Harakanta Sadarmin Barua. Kashinath Tamuli Phukan,
Assam Buranji (Sibsagar, 1844); Kumud Chandra Bardoloi, Sadrami noratma
jibani (1922; rpnt Guwahati: LBS, 1991); S.K. Bhuyan, ed., Asamar Padya Buranji:
A Metrical Chronicle of Assam, consisting of Dutiram Hazarika's Kali-Bharat and
Bisweswar Vaidyadhipa's BelimararBuranji (Guwahati: Department of Historical
and Antiquarian Studies, 1964). Concerning the traditional definition of buranji,
see J.N. Phukan, 'Buranji and Buranji Writing of the Ahoms', in Insight (Gauhati
University: Dept of History, 2003); Lila Gogoi, e Buranjis: Historical Literature
of Assam (Guwahati: Spectrum, 1986); on the method of compilation of buranjis
by Ahom chroniclers, see S.K. Bhuyan, Swargadeo Rajeswar Singha (1975; rpnt
Guwahati: Assam Publication Board, 2005). Such chronicles were produced in
neighbouring Manipur during the same period. For a comparison, see S.N.A.
Parratt, e Court Chronicles of Kings of Manipur: e Cheitharon Kumapapa
(Delhi: Routledge, 2005).
5 We can identify the works of Haliram Dhekial Phukan, Maniram Dewan, and
Gunabhiram Baruah as representative of this category. For a preliminary note on
Haliram and Gunabhiram's idea of history, see Ranjit Deva Goswami, 'Towards
Aryanization: A Note on Assamese Historiography in the 19th century', in Preeti
Barua, ed., Commemorative Volume of the Handique Girls College Golden Jubilee
1939-1989 (Guwahati: Handique Girls College Golden Jubilee Celebration
Committee, 1989). Also, Gunabhiram Baruah, Assam Buranji (1884; rpnt
Guwahati: Assam Publication Board, 2001). For biographical details on
Gunabhiram, see Jogendra Narayan Bhuyan, Gunabhiram Baruah (Guwahati:
ABILAC, 2001). It must be noted here that there is no consensus on the date of
the first edition of this history.
6 Haliram Dhekial Phukan, 'Assam Buranji', in Haliram Dhekial Phukan
Rachnavali (Guwahati: Assam Publication Board, 2005). is was first published
in 1929, while he was an official with the colonial administration in Assam. For
the social background of Haliram's 'Assam Buranji', see Arupjyoti Saikia, 'Haliram
Dhekial Phukanar Assam Buranji', in Arun (Guwahati: Department of Bengali,
Cotton College), New Series, 3, 2006.
7 Simon Digby, 'e Fate of Daniyal, Prince of Bengal, in the Light of Un-
published Inscriptions', Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 36: 3
(1973), pp. 588-602.
8 For a brief idea on the works of Company administrators and missionaries on
the history of the region, see S.K. Bhuyan, 'Organisation of Research Work in
Assam', manuscript in Personal Records, Department of Historical and
Antiquarian Studies (hereaer DHAS). e earliest such work dates back to John
Peter Wade. Wade was an assistant surgeon with the East India Company who
accompanied Captain Welsh into Assam in 1793. During his stay in Assam,
mostly in Guwahati, he directed his attention to compiling a 'History of Assam'.
ough he completed this manuscript on the 'History of Assam' in 1800, it was
never published during his lifetime; it was later published from Assam because of
the painstaking effort of a local historian, Benudhar Sarma, in 1927. Wade also
published his 'Geographical Sketch of Assam' in AnnualAsiatic Register in 1805.
Aer Wade, significant work was done aer the 1870s because of growing interest
in the tribes of the province.
9 Charles Lyall was known for his interest in the ethnography of the region. He is
credited with e Mikirs (Delhi: Spectrum, rpnt 1990).
10 Quoted in E. Gait, Report on the Progress on the Historical Research in Assam,
hereaer Report (Shillong: Assam Government Press, 1897), p. 3. e present
section is significantly informed by this important report.
11 See e Assam Gazette, 13 October 1894, Part II.

12 Lyall reminded people that such enterprise was available for Sanskrit
manuscripts primarily under the auspices of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.
13 To collect Darrang Rajbansavali, Gait had to pursue the keeper of the text with
the assurance that the latter's son would be given free education, and that once he
completed his education he would be given a government job.
14 See e Assam Gazette, 13 October 1894. Gait was appointed as honorary
director of ethnographic research in April 1893. William Ward had sanctioned a
sum of Rs 1000 for this purpose. Lyall thought this could be increased if necessary.
15 He published his lengthy essay on the Koch kingdoms in Journal of the Asiatic
Society of Bengal, hereaer JASB. Later, this article formed an important part of
his better-known work, Edward Gait, 'Koch Kings of Kamarupa', JASB, pt 1, no. 1.
16 Gait had published a number of articles in JASB. He published an article on
Ahom coins once they had been deciphered by his Ahom translator. at article
also gave a preliminary idea of Ahom chronology. Gait suggested that the Caka
era was probably introduced during the reign of the Ahom king Suhungmung,
who reigned from ad 1497 to 1539.
17 In recent times Gait's narrative about the Indian caste system has come under
scathing criticism: see Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind (Delhi: Permanent Black,
2001).
18 Bailungs are official priests of the Ahoms. For the role of Bailungs in the Ahom
state, see Hiteswar Barbaruah, Ahomar Din (Guwahati: Assam Publication Board,
no date). Also, Padmeswar Gogoi, e Tai and the Tai Kingdoms: With a Fuller
Treatment of the Tai-Ahom Kingdom in the Brahmaputra Valley (1968: rpnt.
Guwahati: LBS, 1999).
19 Gait, Report, p. 2.

20 is was published as an official communication in e Assam Gazette, 13

October 1894.
21 Discussed in this section.

22 See para 16, e Assam Gazette, 13 October 1894.

23 ey included commissioners of the Assam valley districts, heads of de-

partments, political agents in Manipur, superintendents of the state, and all
deputy commissioners and sub-divisional officers of Assam. See e Assam
Gazette, 13 October 1894, pt II.
24 e satras played a crucial role in the propagation and consolidation of
vaishnavism in Assam. For a critical history of these satras, see Maheswar Neog,
Sankardev and His Times: Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in
Assam (Guwahati: LBS, rpnt. 1998); Satyendra Nath Sarma, e Neo-Vaishnavite
Movement andthe Satra Institutions of Assam (Guwahati: LBS, 1977); Tirthanath
Sarma, Auniati Satrar Buranji (1975; rpnt. Majuli: Auniati Satra, 2004).
25 Gait, Report, p. 14.

26 Ibid.

27 Gait, A History of Assam, p. xii.

28 Ibid., p. 104. Gait gave the examples of Robinson and Gunabhiram. Both,
according to Gait, relied on Kasinath's work, which was not an original text.
29 Haliram Dhekial Phukan, Kamrupa Jatra Paddhati (Calcutta: New Press, Saka
1753 [1825]).
30 For a discussion of Wade's career, see Arupjyoti Saikia, 'Geographical
Exploration and Historical Investigation: Career of Physician John Peter Wade in
Assam', History Research Journal, Dibrugarh University, vol. 16, 2007, pp.29-47.
31 ere are various myths associated with the thirteenth-century king Arimatta
located in and based on the lower Assam districts. Son of Ram- chandra or
Mayamatta, Arimatta's forefathers, the legend goes, came from Kashmir. He
established his empire up to Nowgaon, a central Assam district.
32 Gait, A History of Assam, p. 1.

33 B.K. Barua and S. Gurumurthi revised A History of Assam in 1963 and inserted
much material to rectify weaknesses in Gait's work.
34 Gait, Report, p. 13.

35 Ibid.

36 For an incisive comment on James Mill's History of India, see J. Majeed,

Ungoverned Imaginings: James Mill's e History of British India and Orientalism
(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992).
37 William Robinson, A Descriptive Account of Assam: With a Sketch of the Local
Geography, and a Concise History of the Tea Plant of Assam (1841; rpnt. Delhi:
Sanskaran Prakasan, 1975).
38 e Buranji Bibek Ratna has been recently edited and published. is text was
in use amongst twentieth-century historians, in various capacities. Nagen Saikia,
Buranji Bibek Ratna (Dibrugarh: Dibrugarh University, 2002). However, the editor
of this edition has maintained that because the first volume was missing from the
custody of the Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, Guwahati, the
entire text is not available to readers.
39 Maniram's biographer says he had a 'fascination' for the old sanchipat
chronicles. Benudhar Sarma, Maniram Dewan (Guwahati: Manuh Prakasan,
1950).
40 In the catalogue of Assamese manuscripts prepared by Hem Chandra
Goswami, BBR was not mentioned. Probably, prior to the referred initial date,
BBR had hardly appeared in the public sphere. Gait's Report of 1897 also didn't
refer to it. See Hem Chandra Goswami, Descriptive Catalogue of Assamese
Manuscripts (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1930). Also see Surya Kumar
Bhuyan, ed., 'Hemchandra Goswami', in Studies in the Literature of Assam
(Guwahati:LBS, 1956).
41 Rai Bahadur Golap Chandra Barua, who retired as Inspector of Schools,
published a translated buranji. e book was in both Tai and Assamese. Baruah
had, further, compiled an Ahom-Assamese lexicon. See, Golap Chandra Barua,
ed., Ahom Buranji: From the Earliest Time to the End of the Ahom Rule (1930; rpnt.
Guwahati:Spectrum, 1985).
42 A committee of five Deodhais was appointed to teach the Tai Ahom language
to Golap Chandra Barua and assist him in translating the buran- jis. Baruah also
acknowledged the help of Deodhais in teaching him the Tai language. See Golap
Chandra Barua, 'Preface', in Ahom Buranji.
43 Gait, Report, p. 9.

44 e reviewer of Gait's work in e English Historical Review, 23 (1908) thought

it 'revealed the unexpected existence of materials by the aid of which its history
may be written'; another in e Geographical Journal, 69: 3 (March 1927), argued
it was the 'only standard work on the subject: it is the only connected history of
Assam from earliest times to the present day that we yet have.'
45 Sarma is referring here to the intellectual independence of Assam.

46 Benudhar Sarma, Assomiya Sahityar Paramacharya Pandit Hemchandra

Goswami (Jorhat: Assam Sahitya Sabha, 1972), p. 49. My translation.
47 Born in Sylhet in 1868, Padmanath Bhattacharya was a professor of Sanskrit
and History in Cotton College, Assam. See Prasanta Chakravarty, 'Padmanath
Vidyabinode: Guwahatir Bangiya Sahitya-Sanskriti O Samakal', Phoenix, 1: 2
(October 2004).
48 Bhattacharya was referring to an article published in a Bengali encyclopaedia,
compiled by N.N. Basu,Viswakosh (Calcutta: 1886-1911). Also see P.
Bhattacharya, 'Mr. Gait's History of Assam: A Critical Study', e Hindustan
Review (1908).
49 Bhattacharya, 'Mr. Gait's History of Assam: A Critical Study'.

50 Padmanath Barua Gohain, Assomor Buranji or An Illustrated History of Assam

(1899; rpnt. of the 19th edn of 1937, Guwahati: Assam Publication Board, 1976).
51 Chintaharan Patgiri, Prachin Bornagar (Assom: Sarbhog, 1930). It was a
booklet in Assamese containing the history of a small township in lower Assam.
52 Muhamad Shah, A Short History of Luki or Lukir Buranji (1922; Calcutta),
Vernacular Tracts No. Ass.B. 32, in the British Library, Oriental and India Office
Collection.
53 Bhattacharya, 'Mr. Gait's History of Assam: A Critical Study'. His Kama- rupa-
Sasanawali (Rangpur: Rangpur Sahitya Parisad, 1931) widened the scope for the
study of pre-colonial state system in Assam.
54 B.K. Barua and S.Gurumurthi, A History of Assam (Calcutta: acker, Spink
and Company, 3rd revised edn, 1963).
55 Amongst the newly inserted two chapters, the first was titled e Period from
the Fourth to the Twelh Centuries, and the second System of Government.
56 is is in reference to his personal letters to Gait. Bhuyan used to send his
published materials to other English bureaucrat-scholars who worked in Assam,
such as P.R.T. Gurdon. Even Bhuyan had reservations about the completeness of
Gait's history. See J.N. Bhuyan, ed., Surya Kumar Bibidh Prabandhawali
(Guwahati: LBS, 2005), p. 50.
57 Bhuyan's 'Note on the Organisation of Research Work in Assam' (unpublished
manuscript), in S.K. Bhuyan personal collection, transcript no. 1, DHAS.
58 Personal letter of P.R.T. Gurdon to S.K. Bhuyan, 5 May 1919. Personal Records
of S.K. Bhuyan A1, vol. 1, DHAS.
59 Nineteenth-century native scholars' attention to the buranjis was limited. Even
S.K. Bhuyan did not make any critical engagement with the nature and form of
the buranjis.
60 S.K. Bhuyan, 'A Review of Dr J.P. Wade's History of Assam', in Cotton College
Magazine, January 1925. Also S.K. Bhuyan, 'An Early Historian of the East India
Company: Dr. J.P. Wade', Proceedings of the Indian Historical Records Commission
(Gwalior: 1929).
61 A fairly comprehensive list of buranjis collected by missionaries in Assam can
be found in S.K. Bhuyan,Report on the Buranji Collected by the Missionaries,
Personal Records, DHAS.
62 For the translated buranji, see Arupjyoti Saikia, Orunodoi 1855—68 (Nagaon:
Krantikal Prakasan, 2002).
63 For the early days of DHAS and a comprehensive note on the origin of and
works done by DHAS, see S.K. Bhuyan, ed., Bulletin, no.1 (1932).
64 In his report to the Linguistic Survey of India, Grierson attributed the literary
greatness of the Assamese language to its great resources, the buranjis. Linguistic
Survey of India, vol. 5, pt 2, 1906.
65 G.C. Barua, 'Preface', Ahom Buranji.

66 Bhuyan, who held the post of honorary director of DHAS from 1933, mentions
the elaborate process of collection, transcription, collation, editing, paragraphing,
and even giving titles to the texts of the 'chronicle written on the folios of a
sanchipat' in order to produce a finished product which 'can be placed on the desk
of reader as machine made finished ready machine product.'
67 Bhuyan, ed., Bulletin, no.1, p. 17.

68 For a preliminary note on the formation of the Kamarupa Anusandhan Samiti,

see Arupjyoti Saikia in Katha Guwahati (January 2006). Details of the activity of
the sabha could be found in the bulletins of Kamarupa Anusandhan Samiti, 1916-
17.
69 Padmanath Bhattacharya, Kamarupa Sasanawali (Rangpur: Rangpur Sahitya
Parisad, 1338 Sal).
70 For biographical details on the life of Kanaklal, see Nanda Talukakdar ed.,
Kanaklal Baruah Rachanawali (Jorhat: Assam Sahitya Sabha, 1973).
71 For an account of the social and cultural aspirations of Assamese students
studying in Calcutta in the nineteenth century, see Lakhinath Bezbaruah, Mor
Jiban Sowaran, first published 1944 (Guwahati: AB Enterprise, 1992).
72 A history of reading and publishing since the late nineteenth century tells us
that a large percentage of the books in print were centred on the Maha- bharata
and the Ramayana.
73 For the historiography of the origin and growth of the Assamese middle class,
see Rajen Saikia, Social and Economic History of Assam, 1853—1921 (Delhi:
Manohar, 2000).
74 For a preliminary reading of various myths associated with the temple of
Kamakhya and the social history of Assam, see Kishore Bhattacharya,
'Interpreting Hindu Myths Connected with the Kingdoms of North East India',
International Society for Folk Narrative Research, 1, 1 (2006), pp. 23-7.
75 Padmanath Bhattacharya, Kamarupa Sasanawali. e work included a detailed
introduction on the political importance of pre-seventh-century Assam and
elaborate discussion and translation of the texts of twelve inscriptions. In the post-
Independence period, the Assam Publication Board published another work, also
similarly entitledKamarupasasanavali, increasing the number ofinscriptions
deciphered and translated considerably and justifying the claim of Assamese
society to be an integral part of the Indian nation. Dimbeswar Sarma,
Kamarupasasanavali (Guwahati: Assam Publication Board, 1981).
76 e most well-grounded attempt to reassert the distinctiveness of Kamrupi
society and literature happened in the pages of Assam Bandhav, a literary
magazine published from 1909. Some issues of Assam Bandhav are available in the
S.K. Bhuyan Library of Cotton College, Guwahati.
77 For a bibliographical survey of works on Assamese Vaishnavism and
Sankardev, see Maheswar Neog, Sankardev and his Times.
78 Pratap Chandra Goswami, Kamrup Buranjir Ahilapati (Guwahati: LBS, 1986).

79 e Assam Sahitya Sabha has since 1917 continued to play an important role in
defining the contours of Assamese nationality, even including the very definition
of who is an Assamese. A short history of the sabha can be found in Maheswar
Neog, Annals of Asam Sahitya Sabha (Jorhat: Assam Sahitya Sabha, 1976).
80 Most of the works of Baruah which were first published in JARS have found
place in Maheswar Neog, ed., Kanaklal Baruah: Studies in the Early History of
Assam (Jorhat: Assam Sahitya Sabha, 1973).
81 Compared to the nineteenth century, it was the first half of the twentieth
century when Assam witnessed the growth of serious interest in modern
institutional academic scholarship. In the nineteenth century, in spite of the
contribution of people like Anandaram Dhekial Phukan, ICS, Anondu- ram
Barua, and Gunabhiram Baruah, most works were produced in a personal
capacity. Decades later, some of the new generation of students from Assam who
went to Calcutta for their higher education, became engaged in literary activities.
eir intellectual pursuits produced some important work on the literary history
of Assam, as also the consolidation of Assamese nationalism based on linguistic
aspiration. eir work was influenced by the intrinsic needs of Assam
nationalism. More serious academic scholarship began with the orientalist K.K.
Handique in the first quarter of the twentieth century. However, such academic
projects were directed more towards linguistic and philological study, with a far-
reaching impact on Assamese intellectual history, and in this context the role
played by Kanaklal Baruah and Bhuyan seemed more meaningful.
 6

Restructuring the Past in

Early-Twentieth-Century Assam
Historiography and Surya Kumar Bhuyan*

SUDESHNA PURKAYASTHA

T
he present essay concerns itselfwith the complex relationship of
modern Assamese historiography with certain vernacular texts
of the pre-colonial era, chiefly that rare genre of historical
writings called the buranji. is historical literature was not
'classical', for it was produced in Assamese. e manner in which the
buranji was used by the early-twentieth-century Assamese historian
Surya Kumar Bhuyan (1894-1964) to restructure a modern past for
Assam forms my central theme.
e history of Assam has oen been excluded from Indian historio-
graphy, and mainstream intellectuals do not usually include the region
in their discussion of history writing. e first volume of the Cambridge
Economic History of lndia provides an example of the marginalization of
Assamese history: here, Amalendu Guha's illuminating article on the
medieval economy of Assam finds space only as an appendix. Assamese
intellectuals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were aware of
this indifference. Historians of Assam, on the other hand, argued that
their neglected history was actually a treasure trove to be proud of.
With this end in view they tried to prove Assam's long tradition of
history writing—a tradition which most regions of India lacked. A
distinct historical discourse was thus created. e creation was the
consequence of activity by a newly formed Assamese elite which
resented Bengali domination, caused in part by Bengali's position as an
official language in Assam since 1836.
e marginalization of Assam and the Assamese language and lite-
rature gave an opportunity to historians like Bhuyan to highlight the
uniqueness of the long tradition of history writing in Assam. It also
helped shape a distinct idea of the nation (jati) in Bhuyan's history
writing. However, Bhuyan was also guided by a notion of the singularity
of Indian history, which conceived Assam as a fragment within an
organic totality. For him, a conceptualization of the nation in
historiography would be fulfilled if the historian succeeded in
restructuring a past shared in common by the Assamese people. I
explore here how Bhuyan used history as a powerful tool to reinforce
his idea of the Assamese nation against a form of domination within the
framework of the Indian nation state. e essay is organized in three
parts. e first deals with the formation of the modern historiography
of Assam; the second concerns itself with the transformation of the
historian; the third focuses on the conceptualization of the nation in
Bhuyan's writings.

e Modern Historiography of Assam

e word buranji is itself a topic of controversy. Since the nineteenth
century the word has carried diverse meanings in the writings of
different scholars. John Peter Wade, who first compiled the history of
Assam from 1793 to 1800, gives a very interesting depiction of the
nature of these chronicles of Assam, in which the meaning of the term
is ingrained. e account contains references to a royal mandate given
under the seal of the king Siva Singha (1714-44) to one Manohar, head
of the Bailung and Ahom scribes, to the following effect: 'e histories
of the King's predecessors should be compiled, the succession of Ahom
monarchs mentioned in detail and the book should be called Roopoot;
that the history should only contain the names and transactions of the
Swargadeos or Ahom Kings.' Roopoot is an Ahom word meaning a book
or document of knowledge. Roo means knowledge and poot means
documents.1
A different meaning of the term buranji has been given by
Padmanath Gohain Barua: it means 'a store that teaches the ignorant'.2
Hem Chandra Goswami and Golap Chandra Barua have also ascribed a
similar meaning to the term3 Grierson arrived at a similar
interpretation by combining three separate words: bu = ignorant, ran =
teach, and ji = storehouse. is has become the standard etymological
meaning of buranji.4
e multiplicity of meanings of the term raised another issue with
the introduction of vernacular print culture in the region. An article,
'Prithibir Purbakalia Itihashar Sankhep Bibaran [A Brief Description of
the Past History of the World]',5 published in Orunodoi, the first
newspaper in Assamese, strikingly opened the question of the
synonymy of two different words, itihash and buranji. A later issue of
Orunodoi published an article entitled 'Hindusthanar Buranji',6 the
preface to which used both the terms to indicate the same meaning.
Gradually, a trend using the term buranji became established, thereby
absorbing the meaning of itihash within it. Interestingly, during the pre-
Orunodoi era there was a trace of intellectual oscillation between these
two terms. In 1829 Haliram Dhekial Phukan, the first Assamese
historian of modern times, had published his history of Assam under
the title Assam Desher Itihashyani Assam Buranji. us, in the first half
of the nineteenth century the Assamese intelligentsia faced an
etymological dilemma which finally ended with the general acceptance
of buranji as the local vernacular equivalent of itihash, history. e
rationale of such a craing of meaning can be viewed, to borrow Jayeeta
Sharma's words, as
the intelligentsia's contention that the particular 'authentic' element of Assam's
past stemmed from the buranji's roots in Southeast Asian notions of chronicle
writing. At the same time we have to take care not to underestimate this elite's
desire to emphasize connections with pan-Indic textual traditions. is was
 propelled by their need to legitimize the land and people of Assam as having a
long association with the ritually elevated culture of 'Aryavarta'.7
In the early twentieth century, Surya Kumar Bhuyan accepted this
standard meaning of buranji, adding that it was an Ahom word which
meant history. He also tried to link the similarity of the term buranji
with the Japanese word boronji, meaning 'sacred letters'.8 Lila Gogoi has
tried to show the close affinity of the word buranji with some Tai words
like bu-lan-ji, bu-lan-chi, and pu-lan-chi. Bu-lan-chi means 'documents
about happenings of olden days which are not known to the grandsons'.
e word bu-lan-ji means 'granary of documents for ignorant
grandsons'. Pu-lan-chi means 'papers of grandfather to grandchildren'.
Gogoi has referred to a Chinese term, Shih Chi, which means
genealogical annals or records of historians,9 as allied with buranji.
Recently, scholars like Numal Gogoi and J.N. Phukan have refuted
the contention that buranji is an Ahom word. Phukan argues that the
chronicles did not have that name, and that later, under Sanskritic
influence, the term buranji developed out of Pali. Buranji, he says, is
linked to Puran Panji (Puran = old and Panji = record) in Orissa.10 e
manuscripts themselves do not refer to the term buranji. Yasmin Saikia
observes that the first chronicle in which this appellation appears is the
Tungkhungia Buranji, written in 1804.11
Anyway, the term buranji came to be synonymous with history. Now
the word has been generalized in Assamese to mean all histories. One
can see this from a visit to the Department of History at Gauhati
University, where, as late as January 2005, the gateway was stamped
with the remarkable caption Buranji Bibhag.12 e endorsement of the
term buranji as history by such an institution indicates the Assamese
elite's concept of history as somewhat different from the modular form
of nationalist historiographic thought. Curiously, this use is correlated
with the shaping of a modern Assamese past which gained added
significance in the context of the search for Assamese identity. e
recent proposal to form an Assamese history association with the name
Assam Buranji Sabha supports this trend further. is expansion in
meaning of the term buranji is significant in the context of the
nineteenth-century historiography of Assam. Applying buranji to
history was part of the agenda to nationalize the buranji.
It has oen been argued that the Indian past was constructed by
scholars from the West. Authors from Edward Said to Ronald Inden
have shown how Western Orientalist scholars constructed the East, and
how various fields of oriental study bound the colony and the empire in
a fusion of knowledge and power.13 Colonial bureaucrats took the lead
in writing the modern history of Assam. John Peter Wade was, as we
saw, a pioneer in introducing Assamese buranjis to the outside world. In
the opinion of Edward Gait, the other major colonial administrator and
historian of Assam, Wade deserved recognition as the first European to
undertake historical research in Assam.14 But it was Gait and Grierson
who systematically used pre-colonial Assamese texts as historical
sources for writing a modern history of Assam. Gait in particular
acknowledged Assam's long tradition of history writing in the form of
buranjis.15 Grierson endorsed the pride felt by the Assamese people in
their 'national literature' and their unique tradition of history writing,
which distinguished the state from other parts of India.16 To quote him:
'Whether the nation has made the literature or the literature the nation,
I know not, but as a matter of fact, both have been for centuries and are
still in vigorous existence.'17
Endorsement of these pre-colonial texts with the stamp of historicity
by these authorities encouraged the Assamese literati of the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries to write the national history of the region
on scientific lines. ese elites did not consider their medieval past an
age of darkness; rather, they were proud of the existence within it of a
rare genre of historical writings. is sense of possession played a
critical role in bringing into existence the concept of Assam as a nation.
Surya Kumar Bhuyan, in his outstanding work Ahomar Din, asserted
Assam's claim to written history:
I felt it necessary to know the history of the long rule of the Ahoms. ere is no
dearth of history for this long rule. e Ahoms were able to surpass other races
in writing history. In Assam, history writing owed its origin to the coming of
 the Ahoms. Before this [period], the authen-tic history of Assam cannot be
traced, because for that [earlier] period one depends onpuranas and legends.
Since the beginning of the thirteenth century, the history of our nation can be
called history in the true sense of the term.18
In the original text, Bhuyan used the term buranji to mean history, and
that history elided into the 'history of our nation'. e buranjis were
now regarded as the starting point of Assamese historiography, virtually
a national property to be preserved and venerated for future historical
research in Assam. Bhuyan started writing history to displace the
marginalization of Assam into the category of a 'Cinderella Province'.19
e national heritage of the buranji now gave Assam a means to resist
this marginalization.
Modern history writing in Assam began to be shaped by the re-
writing and editing of these buranjis. is effort was supplemented by
new information from both oral and written sources, as well as from
colonial gazetteers prepared by bureaucrats. Interestingly, all these other
writings also came to be called buranjis in Assamese. Harakanta Sharma
Barua wrote his Assam Buranji between 1870 and 1880, based on
Kashinath Tamuli Phukan's earlier Assam Buranji. Harakanta Barua was
not satisfied that the latter work constituted a complete history of
Assam. He collected oral information from erstwhile Ahom officials
and from pre-colonial buranji manuscripts.20 When editing pre-
colonial buranjis, the editors emphasized chronology and narrative
formation, and included additional information from vamsavalis or
family histories, and other indigenous texts. Hem Chandra Goswami
and Golap Chandra Barua were important editors in the early phase of
this work. Goswami edited Purani Assam Buranji in 1922, and Barua
edited Ahom Buranji in 1930. e latter was particularly eager to collect
information from vamsavalis and other records in order to compile a
complete Assam Buranji: 'this buranji as well as other Ahom Buranjis
(both in Ahom and Assamese), which I have come across so far, supply
very little information on many important points regarding great
personages for which vamsavalis and other records will be useful.'21
 While Golap Chandra Barua was keen to retain the authentic text of
the buranji, he was also mindful of the needs of the modern reader. In
Ahom Buranji he writes: 'e original Buranji was divided by the writer
into six chapters only without any divisions or paragraphs. Each chapter
was written continuously from beginning to end with indiscriminate
full stop signs "l". To bring it in line with the modern style, as advised by
the Director of Public Instruction, Assam, Mr. Cunningham, I have
separated the rule of each king from the rest by putting a heading over
each reign, and paragraphs according to my discretion.'22
Surya Kumar Bhuyan began his task of editing the buranjis similarly,
by collecting a large number of manuscripts belonging to various old
families and institutions. e American Baptist Mission, which
published the first Assamese newspaper Orunodoi in 1846, was the first
institution to create a major collection of buranjis. Bhuyan's career as a
historian may be said to have begun on 13 May 1925—four years before
the founding of the Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies
(DHAS) at Guwahati—when he made his landmark discovery of
Assamese and Sanskrit puthis 'cribbed, cabined and confined' in a
wooden box in the storeroom of the American Baptist Mission School
building. Bhuyan managed to get immediate permission from Rev. R.B.
Longwell, secretary of the mission, 'to inspect and examine' the
collection, make catalogues of the manuscripts, and transcribe some.
Consequently, Surya Kumar Bhuyan, assisted by a galaxy of Assamese
scholars like Jagneshwar Sharma, Madhab Chandra Barua, Himocklal
Barua, Badan Chandra Bardalai, Sonaram Choudhury, and Benudhar
Sharma, completed transcribing the discovered puthis in eighteen days.
e texts transcribed were the Tulasiduta Kavyam and four Assam
Buranjis.23
is was the beginning of an era of collecting and editing buranjis
which marks the phase when Bhuyan was not yet a professional
historian. ough a Professor of English Literature at Cotton College,
Gauhati, Bhuyan was not devoid of historical training because he had
been associated since 1918 with the Kamrup Anusandhan Samiti
(KAS), and was a member of its executive council as well as secretary.
Bhuyan presented his first article in English on the history of Assam
entitled Ahom Rule in Assam' at the annual session of the Samiti. Two
other valuable papers on Assamese history, entitled 'Reports on the
Manuscript of Assamese Puthis in Possession of the American Baptist
Mission at Gauhati', and 'Glimpses of Assam in the Records of the
Honorable East India Company', were also presented at the KAS. In
1926 Bhuyan, during his second tenure as secretary of the Samiti, was
one of the members of the team that collected a number of royal
artefacts directly from the Ahom royal family.24
From 1920, the Assamese claim to a tradition of history grew more
and more resolute. e establishment of the Department of Historical
and Antiquarian Studies (DHAS) in 1929 was a significant moment for
history writing in Assam. Surya Kumar Bhuyan was appointed assistant
director of the DHAS. e department was established, it was said, to
carry forward the projects of Charles Lyall and Edward Gait. In 1894
Lyall, officiating as chief commissioner of Assam, pointed out that steps
should be taken to arrest the destruction of Assamese historical
manuscripts by collecting the buranjis, making accurate copies, and
translating them.25In the same year Edward Gait submitted a scheme
defining the scope of the work to be undertaken. As a result of Gait's
scheme, important materials like coins, inscriptions, buranjis written in
Ahom as well as Assamese, religious works, folklore, mythology, and
traditions began to be collected, and the archaeological artefacts and
sites of Assam described and catalogued.26
e intervention of these two British bureaucrat-historians rescued a
large number of historical records in the province. But their greatest
achievement was the attention they paid to the vast unexplored field of
historical investigation in Assam. As a result of their impetus, fresh
attempts were made by both individuals and institutions to bring to
light new historical sources. ese pioneering efforts were followed by
the DHAS when Bhuyan, as its assistant director, announced that
'recovery and publication will be the guiding aim of the Department'.27
 From its inception, the DHAS was engaged in the collection of
manuscripts and making transcripts of historical material. Manuscripts
of the buranjis were collected either by correspondence or through
tours by workers of the department.28Manuscripts were also procured
locally on loan.29 e pre-editing phase of such buranjis was marked by
the hazardous task of collection and transcription by office assistants
such as Basudev Mishra, Upendranath Sharma, Jivan Chandra Nath,
Radhanath Hazarika, Dharmakanta Sharma, and Ananda- ram
Gohain.30 In March 1931 Anandaram Gohain visited, over a week,
some Ahom villages in the district of Sibsagar. A large number of Ahom
and Assamese manuscripts were traced and collected.31
Why were the buranjis so widespread? Originating in the Ahom
court, they should have been confined within court circles. Originally,
buranjis included only official documents, comprising periodic reports
transmitted to the court by military commanders and frontier
governors, diplomatic missions sent to and received from rulers and
allies, judicial and revenue papers, and day-to-day annals of the court.32
But with the expansion of the Ahom social structure through a process
of assimilation with different ethnic groups in the valley, the buranjis
spread to a wider area.33 Lila Gogoi has suggested that the assimilation
process within the Tai fold was helped by the liberal policy of offering
respectable official positions to new entrants. It was a tradition of the
Ahoms that one who belonged to the nobility should possess a buranji.
In order to prove noble ancestry, the Ahoms wrote buranjis for
themselves.34 Newly entering groups thus followed their royal
counterparts and also had buranjis written. ese then made them free
from the official narrative constraints of the Gandhia Bharal (royal
archives). e circle of authors and readers expanded, and a new social
class related to state power became the new patron of the buranjis.
Besides, the political disturbances of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, such as civil war and Burmese invasions, may have helped
disperse the manuscripts. ere is evidence that the transcript of a Shan
chronicle known as Lai-Lik Buranji was obtained from Burma by
Kripanath Phukan in 1888. e manuscript could have been taken there
by Assamese captives from the Ahom kingdom.35
It should be noted that private buranjis were treated at par with
government buranjis in terms of authenticity. Since the buranjis were
regarded as authentic records, they came to acquire social authority in
themselves. e social position of an individual was oen controlled by
the buranjis. Buranjis could single out individuals in society, either by
exalting or disgracing his social status. In the Ahom system of chak-
lang marriages, for instance, pages from buranjis were read out publicly
to confirm the social status of the families concerned.36 On the other
hand, certain pages in buranjis bear testimony to the disgracing of an
Ahom minister, Kirtichandra Barbarua. Ultimately, the buranjis became
his target: the minister burnt a large number of buranjis that stamped
him as jalambata (net-maker), indicating his low ancestry.37
From 1930 to 1936 Bhuyan compiled, collated, and edited seven
buranjis: namely, Assam Buranji by Harakanta Sharma Barua (1930),
Kamrupar Buranji (1930), Tungkhungia Buranji (1932), Deodhai Assam
Buranji (1932), Assamar Padya Buranji (1932), Padshah Buranji (1935),
and Kachari Buranji (1936). e Jayantia Buranji, Tripura Buranji, and
Assam Buranji from Sukumar Mahanta's family, and the Satsari Assam
Buranji were edited in 1937, 1945, and 1960. Bhuyan collected, collated,
and compiled the various buranjis before editing them. e volumes
were furnished with a Preface and Introduction, both in English and
Assamese, an exhaustive table of contents, and marginalia beside every
paragraph.38 e process of editing is explained by Bhuyan in the first
Bulletin of the DHAS:
e following processes are involved . . . transcription of the original;
comparison of the transcript with the original to guarantee accuracy; grouping
the transcript with the paragraphs and chapters with appropriate headings;
collation of the text in the event of there being two or more chronicles
containing the same version, so that no important detail or expression having
any philological interest may be le out in the final version; correction of
orthographical errors which reveal scribal idiosyncracy rather than a system;
rigidly avoiding any correction which will involve phonetic alteration; . . .
numbering of the paragraphs; correction of the galley proofs; . . . correction of
 page proofs once, twice and even thrice by comparison with the corrected
galley proofs and with press-copies and originals where necessary; compilation
of the title page, table of contents, preface, errata, etc., and their transcription
and proof reading. We are having a constant eye on the introduction of shorter
methods as far as they are compatible with literary accuracy and the approved
traditions of scientific editing of ancient texts.39
Yasmin Saikia points out two important traits in Bhuyan's editing of
buranjis. One is maintenance of the original prose style, and the other
the employment of a dual dating system, namely, the Indian Saka era as
well as the Tai-Ahom Lakli calendar.40
Bhuyan was, at the same time, well aware of the limitations of the
buranjis. For instance, he regretted that they contained few biographical
narratives:
Historiographers were strictly forbidden to give any prominence to
unconnected personal details, as we learn from King Siva Singha . . . e
history should only contain the names and transactions of Swargadeos . . . is
limitation is deplorable as we have an abundance of personal biographies which
should have been compiled if sanctioned by the Ahom rulers. Such biographies
would have offered us intimate glimpses and touches revealing the working of
the inner minds, thereby enabling ... us to form an accurate estimate of the
character of the leading figures of history.41
To bring to light the character of historical figures, Bhuyan himself
wrote such biographies as GopalKrishna Gokhale (1916), Anandaram
Barua (1920), Ramani Gabharu (1951), and Lachit Barphukan (1962).
Two of his works, Lachit Barphukan and His Times alongside Atan
Buragohain and His Times, can be categorized as historical biography.
Assam Jiyari, Chaneki, and Jonaki are collections of biographies. Bhu-
yan's biographies are marked by hero-worship. Rajen Saikia observes
that an inclination towards the hero cult reflects historical
consciousness among the marginalized and the deprived.42 ere is no
denying the fact that Bhuyan's 'Cinderella Province' was the nucleus of
his historical consciousness, which led him to worship the heroes of his
land.
ough Bhuyan valued buranjis for their historical value, and as the
starting point for future history writing, he did not treat them as fully
rational and scientific history. He acknowledged the 'historical instinct'
within buranjis but realized that they were not 'critical' according to the
modern conception.43 e immediate task before the editor was to give
them a rational and critical touch.44 For, the critical spirit 'constitutes
the greatest gi which the West has made to the East'.45 He elaborated
on this:
Once this spirit is in, there is no Rubicon which it will not cross. is was the
selfsame spirit which ushered in the humanities of Renaissance in place of
dogma-ridden medieval stupor. In India it has penetrated through the thick
masses of conventions and customs and eliminated the grain from the chaff. It
embodies the frankincense and myrrh which the magi of the West laid at the
feet of the newly incarnate child of the East. Man does not live by bread alone,
and the wealth of a pharaoh should be lavished at the attainment and diffusion
of this spirit, on the proper assimilation of which alone lies India's salvation and
redemption.46
e idea was to reconstruct the Assamese past by fusing the Western
spirit of rationalism with pre-colonial Assamese resources of history.
Such a fusion would 'eliminate the grain from the chaff ' and ultimately
create a scientific Assamese past. In 1927 Bhuyan wrote: 'We cannot
conceive the exact nature of the white man's burden if the infusion of
the critical spirit, love for truth for its own sake, veneration of the past
and selfless worship of culture be eliminated from its category.'47
Bhuyan's devotion to the critical spirit and rationalism can be noticed
in his evaluation of Harakanta Sharma Barua, an early-nineteenth-
century Assamese intellectual. Barua was depicted by Bhuyan as 'an
Assamese gentleman of the older school who assimilated to some extent
the growing influx of the Western spirit'.48 But Barua was too respectful
of the work of Western writers. Bhuyan believed that the rational and
critical spirit enabled a historian not to accept blindly any sort of
material, even if it originated in Western writers. Such a critical temper,
he thought, was unavailable in the writing of Harakanta Sharma Barua.
Curiously, Bhuyan's extreme devotion to rationalism looks shaky
because he went beyond factual history and created a literary synthesis
between fiction and the material of the buranji texts. Pre-colonial
buranjis oen crossed the confines of a chronicle that only narrates past
events with factual accuracy. Rather, they were marked by a 'dual
meaning of history' because they spoke both of what happened in the
past as well as of what did not happen.49 Categorizing them as history
as well as a genre of prose literature, Bhuyan argued:
It is curious how the Assamese intellect nurtured on the extravagance of
Vaishnava poetry could pin itself down to the chronicling of grim realities and
hard facts in a colourless and impersonal fashion. e bridge between these two
phases of the intellect labouring in the realm of fiction or of fact was afforded
by the model set forth in the buranjis . . . the chronicler of which enjoyed
immunity from the influence of imaginative poetry and who were subjected to
rigorous discipline and supervision as their works were compiled as a matter of
official routine.50
Bhuyan sought to complement in his own writings 'facts' with the
'imaginative instinct' ingrained in buranji literature. e boundaries
between rationalism, facts, and poetic imagination began to get blurred
in his historical works: history oen became literature and lite-rature
history.
In an article entitled 'Bartaman Assamiya Sahitya', Bhuyan spoke of a
Great History (dangar buranji) of the Assamese nation.51 e
reconstruction of this Great History would be possible, he said, if the
stories in pre-colonial buranji texts, suitably blended with historical
fact, were published. He made the same point in his article 'Assamia
Chhatrar Sahityacharcha', in which he recommended a two-pronged
historiographical pursuit based on literary talent on the one hand, and
historical projects of discovery and the collection of sources, on the
other. According to Bhuyan, literary talent produces elementary literary
pieces, while historical ventures—such as the collection of manuscripts,
legends, and folktales, the writing of family histories, the preparation of
a national biographical dictionary or a literary dictionary, the
compilation of local ethnic or folk customs—facilitate the advance of
Assamese literature.52 A fusion of these, he suggested, makes possible a
plausible reconstruction of the Assamese past. us, for Bhuyan, the
modern historiography of Assam was not totally borrowed from the
West, for it had to incorporate indigenous elements taken from an
existing tradition of prose literature. In trying to shape a distinctly
Assamese historical discourse, Bhuyan transformed the historiography
of Assam into the above genealogical structure.

e Making of the Historian and the

Model of Transformation
e year 1936 marked a turning point in Bhuyan's career as a historian.
e seeds of professionalism were sown that would culminate in his
emergence as the doyen of Assamese history. In this year he le for
England for his doctoral research at the School of Oriental and African
Studies (SOAS), London. e year 1936 brought to fruition Bhuyan's
curiosity about the Assamese past from his schooldays, which included
the years from 1909 to 1911, when Bhuyan was a student of Cotton
College at Gauhati. Later, he made a trip to the house of Kalinath Barua
of Sutargaon. A large number of old manuscripts, such as Padshah
Buranji and other Sachipatiya Puthis,53 were first examined by him
here. He also collected information on the Burmese invasions of Assam
from first-hand witnesses in villages, old people who were still alive in
his school days.54 As a student in Shillong, Bhuyan consulted the
Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Oriental Journal, and Orunodoi,
as well as Gait's History of Assam, which influenced his interest in
history.55 In Shillong he came in contact with another Assamese
historian, Golap Chandra Barua, the editor of Ahom Buranji.56
 e Assamese past had been virtually excluded from Indian
historiography. An attempt, it was obvious, had to be made to introduce
it to the rest of India. From the first decade of the twentieth century,
this task was undertaken by an institution called the Bangiya
Sahityanushi- lani Sabha under the guidance of Padmanath
Bhattacharya, Hem Chandra Goswami, Dheereshacharya, Gopal
Krishna Dey, Kalicharan Sen, and Mahendramohan Lahiri.57
Padmanath Bhattacharya was acutely aware of the marginalization of
Assam. e region's many languages and dialects, its heterogeneous
culture and history, had not been properly described or evaluated.
Padmanath devoted himself to the task of presenting Assamese history
and culture to the neighbouring province of Bengal. rough the efforts
of the Bangiya Sahityanushilani Sabha, the story of Jaymati was first
introduced to Bengal by Gopal Krishna Dey, the first librarian of
Curzon Hall (now Nabin Chandra Bardalai Hall).58 Bhuyan
contributed an article on Jaymati to the Calcutta journal
Nabyabharat.59 is was followed by a series of Bengali literary works
dealing with the historic events involving this remarkable princess. An
article on Jaymati written by Satadalbashini Biswas was published in
Bharat Mahila. Another essay entitled 'Abalar Atmadan was published
in Anusandhan Pakshik Patra. Narratives were written in Bengali by
Priyanath Chatterjee, Purnakanta Bhattacharya, and Sarat Chandra
Dhar.60 A Bengali play (jatra) on Jaymati was produced in which
Haripada Chattopadhyay played a major role.61 We find here, in short,
that a new course of historical writing had been inaugurated in Assam
—a direction that was to be transformed by Bhuyan in later years.
Bhuyan himself wrote:
It may be mentioned that some of our Professors realized the necessity of
apprising the wider public of the great and good things of Assam embodied in
its history and culture. In collaboration with some gentlemen of the town they
founded the Bangiya Anusilani Sabha. Papers were read at its meetings, mostly
on Assam history. It was through this Society that the story of Princess Jaymati
became popular in Bengal, leading to the compilation of a Bengali drama and a
number of poems on the subject.62
 Bhuyan had been engaged in writing books on the history and
antiquities of Assam from a very early age. In 1918 he published Aho-
mar Din. is had been serialized earlier in Usha, in 1911, when he was
a student at Cotton College. Before Ahomar Din, another Assamese
work, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, was published (in 1916) from Calcutta.
is was followed by the publication of a number of historical works in
Assamese. In 1926 appeared Bhuyan's first English work on history,
entitled An Assamese Nur Jahan, projecting Assam and her glorious
past before India and the world.
Bhuyan had an enthusiastic vision of Assam and her past; he was
active in rousing interest in Assamese history both in India and in
Europe. In 1926 he wrote to Muralidhar Barua of the Darpan Press,
where his book was being printed: 'I need not tell you that the success of
such a book depends entirely upon neat execution, printing etc. I
propose to arrange for the sale of the book in other parts of India as
well as in Europe, and neatness and get up will greatly help in the
matter.'63 Bhuyan's vision was partially realized when the first thousand
copies of the first edition were sold within a year of its publication.64His
zealous interest in circulating the story of the Assamese past beyond the
geographical confines of Assam is confirmed by a letter he wrote to a
well-known British publisher requesting him to publish the second
edition of his first English work:
I send here with a copy of my recently published book 'An Assamese Nur Jahan'
for your kind consideration if it can be published under the auspices of your
firm, for sale in India, Europe, America, Australia etc. . . . In my opinion, the
book will have a wider sale ifit be published in England decently backed by the
goodwill of your firm. Books about Assam are very rare, though there is a great
demand for enlightenment regarding this easternmost province of India.65
Bhuyan kept up a regular correspondence with scholars and publishing
houses, trying all the while to arrange for his publications on Assamese
history. In 1927 he wrote to the editor of e Statesman of Calcutta: 'I
have much pleasure in sending herewith an article on the Assamese
written specially for the "Statesman". Complaints are always made
regarding the paucity of literature on Assam and the Assamese people,
and the object of the present article is to dispel some erroneous ideas
about the people of Assam.'66
In Jaymati Upakhyan this positivist historian turned to an
imaginative poetic form and adopted the old language of medieval
Vaishnava poets of the region. In Assamese society, Vaishnava literature
is extremely popular and appeals to all classes of people. Popular
marriage songs as well as religious songs were composed in this literary
language of the puthis:
e language of Jaymati Upakhyan is the language of [the] old Assamese puthi,
i.e., it is the language in which the traditionally respected and beloved books of
the Assamese like Keertan Dasham Bhagabat etc. were composed . . . is
language is loved by young and old, men and women of Assam. is Assamese
language, through Bianam Ainam Keertandasham Namghosha, has entered the
minds of the Assamese and is now established there on a permanent throne.67
Clearly, therefore, Surya Kumar Bhuyan did not believe in confining
his history writing to the strict boundaries of the academic discipline.
He oen felt it necessary to popularize a glorious Assamese past so that
it could reach all classes of Assamese people. is is evident in his
zealous correspondence with Panchali Art Pictures of Lahore, who were
to make a film on Mir Jumla; Bhuyan was keen to supply original
historical material to the film company.68 Bhuyan also frequently urged
Assamese writers to create dramatic works on Assamese history that
might be put on stage. is popularizing mission of the historian was
best reflected in Jaymati Upakhyan. In that work, Bhuyan also adopted
the pen-name Bhanu Nandan, a name he first used in Madhu- jamini
(1915): 'In reply to the query about the identity of the poet Bhanu
Nandan, I can say that I have used this old stylized name in the
introduction first used in the poem Madhujamini to cope with the old
language of the puthi.'69 e use of this pseudonym indicates the
cultural cross-currents within which Bhuyan found himself. Madhu-
jamini, a purely poetic literary work, was written in the Brajabuli
language, very popular in Assamese society because of its link with the
sacred theme of Radha and Krishna, the most admired figures depicted
by medieval Vaishnava poets. erefore, in terms of making the work
popular, the pen-name was appropriate. But Bhuyan also tried to link
the Brajabuli language with Sanskrit, arguing that Assamese was
directly descended from the latter. Brajabuli, he said, was a vehicle
through which a majority of Sanskrit words had crept into Assamese.70
us, the Bhanu Nandan of the Brajabuli text differed from the Bhanu
Nandan of an Assamese text like Jaymati Upakhyan, in which the poet-
historian popularized a historical figure from the buranjis through a
vernacular medium without any link to a classical past.
In the Preface to Jaymati Upakhyan Bhuyan says: 'e elites of Assam
are conversant with the name of Jaymati. But the holy episode of Sati
Jaymati has not been circulated in the same way among the rural people
and women of Assam who are, as though, the backbone of the
Assamese nation.'71 One senses here Bhuyan's aspiration not just to
confine himself to the production of authentic and scientific history, but
to popularize it. is popularizing mission is also evident from such
markers as the use of folk metre—payar, dulari, chhabi, totay, and
lechari,72 compatible with the literary taste of subaltern social groups. If
Bhuyan's history writing was prompted by the desire to bring Assam
out of oblivion and circulate stories from the Assamese past throughout
the world, the popularizing mission represented by Jaymati Upakhyan
was actually a stepping-stone to that goal. In one of his articles, Bhuyan
observed that the lack of a sufficient reading public in Assam was the
major handicap in circulating literature among the people. erefore,
'to ensure larger circulation of his book, an Assamese author has to
adjust the manner and matter of his writings to suit the mind of all
readers from the most highly educated scholar to his semi-illiterate
countrymen.'73
e transformation of Bhuyan into a professional historian took place
in the course of his researches in the India Office Library, the libraries
of the British Museum, the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and
Ireland, the London Institute of Historical Research, the Indian High
Commissioner's Office, and SOAS, as well as through his association
with fellow researchers at SOAS, both Indian and European.74 e early
stage of professional exchange can be traced in Bhu- yan's
correspondence with academic institutions, and in his early
communications with the Professor of Oriental Studies at the University
of Rangoon, seeking to widen the horizon of his own knowledge of
Assam—Burma relations by collecting Burmese chronicles like
Yazawins, Konbaungset, and the Hamannan or Glass Palace
Chronicle.75
Such professional interaction evolved into an organized effort to
locate the Assamese past within a broader historical trajectory. Being a
professional historian, Bhuyan was an active member of the Indian
History Congress and used it as a forum for the projection of a local
past on a national stage. He was, in fact, associated with the Indian
History Congress from its inception in 1935. At the special request of
the general secretary of the Congress, he delivered in 1935 a lecture,
'Assam's Place in India: A Historical Survey', where he dealt with the
notable features of Assamese history and the key elements of Assamese
culture and civilization:
e seed of knowledge of my country is sown today in this great and
appreciative land of Maharashtra, and I firmly believe that through your
increasing and sympathetic interest in our culture and civilization our Assam
will be known far and wide. I am like a negligible ra in the ocean at the sight
of which Columbus conducted his expedition to unknown waters and finally
came upon a country of gold and silver. I request you follow this ra and enrich
the civilization of India by imbibing the vitalizing elements of our culture and
history.76
e seed sown at Poona grew into a full-fledged tree when, twenty-
four years later, in 1959, Assam hosted the twenty-second session of the
Indian History Congress. Bhuyan was elected president of the Local
History Section at this session in Gauhati. Assam had, as it were, come
out of oblivion. In his presidential address Bhuyan said:
It is in the fitness of things that there should be a section in each session of the
Indian History Congress devoted to the past history of the province where the
session is held. is is more appropriate in the case of Assam which has
unlimited possibilities of historical research, to which the attention of Indian
historians should be drawn, because the facts of Assam history if properly
disseminated will convince our countrymen in India and our fellow human
 beings in other parts of the world that the people of Assam are inheritors of
great achievements in the political as well as in the cultural and spiritual fields.
e knowledge of these achievements is practically confined to the four corners
of the state. It is a good sign that our countrymen in India are gradually taking
interest in the heritage and glory of Assam. e fixation of the venue of the
22nd session of the Indian History Congress in Assam is a visible symbol of this
growing interest.77
e Indian History Congress was an excellent forum for Bhuyan to
make contact with the stalwarts of Indian history. He kept up a regular
correspondence with Jadunath Sarkar, the doyen of Indian history, who
became a source of inspiration. is was acknowledged when Bhuyan
wrote to Sarkar: 'I have been constantly thinking of you these days, I do
not know why. My soul is urging me to write to you to say how much I
owe to the inspiration of your noble example and work in my humble
and lowly labours.'78 During his early years in office at the DHAS,
Bhuyan received an offer from Jadunath Sarkar for the publication of a
complete translation of Fathiyya-i-Ibria by Shahab- uddin Talish who
accompanied Mir Jumla during his 1662—3 expedition to Assam.79
Moreover, Aurangzeb's original letter to Mir Jumla written in Persian as
well as a number of manuscripts of buranjis, were obtained by Bhuyan
courtesy Jadunath Sarkar.80
Bhuyan's connections with scholars from various parts of India are
evident in a letter by Professor IP Seshadri of Kanpur: 'Looking at the
last number of your college magazine in which there are some things
concerning the history of Assam, I am wondering if you are aware of
the fact that one of the masterpieces of Telegu literature is a book in
which the scene is laid in Assam. It struck me. I might write a short
note on the subject and send it on to you.'81 We also come to know that
Bhuyan was requested by the vice-chancellor of Dacca University to
offer academic help to a scholar in that university who was working on
Mughal history.82 Bhuyan's stature as an outstanding scholar of
Assamese history was endorsed too by Nihar Ranjan Ray who, aer
reading Bhuyan's edited Assam Buranji, wrote to him:
 I have just finished reading Assam Buranji, and feel like writing to you at once
how admirably you have done your duty so far as this particular chronicle is
concerned. I have learnt a lot from your very valuable introduction and have
come to admire your scholarship, your patience, your steady unrewarded
labour and your academic integrity. You are really doing a great national work,
and your country and your own people ought to feel proud of you for the good
and great work you have done for the last two decades.83
Similar recognition is reflected in a letter from the Indologist Kalidas
Nag on behalf of the Mahabodhi Society—Nag requests Bhuyan to
contribute an article to the Golden Book of Buddhism, to be published
on the occasion of the fiieth anniversary of the society.84
Bhuyan's personal papers and correspondence bear testimony to his
persistence in building and sustaining a scholarly network. As someone
working in isolation in a remote region of the country, this was vital for
his professional life as a historian. As many as twenty-eight copies of his
book, Studies in the Literature of Assam, were sent to various celebrities,
including the president and prime minister of India.85 is was
facilitated because he was by this time a Member of the Indian
Parliament. Other published works were also circulated among
historians and intellectuals: Mir Jumlar Assam Akraman, Ramani Gab-
haru, and Studies in the Literature of Assam were sent to Jadunath
Sarkar, Srikumar Banerjee, Pratul Chandra Gupta, Surendra Nath Sen,
and C.D. Deshmukh.86 Upon reading Mir Jumlar Assam Akraman,
Jadunath Sarkar wrote to Bhuyan, 'I have read it with great interest and
consider it an authoritative work on the subject. You have done a great
service to scholars by printing several documents which were hitherto
available only in manuscript.'87 At another point, Sarkar wrote: 'Your
contribution to placing of the history of Assam on the solid scientific
basis of documentary evidence, and your tireless work in publishing the
source, will remain as your enduring monument.'88
Bhuyan also sent copies of his published historical works to re-
nowned academic journals. Studies in the Literature of Assam as well as
Nawab Mir Jumla and Raja Ram Singha in Assam were sent to the
Journal of Indian History for a review;89 that review was written by the
historian of South India Nilakanta Sastri.90 Reviews of Bhuyan's books
also appeared in Orient Review and Literary Digest.91
e dominant empirical traditions of history writing established in
the nineteenth century had clearly a great influence on Bhuyan. 'But
running through all the empiricism there is a recognizable theoretical
trend . . . ere is an unmistakable Carlylian bent, at times very pro-
nounced, at other times subdued, but the leaning was always there.'92
English literature shaped Bhuyan's style of history writing. Professor
P.C. Ghosh of Presidency College, Calcutta, implanted in him 'a love for
Carlyle and all that the great Victorian stood for.'93 As Manorama
Sharma puts it: 'Carlyle always looked out for heroes and creative minds
because for him the eternal truth appeared in great personalities and
not in ideas.'94 us, Bhuyan tried to understand Ahom—Mughal
relations through what he called 'three great men'—Lachit Barphukan,
Atan Buragohain and the Mughal general Ram Singh. His portrayal of
Lachit Barphukan as the ultimate hero of Assam and her people reflects
his Carlylian belief that 'the common folks need a hero to lead them
and shape them according to the requirement of the hero.'95

History and Nation

e construction of a modern past via positivist history gave body to
the concept of the Assamese nation. Surya Kumar Bhuyan's concept of
the nation has two facets: political and cultural. ese two aspects of the
Assamese nation are explicitly compartmentalized in his historical
writings.

A: Dilemma of Nation-Building
When shaping the political nation, Bhuyan faced a dilemma: the
political nation was sometimes reflected as part of the single political
unit of the Indian nation state, while on other occasions the Assamese
political past was shaped as a parallel political entity. Political
nationalism was characterized by Bhuyan's concept offreedom. 'Death is
preferable to a life of subordination to foreigners'96—this bold
statement by the Ahom king Chakradhwaj Singha, narrated in the
buranji texts, was cited by Bhuyan and identified by him as the
expression of Assam's love for freedom.97
Bhuyan's portrayal of the Moamaria rebellion is a good example of
his complex stance towards the question of national freedom. e
rebellion had shaken the foundations of the Ahom kingdom in the
eighteenth century. e conflict was between the Shakta royal authority
and the Vaishnava preceptors demanding political power. To Bhuyan,
the rebellion was a fight within the nation, that is, among the Assamese
themselves. But the conflict between the Mughals and the Ahoms was
between two different nations.98 To Bhuyan, India under Mughal rule
was a state of bondage, and his writings on the Ahom—Mughal conflict
highlight the desire of Assamese independence from Mughal rule.
Freedom could exist only when the ruler and the ruled were of the same
community. us, British rule over Assam was a rule of foreigners: 'e
Burmese came, saw and conquered. eir oppression reduced the
country to desolation and ruin from which it was rescued by the
British, who drove the intruders from the land and established their
own domination.'99 And further:
Peace was restored, and the new British rulers made every endeavour to bring
back the country to its pristine prosperity. But the Assamese, who were at first
grateful to the British for the restoration of peace and order, became gradually
disgruntled at the sight of foreigners occupying their land, for they believed that
good government is no substitute for self government. For the attempts made
by the Assamese to regain their independence during the early period of British
rule, Piyali Barphukan and Jiuram Dulia Barua paid their lives. In the Sepoy
Mutiny of 1857— 8 the attempt was revived . . . e principal leaders Maniram
Dewan and Piyali Barua, were hanged and their chief compatriots were
sentenced to banishment. British rule was now consolidated in Assam, though
signs of opposition were revealed here and there in sporadic outbursts . . . e
people of Assam threw themselves, heart and soul, into India's struggle for
independence under the leadership of the Father of the Nation.100
 e anti-colonial nature of nationalism became blurred and fuzzy
when Bhuyan tried to identify the Assamese nation with the Ahom
state; Bhuyan tried to remove the fuzziness by turning it into the anti-
Mughal struggle. By this construction of the past, he tried to locate the
Assamese polity as being parallel with the Mughal state. In his view, the
example of Shivaji's success in the Deccan inspired the Assamese
monarch Chakradhwaj Singha to make extensive preparations to expel
the Mughals from Guwahati.101
Bhuyan's portrayal of a generic Assamese society evolving within the
Ahom state tries to assure homogeneity by playing down the legacy of a
composite culture. e Moamaria rebels, he says, stood for a group of
subject people of the Ahom kingdom who became anti-monarchical
and took up arms against royal authority. us, the whole Assamese
nation (jati) was divided into two groups. One group supported Ahom
royal authority while the other sought to bring it down—much as the
English were divided into Cavaliers and Roundheads during the reign
of Charles I. Bhuyan went to the extent ofsaying that the Moam- arias
were an integral part of the Assamese nation and that, because of their
ethnic affinity with them, the Assamese royal officers employed against
the Moamarias chose to collaborate with them in their hour of peril
rather than oppose them.102 Bhuyan thus constructed a demographic
identity for the Assamese people founded on the unity of the Ahom
state. As a territorial national unit Assam was constructed by him in
Ahomar Din in the following words:
In the first decade of the thirteenth century, Swargadev Sukapha of the Tai race
came to Saumarakhanda of Kamrup and by his extraordinary gallantry and
bravery subjugated the indigenous people of the place. Realizing their
incomparable valour, the Kamrupias named them as 'Asama' (na+sama). e
Tai people pronounced (s) as (h). erefore, Asama was transformed into
'Ahom'. In Tai language the word 'Ahom' means 'sweet smelling ambrosia'.
Hence, the Ahoms thought: these people have conferred an esteemed title on
us; coming down from Heaven, we are like sweet smelling ambrosia and they
have named us 'Ahom'. So they happily adopted the name. Since then, they
were identified as Ahoms. e words Assam and Ahom have been taken as
distorted forms of Asam and Ahom.103
Bhuyan tried to prove the crystallization of the territorial unity of
Assam via the foundation of Ahom rule in the valley. e name (Asam
= Ahom) was a symbol of the territorial identity of modern Assam.
Vaishnavism was seen as the binding cultural force within Assamese
society, providing the people a social bond:
e nama-kirtan or religious music and recital, referred to by the royal ladies of
Ambar as being universally popular in Assam, was the direct off-shoot of the
Vaishnava revival of the fieenth and sixteenth centuries . . . From one end to
other, the villages resounded with nama- kirtan; the Ahom Kings Jayadhwaj
Singha, Chakradhwaj Singha and Udayaditya Singha came under the influence
of Vaishnavism. e popularity of Vaishnavism has continued till this day.104
But the common historical past of the Assamese people had to be
reconciled with larger Indian history. Indian nationalism crept into
Bhuyan's writings on Assam when he attempted to identify a pan-
Indian aspect in Assamese history: in Tungkhungia Buranji, Bhuyan the
editor sought to present King Rudra Singha as a pan-Indian political
actor who 'aimed at elevating his kingdom to the rank of a first rate
power in India'. is monarch's importance beyond Assam is
important.
With the resources of a fully developed state at his command he proposed to
unfurl the flag of victory in the Mughal territories, and if possible to seize the
throne of Delhi . . . e vassal chieains on the Assam frontier were bound by
treaty terms to render timely assistance to their liege-lord. Rudra Singha
deputed agents . . . to different places of India to study the customs of these
places and collect information regarding the resources and strength . . . e
king deputed messengers to the Rajas of different parts asking them not to offer
him any resis-tance in his expedition. e messengers came back with a reply
from rajas that they would render all possible co-operation to the powerful
Swarga-Maharaja of Assam if he attempted to occupy the throne of Delhi as the
indignities hurled at them by the Mughal Badshahs were becoming more and
more intolerable.105
Bhuyan was keen to show the Ahom king's plans for a Bengal
expedition as the incipient political project of a national monarch.
 B: Shaping of a Cultural Nation: Language and Nation
Bhuyan the historian did not vacillate when arguing for a language-
based nationalism for Assam. Language was identified as a central
feature defining Assamese culture. In creating a modern cultural past
for Assam, Bhuyan used the buranji texts as a powerful weapon to resist
domination over his mother tongue, and to assert an Assamese
linguistic identity.
When analysing the cultural aspect of nationalism reflected in Bhu-
yan's writings, it needs to be pointed out that history writing in Assam
did not closely follow the trajectory of other Indian linguistic regions.
Bhuyan asserted that the Assamese had written their own history in the
past, and that the Assamese nation had crystallized through history.
Contrary to nationalist intellectuals of Bengal, like Bankim Chandra
Chattopadhyay who wrote 'Bengalees have no history', the Assamese
historian claimed that their history preceded that of the nation. e
essence of this selfin historiography was more or less Assamese, but the
concept of the 'other' would play a crucial role in further depicting the
linguistic identity of the Assamese. A key element here was the decision
in 1836 to make Bengali the official language of Assam. From that time,
Bengali was introduced compulsorily in all the schools and courts of
Assam.
Bhuyan was conscious of the degeneration of his mother tongue and
regretted the attempt to brand Assamese as a patois of Bengali. He also
expressed his gratitude to the American Baptist Mission for recognizing
the 'distinct and separate identity' of Assamese and its 'literature of great
antiquity'.106 He emphasized the separate identity of the Assamese
language by linking it with the Ahom state power that had patronized
Assamese literature in the form of prose (the buranjis), as well as poetry,
and had thus produced the great corpus of Assamese literature:
Assam and Ahom are distorted forms of Asam and Ahom. But despite having
originated from the same root word Ahom, the Assamese and the Ahom
language are not the same. e Ahom language was completely different from
the Assamese language. e numerical weakness of the Ahoms of royal blood
led them to adopt the Assamese language, the language of the subject people, to
 use it in official works for administrative convenience . . .107. . . e Assamese
language is an ancient language which owed its origin from Sanskrit . . . e
Assamese language was highly developed in the days of the Ahoms. ere are
many factors responsible for this development. Royal patronage and sympathy
as well as the love and devotion for the Assamese language among religious
monks and other litterateurs were among the main causes . . . Among them the
names of such great poets as Srimanta Sankardev, Madhavdev, Kangsari,
Purushottam akur, Ananta Kandali, Ram Saraswati, Sri- nath Kandali,
Ruchinath Kandali, Dwija Srichandra Bharati, Narayan- dev, Bhabananda
Mishra, Gopal Ata, Govinda Mishra can be mentioned. Almost all of them
contributed to Assamese poetry. . . But that does not mean that the Assamese
language lagged behind in prose literature. e buranjis bear the mark of a
highly developed prose literature.108
Bhuyan also sought to prove the separate identity of his mother tongue
by emphasizing its distinct derivation from the Sanskrit: 'the language
of the buranjis is pure Assamese. e Assamese language is an ancient
language and it owed its origin to Sanskrit. Earlier, the language
abounded in Hindi, Kashmiri, Brajabuli and other words. Today it has
about 63 per cent Sanskrit words.'109
Bhuyan's initial phase of history writing was conducted in three
languages: Assamese, English, and Bengali. As early as 1923, he
contributed an article entitled 'Assame Ahom Rajatwa' in the
prestigious Bengali periodical Prabasi (the article was earlier presented
by him at the Uttarbanga Sahitya Sammelan in Jalpaiguri).110 Bhuyan's
command over Bengali can be gauged from his winning the first
position in a Bengali sonnet competition at the Eden Hostel in
Calcutta.111 e trend was not unexceptional among the Assamese
literati of the time. Haliram Dhekial Phukan, the pioneering Assamese
historian, adopted Bengali as his medium in Assam Buranji, the first
printed history of Assam (1829); copies of this work were distributed
free among readers.112 Dhekial Phukan's choice of language was
attributed by Bhuyan to the historian's wish to propagate Assamese
history in the neighbouring province of Bengal, where many erroneous
notions were held about Assam and the Assamese people.113 Ironically,
the use of Bengali de-clined sharply from the 1930s, the golden period
of Bhuyan's career. From this time, Bhuyan wrote history only in
Assamese and English. is changed language consciousness was
largely due to feelings of subordination among the Assamese to the
official imposition of Bengali. e imposition led to apprehensions
among educated Assamese that they would lose their linguistic identity.
Such fears prompted Bhuyan to say: 'Even our lexicons embody a
slender fraction of the total output of our nation's vocabulary.'114 e
mother tongue of the Assamese is here transformed into a 'nation's
vocabulary'. Language had become the mark of national identity.
Bengali linguistic domination catalysed Assamese intellectuals to
project the richness and sophistication of Assamese literary history.
Bhuyan maintained that Assamese was perfectly capable of communi-
cating the most complex and sublime ideas. e quality of literary prose
and the nature of historical chronicling in the buranjis strengthened his
conviction. Consider, for instance, these comments by Bhuyan on the
language of Srinath Duara Barbarua: 'e language of Barbarua's
buranji is pure Assamese. e example of the purity of the Assamese
language preserved in Barbarua's buranji will greatly help in
ameliorating the immense change which the present-day Assamese
language has witnessed. An intensive study of Barbarua's buranji is
absolutely necessary to express all forms of higher thought.'115
Benedict Anderson has pointed out the critical role of imagination in
the emergence of nationalism.116 Dipesh Chakrabarty has opened up
the word 'imagination' to further interrogation by arguing that its role
in nationalist discourse is more complicated than is suggested by the
distinction between real and factual.117 Bhuyan's writings, too, show
the complex role of imagination that oen made his historiography
exceed the orbit of 'reality'. ough in theory Bhuyan considered the
imagination an obstacle on the road to a true scientific history of
Assam, his writings, as we have seen, oen reveal a mix of fact and
fiction.
Buranjir Bani is an example of the 'affective history' created by
Bhuyan. e book is a collection of sixteen articles in Assamese on
different aspects of the history of Assam. Bhuyan argued in its
introductory chapter that an author could bring life to a historical work
by adding literary flavour while keeping intact the historicity of events.
He also announced that he was writing the essays to create admiration
for the nation's past and to inspire people to love their country.118 e
lost glory of the Assamese language was, he said, like Sita's exile: 'Amar
Bhasha Janakir banabas ghatise.'119 She had to be rescued from her
cruel fate.
Despite his bilingualism, Bhuyan felt he could not create the aura of
affect around Assam's history by writing in a foreign language. His
views foreshadow Ranajit Guha's: 'at originality could, of course, be
put to genuinely creative use only in autonomous exercises where the
compulsion to fit the language to a foreign text or a foreigner's aptitude
for it did not constrain the freedom it required to generate sentences
according to the full measure of its competence.'120 Bhuyan's Assamese
works seek to prove the quality of his mother tongue—to create
sentences which show that, unless used by native speakers, a language
bears the marks of inadequacy. In his widely read work titled Studies in
the History of Assam, he writes in English of Mula Gabharu, who fought
against the Muslim invader Turbak in the thirteenth century: 'e
history of Assam abounds in womanly courage and determination. First
comes Mula Gabharu, who rushed to the thick of the contest, sword in
hand, to avenge the death of her husband in the war with the Padshah
of Gaur and died, like Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi, fighting in the
battlefield.'121
In his Assamese work Ahomar Din Bhuyan has this to say on the
same subject:
Aer the death of king Sukapha, thirty-nine kings ascended the throne. e
heirs of Sukapha ruled Assam with a firm hand for six hundred years. Seeing
the prosperity of Assam, the Muslim emperors of Delhi lost their sleep. e
Muslims invaded Assam fourteen times, but they could not succeed. Only the
Assamese, among all Indians, could defeat the Muslim invaders. e Muslim
invaders were surprised by the valour of Assamese soldiers ... In fighting the
enemies not only the brave Assamese men but also a large number of spirited
 and brave women came forward to free the proud Assam-Sun [Gaurav Ravi]
from the eclipse of disgrace [Kalanka Rahu] ... In 1532, Turbak came for the last
time to invade Assam and reached up to Kaliabar. Mula Gabharu, the widow of
the Bargohain, like the goddess Chamunda, reached the battlefield riding on a
horse, sword in hand, to drive out her husband's enemy Turbak. Not only did
she fight bravely, her example generated bravery and boldness in the hearts of
hundreds of Assamese warriors. It was proved in the battle of Dikraimukh . . .
Among the Assamese, there was a Joan of Arc.122
e English version is a straightforward narrative of historical events,
with a reference thrown in to Lakshmi Bai, a historical figure of the
nineteenth century. But the Assamese version on Mula Gabharu does
much more, knitting Mula's love for her husband with the qualities of
bravery, inspiring leadership, and patriotism.
Another example can be cited from Bhuyan's writings on Jaymati. In
the introduction to Tungkhungia Buranji he says:
During the reign of Sudaipha Parvatiya Raja, the ambitious viceroy of Gauhati,
Laluk Sola Barphukan, surrendered the territory under the charge of Nawab
Mansur Khan, a deputy of Sultan Azamtara, Governor of Bengal. ey seized
the person of Gadapani's wife, Jaymati Kunwari, and attempted to extract
information from her about her husband's movements. e princess refused to
offer any clue whatsoever which might lead to the discovery of her husband's
whereabouts. e severest tortures were inflicted upon the inexorable princess
but she prepared to die in the hands of the royal executioners rather than
become an instrument of her husband's destruction.123
In Ahomar Din Bhuyan speaks of the same subject thus:
e Ahom Kingdom faced a tremendous crisis in the later part of the
seventeenth century and, for a time, it was felt that the kingdom would not last
long. e revolution within the kingdom was due to the selfishness of the
ministers. From AD 1670 to AD 1681, eight kings ascended the throne. Most of
them met with unnatural deaths at the hands of ministers. Because of the
weakness of the state, the tribes started to commit atrocities on innocent
subjects. Revolution inside the capital and atrocities outside the capital—what
should I call this situation except a period of crisis and danger? To save the
declining nation [patanonmukha jati], Jaymati's life had to be sacrificed. As a
result of this sacrifice of the Sati, Assam became conscious. e darkness in
which the ministers were trapped, unable to see the adverse effects of their
actions on the future, was removed by the death of Jaymati. e elderly
 dignitaries committed sins like regicide and revolt to satisfy their self- interest,
but, on the other hand, what a sacrifice by Jaymati! Her own life was more
important than her husband's, so she sacrificed herself for her husband. As a
result, Jaymati's dedication of her life was like an offering to a peace sacrifice
(santi yagna) for the country. Realizing the adverse impact of their selfishness,
ministers and dignitaries forgot everything and were bent upon restoring the
peace and welfare of the state. ey deposed the weak ruler and installed the
farsighted and vigorous Gadapani in his place. His good administration
brought back peace in the kingdom. e country's welfare was purchased at the
price of Jaymati's life.124
e English version is a flat narrative aiming to provide an objective
report of the internal crisis in the Ahom state. Jaymati, as a devoted
wife, would not disclose her husband's whereabouts and was tortured
and killed by royal executioners. e Assamese narrative has on the
other hand the flavour of an evocative literary work. e story is
constructed around a plot that opposes the selfishness of the Ahom
ministers with the self-sacrifice of Jaymati. In telling the story the
historian celebrates the self-sacrifice of Mula Gabharu and Jaymati for
the sake of the nation. e use of metaphors like 'Assamar gaurav ravi',
'Kalanka Rahu, and 'Goddess Chamunda' were only available in
Assamese.
Further, the historian was also concerned in the Assamese version
with moral principles. e sins committed by the nobility were leading
to the disintegration of the Ahom kingdom; it was ultimately saved by
the self-sacrifice of Jaymati. Bhuyan also endorsed this moral vision in a
well-known work, Assam Jiyari.125 His moral stance was, in fact,
derived from the buranji texts. e authors of the buranjis wrote of the
fate of Ahom kings within a moral framework derived from mythology.
In Kamrupar Buranji, we come across a letter written by Pran Narayan
to the Ahom king Jayadhwaj Singha: 'Look, Ramachandra, Suratha and
Yudhisthira lost their kingdoms. But all of them remained active and
regained their kingdoms and prestige. Our prestige will be lowered if we
are inactive.'126 ree great figures of mythology who had lost and
regained their kingdoms on moral grounds are invoked to assert the
victory of dharma or piety. Again, Madhab Charan says to Shaista
Khan: 'Earlier, Yudhisthir along with his four brothers and the wife were
deprived by Duryodhana and his party who conspired against them. Yet
by the force of the wheel of time, Yudhisthir Chakra- varti became king
of kings of the Universe. Duryodhana's conspiracy could not last long;
there was no trace le of his fame and virtue.'127
Such moral drama within buranjis resonates in the twentieth- century
Assamese historiography of Surya Kumar Bhuyan:
I for myself will not be satisfied by merely giving a picture of the externals of a
nation; and I would ask historians to explore how moral superiority led to the
peace, prosperity and solidarity of a nation, and how moral degradation has
been the cause of its downfall and decay. It will be seen that a country has gone
to the depth of political ruination because its morals are too low, because
selfishness plays an important part in the day-to-day actions of its rulers and
nobles, because they cannot subordinate themselves to the interests of their
country. . . History will show that the well being has been dependent on an all
pervasive moral force, on rigid elimination of unjustness and selfishness in the
minutest details of administration.128

Conclusion
Surya Kumar Bhuyan's history writing contained within itself several
conceptual oppositions. e concepts of fact and fiction, classicism and
pride in the vernacular, Western superiority and the love of oriental
culture and indigenous tradition—all these shaped his historiography
and that of his followers. One critic of Bhuyan is of the opinion that
despite uncovering valuable material on Assam's past, his writing is
devoid of critical analysis and historical insight.129e criticism may be
valid if one's only interest is writing scientifically conducted history and
recording 'objective' historical truth. Bhuyan's endorsement of
rationalist history was only a preference for a particular mode of history
writing. Going beyond the concept of objective truth, Bhuyan wanted to
make 'the unfamiliar past familiar through the use of figurative
language' and thereby give meaning to his narratives.130
He was concerned that its exclusion from Indian historiography had
largely obliterated the Assamese past, putting at stake the very identity
of the Assamese language and, hence, of the Assamese nation. e
separate identity of the Assamese language needed an Assamese
political past strong enough to present a parallel power structure
alongside the Mughal state. Such a construction of the nation provided
a new dimension in historiography that could free the modern
Assamese past from being a 'suppressed history'.131 Bhuyan was in
short able to create a distinctive mode of history writing by accepting
the Western spirit of rationalism within the framework of an
imaginative approach derived from pre-colonial vernacular traditions.
Bhuyan was also able to engage with the dominance of Bengali over
Assamese. His view was that the lack of history and prose literature
during the pre-colonial era had made Bengalis less powerful in dealing
with external aggressors. On the other hand, Assamese culture could
trace an affinity with that of the British because it possessed history and
prose literature.

Notes
*I acknowledge my sincere thanks to Professor Gautam Bhadra, Dr Indrani
Chatterjee, and Dr K.T. Rammohan for valuable comments on an earlier dra. I
remember with thanks Professor Partha Chatterjee, Professor Sanjay
Subrahmanyam, Professor Lakshmi Subramanian, and Professor Himadri
Banerjee for helpful comments. I also express my gratitude to Mr Bijay Kumar
Bhuyan, Dr Prashanta Chakravarty, Dr J. Das, Dr J. Ahmed and Dr B.R. Bharali
for their kind co-operation in collecting some valuable materials used in this
essay. All translations from Assamese into English are mine, unless otherwise
specified.
1 A1/Vol. 2, Personal Records (S.K. Bhuyan, 'A Review of Dr. John Peter Wade's
'History of Assam' compiled between 1793-1800', Gauhati, 10 November 1924.
Published in Cotton College Magazine, January 1925).
2 Padmanath Gohain Barua, Asamar Buranji (Guwahati: Assam Prakashan
Parishad, 3rd edn, 2004).
3 Lila Gogoi, e Buranjis: Historical Literature of Assam (Guwahati: Omsons
Publication, 1986), p. 14.
4 Ibid.

5 Orunodoi, 1, 8 (1846).

6 Ibid., 5, 3-4 (1850).

7 Jayeeta Sharma, 'Heroes of our Times: Assam's Lachit, India's Missile Man', in
John Zavos, Andrew Wyatt, and Vernon Hewitt, eds, e Politics of
CulturalMobilization in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 173.
8 A1/Vol. 2, Personal Records ('A Review of John Peter Wade's "History of Assam"
', S.K. Bhuyan's handwritten note attached).
9 Gogoi, e Buranjis, pp. 15, 29.

10 My interview with Professor J.N. Phukan, 27 October 2005, at the Assam State
Archives, Guwahati.
11 Sayeeda Yasmin Saikia, Assam and India: Fragmented Memories, Cultural
Identity, and the Tai-Ahhom Struggle (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2005), p. 118.
12 e name of the department has recently been changed to Itihash Bibhag.

13 Gautam Bhadra, 'Prak Rammohan Yuge Companir Shashaner Prati Kichhu

Bangali Buddhijivir Manobhab', Bangla Academy Patrika, 5th issue, p. 80.
14 Gogoi, e Buranjis, p. 3. See also the essay by Arupjyoti Saikia in the present
volume.
15 Edward Gait, A History of Assam (Calcutta: acker, Spink and Company, 3rd
edn, 1963), p. viii.
16 Gogoi, e Buranjis, p. ix.

17 Ibid.

18 S.K. Bhuyan, Ahomar Din (Jorhat: Assam Publishing House, 1912), p. 89.
19 S.K. Bhuyan, Studies in the History of Assam (New Delhi: Omsons Publications,
2nd edn, 1985), p. 16.
20 S.K. Bhuyan, ed., Assam Buranji by Harakanta Sharma Barua (Guwahati:
Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, 1930), Author's Preface.
21 Golap Chandra Barua, ed., Ahom Buranji (Gauhati: Published by Assam
Administration, 1930), Preface.
22 Ibid.

23 Ai/Vol. 5, Personal Records ('A Descriptive Account of the collection of

Assamese and Sanskrit Puthis in Possession of the American Baptist Mission',
Gauhati, Assam, 3 July 1925).
24 Nanda Talukdar, Surya Kumar Bhuyan (Guwahati: Pragjyotish Granthashala,
1984), pp. 181-3.
25 Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, Bulletin No. 1, Compiled
by S.K. Bhuyan, Gauhati, 1932, p. 3.
26 Ibid.

27 Ibid., p. 5.

28 Ibid., p. 19.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid., p. 8.

31 Ibid., p. 19.

32 Gogoi, e Buranjis, p. 171.

33 Ibid., p. 173.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid., p. 133.

36 Ibid., p. 15.
37 Ibid., p. 126.

38 Surendramohan akuria, ed., Dr. Surya Kumar Bhuyan: A Birth Centenary

Volume, 1894—1994. Part 1 (Guwahati: Birth Centenary Committee, 1994),
Editorial, p. 2.
39 Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, Bulletin No.1, p. 16.

40 Sayeeda Yasmin Saikia, 'Some oughts on Professor Surya Kumar Bhu- yan as
an Editor of Assamese Buranjis', in Surendramohan akuria, ed., Dr. Surya
Kumar Bhuyan: A Centenary Volume, pp. 31-2.
41 S.K. Bhuyan, Lachit Barphukan andHis Times (Gauhati: Lawyer's Bookstall,
1947), p. 122.
42 Rajen Saikia, 'Surya Kumar Bhuyanr Bishaye Dutaman Katha', Deuka, 2, 6
(October-November 1998), pp. 17-18.
43 S.K. Bhuyan, ed., TungkhungiaBuranji (Gauhati: Department of historical and
Antiquarian Studies, 1962), Introduction, p. xvi.
44 Gogoi, e Buranjis, p. 16.

45 Bhuyan, Studies in the History of Assam, p. 208.

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid., pp. 200-1.

48 Bhuyan, ed., Assam Buranji by Harakanta Sharma Barua, Preface. p. ii.

49 Sudipta Kaviraj, e Unhappy Consciousness: Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay

and the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India (Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1995), p. 110.
50 Bhuyan, ed., Tungkhungia Buranji, pp. xxii-xxiii.

51 S.K. Bhuyan, 'Bartaman Assamiya Sahitya', in Yogendra Narayan Bhuyan, ed.,

Bibidha Prabhanda (Guwahati: Lawyer's Bookstall, 2005), p. 15.
52 S.K. Bhuyan, 'Assamiya Chhatrar Sahityacharcha', in Yogendra Narayan
Bhuyan, ed., Bibidha Prabandha, p. 19.
53 Talukdar, Surya Kumar Bhuyan, pp. 41-2. Sacipatia puthi means a manuscript
written on bark leaves. Saci is the name of a tree available in Assam forests.
Sacipat is a locally prepared writing material widely used in Assam.
54 Ibid., p. 42.

55 Ibid., p. 46.

56 Ibid.

57 Prasanta Chakravarty, 'Padmanath Vidyavinode: Guwahatir Bangiya Sahitya-

Sanskriti o Samakal', Phoenix (Guwahati, 2004), p. 76.
58 Ibid., p. 87.

59 S.K. Bhuyan, Jaymati Upakhyan (Guwahati: Lawyer's Bookstall, 1920), p. 63.

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid. Haripada Chattopadhyay, Rani Jaymati (historical play) (Calcutta:

Bhattacharya and Sons Pustakalay, 1333 Bangabda).
62 S.K. Bhuyan, A Cottonean's Reminiscences, 1909—11 (Guwahati: Bijay Kumar
Bhuyan, 2001), pp. 8-9.
63 A1/Vol. 7, Personal Records (From S.K. Bhuyan to Muralidhar Barua, Darpan
Press, Jorhat, District Gauhati, 8 December 1926).
64 A1/Vol. 6, Personal Records (From S.K. Bhuyan to Messrs Fisher Unwin Ltd.
Publishers, 1, Delphi Terrace. London, Gauhati, 1 February 1927).
65 Ibid.

66 A1/Vol. 7, Personal Records (From S.K. Bhuyan to the Editor of the Statesman,
Calcutta, Gauhati, 6 November 1927).
67 Bhuyan, Jaymati Upakhyan, Introduction.
68 A1/Vol. 15, Personal Records (Govt. of Assam, DHAS Narayani Handiqui
Historical Institute. No. 7719. From S.K. Bhuyan to the Manager, Pan- chali Art
Pictures, Lahore, Gauhati, 16 December 1944).
69 Bhuyan, Jaymati Upakhyan, Introduction.

70 A1/Vol 2, Personal Records.

71 Bhuyan, Jaymati Upakhyan, Introduction.

72 Ibid.

73 A1/Vol. 7 (Extract from 'e Assamese' by S.K. Bhuyan, published in e

Assam Review).
74 Talukdar, Surya Kumar Bhuyan, p. 143.

75 A1/Vol. 7, Personal Records (From S.K. Bhuyan to U Pe Maung Tin, Professor

of Oriental Studies, University of Rangoon, Gauhati, 20 November 1927).
76 A1/Vol. 5 (All India Modern History Congress [Now Indian History Congress]
Account of the First Session at Poona, June, 1935, Compiled by S.K. Bhuyan).
77 Record 11-4/13 (Indian History Congress, 1959, and Oriental Conference,
1964).
78 From Surya Kumar Bhuyan to Jadunath Sarkar, Calcutta, Gauhati, 17 January
1951.
79 Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, Bulletin No.1, p. 14.

80 Ibid., pp. 19, 21-2.

81 A1/Vol. 7 (P. Seshadri, Principal and Professor of English, Cawnpur, to S.K.

Bhuyan, 3 January 1930).
82 A1/Vol. 7, Personal Records (From the Vice Chancellor, Dacca University, to
Rev. Charles E. Olney, American Baptist Mission, Gauhati, Assam,21 January
1926).
83 Book of Appreciation, from Nihar Ranjan Ray to S.K. Bhuyan, Calcutta, 18
October 1945 (Book of Appreciation [Transcript] from Bhuyan Family Library).
84 A1/Vol. 14, Personal Records (From Kalidas Nag to S.K. Bhuyan, Calcutta, 31
July 1941).
85 Record No.11-5/24, True Copy of Letters.

86 Ibid. From S.K. Bhuyan to P.C. Gupta, 15 August 1956; From S.K. Bhuyan to
Surendra Nath Sen, 15 August 1956; From S.K. Bhuyan to Sri- kumar Banerjee, 15
August 1956; From S.K. Bhuyan to C.D. Deshmukh, 28 August 1956; From S.K.
Bhuyan to Jadunath Sarkar, Gauhati, 17 January 1951, through the courtesy of
Bijay Kumar Bhuyan and Prashanta Chakravarty, Book of Appreciation, vol. 11,
Bhuyan Family Library; From Jadunath Sarkar to S.K. Bhuyan, Calcutta, 10
August 1956; Jadunath Sarkar to S.K. Bhuyan, Calcutta, 2 October 1956.
87 Book of Appreciation, vol. 11. From Jadunath Sarkar to S.K. Bhuyan, Calcutta,
10 August 1956.
88 Ibid. From Jadunath Sarkar to S.K. Bhuyan, Calcutta, 2 October 1956.

89 Record No.11-5/24 (From S.K. Bhuyan to K.P. Pillay, Editor, Journal of Indian
History, University of Travancore,Trivandrum). A1/Vol. 6, Personal Records
(From S.K. Bhuyan to S. Krishnaswami Ayengar, Editor of the Journal of Indian
History, Gauhati, 3 November 1926).
90 Ibid.

91 Record No.11-5/24 (From Orient Review and Literary Digest to S.K. Bhuyan, 18
July 1956).
92 Manorama Sharma, 'Surya Kumar Bhuyan and History Writing: A Trend
Missed', in Shiela Bora and Manorama Sharma, ed., Historiography in North East
India: Assessing Surya Kumar Bhuyan (Shillong: North East India History
Association, 2000), p. 21.
93 S.K. Bhuyan, London Memories (Gauhati: Publication Board Assam, 1979), p.
6.
94 Sharma, 'Surya Kumar Bhuyan and History Writing: A Trend Missed', p. 26.

95 Ibid., pp. 26-7.

96 Bhuyan, Lachit Barphukan and His Times, pp. 12, 133.

97 Bhuyan, Buranjir Bani (Guwahati, 1955).

98 Bhuyan, ed., Tungkhungia Buranji (Assamese) by Srinath Duara Barrbarua

(Guwahati, 1964), Editor's Introduction, p. 38.
99 Bhuyan, Studies in the History of Assam. p. 15.

100 Ibid., p. 16.

101 Bhuyan, Lachit Barphukan and His Times, pp. 1-2.

102 Bhuyan, ed., Tungkhungia Buranji (Assamese), Editor's Preface, p. 38.

103 Bhuyan, Ahomar Din, p. 62.

104 Bhuyan, ed., Tungkhungia Buranji (English), pp. 141-2.

105 Ibid., p. xx.

106 Bhuyan, Studies in the History of Assam, p. 16.

107 Bhuyan, Ahomar Din, p. 62.

108 Ibid., p. 68.

109 Ibid.

110 S.K. Bhuyan, 'Assame Ahom Rajatwa', paper presented at Uttarbanga Sahitya
Sammelan, Jalpaiguri Session (published in Prabasi, 24th issue, Shravan, 1301
Bangabda, pp. 494-7).
111 Talukdar, Surya Kumar Bhuyan, pp. 69-70.

112 Haliram Dhekial Phukan, Assam Buranji (Calcutta: 1829), Appendix, p. 15.

113 Ibid., Appendix, p. 20.

114 Bhuyan, ed., Tungkhungia Buranji {.Assamese) (Guwahati: Department of
Historical and Antiquarian Studies, 1990), Introduction, p. xxv.
115 Ibid., Editor's Preface, p. 41.

116 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflection on the Origin and

Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1988), p. 15.
117 Dipesh Chakrabarty, 'Nation and Imagination', Studies in History, 15, 2
(1999), p. 177.
118 Bhuyan, Buranjir Bani, Introduction.

119 Ibid., p. 16.

120 Ranajit Guha, An Indian Historiography of India: A Nineteenth Century

Agenda and Its Implications (Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi and Co., 1988), p. 5.
121 Bhuyan, Studies in the History of Assam, p. 71.

122 Bhuyan, Ahomar Din, p. 5.

123 Bhuyan, ed., Tungkhungia Buranji (English), Introduction, p. xvii.

124 Bhuyan, Ahomar Din, pp. 6-7.

125 S.K. Bhuyan, Assam Jiyari (Guwahati: Kamrup Mahila Samiti, 1935), part II,
pp. 54-5.
126 S.K. Bhuyan, ed., KamruparBuranji (Guwahati: Department of historical and
Antiquarian Studies, 3rd edn, 1987), p. 72.
127 Ibid., p. 57.

128 S.K. Bhuyan, 'Presidential Address', Modern History Section, Indian History
Congress (Gwalior Session, 1952).
129 Dhrubajyoti Bara, 'Dr. Surya Kumar Bhuyanr Aitihasik Abadan', Deuka, 2, 6
(October-November 1998), p. 14.
130 Keith Jenkins, On What is History (London and New York: Routledge, 1995),
p. 167. For details see Hayden White, 'e Historical Text as Literary Artifact',
Tropics of Discourse Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore and London: e
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), pp. 81-99.
131 Partha Chatterjee, e Nation andIts Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial
Histories (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 113.
 7

System and History in

Rajwade's Grammar for the
Dnyaneswari*

MILIND WAKANKAR

T
he lowly traditions of yogic alchemy that became the stock-in-
trade of Nathpanthi lore in the early middle ages, and the
baroque physiognomy of Kabir's inner world they went on to
inspire, had at least this much in common: both involved less the
transformation of the world than an elaboration of the soul. What was
mystical about these writings was not their otherworldliness but their
adumbration of an interior time straining to stand still, the eschatology
of a dissembled self-extinction, the dramaturgy of a death at once
embraced and thrown aside. is scene of the soul grappling with itself
was saturated with the idiom and image-repertoire of high
Vaishnavism; but that agon persevered-if only on the sidelines of such
texts, silent, unobtrusive, as though in secret trespass on the
ostentatious ways of the panths and sampradayas they would help
inaugurate and uphold. It was broached in a gesture of self-
transformation that did not reject history so much as choose to return
to a kind of prehistory of historical action.
 We have of late tried to understand the pre-modern in terms of the
emergence of the figure of the state in language at least a few centuries
prior to the dawn of Eurocentric historiography in early colonial India.1
To the chronicles and local histories that are more typically the subject
matter of this school of historical research, I wish to bring into view
here texts of a literary and philosophical disposition that do not refer
explicitly to historical events but seem instead to be invested in an
involuted and interiorized address to a God who 'will have come.' Such
texts elaborate a momentous 'pastness' that describes the coming of
God from out of a hidden past into the open. eir proximity to
subaltern traditions of pilgrimage and anti-brahmanism makes this
corpus of texts an important basis for asking: how do millennial
traditions of low-caste 'passivity' nonetheless go into the making of
more easily recognizable forms of active protest and caste critique? I
want to prepare the ground for a larger question: does the subalternity
of low-caste mystic speech precede and supplement from a vanished
past our present-day politics of dalit or low-caste empowerment? To
establish this precedence or priority, as I hope to begin to do here, is to
do away with the distinction between passivity and power, subjectivity
and agency, or perhaps even between the religiosity of Bhakti and the
politics of caste. To ask if the past (moral action before ethics or
religion) supplements the present by filling in and exceeding its gaps is
to insist that a dalit idea of moral action (a dalit philosophy prior to
dalitness) must always, in each and every case, be the basis for a
questioning of dalit politics.
By the same token, I will seek to uncover in these traditions an idea
of interiority that inaugurates a radical passiveness prior to the
distinction between the active and the passive, or between text and
history. I want to emphasize that such an interiority precedes the rich
'interior life' historians of religion associate with the spiritual quest; nor
can it be reduced to the ascetic militancy of a range of sectarian
traditions starting from that of the gosain and the Sikh Panth aer
Nanak. e hard pragma of love that holds up such an interiority is
equally hard won; it is staked against the ineluctable tendency of the
soul to fortify itself by turning towards aggression and militarism. e
soul that seeks to become 'fluidly equilibriate' or samarasa with itself
seeks to uncover the sources of eternality in lived time-it reverses
passion and desire netherward, embracing in this way the spectre of
immortality; it does so not from the perspective of human time but
from that of eternity. ere is something markedly millennial (a rupture
waiting a thousand years to happen) about this tendency of low-caste
thought to undertake a critique of time at the very heart of great
ecumenical currents of the medieval period, for there high Hindu
thought had already elaborated a historicity of avatars-Ram and
Krishna were always already transcendentalizations of secular time;
their historical intervention in situations of worldly distress was
designed to raise worldly time to the eternality of kal-whereas low-
caste critique sought, in however alchemical a fashion, to understand
and transmute worldly time itself into the condition for eternity.
Here I have recourse to Dnyaneswara, the poet who wrote in 1190 an
epic verse commentary in Old Marathi on the Gita, known as the
Dnyaneswari. In the Maharashtrian (Western Indian) tradition of
pilgrimage, i.e. the tradition of the pilgrim Varkaris, Dnyaneswara is
oen considered the basis (paya) of a line of four heterodox sants that
ends with Tukaram in the sixteenth century. Tradition has it that his
place in brahmin society was seriously compromised when his father
turned back from the life of a renunciant to that of a householder,
earning the opprobrium of his upper-caste peers for flouting the regu-
lated order of stages (varnashrama dharma) in a brahmin's psychobio-
graphy. e fact of his being an 'outcaste' in this sense, along with his
(still unproven) authorship of a thousand or so verses in honour of the
Vithala/Krishna of Pandharpur, has made him an object of reverence
and even worship among the Varkaris. Where those verses display some
of the caste ecumenicism of the Varkaris, the Dnyaneswari itself is a text
that on first impression re-elaborates (albeit in glorious verse) the
fundamentally caste-conservative vision of the Gita. For this reason the
place of this text in the Varkari tradition today is at once foundational
and ambiguous.
I am going to argue in what follows that this text is crucial for what I
have called elsewhere 'traditions of hearsay' (those that celebrate their
'having heard' of the coming of God)2 because it posits in an inaugural
way the idea that the political idiom of action and inaction, force and
passivity that one finds in resurgent religious nationalism today is itself
based on an earlier, irreducibly anterior passivity, which is the passivity
of death at the heart of the yogic comportment. We should recall here
what a spate of recent research has sought to establish: that the Indo-
Islamic millennium was marked by the militarization of the entire
subcontinent, a trend that had extraordinary consequences for the
evolution of castes, classes, and courtly culture, and indeed for the
elaboration of forms of 'vernacular' expression (that is to say, literary
production under the shadow of cosmopolitan languages such as
Sanskrit and Persian). It could even be argued that the traditions of
hearsay are themselves indelibly marked by the experience of migrancy,
exile and displacement that followed the opening of a vast military
market in the era of successive empires. is was a time when, as Dirk
Kolff has speculated,3 the distinction between active and passive modes
of life, between negotium and otium, may have derived from the
unpredictability of livelihood for the vast majority of low-caste peoples,
for many of whom the tillage of a small plot of land, endemic vagrancy,
a life of plunder and semi-permanent employment in local or regional
armies could all make up the arc of a single lifetime. Kolff 's work helps
us understand why a political idiom of activity and passivity continued
to be favoured by nationalist critics and thinkers writing in the late
nineteenth century, for many of whom the resurgence of a belligerent
Hinduism was necessary if the future nation was to define itself as
Hindu, as against Muslim; and as Indian, as against British or European.
In the Marathi-speaking region it was not uncommon for such critics
to deride the Varkaris as proponents of a passive accession to God, and
to argue that such later poets as Ramdas in the seventeenth century,
traditionally associated with the legendary warrior-king Shivaji,
provided for the first time a whole programme for a militant asceticism
tied to the project of the Marathi state against Muslim rule. Ironically, it
was one of the leading votaries of this nationalist school of thought, the
historian V.K. Rajwade, who went on to publish the first critical edition
of the Dnyaneswari. What attracted him to this text was less its content
than its 'look'. Rajwade claimed to have discovered the oldest extant
manuscript copy of Dnyaneswara's text. e discovery of the original
text, shorn of later sectarian redactions, made it possible for him to
argue that the language of the Dnyaneswari established the continuity of
Marathi with ancient Sanskrit. e correspondence between the two
was something he sought to establish by means of a 'grammar' of the
Dnyaneswari.
e notion of grammaticality that Rajwade used to provide the
scholarly scaffolding for his edition of the text was itself based on Pani-
ni's monumental fourth to fih century BC grammar, the Ashtadhyayi.
Here, without going into the details of Panini's grammar (which has
continued to fascinate linguists and philosophers in our time for its
anticipation of several key issues of reference and meaning), I want to
underscore the brahmanical basis of Panini's text, whose ostensible
purpose was to bring together the grammar of post-Vedic life and the
grammar of language into one systematic arrangement of rules
graduating from the sentence to the verb to the verbal root. e
fundamental idea in this and the other grammatical projects that
followed it in late antiquity was that 'linguistic units are non-products,
hence eternal, and their relationship with meanings are eternally
given'.4 Now in some sense the rigour and complexity of Panini's
masterwork enables one to leave aside-except for explicit references to
caste in some of his examples-the political aspects of his work and focus
instead on the philosophical issues involved. A certain fundamentally
conservative idea of post-Vedic brahmanical culture is so basic to this
text that drawing attention to it would seem redundant. Yet this is not
the case when one takes up Rajwade's attempt to read Paninian rules
into Dnyaneswara's thirteenth-century Old Marathi. It is clear that, as I
will show below, Rajwade's attempt is to assimilate Dnyaneswara to the
history of the Marathi (or Indian/Hindu) state; to trace Old Marathi
back to Sanskrit is in this sense to argue for the hoary lineage of
contemporary Marathi as well as to prepare the grounds for the
retrospective autochthony of Marathi in an uncontaminated Hindu
antiquity. In short, to read Dyaneswara as pre-modern it was crucial to
presuppose Panini as the cultural high point of a pre-medieval, pre-
Muslim past. In strenuously recasting the pre-modern as the pre-
medieval (and by this token producing the figure of a redoubled late
antiquity) Rajwade provides us with an insight, despite himself, into
what in Dnyaneswara and the cultures of hearsay as a whole is not really
reducible to an endorsement of a culturally or religiously prescribed
way of understanding the relation between words and life, speaking and
living.
Less than a hundred years aer the Christology of Hegel and the
comparative philology of Bopp a new kind of project came to incise the
traditional understanding of the texts, that had for close to seven
centuries supported the low-caste affirmation of a becoming (hidden)
of God. One could even argue that this radically new line of inquiry was
of great moment for history, for the history of language and the history
of the writing of grammars, indeed for the very origin of the notion of a
'historical grammar' in India. e essayist, linguist, and historian
Vishwanath Kashinath Rajwade (1863-1926) who is known for his
massive editions of the sources of Marathi history had in 1896 begun
looking across the length and breadth of western India for old Marathi
manuscripts and books. e tenacity with which Rajwade conducted
these searches is now the stuff of legend. In 1903, while visiting the
Mukundaraji mutt (shrine) of Patangan near the city of Bhid,5 he
stumbled upon what seemed to him with almost immediate certainty to
be the oldest manuscript yet of the Dnyaneswari, copied soon aer
Dnyaneswara's death in 1295, a manuscript older than Eknath's fabled
edited version of 1584 which had for so long served as the (now
untraceable) basis of a great many sectarian (sampradayik) editions. It
was as though he was staring at a whole new world of possibilities for
the history of the Marathi language. Rajwade himself was as electrified
(made 'vilakshana') by this discovery, as were Cortez and his men
gazing wild-eyed at their first vision of the Pacific-in Keats's words,
'silent, up on a peak in Darien'. What made this manuscript startlingly
unique in Rajwade's eyes was that the Old Marathi inscribed on its
miraculously well-preserved pages harked back to the language that
Dnyaneswara and 'the urbane Marathis of [CE 1290] actually spoke'.6
ere was for Rajwade absolutely no doubt that the language of this
Mukundaraji MS was the 'unmiscegenated urbane Marathi language
[nirbhel nagar marathi bhasha]' of that time (CW 6:55). For the next
decade or so Rajwade would attempt to work through the implications
of his find. Soon aer he published his edition, Rajwade attempted to
have this MS ratified by the bhats at Alandi and Pandhar- pur; the story
goes that these priests, who were understandably inured to the relatively
more familiar Marathi of the latter-day redaction of the Varkari sant
Eknath's lost edited version, proceeded to rebuff him. In a fit of pique
this temperamental high-Brahmin of markedly anti- Muslim, anti-low-
caste leanings took hold of his remarkable discovery (all 322 of its
lovingly described pages 'measuring each a length of 9 inches and a
breadth of 4 and three-fourths of an inch . . . with 12 to 14 ovis on each
page') and threw it into a running stream somewhere in southern
Maharashtra.7
What is worth noting is that Rajwade appended to his edition of the
Dnyaneswari not just an extensive 'historical' Introduction or Prasta-
vana (CW 12: 1-76) but also an essay published alongside it as 'e
Grammar [Vyakaran] of the Dnyaneswaris Marathi' (CW 1: 153- 276).
Now it is a matter of some agreement that Rajwade's fame in the
Marathi-speaking world is based on the wide-ranging historical and
historiographic speculations that accompanied his 22-volume Sources of
Maratha History. Rajwade's own term for these lengthy exergues was
'Historical Introductions' (Aitihasika Prastavana: see CW 10). We will
soon have occasion to examine some of these Introductions, especially
one that Rajwade wrote to accompany his edition of the oldest Marathi
chronicle or bakhar, the Bakhar of Mahikavati in the Konkan. But what
is intriguing is that the Introduction to his 1909 edition of the
Dnyaneswari does not bear the adjective, 'historical'; nor does the title
of the accompanying grammar. Yet in both texts can be found an
explicit attempt to address the need for two kinds of histories, the
history of the Marathi language and the possibility of a historical
grammar for Marathi. It could of course be argued that in desisting
from using the descriptive term 'historical, aitihasik' for these texts,
Rajwade was adhering to his own personal organon for historical
research. A statement of method that appears at the start of his 1924
Introduction to the Bakhar of Mahikavati should suffice as an
indication of his general approach to such issues. Here he writes:
How the quarrels of kings and the rise or fall of kingdoms transpired and how
these events had an impact on the history of North Konkan, these were not the
issues that necessarily preoccupied [the compiler of this Bakhar, Bhagwan]
Datta. Instead, the relative ranking of castes [jatis] and other such social and
religious issues [samajika ani dharmic bab] were the points of inquiry
motivating Datta's project of compiling the Bakhar. He goes so far as to
describe his prose preamble to the Bakhar as a vansha-vivanchana . . . Since
social and religious issues were his key focus there is evidently very little
confusion in the text with regard to matters of place, time and person nor for
the same reason did Datta succumb to the temptation to generate it. [e later
compilers of the Bakhar followed the same agenda] which was religious and
social, not political [rajakiya]. e tide of Muslims [mlechharnava] having led
to the wrecking of caste-identity [dnyata], dharma and conduct [achara] [in
recent memory, it was le to the earlier compilers of the Bakhar] to undertake a
narratival reconstruction [nirupana] of 18 lineages [khuma] of castes [jatis]
along with their caste-identity, dharma and conduct; in the natural course of
things they included in the flow of their nirupana the political happenings and
social transformations of the period of 310 years between Saka 1060 and 1370.
[. . .] ese being their objectives, they were careful, fortunately for us, to record
unequivocally the names of persons involved in the political history [rajakiya
itihas] of the kingdom of Mahikavati between Saka 1060 and 1422. [CW 12:
357-7]
A curious feature of the empiricism implicit here (which is reflected in
the emphasis on the quality of factual evidence) is the fact that the
distinction between social and political history is in the final analysis
merely a methodological fiction. e contributors to the Bakhar at the
various stages of its evolution make no secret of the fact that their focus
is neither merely political nor strictly socio-religious; it is in fact both at
once. e opening verse sections of the Bakhar deal with the history of
the ruling lineages of the area; the local history that the Bakhar then
proceeds to provide in prose begins with the founding of the
principality of Mahikavati (or Mahim in the Konkan, not in Mumbai)
in 972 but is clearly cued towards the tale of recurrent violent intrusions
that followed aer a period of relative prosperity and peace
(occasionally disturbed by internecine local wars) lasting 300 years, first
with the advent of the Turks in the Konkan (1292) and then of the
Portuguese in the ensuing centuries. Rajwade himself betrays the
reason for his fascination with this particular Bakhar when he calmly
ventriloquizes the language of the text in saying above that 'the tidal
wave of Muslims [mmlechharnava]' had led to the 'dissolution [budne]
of caste-identity [dnyata], dharma and conduct'. ese words reflect the
sentiments of one of the bakharkars of this text, Keshavacharya, who
wrote a few decades aer 1292 of the state of affairs in the Konkan at
the time:
Meanwhile this rajyakula having fallen, the sainika, inamaka, raiyat capitulated
to the exalted [ajam] Sheikh Alauddin // . . . Following which a great many
yavana came to the north [Konkan] // e spirit of the state came to naught
[rajya abhimanasandla] // Arms fell by the wayside [shastra sodali] // Farming
became the only recourse [krushi dharili] // [. . .] Everywhere there was a falling
off from conduct [acharahina jale] // e knowledge of kula and gotra declined
//Knowing this and intent upon securing [rakshaya] Maharashtra dharma, the
devi came to Rajashri Naikorao in a dream. [CW 12: 492.]
Rajwade ventriloquizes Keshavacharya: one could argue that is a kind of
a relay between that pre-modern chronicler and this great historian
who never wrote a history, who remained a 'historiographer,' a compiler
of texts, a commentator on the state of the archive.8 is was in a strict
sense a historico-topological relay-understanding that term as the
running thread of a tale that changes hands without significant
alteration-a relay involving the handing down of a fantastical formula, a
sort of topos determining the advent of the foreigner into the region, a
prejudicial seal that can be stamped and re-stamped interminably,
opening up the possibility of a future nationalism pledged towards
weeding out the stranger.9 It is implicit in the Bakhar itself that
something like the 'spirit of the state' came under threat with the advent
of Alauddin in the Konkan in 1292, and that what was at stake in the
various mobilizations against him that followed was the securing
[rakshaya] of 'Maharashtra dharma'. For Rajwade the 'securing,
rakshaya' (rakhane, from the Sanskrit root, √raksha) of the state
following the mlechha incursions is no doubt essential, but with the
proviso that for him a successful securing would occur only with the
historic compact between Guru Ramdas and Shivaji in the late
seventeenth century, which as legend goes was when those heroes
actually committed themselves together to the restoration
(punarruchchar) of Maharshtra dharma. In making these leaps across
time with only the shiing fortunes of Maharashtra dharma in view,
Rajwade shows that he is in explicit disagreement with those of his
contemporaries, such as Mahadev Govind Ranade and Rajaram Shastri
Bhagawat who had tried to argue for the relation between Maharashtra
Dharma and the radical religious vision of a reformist Bhagawat
Dharma.10 What Rajwade wants to suggest is that the term 'dharma' in
the phrase refers not to a kind of vocation before god (a ''devadharma)
but to one's duty or 'kartavya' towards Maharashtra.
e emphasis on duty (kartavya) stems from a fundamental
distinction Rajwade makes in his Introduction to this Bakhar between
two kinds of attitudes towards historical change, pravrutti-dharma, a
culture of striving or negotium, and nivrutti-dharma, a culture of leisure
or otium. ese attitudes find their expression (for him) in the historic
mission of warriors and priests, kshatriyas and brahmins, since
antiquity, which is to look to the establishment of the state; whereas the
historic mission of the lower castes is confined to the satisfactions
implicit in a eudaemonic state of social existence. e argument is made
along the following lines:
two kinds of peoples have set about their business in this land since ancient
times. On the one hand, there were an expropriated [bahistha; 'finding their
stance or property outside'], pauperized people scrounging desperately for food
who came to run the machinery of the state, and on the other hand were those
overfed, appropriated [antyastha; 'finding their stance or property here inside']
people who charted their course in history by generating great stores of food
grains. [CW 12: 436.]
e coming of the Aryans is the key event in the balance of active and
inert forces in this land. For the Aryans themselves came from Europe,
home to perpetual shortages of food. Europe is for Rajwade the land
where citified Cain wanders the face of the earth in search of the
nourishment that evades him (i.e. Europe is the land of exilic questing),
while bharatvarsha is the land of eternal satiety, where a sedentary Abel
lives contentedly, never anxious for the morrow. It is clear to Rajwade
that the people who brought the institutions of the state to India were
the arya brahmins and kshatriyas who came from Europe. e racist
and caste-contemptuous myth of an Aryan incursion into a tribal
homeland is greatly enabling for Rajwade's etiology of the state in
Indian antiquity. For it was this immigrant peripatetic horde that first
gave a name to India's trading or vish castes: 'vish refers to people
seated, or lying on a spread meant for husbanding or exercise' (CW 12:
436). e whole of this excursus on otium and negotium, propertied
and unpropertied, warrior dharma and merchant dharma, is organized
around the idea that the state refers to the installation of 'securing',
rakhane, at the heart of the social.
Rajwade's argument here moves smoothly along strictly etymological
lines, imputing an arche-paternal origin to the lineage of the state. 'e
institution of raja [king] and praja [subjects] was brought to India by
brahmins and kshatriyas. Every father is the king of his subjects or
progeny. e king is he who secures [rakshana karnara]. e verbal
stem of the word "raj" is √"raksha".' By the same token, Raj- wade
argues that the originally satiate inhabitants of India, the vish, were not
the original subjects of the Arya kings-those subjects could only have
been the members of their (the kings') lineages, the various offshoots of
their own progeny. e vish became not the praja but the dasas of the
kings, because dasa meant 'those who gave,' which is to say those who
paid taxes for the privilege of being protected by kings (CW 12: 436);
half a century later the word 'dasa' would translate as 'slave' or pre-
modern dalit (as it does for such non-brahmin thinkers as Sharad
Patil). In Rajwade's theory of the state then there is a fundamental
opposition between the masochism of the indigene and the aggression
of the tyrannus (usurper-king) on horseback, between a passive
autochthony and an active, transformative allochthony, between all that
is other and self same, allos and autos, in the travails of historical
dharma as the spirit of the state. For, hunger and despair lay at the
sordid basis of state-formation. And the subject races were sedentary
peoples who had in an attitude of political quiescence 'turned their face
from the state [had become rajaparamukha], socially non-committal,
renunciant and fundamentally Vedantic' in their attitudes (CW 12:
437). Now if we refer back to the passage about the choices faced by the
writers of the Bakhar of Mahikavati it is clear that for Rajwade they
could not but have written a history of social and religious
developments while only secondarily paying attention to 'political'
developments. is is because a genuine installation of Maharashtra
dharma was yet to take place at the time. From this point of view the
history of Maharashtra prior to Shivaji and Ramdas was 'pre-political'.
Up until that time it was not as though there had never been kings or
potentates in Maharashtra. e period before the advent of Alauddin
had been a time of peace and plenty, allowing for considerable
continuity in political regimes. But that for Rajwade is precisely the
problem. Until such time as blissful satiety pervaded the land there
could not have been any motivation for 'securing' the state. Such a task
was best le to those who came from the outside. And so for him it is
almost inevitable that the state should have been for Maharashtra (in
extrapolation from the Konkan) an eternally heteronomous entity. e
idea of the state as the horizon of the social came from the outside in
the destiny of a desperate, starving people who had had to learn how to
be canny under open skies. ey had experienced a primal uncanni-
ness (homelessness, bahisthapana) in the hard passage over continental
roadsteads. And they introduced that transcendental homelessness (to
borrow a phrase from Lukacs) into these teeming native hearths, homes
that had never seen such resoluteness writ large in the brute face of the
state-for the newcomers quickly channelled their desperate 'scrounging'
into the canny requirements of statecra. ey were now 'at home' with
their uncanny ways, having translated their skills at struggle and strife
into the art of governmentality. e outsider became the insider, the
'out-standing' was now the 'in-standing'-the bahi-stha became the
antya-stha. e outside was installed in the inside, but always as the
outside of the inside. For the state was always in some sense on the
horizon, about to be reinstalled at the heart of sociality itself, at its
centre. e state both belonged to the centre and remained eternally at
its threshold. So that for Rajwade it would seem as though Indian
history was nothing but a long wait for the institution of the state. But
this long wait was what made the state paradoxically more native to this
land than any other institution. It provided the alibi for the invocation
of Maharashtra dharma in the era of anti-colonial nationalism. For
Maharashtra dharma was nothing if not this waiting that placed the
future of Maharashtra under the sign of the subjunctive.
One could argue therefore that when Rajwade neglected to place the
adjective 'historical, aitihasik' in the titles of the introduction and
grammar to his edition of the Dnyaneswari the implicit reason could
have been what seemed to him to be the undoubted historicity of the
text itself. is historicity did not have to be announced in any title or
preamble: it was clear for all to see in the very pages of the Mukundaraji
MS. is text was in itself the very embodiment of Maharashtra as a
historical entity. For if the Marathi language was the very instance of
what it meant to be Maharashtrian, and if the Mukundaraji MS made it
possible for the first time for that language to be accorded a history,
there could be no doubt at all that Maharashtra was itself a 'historical
entity'. But how could one prove beyond a doubt that the language of
this text, Old Marathi, had descended from Sanskrit on one side and
provided the basis for modern Marathi on the other? is would have
to be done via the new science of the historical verification of a
language, which is to say by means of a historical grammar. For the
latter would establish once and for all the essential continuity of a
language through time, even ihat continuity was oen concealed
under a spew of apparent discrepancies.
It is Rajwade himselfwho tells us right at the outset in his Grammar
(Vyakaran) appended to the Dnyaneswari, that to determine 'the ways
[padhati] in which a designated people [vivakshita loka] speak and
write (assuming that they know how to write) a designated language at
a designated place and time' in keeping with a 'set of norms [niyam-
saranine] or shastric principles' is assuredly to write 'the grammar
[vyakaran] of the language of that place, that time and that people
[tatsthalina, tatkalina va tallokiya vyakaran]' (CW 12: 1). e principle
of historicity implicit in this formulation rests on the idea of what we
can call a 'project', a projection from this people-time-place designated
according to 'niyamsaranaya or shastric principles' to that specific
people-time-place. is is without doubt a theoretical projection that
assumes that historical specificity can and should be determined
according to a set of carefully defined presuppositions. e theoretical
moment, we may surmise, consists in the work of the grammarian, the
vyakarankar himself: he it is aer all who 'pulls away (vya) severely (a)
to make certain (√k ri)'. He it is who pulls away from historical fact to
sustain an objective standpoint from which to return to reassess that
fact. Rajwade is aware that this projection is essential if one is to
generate the 'aitihasik vyakaran' (historical grammar) of a particular
language. Yet what precisely is aitihasik about the Old Marathi of the
Mukundaraji MS? For him this 'aitihasik-ness' would appear to lie in its
supposedly 'urbane [nagarika]' quality. Now there would seem to be
something fundamentally tragic about this urbanity, since it comes into
being (for Rajwade) at a point between the dark ages following the
decline of Sanskrit and Prakrit in late antiquity and the dark times that
are soon to follow with the first incursions of Alauddin Khalji.
e Mukundaraji MS is thus in Rajwade's mind a monument to the
persistence in Maharashtra of the arya culture of the classical period.
Two telltale signs of this link to an older past establish the preeminence
of this MS for him. ere is first the fact that this MS is not written in
running-hand or modi-as were so many texts in Marathi aer that
language came into contact with Persianate scripts. One central concern
for Rajwade is to try and prove that what was fundamentally Marathi in
western Indian culture remained unaltered during the period of
Muslim rule in the region. ere is secondly a more crucial point, one
that has a great deal to do with the immediate visual impact of the MS,
viz. its striking resemblance to Paninian Sanskrit. It would take Rajwade
six years to make sense of this discovery and to move his thinking
towards the still tentative summation that is the 1909 Grammar. e
path he travelled is clearly recounted in this passage from an essay
written three years later.
It has been close to twenty years now since I began investigating the origin
[ugama] of the Marathi language. With every old text I came across I would
attempt to deduce the differentiating features of the Marathi unique to that text.
Having returned time and again to these finds I began to realize that present-
day Marathi retained traces of many of the forms of Old Marathi. It was while I
 was on to this that I discovered [in 1903] the Mukundaraji MS of the
Dnyaneswari. Aer looking at this and other contemporary texts I found that
present-day Marathi does indeed have its origins in the language of the
Mukundaraji Dnya-neswari. From then on I proceeded on the basis of a
working hypothesis [kamachalausidhhanta], that present-day Marathi evolved
successively [paramparene] from the Marathi of the Dnyaneswari, Apabramsha,
Maharashtri, Sanskrit and Vedic [Sanskrit]. Very soon I set about putting this
working hypothesis to the test. It was while attempting to verify this hypothesis
that I found I could make very good use of the Grammatik derPrakrit-Sprachen
[that had been published in Strassburg in 1900] by a German gent called
[Richard] Pischel [1849-1908] ... If Pischel's work had not come to my notice I
would have had to do on my own what he has done for us, which is to compile
and analytically differentiate [in aprithakkarana] the treatises of such Prakrit
grammarians as Vararuchi, Katyayana, Hemchandra etc., as well as other
available Prakrit texts and epigraphs. I had already begun to do this when
Pischel's Grammatik appeared. It became clear to me aer reading this text that
it provided a most happy link between Old Marathi on the one hand and
Apabrahmsha and Maharashtri on the other. But it also became increasingly
clear to me that relying on the forms of Apabrahmsha and Maharashtri most
closely resembling Marathi that Pischel had provided would not exhaust all the
forms of present-day Marathi. It was then that I began to compare Marathi with
Paninian Sanskrit. And I begin to realize that each and every [present-day]
Marathi word whether short or long has its equivalent in the divine Panini's
Ashtadhyayi; it was also clear that Pischel's Grammatik had many flaws [not the
least of which was] his lack of knowledge of Panini's shastra . . . Which is why
when I wrote my Grammar for the Dnyaneswari in 1909 I continued to turn
toward Prakrit. One outcome of this was that I managed to uncover many
subtle issues that underlie the idea of a Marathi vyakaran. But it is also true that
many such issues remained to be unearthed at that time. e present work [on
Moro Krishna Damle's Classical Marathi Grammar, Shastriya Marathi
Vyakaran (1912)] is finally an attempt to address precisely those issues by
relying entirely on Paninian principles. [CW 1: 425]
A confirmed votary of Panini towards the end of his life, Rajwade was
around the time of the Grammar for the Dnyaneswari still to go the
whole hog. e reluctance to do so was not merely personal. Its reasons
may well have had something to do with the very idea of a historical
grammar, aitihasik vyakaran. What was clearly paradoxical was that a
grammar (vyakaran) written along the lines of Panini could at the same
time be historical, aitihasik. is is not to say that Panini's Ashtadhyayi
does not contain the elements of a historical linguistics covering a range
of linguistic changes in Sanskrit since Vedic times. But the fact is that
Rajwade's own access to Panini was informed by the growing rise in
contemporary Indology of the science of phonology.
e scene had therefore already been set for a strictly 'phonological'
or (what was the same thing for Rajwade) 'phonetic' account of the
Marathi language, using Panini's analysis of swaras and varnas to
inaugurate a comprehensive phonological analysis of the Old Marathi of
the Mukundaraji MS. While the analysis of the historical changes in the
language since Panini was conducted in the ambitiously wide- ranging
Introduction, the Grammar was to serve as the setting for an attempt to
uncover the phonological ground-ri (Grund-riss) or blueprint of the
Dnyaneswari. e lack of fit between the objectives of the two
supplements to his edition of the text itself should be obvious. For
strictly speaking phonological principles enabled an assessment of the
structural features of language at 'its' moment. e very order of
Rajwade's analyses in the Grammar is telling enough. 'Varna- itihasa,'
phonemic analysis has a preeminent place in terms of procedure, as
does 'Nama-vibhakti-pratyaya-itihasa,' the declension of nouns and ''
Kriya-vibhakti-pratyaya-itihasa', the declension of verbs. e running
comparison with Panini's text is also a key feature of the Grammar, even
if it strays from the order of analysis in that text in succumbing to the
requirements of contemporary Western grammars. At its
methodological heart is the idea that 'phoda' (declinability) is the basic
motor of language change. Declinability itself entailed that language
could be continuously analysed from the level of the sentence to the
word and from the word to the basic phonemic element. e idea of
semantic accretion implicit here is different from that of the cultures of
hearsay such as that of the Varkaris we have discussed above;
declinability is tied to the semantic preservation of etymological origin
(though my etymology is usually just as good as yours) whereas in
cultures of semantic accretion there tends to be a movement away from
etymological essence to a wide variety of linguistic interface. We can
imagine that when he caught sight of the Munkundaraji MS Rajwade
saw a version of Old Marathi that seemed to give itself precisely to
declinability as one of the key constituents of a Panini-informed
niyamasarani, organon.
Where Dnyaneswara's text (as we will see in the next section)
virtually inaugurates the tradition of becoming-God in Maharashtra,
shiing it away from an affirmation of the simultaneity of caste and
state, Rajwade reads that very text as an instance of Indic and
brahmanical resilience in the face of Islamic imperialism. Where
Dnyaneswara's is a grammar of yogic involution postulated at a point
just before the affirmation of Vithala/Krishna, Rajwade's is an attempt
to establish Dnyaneswara (and by that token the Varkari tradition itself)
as a bulwark for the brahmanism of the Hindu/Marathi state. It is
crucial for him to 'see' in Dnyaneswara's Old Marathi a persistent
signposting of etymological roots in the eternality of Sanskrit. Whereas
in Dnyane- swara, as we will see, there are no roots, only routes, only
practices; it is for this reason that the Dnyaneswari can be seen to have
provided for what in the Varkari tradition was, for the first and perhaps
for the last time (there is no sant aer Tukaram) a grammar oearsay
bringing together elite and subaltern in one field of speech.11 And even
though such a large portion of both the Grammar and the Introduction
are taken up with the varying forms of Marathi through time and over
space, and although there is indeed an emphasis in both essays on an
analysis of language according to historical (aitihasik) requirements, yet
in some sense the encounter with the Munkundaraji MS is mediated by
what can be described as a 'visual' dimension. ere is of course the
visual specificity afforded by a manuscript whose characters were not
drawn in Persian-informed cursive, modi; the physical appearance of
the text was that of a series of discrete (balbodh) characters. But there is
also the additional attraction that the text appeared to 'freeze' in time
and even slow down the evolution of Marathi, announcing a direct and
(for Rajwade) unmistakable ancestry with Paninian Sanskrit. Rajwade,
who is in this instance at once grammarian and historian, a
vyakarankar and an itihaskar, 'pulls away severely to make certain' but
only to give greater priority to a 'theoretically' grasp, a seeing and
objectifying gaze that makes historical principles give way to structural
needs.
 To the extent that Rajwade attempts to assimilate Panini to the
history of the Marathi/Hindu nation, we might say that his interest lies
in using the notion of declinability and roots in the Ashtadhyayi to
argue for the essential coming together of a brahmanical/Hindu way of
life and a grammatical notion of meaning underlying Vedic speech and
going back to the pre-Vedic period. One can fault him for presuming to
criticize Panini himself (and Yaska) for having neglected the lived
speech of the pre-Vedic period. And one could easily disagree with
Rajwade when he indicts Panini for his inability to understand language
'historically'. For Dnyaneswara's own use of the words 'nagar' and
'marhathi' show that more was at stake than simply the developed 'pre-
medieval' or Paninian urbanity of Old Marathi prior to Muslim rule. (It
is clear, for instance, that for Dnyaneswara 'marhathi' is a reference to
the epistemological work performed by metaphor and idiom in
Marathi, to the aesthetic ruse by which the dialogue of God with man
in the Gita can be brought before the listener by the beatific poet.) If
there is nothing specifically 'pre-medieval'or 'urbane' in the
Dnyaneswari to endow it with the imprint of the Marathi/Hindu pre-
modern, and if urbanity is lived, everyday speech it would by the same
token be hard to argue for the elision of pre-Vedic speech in Panini. Yet
this elliptical passage in Rajwade from the modern (nationalism) to the
pre-modern (Dnyaneswara) and from the pre-modern to the pre-
medieval (Panini) is worth attending to, despite the persistent
brahmanization of Vedic thought. Rajwade's implicit philosophical
assumption is that the sayings of the Vedic seers are literally 'drawn'
from (the idea of a) pre- linguistic, metaphysical essence of the pre-
Vedic period and are therefore in themselves in origin neither metaphor
nor concept but both at the same time; they establish the ontological
basis of a certain lived way of life, inaugurating a philosophical
understanding of nature and speech that is radically empirical. at is
to say, they refer directly to the practical everyday concerns of the Vedic
period, where words like maya could only mean 'an amazing skill or
power', and not 'illusion' (as it was later ethicized in Vedanta).12 at
Rajwade should see in Panini, Dnyaneswara and in the Marathi of his
own time an essential pre-linguistic continuity in the care of the soul is
remarkable, and provides an important insight-perhaps Rajwade's
greatest-into the persistence in the heavily compromised domain of the
Indic of older forms of conducting oneself in the world, forms not
reducible to the dominant understanding of knowledge or power in
Indic philosophical exegesis. But that he should see in all this the sign of
an original brahmin/Hindu/Marathi speech restores his text to the age
of nationalism.
Structurally, the two aspects of his Grammar, which is to say the idea
of an earlier way of life still available as an ideal in language on the one
hand, and his need to argue for Maharashtra dharma on the other
hand-the coming together in Rajwade of a grammar of life as speech on
the one hand, and of the Law on the other hand as the continuity of
caste/nation, can be seen as an instance of a juridico-grammatical
understanding of tradition as Hinduism, one where all of life is
patterned aer the Law. But what we see in Dnyaneswara himself is less
the self-presence of the brahmanical view of the world than the idea
that all of life (all the dimensions of Man and World) is derived not
from an older way of speaking that evokes a Vedic or brahmanical
ethos, but from a systematic priority of God to the World. Which is to
say that Dnyaneswara's thought cannot be derived from the larger
history of Shiva, Vishnu worship and Nathyogi practice (a staple of
Dnyaneswara scholarship still focused on 'religion') but is the
celebration of an anterior speech. Such a way of thinking is closer to the
thought of a 'system' that presupposes the 'derived absoluteness' of God,
a God whose origin is always prior. In this respect his is a system that
works with an idea of God as the principle of negativity at the origin; it
is not a philosophical attempt (such as Hegel's) to explore the ways in
which negativity is at last restored to itself in the state or in the Spirit-
this idea of a negativity at the origin brings him closer to Cusa, Bruno,
and the later Schelling, those thinkers of the 'ground without ground'
who remain marginal to the tradition of ethico-historical thought from
Kant through Hegel to Heidegger.13
For the unprecedented coming of God (in the form of Vithala in the
verse collections, and as Krishna in the Dnyaneswari) is understood in
Dnyaneswara as the coming of God to man, and therefore as the
unsurpassable trace of God in man. e opening lines of the
Dnyaneswari work through this theme from the very first word.
Om namo adya/ vedapratipadya/
Jai svasamvedya / atmarupa //1//14
Give yourself over to the always-already-begun-saying-Om
Never quite worked over by the already-said-Vedas
But as knowing coming to itself from itself
Tracing in its wake the outline of its self-receding.
Dnyaneswara begins by deferring all beginning, all origination to a
primordial, immemorial past. 'Om namo adya', he commences,
inscribing a moment whose tensing is originary, referring to a past
before all pasts, and whose aspect is in the imperative, signalling a
commandment prior to all commands: 'Give yourself over (namo)', he
seems to say, 'to the beginning of all things (adya ) which is Om', that is
to say to the Onkar, Pranava, the Word, Shabd, the Saying. In this giving
oneselfover one obeys an injunction to institute beginnings. Especially
since the Gita itself is a treatise on how to install oneself at the
beginning, how to move the stha towards the subject's self-installation
in Karma as an active (praxis-directed) subject, sthithapradnya. Yet the
instituting itself, the happening at the origin, what we might call the
adya-sthapana, already draws the text back towards to its own dark
origination, one greatly removed from the grand cosmogony of Kar-
mic Sacrifice of which Krishna is the eikon par excellence in the Gita.
Instead, here at the start of the Dnyaneswari, in the very act of coming
into the light, something has already withdrawn. Something that
remains vedapratipadya: the Vedas, repositories of the already-known
(the already-vid) cannot, try as they might the text seems to say, attain
the ground without ground at the origin. e Vedas are only a ground-
laying but one that is always incomplete (pratipad-ya, a pratipadan ever
under way), never quite enough. at which retreats towards itself even
as it inaugurates the knowable, the sva-sam-vid, nonetheless traces its
forms in the field of all that is knowable. It imprints itself in history and
then withdraws. What makes knowing possible is this re- trait, atma-
rupa of the Om, the Saying at origin and end. In the very next ovi there
is the celebration of all becoming as sakal-artha-mati- prakashu.
Deva tun chi ganeshu/sakalarthamatiprakashu/
Mhane nivruttidasu/ avdharijo //2//
You, like Ganesha
e whole gathered in meaning as light,
I follow Nivrutti's Word
In 'holding for true.'
Here 'sakal'-a word that recurs in Varkari-speak-implies 'the whole',
being-in-general or Being. 'Artha' refers us to the meaning of being.
'Mati' occurs here and elsewhere as the institution of logos (speech we
direct purposively to the objects around us) as vid. And finally
'prakashu', the lighting or clearing registers the difference (that always
recedes or withdraws) between being in general (God) and beings in
particular (as singular beings in themselves). Here again we are given a
sense of a form of 'systematic' thinking that retreats from the world and
attends to a more original becoming in the recesses of the soul. e link
between this poet and the Varkari tradition of which he is said to be the
founder has something to do with this inaugural speech in the
Dnyaneswari of prayer in praise of a vanished God. It is this speech that
Dnyaneswara offers to the Vithala/Krishna of Pandharpur.
Dnyaneswara was a Varkari, one of the pilgrims of the tradition of
hearsay who made periodic vari's or pilgrimages to the shrine of
Vithala. For him the persistent tracing and re-tracing of sakal-artha-
mati-prakashu (ontico-ontological difference, system and history)
leaves behind as a trace the atma-rupa of the adya, a trace that is
magical, mysterious, soteriological in promise. More crucially for him
the event of the retracing-retreating of the adya in atma-rupa (itself
departing from itself) signals the advent of Vithala. is 'event' offers a
silhouette (a virtual icon if not an icon itself) of that beloved deity,
Vithala arms akimbo, standing on a brick in the city of Pandharpur on
the banks of the Chandrabhaga, inaugurating with his stance (his
incontrovertible 'ubha'-ness) the Varkari tradition itself. e yearning of
that tradition rests less in ecstatic communion than in joyous welcome,
a chorus of praise for the ancient mystery that called for Vithala to
stand firmly on the brick for '28 epochs' (athavis yuga). e utterance of
the Varkaris treats of Vithala's coming as the love or prem that
withdraws. To be sure, Vithala as prem 'is' this saying-Om to which the
Varkaris have for the past seven hundred years rejoined a huge corpus
of poems. Vithala's very coming into being is guaranteed by the Om to
which Dnyaneswara gave himselfover at the origin, adya. ese
together comprise the Varkaris' infinitely loving, adoring acts of having-
said-of-Vithala-in-praise, their own 'vedas'.
Where Dnyaneswara is thus invested in a turning back to God,
Rajwade's goal lies in the assimilation of this Varkari sant to the larger
destiny of the state as it can be detected in the history of the Marathi
language. We could well ask: Why this insatiate desire to prove the
historicity of a language? Aer all, we do not in our everyday linguistic
practice resort to such historical arguments. at we speak a language
and use it to communicate suffices as a motivation for all our
metalinguistic explorations ranged around linguistic meaning. But why
this need here to prove that the language one is speaking has its very
own antiquity? e answer lies only secondarily, to my mind, in the
realm of linguistic pride and nationalism. It has much more to do with
the attempt to install history itself at the heart of language, to try to
prove that a language and a history are coterminous. It is to establish
that language, in short, is historicity. And to have a language, to have
language as part of one's having-being, is to be historical. If the 1924
Introduction to the Bakhar of Mahikavati was to be about installing the
state as the future at the heart of the nation, the introduction and the
grammar accompanying the 1909 edition of Dnyaneswara implied the
need to insinuate a history at the heart of a language's past. Underlying
both attempts is the problem of the outside coming in to generate an
inside; for there could not have been a history of Marathi without at the
same time a history of Persian (there is arguably at least one Persian
word in the Dnyaneswari, pace Rajwade), of the many local dialects of
Marathi, and of loans from Kannada, Konkani, and Telugu. To install
history at the heart of Marathi was to introduce a historical principle
essentially alien to a living and vital Marathi. e histori- cization of
Marathi entailed the excising of one history and the intro-duction of
another.
Marathi had never had, has never needed a history per se. Aer all, I
do not speak the 'history of Marathi' when I speak Marathi: its historical
aspects are part of the 'feel' I have for this language; the history of
Marathi cannot be derived from Marathi itself; its history is 'underived',
part of the sets of reflexes that make my access to that language
historical without that historicity necessarily having to be thematized.
Just as I do not 'think about' the historical being of a hammer as I move
it resolutely towards a nail, I do not 'thematize' a language's historicity.
When do I suddenly come face to face with the sheer fact of the
hammer as an object to be gazed at, theorized, grasped, thematized?
is happens when the hammer or the nail becomes abruptly useless by
falling into disrepair, interrupting my unthought activity by suddenly
drawing attention to itself. is may provide some sense of what may
have produced the inclination in Rajwade towards a historical grammar
for Marathi. For that language as it was spoken in the first decades of
the twentieth century was nothing if not miscegenate, bearing traces of
both the languages of the north and of the south. is bhasha now
needed to be shorn of its demotic elements and restored to its roots in
the original cosmopolitanism of Paninian antiquity. e great effort on
Rajwade's part was to ensure that his researches helped to uncover a
certifiably hieratic (shishta) and urbane (nagar) language whose history
could be written in terms of clear-cut temporal axes, which is to say its
basis in the past of Panini's Sanskrit, its present in the Marathi of the
post-1296 Mukundaraji MS and its future in a comprehensively
historicized Marathi that was to serve as a new standard. A pre-
theoretical, pre-thematic 'feel' for Marathi had to be transformed into a
theorized Marathi 'language' uncovered in grammar and objectified in
history.
Two crucial implications should be drawn from Rajwade's analyses
here. First, the heteronomy of the state as it is posited in the historical
semantics of the introduction to the Bakhar of Mahikavati finds its
exact counterpoint in the heteronomy of historical principles implicit in
Rajwade's scholarly scaffolding for his edition of the Dnyaneswari. One
could go even further and argue that the installation (stha) of the state
at the heart of the nation and the installation of history at the basis of
language rested on a fundamental alienation, for what had been
installed in that inner citadel of nation and language remained in place
only ever as the outside of the inside. Far from being an authentic
(authenticated) inside, that inner core harboured the necessary
presence offoreign bodies, which is to say the presence of the state and
of history brought in from the outside. Both nation and language rested
on this necessary alienation, on a productive and enabling alienation at
their core. If the origins of the state were violent and the origins of
language miscegenate there was a sense in which history had a way of
throwing them outside themselves even as it restored themselves to
themselves. It is hardly a conundrum that Rajwade should lay such store
by the idea of rakhane (√raksha) or 'securing' as the basis of Indian
state-formation. For the State as an idea in Rajwade was nothing but the
technology (technics) of securing, grasping, harbouring, placing in
storage the potentially transformative energies unleashed by History
understood as transcendental homelessness. History as coming-into-
being began with frantic detours across the face of the earth and ended
when the carpetbagger buckled down, promulgating his civility via a
state erected swily in situ.

e Inner Citadel
Where the luxuriant verdure of the Konkan generated in Rajwade's
work the thesis of the lazy indigene, the graphic correspondence of the
Mukundaraji MS with Panini's language brought about the crucial
insight that language needed to be historicized if it was to be brought
close to the horizon of the State. Language without a State is for Raj-
wade merely the sign that history is yet to be inaugurated. History itself
'is' violent transformation with Language and the State as its ethical
motors. In short, Rajwade's nationalism is based not on a principle of
autonomy as is routinely assumed but on the precisely antithetical
notion of a constitutive heteronomy at the heart of the historical.
History in his work is nothing ifnot the movement of Language
(itselhe logos [speech, utterance, self-narrative] of a being-together-
through-hist- ory)-language moving through history and precipitating
itselefore the telos of the State, an end determinable very much in
advance. Language for him refers us to the necessarily violent and
traumatic onto- teleo-logy of the State through history.
Paradoxically, the text that Rajwade used to drive home his thesis
with regard to language was a text (i.e., the Dnyaneswari) that, as we
will see, could have provided the grounds for a wholly different notion
of the State, of Language, and History taken as transcendentally
regulative entities. But we should also not forget that the Dnyaneswari is
aer all a verse commentary (if an extraordinarily imaginative one) on
the Gita, and that the latter text is the locus classicus of the idea of
securing, √raksha in millennial discourses on the State. is is in large
measure because it is dedicated to raising historical experience to the
level of the transcendental.15 e existential situation of Arjuna in the
Gita itself, as is well known, is very quickly written into the trans-
historical schema of universal history, of which Krishna becomes the
awe-inspiring figure in the Eleventh Book. In strictly ontological terms,
all historical action (denoted in the text by a range of words derived
from the Sanskrit root for movement, √k ri) is subordinated to the
eternal path of the negative (denoted by a range of words such as
vartate, anuvartate,pravartitam derived from the key root for eternity as
a 'turning of the eternal', √vrt). By this logic, all phenomenal action
within historical being-human is placed under the sign of history as the
movement of eternity, a movement that was first installed by dint of the
cosmogonic rite of Karmic sacrifice (yaj, gi and counter-gi between
man and God; sacrifice as the origin of the caste system in the varna
division of labour). As a figure for the movement of Time taken in a
transcendental sense, it is to subsume within it all historically specific
action.
e transcendentalization of the figure of Krishna in that text as the
very instance of the universe in motion is to serve at the same time as a
historical intimation-to the effect that the Lord will return in epoch
aer epoch to install and re-install dharma (dharma-sthapana). Arjuna
as a phenomenal instance of creation gradually finds instituted in
himself this figure of absolute otherness, of which his own being is
reduced to a mere moiety. But the stature of that text rests not just on its
insistence on the itinerary of Krishna as an instance of the State but also
on its invocation of the self-overreaching inherent in yogic seeking.
Oddly for a text that places so much emphasis on absolute (cosmic,
metaphysical) heteronomy, there coexists in its pages the
unprecedented counter-balance of a relentless project of self-autonomy.
e tension between the two movements of absolute heteronomy and
unrelenting autonomy lends to the Gita the ambivalence that has made
it the focus of a host of interpretive traditions of which those of Sankara
and Ramanuja are only the most well known because most influential.
Another way of saying this is that there is in that text both the
'system' that is yogic self-overreaching and the 'history' that is Krishna
as Karma. e injunction to Arjuna in the text is to break through the
possible impasse between the two and broach action (√kri) in the world
but in a selfless manner. Why an impasse? Because the animal- machine
of Time or kal could potentially hurtle onwards without in any way
affecting history with transformative potential; especially if the
householder-mimansaka were to adhere to a nearly atheistic self-
abnegation in his commitment to the ritual everyday, or if the yogi
chose total renunciation. Alternatively, human mortality may well
ensure an irreversible plunge into the temptations (bhoga) of the
phenomenal world. Arjuna's selfless action is meant to break through
these dilemmas and resolutely address the necessary and impending
annihilation of his clan. As we can no doubt infer from important
latter-day interpretations by nationalist critics such as Tilak, Shukla and
Gandhi, the Gita is the text that inaugurates for the first time in
antiquity the idea of the State as an originary (historically enabling)
instance of transformative violence. It is the text that announces at the
outset of the post-Buddhist world (i.e. installs for the first time as a
potentially genocidal red thread running through the tradition) the
deeply disturbing ethical proposition that violence is at the heart of any
fungible notion of the social.
e paradox is that Rajwade was one of the first critics to provide
rigorous rules for studying the language of the Dnyaneswari. But he was
also an unstinting critic ofwhat he described as the 'pangu-ness or
sanctioned pusillanimity of the Varkari tradition with its anti-political
emphasis on passiveness (nivrutti-dharma),16 the very same Varkari
tradition, that is, of which the Dnyaneswari has historically been
considered the foundation (paya)! If activeness,pravrutti, entailed the
drive towards the installation of the state, nivrutti or passiveness meant
a complete repudiation of any relation to the idea of a transformative
history. To use the terms I have been discussing above, we might say
that the tradition of which Rajwade was an advocate was the
Maharashtra dharmi tradition he associated with Ramdas (1608-82), a
tradition that worked towards the institution of the state's violent
heteronomy at the heart of the social. Ramdas was not a Varkari (the
sampradaya continues to deny him a place in their four-pillared
pantheon of Dnyaneswara-Namdev-Eknath-Tukaram); he did not
endorse the Varkari way, which insists on the relentless self-
overreaching of the yogi working through the unprecedented gi of
Love that is Vithala. Rajwade's reading of the chronicle (bakhar) of
Mahikavati convinced him that the historical reasons for the quick
capitulation before Alauddin of the local raja of Devagiri was precisely
the culture of Bhakti-informed devotionalism popular in the Konkan at
the time. Dnyaneswara himself lived in Devagiri (Daulatabad) at
around the same time and was at least nominally a subject of
Ramchandra Yadava (1271-1311), the Yadava king who was forced to
capitulate before Alauddin. So that whereas in his introduction to his
1909 edition Rajwade is moved to use Dnyaneswara's text as an instance
of the urbanity and cosmopolitanism inherent in the Marathi of the
period, a quality it was to lose quickly with the coming of Alauddin, in
other places in his work he tended to see those very same qualities as a
sign of Maharashtra's vulnerability to foreign incursions. What the
incipient nation needed at the time, he argues, was a firm avowal of a
warrior ethic, kshatriya-dharma. What transpired instead was that a
lotus-eating populace remained helpless against the power and reach of
the stranger.
I spoke of the millennial discourses of the state; I have in mind the
alarming manner in which the idea of Maharashtra dharma dovetails
with the notion so dear to Hindutva and to the imperial ambitions of
the twentieth-century United States that the last millennium has seen
the perpetual and violent renewal of a primal conflict between two
opposed entities. On the one hand there is a Hinduism retroactively
semitized during the course of the nineteenth century, a globalized
Christianity, and a racist Zionism. On the other hand, there are the
transnational networks of a resurgent Islam. From the point of view of
Maharashtra dharma this long epoch that began with the Muslim
incursions into the Konkan can only ever end with the expulsion or
complete extermination of the Indian Muslim. But there perseveres in
the Maharashtrian scene an important aspect of this millennial notion
that tends to undercut the idea, inherent in such a millennial schema, of
a perpetually Manichaean opposition between Hindu and Muslim
throughout this historical period. is potentially oppositional aspect is
already evident in Rajwade's introduction to the Bakhar of Mahikavati.
e idea that Maharashtra lacked the leading role played by kshatriya-
dharma in this millennial context enables us to detect in Rajwade's use
of this particular topos of Indian antiquity a typically modern gesture.
We recall that the founders of the idea of the state in Indian antiquity
were 'brahmins and kshatriyas'; their tax-paying subjects were the
dasas. Rajwade is clearly less interested in the origins of the state in
antiquity than in the extent to which caste-identity did or did not serve
Maharashtra in good stead in medieval Konkan. His work is classically
elite-nationalist in that it uses a caste-argument about the paradoxically
normalized 'tyranny' of those putative early usurper-kings, the
brahmins and kshatriyas taken together, to make a point about the need
for a proto-nationalist response to the advent of Islam. As is oen the
case with nationalist thinking in this period, there is an attempt at once
to evade the question of caste altogether and to draw attention to the
fact that before everything else the fall of immemorial Hinduism,
sanatana- dharma ought to have fused all Hindus together regardless of
caste and led to the overthrow of Muslim rule. In the long period of
Indo-Islamic militarism (i.e. 'the struggle against Muslim rule'), it
would seem, caste was merely an indicator of where in the socius would
lie the possible sources of genuine historical transformation for future
nationalist ends.
 Now if we were to turn to the work of writers in the non-brahmin
tradition in and around Rajwade's own time, a very different picture
comes to view. Like Maharashtra dharma (with its implicit focus on a
new warrior ethic, kshatriya-dharma for brahmins), this dalit and non-
brahmin tradition too is oen enough centred on the figure of the non-
brahmin hero, Shivaji. But with a very crucial difference: the warrior
ethic, kshatriya-dharma of the dalit and non-brahmin movement does
not focus on the conflict between Hinduism and Islam in the era of
Indo-Islamic militarism but trains its sights on another much older
conflict, that between the dalits and non-brahmins on the one hand and
historical brahmanism on the other. With the phrase 'historical
brahmanism' (and its political fiction of an absolute opposition between
dalits and brahmins in history) we leave the topos of Indo- Islamic
militarism altogether and broach another genealogy of the conflict at
the heart of the Indian social, which is now recognizably a caste conflict
with its own peculiar forms in antiquity, in the era of militarism and in
the epoch of nationalism. For if this conflict between dalits (and non-
brahmins) and brahmanism is to be discerned in the Indo-Islamic era
of so-called militarism, it would have to be seen less as a time of proto-
nationalism than as a time when Islam provided a radical critique of
caste society, one that offered dalits an unprecedented way out of
institutionalized caste-Hinduism. For the weaver-convert Kabir, for
instance, the critique of the Hindu idea of the social offered by Islam
opened the very possibility of his poetry. In sum, where the warrior
ethic, kshatriya-dharma, in the brahmanical tradition of Maharashtra
refers to the permanent militarization that nationalists perceived (again,
retroactively) in the Indo-Islamic world, kshatriya- dharma in the dalit
(and non-brahmin) tradition of such nineteenth- century activists as
Phule refers to the struggle against the effects of brahmin dominance
since antiquity. e coming together of these seemingly heterogeneous
concepts-a low caste ethic, a warrior ethic, the ethic of Krishna Love
(shudra-dharma, kshatriya-dharma, bhagwat- dharma)-in the work of
such critics of historical Brahmanism as Phule, Rajaram Shastri
Bhagwat, Vithala Ramji Shinde, Ambedkar, and more recently in
Sharad Patil-uncover an Indo-Islamic millen-nium that is less about
militarism and the contest between Hindu and Muslim than about the
long-running low-caste movement, going back to ancient times, against
the brahmin conception of the social.
Is there then some conception of this low-caste intransigence in the
Dnyaneswari itself? e conventional understanding of the so-called
Bhakti texts of the medieval period subsists on the beliehat these texts
maintain, if at all, practically no connection with the political world.
e notion is that they tend to turn away from worldly affairs and prefer
to attend to the task of singing praises of their particular deity. 'Bhakti'
texts, we are told, transcend religion, caste, and politics; they embrace
an ecumenical vision of liberal tolerance towards all expressions of
dissent and difference. is interpretive tendency is even at its most
rigorous merely a symptom of the retroactive projection that the
influential bilingual elites of the decades aer and before Partition
exercised on the texts of the medieval era. ese elites prided
themselves on their urbane and secular approach to issues of identity;
they sought to detect in the traces of the past the threshold for their
own liberal tendency to ignore caste and religion as merely instances of
backward forms of social organization. e texts of medieval 'Bhakti'
remained for them instances of a reformism that was radically opposed
to caste and religious prejudice. Such modernists embraced the
contemporary dalit movement in the belief that it had in point of fact
renewed an older 'pre-modernist' attack on the effete and decadent
remnants of an older world. For them, the dalit recovery of the modern
would place directly on track what mattered most to their sense of
historical change, which was the hope that a secular, caste-free society
would inaugurate in India a genuine modernity. e historical
experience of the last few decades has considerably attenuated the
already slender link between this elite modernism and its vanguardist
notion of the modern. For one, the diverse tendencies of the dalit
movement did not, as it turned out, foster the abandonment of ideas of
caste and religion despite having won through the years a series of
constitutional guarantees for affirmative discrimination in their favour-
to the contrary, they have gone on to further exacerbate the identitarian
climate of our times. Under such conditions it would serve little
purpose to turn to the Dnyaneswari merely to rehearse the ecumenical
vision of an Indian modernism that is in many respects out of step with
contemporary political realities.
ere is however a reference to 'war' in a section of this text. e
reference is couched in an elaborate allegorical device borrowed from a
traditional yogic physiognomy of the soul. e shloka from the Gita
motivating this passage extols those who 'exert themselves with
fortitude [yatantascha driddhavrattha]' in trying to attain the Lord. e
reference to working on oneself ought to alert us to the links be-tween
this passage and the persistence of the singular subject in late antiquity.
Here is the couplet from the Gita: 'ere are those who, always yoked to
devotion [bhaktya nityayukta], adore me and glorify me, while exerting
themselves with fortitude, and pay homage to me' (§9: 14; van Buitenen,
105). Here is Dnyaneswara's gloss on the nature ohis self-disciplining.
He writes that this species ofdevotee, the yogis in particular
Take great care always to
Direct the five senses and the mind
Spreading outside like a fence of thorns
e technique of Restraint, yama-niyama.
ey set up inside as an enclosure the Adamantine Posture, vajrasana
Placing above like catapults Modulations of the Breath, pranayama.
at done the Serpentine Feminine's, the kundalini's, Reversing-
power, ulhata-shakti, lights up e Mind-Spirit-Breath, mana-pavana, moves
out and up
Staunching in preparation for the siege
e seeping nectars of the Seventeenth Level of the Pericarp, satrava.
en the Retraction, pratyahara, comes into its own.
It neutralizes the lure of the phenomenal world [vikara]
By lassoing the senses that are like calves insatiate at the udder
Turning them as they forage abroad, into the heart of the citadel
[hrudaya antu].
ey lay claim then to Stasis, dharna, by
Turning the earth-water-fire-wind-sky into sky
Routing and triumphing over the four-flanked army of the under-
standing.17
 At length they go on to heed through Meditative Focus, dhyana
e bugle-cry of the Unsounded Sound, anahat nada
e passionately shining, circumambient
And inexhaustible Concord, samadhi,
Which in turn endorses
e self reaching out to the self,
Regnant in instituting a State of peace [atmanubhava-rajyasukha]
Bringing forth a vision of the coronate [pattabhisheku dekhan]
At-one-with-itself, Fluidly Equilibriate, samarasa.18
What Dnyaneswara provides us here is the portrayal of an agricultural
society preparing for a siege. One would think that here we have the
very picture of Rajwade's ''pangu (pusillanimous) Konkan world, unable
to take up arms but quick to move into a defensive posture. Yet the
nature of this defensive activity, steeped in the concept-metaphors (for
they are both concept and metaphor at once) of yoga and the school of
Sankhya, has very specific aims and carefully ordered ways of attaining
them. e final aim of the exercise is to fortify the powers of the mind
in order to attain samadhi (sam + √dha 'to place') or 'concord,' an aim
that is attained when we arrive at the 'At-one-with-itself ' in the final
line. e theme of the placing-inside-of-what-has-strayed- outside
contains only one explicit account of warfare, which occurs when the
mind 'routs' the 'five-flanked army of the sankalpas'. But in as much as
the mind-the central actor of the entire psychodrama or more strictly,
psychomachia-in this narrative is perpetually at war with itself, we
might even say that the theme of the passage is a kind of 'crypto-
militarism' that internalizes war and places it inside itself. is reversal,
passing through the stages of this yogic physiognomy of the soul
(yamaniyamana-pranayama-ulhatashakti-pratyahara-dharna- dhyana-
samadhi-samarasa), produces the triumphal self-narrative of the mind
trafficking in a certain peace with itself. What we hear throughout the
passage is not a 'rumour of a hidden king'; that which is to come is not a
revelation. Since the argument is taking place at the level of the soul it is
highly unlikely that the allegory will make reference to historical events
or persons. Comparisons with Augustine's substitution of the inner
conflict of the soul for the grand theatre of Virgil's epic of Roman
empire-building, or Dante's transposition of the politics of
contemporary Florence to an imagined underworld would both be out
of place, for unlike Augustine, Virgil, and Dante there is no figural
humanism implicit here, no figurae similar to those predicting the
triumph of Rome or of Christendom. e historical vectors of
Dnyaneswara's allegory are pointed resolutely inwards to-wards history
not as 'violent transformation' but as ethical, other- directed 'reversal'
(ulhat). Having passed through the technology of reversal (a retro-
technics of the body), the mind finds itself very much in control of itself.
If anything the effort has been to modulate (not destroy) the senses, to
undo its somewhat concupiscent pull toward external objects and to
draw the mind into itself.
To this end, various modes of askesis are employed towards the
'modulation' (niyamana) of the senses, chief among which is the
technique of pratyahara, which involves 'moving towards the sensuous
world and then taking oneself away' (pratyahara=prati + a + v √hri
['take away']). Aer having outlined a series of external measures from
yamaniyamana to pratyahara, the text moves on to more internal forms
of self-modulation, such as dharna and dhyana. At the end of this
procedure, having restored the senses to the inner world and drawn
them from out of the outer world, the mind is enthroned in the inner
citadel, where mourning (dukha; lit. 'suffering') has been able to expel
the mourned object it had incorporated (sukha, lit. 'peace'), leading to
the final State of equilibrium, concord (samarasa, samadhi). Clearly the
securing (√raksha) mentioned here is different from its use in Rajwade.
For what has been accomplished is 'neither the rejection nor the
spurning' of the body but in fact its fortification and its becoming free
from disease.19 In 'securing' the body in this way via a process of
repeated reversals carried out at various levels of the yogic system, the
objective is to institute the perpetually renewed autonomy of the mind
against the possibility of its own wavering. (If Rajwade's is an onto-teleo-
logy of the state in history, Dnyaneswara's is a de-onto-teleo-logy of the
mind as the source of self-modulation and as the locus of a 'State' of
inward peace.) For the citadel is to be guarded against the influx of
distracting thoughts, and to aid it in this difficult exercise the first thing
that the mind does is to draw in the senses. e passage is thus a classic
instance of allegorical narrative in the dynamic sense, possessing as it
does the capacity for potentially interminable narratival involution. At
the same time, what Dnyaneswara gives us is not a picture that points in
the direction of another reality, as would be the case if its allegorical
signs merely corresponded in a mechanical manner to meanings fixed
in advance. In other words, it would be premature to describe this inner
landscape as 'symbolic'. is is not by any means a static picture of the
soul at work, as in an allegorical woodcut. Instead what we have here is
the concerted 'artificial' use of mental processes, a memory exercise
(taken from traditions of hearsay) dedicated to the mechanical
'retraction' of the soul. War and siege are not 'metaphors' used by
Dnyaneswara-they are concepts just like the philosophemes that he
draws from the vocabulary ofyoga. e latter is always an allegorization
of death as the 'ceasing to be' of the body, the point at which ethicized/
religious notions of dying as the transmigration of the soul etc. are
preceded by the passivity of an inner 'ab-solute' which we cannot
resolve into metaphor or concept, but which is the posture or 'act'
(asana; dynamis) that alienates the soul in the body, bringing to it an
experience of otherness.20
Neither concept nor metaphor, neither merely symbol nor sign, what
then do we make of the self-overreaching in death of the yogic mind, of
which this entire passage is a portrait? In Rajwade there was the idea
that the state must be installed at the inside as the 'outside of the inside'-
a perpetual otherness or heteronomy that generated history as
transformative violence. e great models for this violent
historiographic state, the state in Hegel (Rajwade was familiar with his
theses on history and nationhood in e Philosophy of History, but not
perhaps with his unravelling of the state in the great treatise on Right)
and in Heidegger (whose indispensable texts are traversed by the
discourses of fascism) come immediately to mind. Indeed there is much
that is 'Hegelian' in this larger sense in Rajwade's idea of the State as the
agency for historical change, and as the horizon of the social. Yet it was
Rajwade who first made it possible for us to read Dnyaneswara's text in
the way we have just attempted. ese lines are taken from his edition of
that text, still the most crucial aid to our understanding of the text as an
instance of the Varkari tradition. It is Rajwade's edition that takes us
closer to Dnyaneswara than any other; there have been more than a
dozen scholarly editions of that text in the last century. Yet in that
closeness to Dnyaneswara we can detect in Rajwade a form of
interpretive engagement that bears some resemblance to critics in other
languages, such as Shukla and Dwivedi in Hindi, who too were working
on the texts of 'medieval Bhakti' (madhyayugin dharmasadhana) at the
time. Rajwade is drawn to this text partly because of its stature as a
perennial monument to a Marathi-speaking society awaiting its final
emancipation in the era of Shivaji and Ramdas. As the sign of a society
awaiting the future installation of the state, the Dnyaneswari is for
Rajwade very much like a sarcophagus housing the precious remains of
Old Marathi, pointing back to 'Aryan' antiquity and to a future
Maharashtra dharma athwart Muslim imperialism. In the somewhat
emasculated society of medieval Konkan, a society that was unable to
stand up to Alauddin, Rajwade seems to say, there was nonetheless the
extenuating circumstance that Dnyaneswara's text could preserve for
the future a Marathi essentially unadulterated, 'unmisce- genate'. We
can imagine that with the coming of Shivaji that sarcophagus would
keep within itself the body of the Marathi state, melding state and
language into one assertive cultural entity.
If the Dnyaneswari is for Rajwade a sarcophagus for language in its
relation to a people and a state, this text itself would seem to be
dedicated to a different kind of secretion. What is the 'secret' of the
Dnyaneswari? What does it 'keep' inside itself? We saw that what it
keeps is nothing but the self-overreaching of the yogic mind. In the
'simplest' terms (so simple that, like Poe's Purloined Letter, we cannot
see what is right in front of us) we might say that this yogic regimen
involves 'placing the inside back [palat, ulhata] in the inside'. For the
nationalist critic accustomed to think of culture as the source of a
specular image of one's own national identity, this kind of 'inside within
an inside' has the aspect of a hall of mirrors. Instead of one's self-
assured sense of self there is the chance that the mechanical replication
of the self may introduce an element of the abyssal into the unplumbed
depths of this interiority, the region of the 'unsounded sound' (anahat
nada). Yet for the yogi himself this exercise is not abyssal: just as
'aporias' must be 'pored through', that is to say decided in one way or
another, the encounter with the abyss of non-meaning requires the
immediate and retroactive institution of meaning; the abyss calls to be
crossed over, covered, making abyssality transient, unsustainable in
itself. What is crucial here is that the abyssality issues from the
ungroundedness of the regimen itself. Such a regimen has no origin or
end. It merely brings about reversals. And this infinite reversibility is
endlessly 'secretive' in that it involves a momentous involution of the
psyche, drawing it deeper and deeper into its inner recesses. At the
same time, this draw- ing-in has none of the features of New Age
commercial spirituality because it is prior to religion, prior to the age of
religions in which non- Western religions can only be
ethnophilosophical adjuncts to rationalized life in late capitalism; as
part of this 'retraction', no inherent symbolic value can be accorded to
mind or soul, to the senses or the body, all of which remain alterable,
dispensable aspects of the technique itself. It implies the involution of
yoga itself towards an ancient oblivion of the right to mourn.
No wonder then that the nationalist critic detected a mystery, secret,
or pusillanimity where there was only this inner journeying. No
wonder, moreover, that such critics tended to be deeply suspicious of
the allegorical schemas in which such journeying would be couched;
aer all, the philosophical vocabulary of such texts as the Dnyaneswari,
as I have suggested above, has a semantic range reducible neither to
concept nor to metaphor. ere is no name for allegory in Indic
criticism-yet this handing down of the selfsame message is not unique
to cultures of hearsay. As Rajwade himself seems to suggest in his
seminal essay on the 'fantastic' (adbhut), Sufi-inspired allegories such as
that of Jayasi and the fascination Dnyaneswara and Kabir display for the
yogic landscape of the soul, are forms of memory that relay a kind of
preserved stereotype conveying the force and newness with which new
empires were built in South Asia in this period. Allegory is mechanical
retention, but its mechanism gives us an insight into the apocalyptic
and utopian dimension of popular memory. For the critic invested in
the construction of a nationally available symbolic image-repertoire
from out of the narrative strategies of medieval texts, this tendency in
the Varkari saints, in Kabir and in Jayasi, towards a potentially endless
generation of meaning was troubling. In contrast, Tulsidas, Surdas, and
Ramdas seemed immeasurably more 'democratic' because the exoteric
quality of their tableau of Ram and Krishna in action was so much
easier to ascertain. And yet in some sense these critics were nonetheless
drawn towards what they saw as the 'esoteric' texts of 'medieval Bhakti'.
e fascination with such a secretive corpus became the basis of their
productive encounters with these texts. In the final analysis the 'secret'
of Varkari hearsay or for that matter of Ram, the name for the
becoming-God of Kabir, is less what is secreted in these traditions of
silence; it is very much more the origin one ascribes to a text in a
necessarily wilful fashion, as the start of a hermeneutic project seeking
to bring out if not the secret itself then most certainly the fascinating,
obsessive possibility of a journey towards that secret in one's critical
labours. Nationalist exegesis, in its encounter with 'Bhakti texts' bearing
evidence of a connection with popular yogic practice (there are strong
connections between Nathpanthi practice and the thinking of both
Dnyaneswara and Kabir) is in the final analysis not about these texts
themselves but about the interpretive dilemmas of the critics that
engaged with them. e fascination with popular esoteric practice as
reflected in this sector of the 'Bhakti' archive coexists in the work of
these critics with a certain citizenly outrage directed at authors whose
secrets nonetheless eluded them. In other words, the popular both
attracted and repelled their gaze. at is the secret these texts keep for
us, who have inherited those older perplexities.
e question remains: do systems make reference to history? e
chronicle (bakhar) of Mahikavati is historical not just because it
contains a narrative of events whose historical basis can easily be
ascertained (as it was by Rajwade) by turning to other contemporary
sources; the Bakhar is 'historical' also because it makes a point about the
decline of Maharashtra Dharma, thus locating itself (at least in
Rajwade's mind) in the still incipient history of the state in
Maharashtra. One could argue for the Bakhar as a historical document,
but is Dnyaneswara's text historical by the same token? A text that seeks
to establish its origins in a time without origins, that lays out a
complicated paradigm for the self-overreaching of the soul would seem
to have very little to do with history in the way the Bakhar quite
obviously does. Rajwade was correct to focus on the language of
Dnyaneswara, for the latter's use of the spoken Marathi of the time is
arguably the only explicit link his text has with historical evidence in
the conventional sense. Where the Bakhar provides evidence of the
timing and narration of actual historical events, Dnyaneswara's text
offers instances of the state of the Marathi language at the time, of the
timing of the Marathi language in history as it moved from its origins in
Sanskrit-Prakrit- Maharashtri-Apabramsha to its transmutation into
the Old Marathi spoken in the Konkan, circa 1290. Yet what are we to
make of that other 'timing', the timing of yogic overreaching which
generates in the text the endless allegorical expanse of levels, sites,
destinations, crossings, the epic dimensions of an inner life that seems
to flee from any connection with history? Yet interiority is nothing if
not a meditation on the question of time. Rajwade projected his
(admittedly faux) 'Hegelian' framework back into the distant past and
thereby instituted the hist- oriographic episteme in Maharashtra,
lodging it firmly in the annals of the Maharashtrian state. Dnyaneswara,
on the other hand, appears to eschew historical reference for a
meditation on the question of tem-porality, the timing of a life as yogic
involution. Is there then any con-nection at all between history
understood as facts and time understood as the work of the soul,
between the exteriority of historical occurrence and the interiority of
inner-worldly time? For, in exteriority the other of history is the state;
in interiority the other of the soul is the phenomenal world, whose
apotheosis (remindful of the eskhaton in an Eleatic register, and paravac
or parakashta in the tones of Shaivite Medieval Kashmir) is in the moral
act of dying before religiously sanctioned death.
e idea of freedom implicit in Rajwade was that of a freedom
secured by means of the state as the final horizon of historical striving.
e violence inherent in the radical heteronomy of the state implied it
alone was to be the motor of historical change in the service of
nationalism. e 'system' of freedom in Dnyaneswara on the other hand
would appear to be static, mechanical. Repetitive-but in keep-ing with
the great allegorical systems of this period and later (one thinks again of
Kabir and Jayasi) there is a sense in which reversibility ensures that a
new history of the soul will have been broached. is system
presupposes difference-it addresses at the outset the issue of the
tendency of the senses to turn towards the sensual world-but it seeks to
reverse this constitutive heteronomy by means of a movement of
transformative autonomy. Moreover where language in Rajwade
entailed the principle ofdeclinability, the necessary 'finitude' of words,
language in Dnyaneswara sought to address the 'infinitude' inherent in
saying: for 'Om' is here the infinitive par excellence, addressing the
question of being from a position of perpetual movement and change.
In conclusion, we can say that two pedagogies of the will have
coexisted in the Indo-Islamic millennium, the ineluctable drive towards
action and the desire to welcome the aniconic, non-anthropomorphic
figure (daivat) of the God who will have come. Both forms involve
change and transformation, but whereas one form involves inciting
action in the subject to change the world, the other involves action to
change oneself; one is a self-subjection oriented to the world, the other
is a self-subjection geared toward itself. Is not the heteronomy of the
self (the idea that oneself is for another) far more enabling than the
heteronomy of the state (the state as the other of the social)? e
traditions of the becoming-God as they are as inaugurated in
Dnyaneswara, Kabir, and Tukaram are precisely about the 'mourning' or
dukha that ordains this self-transformation; for in self-transformation
there is also the important recognition that every other person is
unique, irreplaceable and different from me. e God in him holds me
to account, asks me to mourn for him. He is not the third person
(whom I can then proceed to represent and use as an alibi) who
demands justice, violence, dominance. is practice of the 'returning' of
the soul offers an account of practical reason that makes use of terms
from the religious lexicon as various topoi (dogma in the pre-eccle-
siastical sense) but only for mechanical retention. Could this be a
threshold for a low-caste practical reason severed from the internal
auto-critique or ethical soul-searching of Hinduism? In embracing
hearsay (return, retention, retraction), defiantly this side of theology or
love as eros, such a practical reason would clearly have announced its
own 'hegemony over the social'21 -a social attained not merely by laying
claim to the state but by addressing the problem of a past that is older
than the time of history even as it makes it possible, a past beatifically
mediated via the notion of the 'divinity of the divine' of which the
Varkaris' Vithala and Kabir's demotic Ram are signs taken for wonder.

Notes
* is essay was first written at the invitation of Partha Chatterjee and Razi Aquil
for the conference on 'History in the Vernacular' organized by the Centre for
Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (28-30 December 2004). Many thanks to the
members of the Centre for their enthusiastic and insightful response; my especial
gratitude to Sibaji Bandyopadhyay for his detailed and painstaking engagement.
e present substantially revised version was read at the invitation of Gyanendra
Pandey at a conference on 'Subaltern Citizens and their Histories', Emory
University (13-14 October 2006). I would like to thank Ruby Lal, Laurie Patton,
and Gyan Pandey for their comments on that occasion.
1 Sanjay Subrahmanyam, V. Narayana Rao, and David Shulman's collaborative
work, Textures of Time: Writing History in South India: 1600-1800 (Delhi:
Permanent Black, 2000) is a case in point, but I should also mention here the work
of Sunil Kumar, Sheldon Pollock, Shahid Amin, and Muzaffar Alam.
2 See 'e Prehistory of the Popular' (unpublished MS).

3 See Dirk H.A. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: e Ethnohistory of the Military
Labor Market in Hindustan, 1450-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990).
4 Bimal Krishna Matilal, e Word and the World (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1990), p. 36.
5 Mukundaraja (circa 1300) was the Shaivite author of the Vivekasindhu. For an
account of the controversies surrounding the dating of Mukundaraja and his work
as well as his relation to the Nathpanthis and to the Mahanu- bhavas, see
'Tarkateertha' Lakshmanshastri Joshi's entry on Mukundaraja, in G.D Khanolkar,
ed., Marathi Vankmayakosh: Khanda Pahila, Marathi Granthakar(AD 1050-1857)
(Mumbai: Maharashtra Rajya Sahitya Sans- kruti Mandal, 1977), pp. 251-60.
6 See Rajwade's Collected Works (henceforth 'CW'), published in Marathi as
Itihasacharya Vi. Ka. Rajwade: Samagra Sahitya (Dhule: Rajwade Sansho- dhana
Mandal, 1995-8), 6: 55.
7 Rajwade's tantrum nonetheless met with some historical justice, though only
years later, and by critics who would doubtless have earned very little gratitude
from him had they been his contemporaries! If the continuing critical fascination
with it is anything to go by, it can be said that Rajwade's edition of his
Dnyaneswari in 1909 based on that misbegotten MS retains its sheen to this day.
e pellucid strokes of the Rajwade-prata (as it is more widely known) make up a
ghosted palimpsest, like a photograph none the worse for a negative
unaccountably lost. Nor has the stature of his edition been necessarily displaced
by the official (Maharashtra state-sanctioned) corrected edition of his text,
published amid great fanfare in 1960. In disputing a number of the decisions
taken in the 1960 edition, the distinguished edition of the Dnyaneswari by Arvind
Mangrulakar and Vinayak Moreshwar Kelkar, the Dnyandevi (Mumbai:
University of Bombay, 1994), has restored Rajwade's text to the eminence that it
deserves. My forthcoming translation and commentary of this text uses Rajwade's
edition as its point of departure.
8 Compare for instance the historical writings in English of Rajwade's con-
temporary Jadunath Sarkar (1870-1958) which are noted for their breadth of
vision, their philosophical summations, and for the stylistic bravura of Jadunath's
prose. It is not hard to see why he was such a harsh critic of the Marathi historical
method (as can be discerned in the caustic essays on Rajwade and his colleagues
in Sarkar's e House of Shivaji [Calcutta: Orient Longman, 1978]). Yet, as
Gautam Bhadra's recent researches have begun to inform us, Sarkar's Bengali
writings tell a different story. Bhadra's work reminds us of the oen blurred line
between 'historio- graphical' and 'essayistic' writing in the regional languages in
the epoch of nationalist criticism, a genre ofimaginative speculation that oen
departed from the presuppositions of dominant Eurocentric historical paradigms
in this period.
9 I take up this notion of stereotype in relation to the question of allegory in
Rajwade elsewhere in my unpublished essay, 'e Colonial Fantastic'.
10 For Rajwade's critique of Ranade, see CW 10: 270.

11 I am grateful to Marathi playwright and Sinologist G.P. Deshpande for the

suggestion that the Varkari tradition is a unique instance of this coming together
of elite and subaltern. (Private communication.)
12 See the work of Jan Gonda, especially the essay 'e "Original" Sense and the
Etymology of Skt. maya , in Gonda, Four Studies in the Language of the Veda ('S-
Gravenhage: Mouton, 1959), pp. 110-94.
13 e affinity is especially marked in Giordano Bruno's Neoplatonist roots, and is
clearly discernible in this account by Frances Yates in her book, Giordano Bruno
and the Hermetic Tradition (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 79-80: '[Marsilio]
Ficino says that the figure of the world may be constructed so as to reproduce the
motion of the spheres . . . not only to be gazed at but to be meditated upon in the
soul. . . . It is a cosmic mechanism . . . not only to be looked at but reflected or
remembered within. e man who stares at the figure of the world on his
bedroom ceiling, imprinting it and its dominating colors of the planets on
memory, when he comes out of his house and sees innumerable individual things
is able to unify these through the images of a higher reality which he has within.
is strange vision, or the extraordinary illusion, was later to inspire Giordano
Bruno's efforts to base memory on celestial images, on images which are shadows
of ideas in the soul of the world, and thus to unify and organize the innumerable
individuals in the world and all the contents of memory.'
Not only is this notion of 'figures of the world' patterned very much aer an
abyssal or ungrounded interiority, its idea of God is entirely derived from the
project of a mechanical retention of memory. See also the very intricate reading
Heidegger gives of Schelling's notion of a ground without ground of God: 'What is
dependently independent, the "derived absoluteness" is not contradictory. Rather,
this concept captures what constitutes the band between the ground of beings as a
whole and beings as a whole. God is man, that is, man as a free being is in God
and only something free can be in God at all . . . [Gott istderMensch; d.h.
Mensch alsfreier ist in Gott, und nur Freies kann uberhaupt in Gott sein . . .]',
Heidegger, Schelling's Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom, tr. Joan
Stambaugh (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1985), p. 87. For Cusa, see Michel de
Certeau, 'e Gaze: Nicholas of Cusa', Diacritics, 17, 3 (Fall 1987), pp. 2-38.
14 Dnyaneswari 1:1. All translations from the Marathi of Rajwade and
Dnyaneswara in this essay are mine. Both authors are poorly represented, if at all,
in English. In attempting to translate this and other passages from the
Dnyaneswari, I have relied on the vast archive of secondary material on the text.
In the interests of economy I will defer a discussion of that material here. e
edition of the text I have used here is V.K. Rajwade ed., Dnyaneswari (Dhule: Kesri
Press, 1909). I should add that my translations tend to emphasize the verbal
movement of Dyaneswara's thinking; my scruple is to avoid abstract,
substantializing words that merely freeze concepts. Conventional translations of
this text abound in such 'metaphysical' terms as 'the Universal', 'the One', the 'All-
knowing', etc.
15 e edition I have used here is J.A.B. van Buitenen, trans., e Bhagavadgita in
the Mahabharata (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). See especially §3
and §4, pp. 81-9.
16 See CW 10: 270.

17 Sankalpa = sam +√iklrp: what one brings together, i.e., mana-buddhi-chitta-

ahamkara so as to determinedly 'take-to' the world.
18 Dnyaneswari, 236: 211-17.

19 I owe this point to Madhukar Vasudev Dhond. See ' Yogasangrama in

Dnyaneswaritila Laukika Srushti (Mumbai: Mauj Prakashan Gruha, 1991), p. 35.
For the rendering of samarasa as 'fluidly equilibriate' I am indebted to David
Gordon White, e Alchemical Body (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996),
p. 218.
20 As I have argued elsewhere in a reading of David Lorenzen's work on the
extinct Shaivite sect of the Kapalikas, that is the precise threshold at which this
death-allegory evokes the mourning of the aboriginal Kapalika, whose death-
mask is the Great Vow-the unmasking (dédoublement) of which reveals an older
mastery over the art of remembrance, 'e Prehistory of the Popular'
(unpublished MS).
21 e phrase 'hegemony over the social' was used by Gopal Guru in an oral
presentation of his paper, 'eoretical Brahmins, Empirical Dalits', at the
Southern Asian Institute, Columbia University, New York, March 2000.
 8

Captives of
Enchantment? Gender, Genre,
and Transmemoration*

INDRANI CHATTERJEE

R
ecent scholarship on literary cultures of the subcontinent has
blown apart arguments that collapsed notions of identity into
primordial linguistic or literary formations.1 By highlighting the
role of courtly elites who created 'vernacular' literatures, and by
insisting on the choices made by literate groups to borrow themes and
symbols from oral and performative contexts, this scholarship pushes
historians of modern South Asia in many useful directions at once.
First, it disables a hitherto influential idea regarding the separation of
languages of command from languages of expressivity.2 Instead, it
dispels assumptions of purity and homogeneity in both 'vernacular'
regional and the 'classical'/translocal or 'cosmopolitan'. Second, this
scholarship also impugns the implicit mapping of such abstract divi-
sions onto social groups whose identity is located outside of history,
already constituted either as elites and subalterns, rulers and ruled, or as
'foreigners' and 'natives'. Instead, this scholarship urges us to attend to
the historical circumstances under which all language choices are made.
Rather than endorse the natalism embedded in metaphors of blood and
milk invoked in terms such as 'mother-tongue', oen elided in lay usage
with notions of vernacularity, this position reveals instead the
investments of gendered ahistoricism that operate at the core of
contemporary ethno-linguistic politics and much other social science
theory.
If hybridity and historical contingency need to be foregrounded in all
discussions of literary change, they are even more critical for the
histories of groups whose polyglossia was not reduced to script till the
end of the nineteenth century. Hitherto, the most influential and
nuanced discussants of vernacular historiography in early modern
South Asia have drawn their evidence from niches in settled and ex-
panding agriculture, courts, temples, and Sufi hospices.3 When alter-
native ecological niches-of forests and mountains-have been studied,
these have been temporally limited, and have almost universally privi-
leged the oral over written sources.4 It is easy to conclude from this that
groups living in forests and mountains in the modern period have been
absent from pre-colonial courts, armies, and commercial networks of
the region as a whole. Postcolonial ethno-nationalist movements, with
their own claims to reified ethnic identities in the past, narrations of
victimization in the present, and the related redemptive claims to
territorial sovereignties further prohibit scholarly historical investi-
gations of pre-colonial pasts in these regions. All that the conscientious
historian can do, it appears, is refute the grounds on which such claims
are made.5 Yet in doing so such historians inevitably lay themselves
open to the charge of 'elite' discursive and methodological practice that
critics like Hayden White and others have decried.6 However, it is
precisely the absence of knowledge about pre-colonial formations of all
identities-of rank, or culture, or gender, or sect-that makes such charges
appear plausible to begin with. It is also a profound absence of
knowledge about non-European cultural and narrative traditions and
histories that permits such facile comparisons and categorization. It
might be worth recalling here that neither the postcolonial European
critic nor the Indian historian has access to the older languages and
enciphered scripts (used by many monastic and courtly scribes) with
which to defuse the conflict over form and rhetoric in historical nar-
ration, between ethics and art, between history and life.
While this essay uses material from a corner of the present
subcontinent and of people modern constitutionalists call a Scheduled
Tribe, Mizo, it is concerned with broader issues of sources, the non-
separation of rhetoric and ethics from critical historical method,
including that in the past, and the reification of ethnic, linguistic, and
other identities in the writing and imagining of historical pasts.
Literally, the term Mizo means 'man of the mountains' or highlander.
As a descriptor for the many different dialects spoken by people in the
late twentieth century, it signals a standardized composite form created
by Welsh Presbyterian and American Baptist missionaries between 1896
and 1940. Hence, if the use of language is taken to identify 'ethnic' or
cultural identity, it is apparent that Mizo is a relatively modern identity
largely limited to the northern hills of the present state of Mizoram.
Most of the southern villages of this tiny state speak Mara. Since neither
group has written records of a pre-colonial past, and given the
peculiarities of geography (see map) of northwestern Burma, eastern
Bangladesh and the modern Indian provinces of Tripura and Manipur,
scholars keen to know about pre-colonial pasts have to read whatever is
accessible to them from the contiguous courts and regimes.
 Eastern India in the Nineteenth Century

Prehistories of the Modern

One of the commonest features of this region between the late
seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries was warfare. All the place-
names given in particular chronicles of Manipur, Tripura, Cachar, and
Assam suggest twin processes at work in this warfare: one, a gradual
consolidation of power in a particular dynasty or centre, sited on the
top of a mountain or hill rather than on marshlands below; second, a
decentralization of military labour which could only be mustered by
'royal' order.7 is decentralization of soldiering brought local
households and peripheral regions into regular relationships with the
kings and courts, at the same time that the drive to control and amass
labour also fuelled the war machinery in each instance. Labour was part
of the wealth seized in warfare between the Burman, Arakanese, Ahom,
Cachari, Manipuri,Tripuri, and Tai-Shan courts between the fourteenth
and nineteenth centuries.8 Captives counted. 9 In the seventeenth
century a Manipuri ruler who had captured a thousand 'Kachari'
soldiers 'appointed them to work as bugler, drummer, dhobi, mahout of
elephants, syces for horses and other works according to their res-
pective qualities'.10 A neighbouring ruler of Tripura resettled captives
from the coastal Arakanese (Magh) populations in the highlands where
they were to clear forests for cultivation.11 is mode of acquiring
labour through warfare continued in the nineteenth century.12
Local chronicles also outlined exchange values of such war booty. e
Tripura Rajamala records that the wages of sixteenth-century military
levies were based on monetized values of plunder. Verses give four
annas as the value of each cow, two annas for each goat, and sixteen
annas (or a full rupee of silver) as the value of each human captured.
Military levies from Sylhet were paid in human captives as a result
(looter monushyo nite nripe aadeshilo).13 Captives could be transferred
in different ways within and between different social groups as 'tribute',
'rewards' or 'fines'. Manipur chronicles record that one seventeenth-
century scarcity drove the poor of a village to kill a royal elephant for
food but the offenders compensated the king with 'twenty- two slaves,
cows and horses'. Another group of tributaries (named 'ongjai' in the
Manipuri and 'Kuki' in the Bengali accounts) paid their 'tribute' to the
court of Manipur in human wealth (along with guns, gongs, and
animals). Such tribute was then redistributed further. Over an
eighteenth-century food scarcity, captives were traded for 'nineteen
maunds of grain' each.14 Under such conditions we can only guess at
the worth of the reward that kings gave to polo players or to builders of
royal apartments when they gave 'a slave'.15 We can also guess at the
value of royal oblations of slaves to Govindaji, the Vaishnava deity of
the Manipur palace temple. Indeed, so well understood was the
language of 'dedication' of slaves to overlords across the region that a
seventeenth-century Portuguese Catholic friar, eager to gather his
scattered flock of Christians within a single parish, resorted to this
idiom in asking an Arakanese Buddhist ruler to dedicate local converts
as slaves to the newly established Christian shrine at Dianga- a
'donation' readily made to the supplicant padre.16
e dyadic bonds implied in such relationships could be found both
in the entourages of warrior-princes and in the service of temples,
akharas, khanaqas, and monasteries. During times of peace, skilled and
trained captives attached to princely and royal households could work
in a variety of tax-collecting or scribal and cra workshops. During war,
some of these could also either 'volunteer' themselves or be
'volunteered', depending upon the particular relationship between the
obligations of holding households to dominant powers in the region in
the matter of military and auxiliary services. If the dominant power
wished to favour particular ministerial and religious establishments,
exempting the latter from having to send their slaves and servants to
war was certainly an option.17
is pattern of resettlement of populations in different parts of the
region has a direct bearing on issues of linguistic diversity, and of the
heterogeneity of identities. As for the former, recent compilations of
biographies from across the subcontinent reveal a consistent pattern of
captivity, spatial and social dislocation in youth followed by adult
careers in military service, saintly status, and literary fame. us,
parallels appear in the careers of Sufi Muslim poets like Alaol at the
seventeenth-century Buddhist-Muslim Arakanese court,18 a
contemporaneous Sufi saint in northern India,19 military men like
Malik Ambar in the peninsula,20 and similar figures of the eighteenth
century like Himmat Bahadur,21 and the Mughal courtier Tahmasp
Khan Miskin.22 Linguistic and literary affiliation is particularly at issue
in some of these biographies. Miskin's memoirs record that as a child in
a largely Persian-using gubernatorial entourage in Mughal Punjab, he
was segregated from other young male slaves in order to preserve his
'original' Turkish speech. Alaol too appears to have retained a 'native'
Bangla at the Arakanese court. While Miskin did successfully cross the
linguistic barrier as an adult (enough to have his eldest son become a
famous Urdu-Rekhta poet of the nineteenth century), a similar lingu-
istic-literary barrier was suggested for the Georgian male slave whose
Persian-language lyrics were passed off as those of an amir of Sindh.23
ese individual examples suggest that linguistic 'incorporation' was
itself a matter of cadet agency, and that masters and owners might have
stakes in maintaining 'differences' among subject populations. Extended
to clans or villages that were deported and resettled elsewhere, such
contrivances on the part of new masters ensured linguistic 'diversity'
among multiple groups of captives and escapees incorporated into
upland communities.
All the early English-language evidence from the region reinforces
this. As East India Company officials encountered various groups as a
result of war with the Burmese court, and when timber extraction from
and tea cultivation in the Assamese hills took them deeper inland, they
too acted upon older patterns of 'resettling' fugitives and prisoners of
war as 'colonists'.24 us, Burmese 'Maun' (more correctly Mon)
prisoners of war became sipahis (soldiers) in the East India Company's
forces in 1824-5, and were deployed to put down rebellions of other
upland populations (referred to as 'Cossiah'/modern Khasi). A
considerable number of the other prisoners, including women and
children, were settled as 'cultivators' in northern parts of Bengal and
Assam, with advances of agricultural implements, cattle, and seed grain.
Another set of mixed populations referred to as 'Doannia' were formed
into a 'frontier' militia under the command of a European officer.25
Company officers, following the naming practices of their plainsmen
soldiers and contractors, willingly adopted the latter's descriptors (such
as Kuki,26 Lushei Chin, etc.) for motley labour groups tied together by
marriage and worship rituals. Yet the populations to which such labels
were attached were extremely complex. For instance, even among the
Mon prisoners of war referred to earlier, there were men with names
like 'Abdool Roy Maun' or 'Sheeb Maun', or 'Sham Pho- kun', indicating
a diversity of religious, linguistic, and genealogical sources for their
social identities. Obviously, such identities were not created overnight.
In the 1850s a group called 'Mrung' defined themselves as 'persons
carried away from Tipperah (Tripura) several generations back by the
Arracan Kings by whom they were first planted on the Le-myo river.'27
Since the period of the 1840s to the 1860s only exacerbated the
dislocations of such populations due to dynastic warfare, deportation,
and resettlement, and with the flight from labour and taxation regimes
of different kinds throughout the region, the pattern of complex,
heterogeneous labour groups remained a characteristic feature of the
landscape. News of the availability of land, shortages of labour, and the
ease of 'passing' in contemporaneous indigenous courts of the region
even attracted Hindustani soldiers mutinying at Chittagong and Dhaka.
In 1857-8 they made towards these hills and courts, taking their
households with them.28 Some of these mutineers were killed by
mercenaries hired by local tea planters from among their own labouring
groups (also identified as 'Kuki' and 'Manipuri'). Some of the mutineers
survived: among the cultivators-cum-soldiers banded under one of the
contenders for the Manipur throne in early 1860 were men identified as
'Looshai, some Munipuri, and a few Hindustani, the latter most likely
old mutiny sepoys.'29
is pattern of group formation around the nexus of military labour
and access to cultivable land proved hospitable to the induction of
different kinds of individuals. Lewin, the English officer who played a
principal role in the annexation of the southern hills, described a 'Riang
Tipperah' who had formerly been a slave of Rutton Poia, 'a Lhooshei
chief '.30 In the earliest accounts given by this officer, the young male
slave was called Nuruddin, and his initiation into a military career was
outlined in detail. Twenty years later, this Bengali-speaking Muslim ex-
slave was found to have acquired a clan Lushei name, 'Ngur-dina', and
an elevated official status as the inspector (jemadar) of the Demagiri
bazaar.31 If, instead of fashioning all our research agendas from
prefabricated notions of ethnic, sectarian, linguistic, and class identities,
we fashioned them from the vantage point of a sometime Muslim and
later Christian Lushei, Ngurdina, whose 'vernacular' and what 'history'
might we find ourselves tracing?

Gender and Historical Genre

Let it be clear from the outset that there are no manuscript accounts of
the past written by members of the nascent 'Mizo' community of the
late nineteenth century. Indeed, the only direct link between Ngurdina's
actions during a raid on the village of Khandal in 1860 (an event we will
trace later) and to a broader pattern of raids claimed as foundational to
the formation of Mizo identity comes from Lewin's English-language
account cited above. While the new historiography of literary cultures
seldom pairs English with 'vernacular',32 the preceding social history I
have outlined in passing should suggest the stakes involved in the
reconstitution of fragmented and vanquished remnants of many
regimes in the region into particular kinds of 'ethnic communities'.
Comparable with identical formations in colonial Africa,33 many of the
defeated military conscripts among these South/ Southeast Asian
populations embraced the language and script that the English
conquerors gave them at different points in the late nineteenth century.
Hence, Mizo in the Roman script and the English language were alike
embraced by those who had long experience in acting as military and
diplomatic mainstays of older conquest regimes and cultures in the
region. So, following Hayden White, if we understand historical
thought as a retroactive patterning and communication of varying
temporal and social conjunctures, then the label of 'vernacular Mizo
history' should go to newspaper accounts in the English language first
authored by young Christian men among the Mizo community in 1963.
is was doubly significant because the task of constructing and
transmitting a memorable past was oen done with materials and
symbols gleaned from equally myriad sources-apparently living
memory, floating 'classical' traditions of an older polyglot universe, and
the accounts of Englishmen of different groups. As we will see below,
one of the main themes-or to use Pauline Strong's words, narrative
'typification'-in such histories was captivity. It informed colonial,
Christian missionary, local Bengali-speaking bards, and English-
speaking Mizo storytelling alike in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries.
 In early 1963 a local pastor (now Reverend), Zairema, wrote an
article titled 'e Lushais are Coming' for publication in English and
Bengali papers.34 e first of the Mizo narratives about the pre-colo-
nial past referred to a story of 'Kukis' who attacked a tea plantation
belonging to a Mr Winchester in 1871. ey apparently killed the
planter and kidnapped his six-year-old daughter Mary. In the colonial
archives this narrative was deployed to legitimize military conquest of
the hill country between 1872 and 1890 on the pretext of 'rescuing' the
little girl from her kidnappers. ough the Mizo reverend fully
appropriated the older imperialist interpretation of the 'raid' upon the
tea plantation, he reinterpreted 'conquest' itself as the beginning of
alternative modes of being, with the arrival of two Christian
missionaries. As a 'result of. . . subsequent missionary labour practically
the whole of the district has embraced Christianity and have turned
away from their old ways. Ninety-nine percent of the Lushais are now
Christians and among the Hill Tribals they are considered to be the
most progressive. is change has been brought about by Christian
missionaries following the murder of Mr Winchester and the capture of
his daughter.' Both imperialist and local postcolonial Mizo pastor made
the captivity of a six-year-old girl the turning point of the narration: it
caused the forces of 'good' to sweep down upon the land, and led to the
destruction of the 'demons'.
Such a narrative of female captivity and rescue confounds those
looking for discrete 'vernacular' enunciations and narrative genres. It is
equally puzzling because such typifications have a special salience in the
cultural traditions of South and South East Asians, associated with
episodes from the epics Ramayana (where Sita was abducted by
Ravana) and the Mahabharata. But such a staging of the past by Mizo
Christian groups under the sign of 'history' was also politically
transparent. It simultaneously aligned a local past with the legends of an
international textual and performative universe, while folding into itself
a narrative product of British imperialism.35 us, while the imperialist
narration of 'Lushai barbarism' led to military annexation of the region,
the postcolonial Mizo narration of 'Lushai backwardness' acted as a
claim for progress in the early 1960s-a politically significant gesture in
the context of federal government.
Clearly, each narration needs historicization, not the least because
each encapsulates conflicts over political economy and cultural
symbolism within itself. For instance, the imperial narration of the
capture and rescue, by focusing attention on the vulnerability of an
iconic child, directs attention away from the conflicts within the British
imperial administration itselfin the 1860s, around the terms on which
'wastelands' between Sylhet, Cachar, and Tripura had been leased at
extraordinarily favourable rates to British tea planters.36
e imperial narration of the rescue oflittle Mary presents military
conquest itself as a venture in humanitarian capitalism, even as the
officer who led the 'rescue' knew that she was an 'illegitimate' child of
the European planter. e British officer's anxieties regarding the visual
impact of a less-than-white child surfaced in his remark that should
'they put her picture in the Illustrated London News, the deeds of our
column will be robbed of their lustre.'37 He need not have feared; the
picture that was printed in contemporary newspapers, and is now the
only photographic evidence of that momentous occasion, is that of a
reasonably sturdy, light-coloured and light-eyed young infant.
Nevertheless, decades later, Lewin was to describe the adult professional
and mother of three, Mary, as 'a stuck up conceited little half-caste
woman . . .'38 Juxtaposed against such obvious official racism, one can
read the narration by the Mizos of the twentieth century as an attempt
to restore Mary to the past of local hillsides, and to claim her mixed
identity for the space itself. For decades later, when I taxed Reverend
Zairema for an explanation of the importance of Mary's captivity to his
narration of the past of the region, he began by outlining Mary's
ancestry as the daughter of a 'local' hillwoman, an ancestry that was
apparently common knowledge among his congregation, but never
shared in print. It was obvious to me that a Mizo retelling of the same
story in English is as much a participant in the conventions of 'classical'
and 'vernacular' storytelling as any other regional language narrations
of the past of these hillsides.
 is modern Mizo reappropriation of the captivity tale as history is
an exemplar of the problem that this essay grapples with. For while
family resemblances between narratives render repetition itself part of
critical practice, they also suggest the reappropriation and
reincorporation of the 'classical' into the historically specific 'modern
vernacular'. Literary conventions of such 'cosmopolitan' groups in the
region required that each narration represent itselfas an echo (dhvani-
pratidhvani), a resonance, of a story heard many times before.39 e
meanings of each narration of the past then lay not in the
'characteristics'/ identity of the producers, but in the
'correspondence'/identity of the echo itself. Which particular notion of
'identity' was engaged in each retelling depended for its decipherment
each time upon the skills and aptitudes of each audience and teller. Put
like this, we can avoid the ultimately futile search for authorial intention
which would have us ask whether or not Reverend Zairema had been
aware of 'classical' conventions when he wrote that newspaper account
of the event of 1871, whether or not he had transmitted older Muslim-
Vaishnava traditions into his English language history writing, which
superficially appears to be a legitimation of Christianity's
transformative capacities. If we did ask those questions of Reverend
Zairema, as well as of the narrative traces available to us, the answers
would only confirm the impossibility of barriers between multiple
narrative traditions in the region.

Narrative as Historical Critique

Hybridity or cosmopolitanism characterized all narrative traditions
regardless of the language they were embedded in. I shall make this
argument in greater detail below by referring again to the theme of
captivity and 'Kuki' attacks in two different narrative forms in the same
Bengali language at the end of the nineteenth century. One is a long
poem I found in the Dhaka University Archives.40 For the most part
the manuscript is in legible hand, on machine-made paper of 7"x 6",
which had decayed in some places. is manuscript poem has about
seventeen lines on each folio; there are a total of fieen folios. e metre
varies between the payar and tripadi unpredictably. Some of its other
aspects are equally puzzling. A colophon appears in the middle of the
poem indicating authorship by a Gulbaksh, but there is no other
indication of village, ancestors, or patrons of this author. Once small
and local printing presses (bat tala) began to reproduce such
compositions from the nineteenth century, we can ordinarily trace
patrons and local publics of such poets from the printed covers and
frontispieces. However, this poem does not appear to have been ever
printed.
Such an absence from print is meaningful in itself. First, it suggests
that the strategies of memorization usual in the world of pre-print
orality would remain important to the interpretation (and
consumption) ohis poem. e poem's 'performability' is signalled in
invocations to hear the poet. Phrases like shuno kohi gunadham (hear
me good folk) match up with musical directions like dirgha chhanda
(referring to tempo, requiring prolonged holding of musical notes, and
of human breath) and ektali chhanda (quickened tempo). ese traces
of orality are compounded by the strong rhythms (of payar and tripadi),
the mnemonic patterning and formulaic contrivances of plot and
language that make such poetry specific to the formation of an 'enclave
of preserved, significant communication'.41 In other words, it is this
stylization itself that signals its purpose-of encapsulating large chunks
of knowledge for storage and recall. Yet such stylization itself might
have contributed to its oversight.
e absence from print therefore suggests a conflicted relationship
with a changing interpretive or consuming community. While a
strongly nasalized dialect suggests that it was written for a local
community, its mix of Arabic terms (munajat = petition) and
invocations to Allah and a Prabhu Niranjan suggest that the community
of address was a mixed one of both Hindus and Muslims. Yet the
higher-status Bengali Muslims (ashraf) oen did not write in Bengali;
those who did were implicitly considered of lower pedigree and
registered an ambivalent social location.42 is ambivalence comes to
mind repeatedly when confronted by the nasalized dialect, and the
unstandardized transcription, spelling, and grammar in the poem.
Neither in its address nor in its production then does this poem
indicate a particularist identity.
e story appears in sections of verse marked out as chapters. e
first section describes a village celebration attacked by armed Riang-
Kuki, and the consequent devastation. e second section refers to
armed resistance offered by a local potentate, a Muslim man called
Guna Ghazi. e third section describes the women who were captured
and taken away by the raiders, and their laments. e fourth details the
arrival of the British forces from three contiguous provinces. e
narrative ends with the flight of two women from their jailers. If we
measure this narrative-of war and captivity and flight-against virtuoso
explanations of how certain communities adopted certain narratives as
'their own history', it is evident that here was a narrative so repetitious
that it appears impossible to fix to any one community's 'real time' or
'space'. In other words it was a narrative that could become no one's
history-until it was read specifically as a critical commentary.
In order to read it as critique and contemplation, one would do well
to recall the conventions of deferential speech, enacted as 'law' in the
older polities of the region like Cachar and Burma, which punished (or
threatened to punish) the 'lowly' who accused their superiors of
wrongful behaviour. Given this past of impelled politesse, the poem's
gesture towards events that it could not directly describe is obvious; it
referred to an elite 'ritual of bodily seizure' of labouring groups.
Methodologically, since the poem relied upon established patterns of
inter-textuality, readers need intertextual tools of their own in order to
be able to read the criticism implicit here. ese tools are what we call
'archival' records and secondary sources.
One of the latter kinds is a Bengali language prose history, written by
an erstwhile official of the royal house of Tripura. is describes a raid
on Munshirkhil, a village under the jurisdiction of Chhagalnayia police
station within Khandal parganah in the early part of 1860.43 is
report, based on survivors' oral accounts given to the author (in his
words, tatkale jahara polayon purbak atmaraksha korite shokshom
hoyiyachhilo tahader nikot ei ghotona jeirup sruta hoa giyachhe ei sthole
tahai prokash kora gelo), is specific in terms of dates and numbers.
According to the latter, 400-500 Kukis descended on the village on a
Saturday morning in the middle of Magh, when the village was
preparing to perform the Panchami Puja, normally associated with the
worship of the female deity Saraswati, on the plains; 185 men and
infants were killed in a raid that spread over 15 villages, and
approximately 100 women were captured. is account also speaks of a
rural notable called Guna Ghazi, who gathered together 25-30 guns
from his village across the river Baunali, attacked the Kukis, and
compelled them to retreat.
Apart from the oral accounts of survivors, Singha took recourse to
his own memory. He recalled that, as a boy, he had heard the rustic
Radhamohan's poetry composed immediately aer the events of 1860.
He then reproduced twenty-four lines of the 'remembered' poem thus:
(Good folk! Hear the story of the slaughter at Khandal/ Sripanchami
was a Saturday in the month of Magh/ Babu Dhurandhar came to the
mart of Munshirkhil/ e morning on which the worship was to be
conducted/ with plentiful sugar and sweetmeats/ Was suddenly dis-
rupted by the arrival of Tiprakuki/ Holding dagger in hand and gun on
shoulder, they spread terror/ Caused the heart to quake with fear at the
very sight/ ey began to fight cutting all before them/ Bodies tumbled
to the ground/ Blood flew, and the vultures circled the sky/ Houses were
plundered, then their roofs torched/ Implements were looted, and the
best cloths in the boxes/ By aernoon their destruction was completed/
ey returned on Sunday, passing through the dead village on their way
to Koilapara/ On way at Dhaunali, they were seen by Gunaghazi/ Who
came with soldiers and turned the Tiprakuki guns back).
is remembered fragment of verse dated the event to a Saturday in
the month of January (maghmashshonibar sripanchami puja), named
the collective under which the perpetrators were known to plainsmen
(Tiprakuki), the police officials appointed by the Tripura court
(Dhurandhar), and the places affected by the event (Munshirkhil bazaar,
Khandal, Koilapara, and Dhaunali, where Guna Ghazi is said to have
turned the raiders back). At least some of these details correspond with
Gulbaksh's referents. Both locate the event at the south-ern end of the
state of Tripura, where its boundaries with British Bengal's revenue
jurisdictions were contested. Both poems in using the category
'Tiprakuki' and 'Reangkuki' had apparently failed to specify the
presence of real Bengali-speaking Muslim soldiers like Nuruddin, alias
Ngurdina, who were participants in these attacks, such as on Khandal.
And most significantly, the remembered poem made absolutely no
reference to any women, young or old. Yet the prose account that Singha
wrote, apparently on the basis of the oral testimony of survivors, not
only enumerated the numbers of captives but made pitiful references to
the violence against women and children. So while one poem said
nothing of this, the other by Gulbaksh paid a great deal of attention to
it. Had the memories of one group of people falsified the past, or had
memory itself been constrained to clothe itself in an enchanting
tradition?

e Gravity of Enchantment
Enchantment works not by explaining, or linking cause and effect, but
by taking the hearer/audience beyond its own familiar horizons and
locating it on the verge of another understanding. It generates both
delight and unease within the listener, simultaneously expanding her/
his mundane or quotidian world while suggesting the inexplicable
nature of it. e unease comes from the challenge that this throws to
the established lexicons and competences that an audience might have
to deal with the given world. Gulbaksh suggests a familiarity with a
world beyond sense perception, the world of both morality and magic.
e ethical imperatives of the narrative are clear. e opening verses
describe a land where men are cruel (jalim) and heed neither
knowledge (na mane alim) nor observances of the faith, like
distinguishing between haraam and halal foods, upon which Allah
sends a band of naked (ullanga) fearless warriors-the Kuki-Riang-to
show them the error of their ways. e Kuki raids on different villages
appear initially as divine retribution for the social and moral
degradation of the local populace. is may appear contradictory,
especially since the poet does not explain, nor directly legitimate, each
raid by the Kukis. To discern the implications of the poet's treatment of
the raids, the reader has to look to the use of rasa established in Sanskrit
poetics.44
In this poetic tradition an event is described in terms of the emotions
to which they give rise. A war is inferred from the poet's descriptions of
terror. Devastation, inferred from the putrid smell of skeletons
cannibalized by jackals, vultures, and ants, is to arouse pity (karuna) in
the hearer. Both terror and pity are aroused by minute and vivid
descriptions of the moral world turned upside down. us, the
descriptions of the flight of men and women subvert the settled life of a
cultivating village, as well as the social norms which tie kinsmen and
women together. Both kinds of dissolution are embodied in the images
of men forsaking their social obligations to their sons and to their elders
in their flight to save their own lives, and in that of pregnant women
giving birth in the jungles to babies who will be a danger to themselves
and to their mothers.
ousands of people fled, leaving their own homes, the fleeing son
heedless of the parent. Seeing the heads of the slain on the fields, the
birds of the forest felt pity. Young men and women fled their homes,
and as quickly landed in the fields. Pregnant women gave birth in these
fields.
is was a convention of war poetry, written both as part of Islamic
jangnama traditions, as well as for secular traditions of war.45 A close
reading of an eighteenth-century narrative poem on the raids by
Maratha cavalrymen (Bargis) upon tracts of western Bengal in the
eighteenth century illustrates the formulaic core of such depictions
(Maharashta Purana).46 What is more important is that the flight of
social groups suggests upheavals in the moral-political order. Most
critical of all is the suggested gender disorder.47 Hence, for both the
eighteenth-century poet of the Bargi attacks in western Bengal and the
nineteenth-century poet of Kuki attacks on the eastern frontiers, the
final symbol of this disorder is the pregnant woman's public labour,
summed up in gorbhoboti nari joto na paare cholite/darun bedana paiya
proshobichhe pothe (pregnant women, all but unable to walk, began
their labour on the road and were delivered there).
What poetic, if not historical, purpose then was served by such
graphic references to the disordering of the world? It is the validation of
the heroic avenger. As far as Gulbaksh's poem is concerned, the
ideological frame of the heroic warrior appears in stages: in the first half
of the poem, the depiction of groups in flight allows for the
representation of the Kuki-Riang as worthy opponents for the ghazi
hero of the third section of this poem. It is, therefore, to build up the
heroic nature of the latter that the section preceding the verses on Guna
Ghazi are devoted to more detailed descriptions of arson, pillage, flight,
and death unleashed by the Kuki-Riang. e implication is that the
more terrifying and destructive the enemy, the more heroic the feats of
valour, the greater the courage of those who resist.
It is clearly in this light that Guna Ghazi is represented as the
alternative and moral centre of this narrative. e poet represents him
as going to battle the Kukis on mere report, and his bravery as a sharp
contrast to the cowardice and treachery of the fleeing male villagers
who have experienced the raids but failed to resist. e righteousness of
this battle is also indicated by the arrival of more troops under the
banner of one Jokimal (sounds like a legendary character since I have
not been able to find any reference to this name at all). is enhances
the ardour of Guna Ghazi, whose wounds in battle are detailed to the
extent of valorizing his strength, and achieving the miraculous-the rout
of the Kuki-Riang from the battlefield. Yet, having achieved this feat,
Guna Ghazi is nevertheless defeated by the forces of an immoral world-
represented by an alliance of cowardly villagers and British courts and
soldiers.
e heroism of the ghazi is constructed as an alternative not merely
to the pusillanimity of the lesser cultivators, but also to the
overwhelming physical might of a colonial government. is effect is
achieved by deploying words and registers which have very precise (not
symbolic) associations. A colonial bureaucracy is represented by the
munshi who reports (riput) the Munshirkhil carnage to the British
magistrate (shaheb magistoro), and the latter sends troops (chhipaii,
Hindustani sipahi) from three contiguous districts (tin jelar shaheb
aashi ekatro hoyilo). e villagers are depicted as both fearful of the
shaheb and the sipahi and collusive with them in falsely alleging Guna
Ghazi's complicity with the Riang.
It needs to be said that traditions about the heroic ghazi were at least
a century old in this region. For a man called Shamsher Ghazi was said
to have established an independent jurisdiction in these parts between
1746 and 1758 CE in defiance of the provincial governor of Bengal, the
nawab nazim at Murshidabad, as well as of the ruler of Tripura.48 Some
version or the other of the poem was read, heard and incorporated in
the work of most of the significant historians and literary figures of the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Verses from one such
version were incorporated into the prose history of Kailash Chandra
Singha too. For while the Shamsher Ghazi tradition outlines a
triangular contest between Murshidabad, the monarchs of Tripura and
the substantial landholders of the region, the Guna Ghazi persona
addresses a quadrangular contest between the imperial British
government, the rulers of Tripura, the revenue-collecting landlords, and
the revenue-paying cultivators.
A sense of this oscillating set of relationships, of both conflict and
collusion, is immanent in the English-language records of the late
nineteenth century. For instance, some Muslim as well as some akur
landlords were believed to have protected specific groups of armed
cultivators, described as 'raiding parties' in official files. Describing a
'raid' at the end of 1868, in which a great number of men were reported
to have been murdered, cattle taken, and villages burnt in areas of the
Tripura state, one official reported that the raiders surrounded a
zamindar, Ismail Ali Khan of Lungha, and 275 men with him.49 Yet
other reports also suggested a conflict between local Muslim tenants of
the court of Tripura against whom the maharaja was willing to deploy
Kuki arms. us: 'there is no plumbing the depth of the intrigues
carried on in connection with the affairs of Ali Ahmad [the zamindar]
and the Raja of Tipperah and the hill tribes over whom both claim
rights, and who are willing to pay rent to neither; with which intrigues
the family quarrels of the hill tribes dwelling further to the south and
east are mixed up.'50
Hence, the poetic treatment of Guna Ghazi, and his wrongful
imprisonment, seems to share in both the enchanted tradition of the
ghazi of the eighteenth century, and in the historical sets of conflicts in
which some Muslim tenants of the local landlords appear to have been
enmeshed.

Returning to Stories of Seizure

Such conflicts over sustenance were encountered first of all as stories,
some of which on their eddies around the hills reached the colonial
administrators. At core, these were about conflicts over pasturage in the
grasslands in the hills, just as drought dried out the watering holes and
made verdure precious to cattle-herders in the plains below. ough the
right to collect a tax on hill grazing was given out on lease by the ruling
house of Tripura, this tax became impossible to collect from desperate
herdsmen. Hence 'the story is still told how a band of these lawless men
served a presumptuous lessee . . . who dared to assert his rights against
them. It appears they seized him and hung him on a tree, leaving his
corpse as a warning to others. is occurred many years ago. I have
heard that the closest investigations failed to bring the murderers to
justice.'51
Clearly, such stories were meant to deter all tax farmers. However, the
hardiest, or the newest, entrants into their ranks appeared not to have
learned from them. In 1871, one such 'new man' proceeded to 'capture a
large herd of cattle' grazing on his leased hillside, and drove it off before
the herdsmen realized what had happened. e latter retaliated by
charging him with 'the' of the cattle from the plains, producing the
'most carefully prepared evidence, every man of the village being ready
to swear that the cattle had been plundered from Government territory.'
ough a long trial finally cleared the lessee of wrongdoing, he had
spent sufficient time in the area by then to have heard the earlier story.
He never showed his face near the spot again. Other officials of the Raj
took longer to learn from these stories. ey tried to enforce the
payment of forest-grazing dues by arresting the resistant herdsman. e
relatives of the accused petitioned the magistrate that the man had
'been carried off to Hill Tipperah, and "caused to disappear" . . . that the
Rajah's people had either murdered or otherwise disposed of him.'52
Captivity acquired its particular valence as impoverishment and
dispossession from these material conflicts. A group of landless tenant
cultivators and herdsmen were involved in a struggle over enhanced
rates of taxes on their cultivation as well as on forest produce and
pasturage. While the history of this intensified taxation was related to
the wider issue of deepening colonial capitalism, its peculiar impact in
this region came from the repeated devastations caused by marching
armies (dynastic warfare for the Manipuri throne between 1841 and
1850, Anglo-Burmese war in 1852, rebellions in 1857, Anglo-Burmese
war again in 1885). Destabilized political and military arrangements
were worsened by a spate of succession disputes in the ruling families in
Tripura and Manipur.53 A contested dispute in one inevitably dragged
the other into the conflict because of a pattern of marriage alliances
between them. is adversely affected the populations living on the hills
shared by both powers, as each unsuccessful contender for the throne in
each instance retreated to the hills, from whose populace then would be
recruited the next army for the next assault on the throne. Each such
attempt failed, especially because European-trained armies and
ammunition were normally available to the throne-holder. Each attempt
appears to have been followed by even greater repression of the
particular hill group that had supported the contender. Meanwhile, the
agricultural economy of the hills, dependent upon seasonal and timely
clearing of forests, sowing of seeds of rice, cotton, mustard, or sesame,
and on rain and regular weeding, felt the impact of labour shortages
and belated planting. Famine lurked around the hills at all times. But
when the bamboo flowered, especially every thirty years or so, the rats
feasted and overran standing crops regularly. Conflicts that are so
poetically refracted in Gulbaksh's narration become intelligible once
more within this landscape of immiserization.

Enchanted Memory
How then are we to understand the reference to the 700 women seized
by raiders in Gulbaksh's poem? For one, the numbers are symbolic and
meant to indicate significance, not mimetic truth. Second, the
conventions of rasa, deployed in the description of the vulnerable
beauty of one Komol Poddar's woman, or those of the 700 women,
taken captive are meant to signal the 'doubling' of one woman for
another, and invoke yet another meaning of 'identity' as sameness. us,
woman/women, lied out of kin-and-household groups represent the
ideal 'scapegoats of the gods' (Smith's phrase); their subsequent defeat
of the forces of evil (rapacious men, wild animals and reptiles, as in
Damayanti) being an injunction to ethical behaviour in the future.
Hence it comes as no surprise that there should be a great hiatus
between contemporary records and Gulbaksh's verses where women's
captivity is concerned. ese archival records, by confirming the gap,
help to direct attention to the absences-to spaces where critical
commentary would have been, ifit had been permissible. In other words,
archival records confirm that the poetic contains within its own spaces
an accusatory ghostly presence. e first hint of this comes from a letter
from Mary Winchester, the child who had been at the heart of the
remembered drama of 1871. In a letter to one of the Welsh Presbyterian
missionaries, Mary Winchester wrote:
My name in Lushai was Zoluti, a 'stranger in the land.' ... I have a mixed
recollection of the journey into the Lushai country, the huge fires at night in the
jungle to protect us from wild animals, the upward journey through the various
villages . . . and finally a bungalow with a dear old motherly woman who was so
good and kind to me. ere was a younger man of whom I was afraid as he
threatened to kill me, but the old woman would not let him have anything to do
with me. Oen has it been said I romanced when I spoke of this old woman,
but I am glad that I have lived to prove that it was no stretch of imagination but
a fact, for she was no other than Piklwangi [Pi Tluangi] the grandmother of
Vanchhunga one of your native preachers at Aijal. She wove me garments, a
 blue striped skirt and a red tartan shawl made of silk, which I treasure not only
as a relic of my life there, but of the love, Divine given, that prompted the
weaving of them. en came troublous times. I was threatened to be killed as
being the cause of it all, but the old woman shielded me. One could see villages
being burnt lower down the slopes and a general uneasiness prevailed where I
was. en I was fetched and withgriefI le my friends . . . I was given up on the
21st of January, 1872 one year except six days aer my being taken prisoner.54
(Emphasis added)
Apparently, Mary's memories of captivity were neither diluted nor
falsified by age, for even the contemptuous colonial officer who had
headed the British military rescue effort confirmed the possibility of
affective assimilation that the child may have enacted. For the moment
of Mary's return to British society was recorded thus:
e officer who was sent by Colonel Tytler to take her over from Rutton Poia
found the little maid sitting on the log platform of the chief 's house, having for
clothing only a blue rag round her loins, and with a pipe in her mouth, issuing
sententious commands to a troop of small boys who were disporting
themselves before her.
She appeared during her long stay with her kidnappers to have al-together
forgotten the English language; but on the officer fumbling in his pocket and
demanding whether she would like to have a sweetie, her memory at once
responded to this ancient and familiar question, and she held out her hand,
showing that she understood what had been said . . .
It was curious to consider that, but for a chain of unlikely events, she
might have been the bride of some dusky Lushai chief, wearing a scantly kirtle
and an amber necklace! 55

While Gulbaksh's poetry elides captivity with vulnerability and aban-

donment by kinsmen, the ex-captive's English-language records suggest
a diametrically opposed picture of captivity peopled by playmates,
affection, and social ease. More dramatically still, if one juxtaposes
Gulbaksh's narrations of captivity against both earlier and later
accounts of captives of such raids, there seems to be a preponderance of
young girls rather than young adults. So both before and aer the 1869-
71 raids, we hear of child captives, and another sold captive little girl of
six, being returned.56 When we do meet with older captives in the
archives, they are all products of thirty-year-old raids and kidnaps.57
Moreover, such older captives repeatedly refused to leave erstwhile
captors.58 Shakespear, sent to free captives in 1890, reported 'One old
man said he had married a Lakher wife and did not want to move; the
other said she had been taken a baby and was quite ignorant of his
father's language, and he did not want to go back . . .'
ese gaps between the English-language archive and those of the
Bengali-language poetic narration demand that we treat the work of
enchantment seriously. Only if we allow that the poem is haunted by
captors who double up for each other can we understand that the
absence of correspondence between one and another is the invitation to
contemplation. For it recalls attention to the poem, and particularly to a
section headed ominously, Shaheber Hukum Paiya Jamaddar Haate O
Chipaigane Begar Dhoribar Bayan (Narration of the Impressment of
Unpaid Labour by Colonial Armies on the Orders of their Superiors).
Suddenly, audiences hear that colonial soldiers have come into the local
bazaar to impress labour (begar dhora); hearing this, all those present
began to flee. us begins a cycle of repetitions that would conjure up
the demons encountered earlier in the narrative. e first set of
repetitions is about the flight ofpeople from the marketplace.
Repetition, within the subcontinental meditative traditions of zikr
(remembrance) and mantra, also clarified knowledge for seekers of
truth; repetition committed things to memory, and hence recall. us, it
is by repetition of rhythm and by the description of flight that the
audience is nudged into clear recognition and remembrance.en
follows the next cycle of repetitions: this time about the capture of 700
women in even more elaborate terms.
Favoured by destiny with the most beautiful women (the captors) divided them
up upon arriving home. I cannot count how many hundreds of women were
taken, two were given to the Upha [minister] of the Kukis, two of the most
beautiful were given in tribute to the king, two captives were given to each
house, but never a third. e captors reasoned that keeping four or five of these
women in one house might help some to escape into the forest from where they
would be irrecoverable. us only two women were kept in each house. Such
was their captivity, they could see neither sun nor moon.
 But these captors, who the poet leaves unnamed, are presented as
even more refined and organized than earlier marauders. ey are the
British army. e latter's impressments of labour between the 1860s and
World War II have been remarked upon by C.A. Bayly and Tim
Harper.59 Gulbaksh reworked an existing and elaborate mythopoesis of
captivity to lament this malignant series of events in the region. It is to
this that I now turn.

Repeating the Rituals of Bodily Seizure

As some of the stories reported by colonial administrators earlier re-
veal, many among labouring landless populations understood their
relationship to overlords in terms of 'seizure'-of all forms of wealth,
whether cattle, or land, or human labour. Like the herdsmen who
charged the raja of Tripura with having 'disappeared' their kinsman,
there were others who accused the labour recruiters working for tea
gardens of 'kidnapping' girls.60 It is perhaps as references to labour
recruitment in the region that such narrations of kidnap have the
greatest resonance.
A quiet desperation about the impressments of labour from among
hill dwellers all over these regions is evident from records originating in
the 1840s itself.61 Such demands for labour for colonial armies and
engineers added to the grief of hill cultivators when the latter were
asked to supply rasad (rations) for the soldiers of colonial armies sent in
to 'protect' them.62 When British imperial forces occupied the region
from 1880 onwards, these dual expropriations redoubled in effect the
long history of famine in these hills. e superintendent of the hills,
C.S. Murray, offered settlement terms which were punitive from the
outset: each household was to pay an annual tribute of one basket of
rice, and each able-bodied man to give ten days' labour 'free' in the
year.63Unremunerated labour was to be given in addition to food
acquired with great difficulty. ough in later years some officials may
have regretted such impressment, calling it 'one of the blots on our
administration', they remained inflexible about its place within the
symbols of rule. In the view of one such official, 'Not to have forced the
people to provide labour for road making etc. rendered necessary by
their own folly in forcing us to occupy the Hills would have been wrong
and would le [sic] the Lushai in doubt whether we had really mastered
him . . .'64
e mastery over the impressed labourer/coolie was mediated
through a local headman or 'chief '. Each chief in turn negotiated a
particular relationship with the representative of the British army, the
superintendent of the hills. In the words of one, complaints against the
chiefs by their village subordinates were common. To these colonial
officers, the recalcitrant men were 'rascals who had refused to go as
coolies when ordered by the Chieo do so.' eir reluctance was oen
crushed by extracting even greater amounts of labour than hitherto
established; so instead of the ten days that might have been asked for
earlier, the men would work for a month without pay.65
Such labour demands were gendered in that the British officers
expected only young men to be sent to them. But such men oen
'bolted' into the jungles and refused to comply with many of their chiefs'
demands and entreaties, leaving behind the very old or the very young
to be caught for 'forced labour'. Colonial officers, infuriated by refusals
of labour, took recourse to an ominous series of 'rituals of bodily
seizure' simultaneously sexual and material.66 For instance, finding
only nineteen bodies in place of the thirty coolies wanted from a
particular village, a local superintendent sent off 'the sepoys to catch the
eleven men we wanted'.67 Shortly aerwards, another, a police officer
turned civilian administrator, set off to catch some coolies, at least two
of whom were women. When the female bodies eluded him, he tried to
seize substitutes. As an elderly Ralte hillman, who had regularly taken
rubber down from the hills to the marts of Sylhet, remembered it: 'Mr
Murray asked for them [two young Paihte women] for himself and Mr
Taylor . . . e two young women fled into the jungle and the chiefand
his elders could not find them. Mr Murray was very angry and said to
the chief, "If you do not give them to me I shall demand your wife". As
they could not be found, Mr Murray demanded the wives of the
chiefand his brother respectively.'68 On the local headmen's refusal to
yield up wives, the colonial officers determined to 'burn the rice'. Aer
thirteen such 'rice-houses' or granaries had been burnt, and the
standing crop devastated, the villagers of Khawhri, led by
Zakapa/Jacopa, shot at and wounded the British officer and his
entourage and troops. e resistance spread beyond the immediate
village. When the rebellion was eventually investigated, Murray
claimed-as though in exculpation of such demands-that he had only
'demanded coolies'.69 e 'opinion in the hills' was that the people had
rejected the demand for women.70
Under the sign of Pax Britannica, officials who demanded 'coolie'
labour from local populations and were refused were authorized to
burn all food stocks of resistant villages.71 As the man-made shortages
of food became more acute, colonials waxed eloquent about the
'blessing' that such starvation meant: rice could then be imported from
the plains, and the cost of this could be realized from the starving
labour.72 Since exposure and starvation were praised as the 'strongest
allies of the empire',73 the imperial plunder of food also extended to the
collectors and creators of it-women, children, and other animals. So,
among the imperial forces swooping into a village, a jemadar (or
subordinate Indian officer) 'captured 12 women and children, 1 gun, 2
powder horns, 2 goats, 3 baskets of fowls, and some galvanized iron
screws'.74 Another soldier captured a four-year-old child. is
particular ritual of captive taking by imperial forces was prolonged till
1894-5, and never completely ceased thereaer.

Transmemoration and the Gender of Resistance

Hence, Gulbaksh's poem gestured to multiple acts of capture,
conducted under the aegis of multiple ruling groups. His conclusion
eloquently memorialized different groups of fugitives in the narrative of
the escape of two women. Archival records confirm that while some
women escaped from their captors on their own initiative,75 others
were ransomed by their employer, as in the case of the 'Lushai' woman
ransomed by the Raja of Manipur in 1871,76 while some others were
never ransomed at all. Contrary to the suggestion in Gulbaksh's poem,
that all children were slaughtered by the raiders, some escapees even
returned with their children. One Puran Chang said that she tied her
surviving daughter to her back, slid down a tillah into a jungle, where
she hid for two nights, surviving on raw plantain (thore) and cane tops.
is was how she, in her own words which strangely echo Gulbaksh's
poetic ones, 'walking slowly through the jungle observing the sun and
the moon', made her way back home eventually.
A significant image of the archived memories of survival, and of
captivity, is that of the shortages and varieties of food. One Shalutri
[Shabitri?] Kulini [coolie?] described how the 'raiders drove us along
uttering the words droo-droo. ey took us on 8 days' journey from the
garden and gave us nothing at all to eat. But they fed Mr Winchester's
child thrice a day with boiled rice mixed with molasses . . . We picked
and ate the forest fruit " Chotta".'77
It is this final image that establishes the dialogic interaction between
the archived memories of the fugitives, and the poetic rendition of the
moral authority of victims. For Gulbaksh, the two successful fugitives
are, like the rest of the images, unrecognizable except in moral terms.
And morality is always marked by the patterns of consumption or
renunciation. Hence, the two captives are represented as dependent
upon their captors for their food, and resolutely refusing to eat
haraam/forbidden foods supplied by the masters. ough their captors
provided a plentiful fare of meat (of peacocks and other birds), fruits of
the forest, and insects (grasshoppers and worms), the women's rejection
of such food is explicitly linked to taboos sanctioned by faith.
Accordingly, says the poem, 'I am permitted to mix grain with halal
food, but my lord has forbidden me to eat haraam food. Provide me
with the materials which I eat regularly.'
e mention of tabooed foods (carrion, blood, swine), if read refe-
rentially, might suggest that female captives came from the group of
newly Islamizing peasant groups in eastern India. While there is no
definite evidence to justify this reading, it makes for a perfect poetic
intelligibility. It provides the axis for suggesting the victory of the
helpless captive over the barbaric captors, the undiscerning nameless
males. It shis the emphasis from 'sexual chastity' of women, with
which every retelling of kavya was concerned, to an image with far
greater resonance, to a famine-ravaged landscape, that of 'willed'
starvation. e poet leaves us in no doubt that this provides the captives
with the resources for their final victory-both escape from captors and
survival in forests. For, having provided the women with the means to
cook their own meals, the captors suddenly fell unconscious one night.
e women fled the place immediately. In a final section, the two
runaways negotiate the obstacles of a strange terrain at night, thus—
Fearing for their lives, yet clueless about the way back, they [the two women]
went deep into the forest. Unable to tell north or south, they walked night and
day in the forest. eir stomachs became unfamiliar with cooked food; they
survived on roots of banana trees. At night, terrified by the roar of tigers and
lions, they rested on the high branches of trees. In the morning, they climbed
down and ate what they could . . . they survived twelve days in this way.

Reclaiming the Past for the Future

Here, with the successful flight to freedom of some real and imagined
women, should have ended my own interpretation of the poem. But in
keeping with the intentions of Gulbaksh's conclusion, I wish to
conclude with a set of recognitions that the poem nudges me into. e
first is a recognition that Gulbaksh's conclusion has neatly overturned
the logic of masculinization and militarization, seeing both as indelibly
linked with each other, and equally 'barbaric'. is was the rhetorical
criticism taken on by this narration,78 a purpose which it could not
directly claim for its own, and which would not be heard in these terms
either by the current rulers of the country, nor those rentier or
professional groups with aspirations to rule in the future. Gulbaksh's
conclusion, with the successful escape of two women, invokes instead a
politics of wiliness and endurance, not too distant from the one that
might have been shared by Gandhi and his Jain-Vaishnavite model of
civil resistance later in the twentieth century. Both Gulbaksh and
Gandhi turned the politics of gendered heroism on its head, suggesting
that where military resistance by heroic Ghazi-like figures had
succumbed to the onslaught of a greater militarization, the feminization
of resistance offered the only possibility of return to normalcy.
But there is yet another recognition that Gulbaksh's narration
enables-that, in kavya, events happen not once as tragedy and the
second time as farce, but the first time as lyric and the second time as a
creative haunting. So, in keeping with the demands that such narrations
made of their audiences-that of contemplation of the repetitions, the
allegories, the variations and the eerie silences-we too are required to
contemplate the void le in Shalutri/Shabitri Kulini's archival
testimony. e escapee, even though describing herself as having been
captured with her child, said nothing of any other child but Mary
Winchester. is, given the absolute tracelessness of Mary's mother in
British birth records (in Farringdon) of the period, and a marriage
record which only gives us her dead father's name, leads me to surmise
that Shalutri/Shabitri Kulini was none other than Mary's mother.
If that is indeed the case, then Gulbaksh's treatment of captive
women scapegoated by the gods reminds us that 'community', history,
memory, gender, and genre were all fluid, and were made meaningful in
particular historical contingencies. us, in Gulbaksh's own narration,
the Poddar woman, 2 women and 700 women all recall not just each
other but also perhaps living captives in local society such as Nuruddin,
just as the 1963 Mizo narration of the events of 1872 would place the
local hill girl, the six-year-old Mary Winchester, as part of a universal
mythic tradition. While each of the female captives referred to each
other, they also referred to the cross-localism and cross- gendering of
identities that was so characteristic of the colonial encounter itself. For,
as archival records and contemporary memory both suggest, Mary
Winchester was only the name of a child born to a local female labourer
in the gardens. Hence, her 'capture' by her mother's folk may not have
been what the imperialist armies suggested it was, and Mary's 'rescue'
by Englishmen amounted to an exile from her 'motherland' as well. So
the Mizo narration of the coming ofcolonialism also begins with a
certain kind of 'ancestor worship', and Mary, like all such dead
ancestors, was thus ritually remembered in ways living within the layers
of Christian practice here. At the same time, the history began by
invoking a story of defeat and exile that was typically also gendered. For
while all the female captives of each narration invoked each other, they
participated in the broader mid nineteenth century invoking of fragility
and resilience believed to be typically female. Certainly, such a
gendering of the self as female-marked by long hair, or in other cases by
bangles-was repeatedly enacted by native rulers overwhelmed by
colonialism in the mid nineteenth century. One of these, a local
Bohmong chief near Chittagong, asked to explain the fashion of long
hair worn by men in his clan, responded with a story of Burmese-
Arakanese warfare in which the latter were defeated, and 'so we are not
so brave as formerly and wear our hair in a knot at the back of the
head'. If living men could believe that defeat transformed men into
women, perhaps it is possible to understand the reasons for the poetic
silence on the slave warrior Nuruddin/Ngurdina-for he was already a
female captive in the household of the master.
Posed in these terms, the 1963 Mizo ritual of remembrance then
returns not merely as recollecting together (com-memoration) but a
trans-memoration, in the sense of crossed borders of cultures, times,
geographies, the apparent remoteness and exteriority of the past.79 If
such rituals of trans-memoration did not occur in 1937, when news of
Mary's death reached the missionaries in these hills, it was because the
Mizo language was not yet available to those who remembered her as a
'daughter' of the hills. Given the subsequent claiming of her 'rescue' as
an 'exile', scholars of literary history, of women's history, and of ethnic
history must ask ourselves what spells blind us to the presence of
English and Christianity within the 'vernacular' histories of the
subcontinent. What spell keeps us from abjuring our sedentary
metaphysics for a perpetual translocation across modern nation-states
as well as within them, for perceiving the flux in all identities including
those of gender and language?
 Notes
*is essay has been written with the support of the ACLS, which gave me the
Frederick Burkhardt Fellowship for 2004–5. It allowed me to visit the Welsh
missionary archives housed in the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, and to
write up some of the current material in this essay. I would also like to thank the
librarians at the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, at the Firestone Library,
Princeton University, and at the Alexander Library, Rutgers University. I am
especially grateful to my colleagues in the anatology Seminar at the Institute of
Advanced Study, especially Caroline Bynum, Susan Morrissey, Susan Einbeinder,
and Karl Morrison, who helped shape some of the arguments developed here. I
am especially grateful also to omas Keirstead, Julia omas, Bruce Grant, and
Sumit Guha for invaluable advice on the craing of literary style, to Carla
Petievich and Ramya Sreenivasan for critical interrogations, and to Partha
Chatterjee, Gautam Bhadra, Manas Ray, Rajat Ray, Tapati Guha-akurta, and
members of the audience at the conference organized by the Centre for Studies in
Social Sciences, Calcutta, December 2004, for their intellectual engagements with
the arguments of this essay. Finally, I thank Fran Prichett for urging me to think
through the pairing of English and ‘vernacular’ in the context of Indic languages
of the modern past. However, like my other colleagues, she is not responsible for
my use or abuse of their intellectual inputs. All the failures of this essay are mine
alone; all the achievements are due to collegial conversations.
1. Sheldon Pollock, 'Cosmopolitan andVernacular in History', Public Culture, 12, 3
(Fall 2000), pp. 591-625; idem, ed. , Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions
from South Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); Sumit Guha,
'Transitions and Translations: Regional Power and Vernacular Identity in the
Dakhan 1500-1800', and Allison Busch, 'e Anxiety of Innovation: e Practice
of Literary Science in the Hindi Riti Tradition', Comparative Studies of South Asia,
Africa and the Middle East, 24, 2 (2004), pp. 23-31 and pp. 45-59, respectively; also
Sumit Guha, 'Bad Language and Good Language: Lexical Awareness in the
Cultural Politics of Peninsular India', in Sheldon Pollock, ed. , 'Languages of
Science in Early Modern India' (forthcoming). For the later periods, see Stuart
Blackburn and Vasudha Dalmia, eds, India's Literary History: Essays on the
Nineteenth Century (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004).
2. For one of the more enjoyable examples, see Bernard Cohn, 'e Language of
Command and the Command of Language', in Ranajit Guha, ed. , Subaltern
Studies IV: Writings on South Asian History and Society (Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1985), pp. 276-329.
3. For examples of recent scholarship, see Velcheru Narayana Rao, David
Shulman, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Textures of Time: Writing History in South
India 1600-1800 (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001); Sumit Guha, 'Speaking
Historically: e Changing Voices of Historical Narration in Western India, 1400-
1900', American Historical Review, 109, 4 (October 2004), pp. 1084-1103; Muzaffar
Alam, e Languages of Political Islam in India, c. 1200-1800 (Delhi: Permanent
Black, 2004).
4. Ajay Skaria, Hybrid Histories: Forests, Frontiers and Wildness in Western India
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Stuart Blackburn, 'Colonial Contact in
the "Hidden Land": Oral History Among the Apatanis of Arunachal Pradesh',
Indian Economic and Social History Review (henceforth IESHR), 40, 3 (2003), pp.
335-65.
5. Yasmin Saikia, Fragmented Memories: Struggling to be Tai-Ahom in India
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2004). Compare the denial of 'Tai' claims of
Assamese-speaking peoples in Saikia with those made on the basis of Sinic and
Burman sources by Christian Daniels, 'Historical Memories of a Chinese
Adventurer in a Tay Chronicle: Usurpation of the rone of a Tay Polity in
Yunnan, 1573-1584', InternationalJournal ofAsian Studies, 3, 1 (January 2006), pp.
21-48.
6. Hayden White, Metahistory: e Historical Imagination in Nineteenth- Century
Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973); idem, e Content of
the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1987); for critical discussion, see Roger Chartier, On the
Edge of the Cliff: History, Language and Practices (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1997), and A. Dirk Moses, 'Hayden White, Traumatic
Nationalism and the Public Role of History', History and eory, 44 (October
2005), pp. 311-32.
7. TripurarRupakatha (Agartala: Upojati O Topshili Kalyana Bibhaga, 1980), pp.
123-9.
8. See, among others, Michael Walter Charney, 'A Reinvestigation of Konbaung
Era Burman Historiography on the Beginnings of the Relationship between
Arakan and Ava (Upper Burma)', Journal of Asian History, 34, 1 (2000), pp. 53-68,
and 'Crisis and Reformation in a Maritime Kingdom of Southeast Asia: Forces of
Instability and Political Disintegration in Western Burma (Arakan), 1603-1701',
Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient, 41, 2 (1998), pp. 185-219;
Jacques Leider, 'On Arakanese Territorial Expansion: Origins, Context, Means and
Practice',and Stephan von Galen, 'Arakan at the Turn of the First Millennium of
the Arakanese Era', in Jos Gommans and Jacques Leider, eds, e Maritime
Frontier of Burma: Exploring Political, Cultural and Commercial Interaction in the
Indian Ocean World, 1200-1800 (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002), pp. 127-49; Sanjay
Subrahmanyam, 'Slaves and Tyrants', Journal of Early Modern History, 1, 3 (1997),
pp. 201-53; Amalendu Guha, Medieval and Early Colonial Assam: Society, Polity
and Economy (Calcutta: CSSSC and K. P. Bagchi, 1991), and idem, 'Ahom Political
System: An Enquiry into State Formation in Medieval Assam 1228-1800', in
Surajit Sinha, ed. , Tribal Polities and State Systems in Pre-Colonial Eastern and
North Eastern India (Calcutta: CSSSC and K. P. Bagchi, 1987), pp. 143-76.
9. For the sixteenth century, see Jon Fernquist, 'e Flight of Lao War Captives
from Burma Back to Laos in 1596: A Comparison of Historical Sources', SOAS
Bulletin of Burma Research, 3, 1 (Spring 2005), pp. 41-68. For reports of
eighteenth-century deportation, see Volker Grabowsky, 'Forced Resettlement
Campaigns in Northern ailand During the Early Bangkok Period', Journal of
the Siam Society 87, 1-2 (1999), pp. 45-81. For captives of warfare between
Burmese, Arakanese, and Manipuri regimes, see D. G. E. Hall, ed. , MichaelSymes,
Journal of His Second Embassy to the Court of Ava in 1802 (London: George Allen
and Unwin, 1955), Introduction.
10. 'Diary of Manipur: Typewritten at the State Office by Nithor Nath Banerjee,
1904', Mss. Eur. D 485, British Library, OIOC, f. 10. According to a letter of T. C.
Hodson, 28 October 1946, this was the Meithei historical chronicle titled Meithei
Ningthanrol. Yet another chronicle, identified as the Cheitharol Kumbaba or the
Manipur Chronicle (From ad 33 to ad 1897), is L. Joychandra Singh, compiled
and edited, e Lost Kingdom (Royal Chronicle of Manipur) (no place/publisher:
1995), Introduction. According to Singh, the British Government had
commissioned Bama Charan Mukherjee in 1891 to collect all recensions and to
translate the chronicle into English; this had been done with the help of fourteen
local 'pandits' and was completed in 1897. e identical phrase regarding the
resettlement of captives can be found on p. 6 of the latter. For a larger discussion
of these histories, see S. N. Pandey, ed. , Sources of the History of Manipur and the
Adjoining Areas (Delhi and Imphal: National Publishing House and Manipur
University, 1985), pp. 79-121.
11. Tripura Buranji or A Chronicle of Tipperah written in 1724by RatnaKandali
Sarma andArjun Das Bairagi, ed. S. K. Bhuyan (Gauhati: Government of Assam,
1938), p. 30.
12. For the Burmese conscription of labour from Arakan in 1790s, see Hall, ed. ,
Michael Symes, p. xxviii, and G. E. Harvey, History of Burma from the Earliest
Times to 10 March 1824 (London: Longmans, Green and Co. , 1925), pp. 280-3.
For reports of Burmese captives taken by Manipuri armies from Upper Burma,
see ibid. , p. 208. For the Burmese occupation of Manipur and Assam, and
conscription of labours by all the armies, see H. K. Barpujari, Problem of the Hill
Tribes of North East Frontier, 1822-42 (Gauhati: Lawyer's Book Stall, 1970), vol. 1,
pp. 26-7; S. L. Baruah, Last Days of Ahom Monarchy: A History of Assam from
1769 to 1826 (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1993), pp. 219-28.
13. K. P. Sen, Sri Rajamala, iii, p. 13.

14. 'Diary of Manipur', f. 43; Lost Kingdom, p. 27.

15. 'Diary of Manipur', ff. 24, 34, 38; Lost Kingdom, pp. 15, 21-2, 24, respectively.

16. C. E. Luard, trans. and ed. Travels of Fray Sebastian Manrique, i, 139-59, 181,
193-204; also summary in Maurice Collis, e Land of the Great Image: Being
Experiences of Friar Manrique in Arakan (London, 1945; rpnt. Delhi: Asian
Educational Services, 1995), pp. 172-9.
17. an Tun, ed. , comp. and trans. , e Royal Orders of Burma (Kyoto: Center
for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, 1987), vol. 6 (18071810), Orders of
19 October-25 October 1808, pp. 143-53.
18. Amritalal Bala, 'Alaoler Sufi Chetana', BanglaAkademiPatrika, Dhaka, 35, 1
(Baisakh-Asar 1398 BS/May-June 1991), pp. 7-50; Swapna Bhattacharya
(Chakraborti), 'Myth and History of Bengali Identity in Arakan', in Gommans
and Leider, eds, e Maritime Frontier of Burma, pp. 199-212.
19. Alam, Languages of Political Islam in India, pp. 99-103.

20. For the most recent study, see Richard M. Eaton, e New Cambridge History
of India: A Social History of the Deccan, 1300-1761: Eight Indian Lives (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 105-28.
21. William R. Pinch, 'Who was Himmat Bahadur? Gosains, Rajputs and the
British in Bundelkhand ca. 1800', IESHR, 35, 3 (1998), pp. 293-335. Indrani
Chatterjee and Sumit Guha, 'Slave-Queen, Waif-Prince: Slavery and Social Capital
in Eighteenth-Century India', IESHR, 36, 2 (1999), pp. 165-86.
22. Indrani Chatterjee, 'A Slave's Search for Selood in Eighteenth-Century
Hindustan', IESHR, 37, 1 (2000), pp. 53-86.
23. James Burnes, A Narrative of a Visit to the Court of Sinde; A Sketch of the
History of Cutch from Its First Connection with the British Government in India till
the Conclusion of the Treaty of 1819 (Edinburgh: Printed for Robert Cadell,
Whittaker, Treacher and Arnot, 1831), pp. 110-11.
24. Political Agent on the North East Frontier to Secretary to Government in
Bengal, 16 September 1836, Letters Issued to Government, vol. 5, no. 77, Assam
Secretariat, Guwahati.
25. Political Agent on the North East Frontier to Secretary to Government in
Bengal, 19 July 1836, Letters Issued to Government.
26. According to anthropologists working on these regions in the twentieth
century, 'Kuki' was a term used by the Manipuri court to describe agglomerate
clans spread out over the hills (cf. F. K. Lehman, e Structure of Chin Society,
Illinois, 1963). e clans appeared to refer to themselves as ado, Poitu, Khyen,
Lakher, Mara, and Lushei, but these names too changed over the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries.
27. Captain omas Herbert Lewin, e Hill Tracts of Chittagong and the Dwellers
erein; with Comparative Vocabulary of the Hill Dialects (Calcutta: Bengal
Printing House, 1869; rpnt. Aizawl: Tribal Research Institute, 2004), p. 122.
28. See correspondence about mutineers from 34 Native Infantry in Sylhet and
Cachar, Board of Revenue Papers, files 109-10, nos 1-8, and 1-20 respectively,
1858, Assam Secretariat, Guwahati, Assam.
29. Private Letter from Earl of Mayo to Duke of Argyll, 18 January 1869, OIOC,
Mss Eur. B 380/1, ff. 28-9.
30. Lewin, e Hill Tracts of Chittagong, p. 149.

31. Letter from J. Herbert Lorrain to Col. Lewin, Lungleh, South Lushai Hills via
Chittagong, 16 October 1915, Mss 811/IV/63, T. H. Lewin Papers, Senate House,
University of London, U. K.
32. e single exception-arguing for the domestication of English among local
South Asian groups in commercial, sexual, sectarian, and social contact with
native speakers between the sixteenth and early nineteenth century-is Vinay
Dharwadker, 'e Historical Formation of Indian-English Literature', in Pollock,
ed. , Literary Cultures in History, pp. 199-267.
33. e most productive have been Allen Isaacman and Derek Peterson, 'Making
the Chikunda: Military Slavery and Ethnicity in South Africa, 17501900', Journal
of African History, 36, 2 (2003), pp. 257-81; Pier M. Larson, History and Memory
in the Age of Enslavement: Becoming Merina in Highland Madagascar 1770-1822
(Portsmouth NH and Oxford: Heinemann and James Curry, 2000); Sandra E.
Greene, Gender, Ethnicity and Social Change on the Upper Slave Coast: A History of
the Anlo-Ewe (Portsmouth NH and London: Heinemann and James Curry, 1996),
and idem, Sacred Sites and the Colonial Encounter: A History of Meaning and
Memory in Ghana (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003).
34. Article by Zairema in Letter from Rev. T. Meirion Lloyd, dated 18 January
1963, National Library of Wales (NLW), Aberystwyth, Church Missionary
Archives (CMA) 5, no. 27, 187. I am grateful to Rev. Cyril Evans for permission to
consult these records.
35. is is not to foreclose the possibilities of older traces of such exchanges
between plainsmen and upland populations. At least one British official recorded
that in the northern hills 'there were some sculptured stones associated with the
killing of Hrankupa by Loarband, the former being an ally of Rama, and the latter
being the local name for Ravana; Sita was Siti and Rama was Kenali Rama. ' Diary
of 22 January 1895, Mss. Eur/ Photo Eur 108, British Library. A tale called 'Khena
Leh Ramate u Nao u / e Story of Khena and Rama' was published in John
Shakespear, Mi-Zo Leh Vai on u/A Collection of Mizo andForeign Tales
(Shillong: Assam Sectt. Printing Office, 1898), pp. 19-30; also see Lalruanga and
Birendranath Datt, 'e Rama Story in the Mizo Tradition', in Kumar Suresh
Singh and Birendranath Datt, eds, Rama-Katha in Tribal and Folk Traditions of
India: Proceedings of a Seminar (Calcutta: Anthropological Survey of India and
Seagull Books, 1993), pp. 219-25; for the subcontinental traditions, see Paula
Richman, ed. , Many Ramayanas: e Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South
Asia (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991); for the
significance of Muslim Javanese tellings of the tale, see Laurie J. Sears, Shadows of
Empire: Colonial Discourse and Javanese Tales (Durham and London: Duke
University Press, 1996). e relationships between each of the tellings is beyond
the scope of this essay.
36. Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire Into the State and Prospect of
Tea Cultivation in Assam, Cachar and Sylhet (Calcutta: Calcutta Central Press
Company, 1868), p. 14.
37. Extract from printed diary of 1871-2, signed 'From Our Correspondent with
the Right Column' [T. H. Lewin], 26 February 1872, Mss 811/II/29, Lewin
Collection, Senate House Library, University of London.
38. Letter from T. H. Lewin to Daughter, 7 November 1912, in Senate House
Library, University of London, Ms 811/IV/57.
39. Wendy Doniger, 'Fluid and Fixed Texts in India', in Joyce Burkhalter
Flueckiger and Laurie J. Sears, eds, Boundaries of the Text: Epic Performances in
South and Southeast Asia (Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies,
University of Michigan, 1991), pp. 31-42.
40. Manuscript no. 88, Abdul Karim Collection, Dhaka University Library,
Bangladesh. e manuscript is lodged between two hard covers, the front of
which bears a title, Kuki Katar Katha. e poem reads from back to front though
the page numbers in Bengali numerals follow in the reverse order, and are absent
in some cases. Henceforth I shall refer to this manuscript by the title, and by folio
numbers, rather than by the ink-written page numbers.
41. Eric Havelock, cited in Amin Sweeney, 'Literacy and the Epic in the Malay
World', in Flueckiger and Sears, eds, Boundaries of the Text, p. 21.
42. For discussions of this, see Richard M. Eaton, 'Mughal Religious Culture and
Popular Islam in Bengal', and Asim Roy, 'e Interface of Islamization,
Regionalization and Syncretization: e Bengal Paradigm', in Anna Libera
Dallapiccola and Stephanie Zingel-Ave Lallement, eds, Islam and Indian Regions
(Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1993), vol. 1, pp. 75-86 and pp. 95-128; also see
Asim Roy, e Islamic Syncretistic Tradition in Bengal (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1983).
43. Kailashchandra Singha, Rajamala ba Tripurar Itibritta, 1896, pp. 360-2.

44. For 'rasa' theory, see Edward C. Dimock Jr. , J. A. B. van Buitenen et al. , 'e
Persistence of Classical Esthetic Categories in Contemporary Indian Literature:
ree Bengali Novels', in idem, e Literatures of India: An Introduction (Chicago
and London: e University of Chicago Press, 1974), pp. 212-38; also Susan L.
Schwartz, Rasa: Performing the Divine in India (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2004).
45. For jangnama traditions from the seventeenth century in Bengali poetry, see
Sukumar Sen, Islami Bamla Sahitya, pp. 44-8; for similar narrations of war,
conveyed in prose, see the ballad on the Santhal insurrection of 1855, collected in
1925, in Dinesh Chandra Sen, compiled and ed. , e Ballads of Bengal (1926;
rpnt. Delhi: Mittal Publications, 1988), vol. ii, pp. 259-71.
46. e Maharashta Purana, an Eighteenth Century Bengali Historical Text,
translated and annotated by Edward C. Dimock Jr. and Pratul Chandra Gupta
(Honolulu: 1965; rpnt. Calcutta and Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1985), p. 49.
For another critical discussion of a recension in the library of Calcutta University,
see Anima Mukhopadhyaya, Atharo Sataker Bamla Puthite Itihas Prasanga
(Bengali Manuscripts and History) (Calcutta: Sahitya Lok, 1987), pp. 9-34.
47. I draw upon David Dean Shulman, 'Battle as Metaphor in Tamil Folk and
Classical Traditions', in Blackburn and Ramanujan, eds, Another Harmony, pp.
105-30.
48. Dineshchandra Bhattacharya, 'Bangla Sahityer Katipaya Aitihasik Kavya:
Rajamala, Krishnamala, Ghazinama o Champakbijoy', in Anilabha Bhattacharya,
ed. , Sasvat Tripura: TripuraHitasadhini Sabhar Satabarshiki Smarak Sankalan,
1872-1972 (Calcutta, n. d. ), pp. 94-101; Dinesh Chandra Sen, e Folk Literature
of Bengal (Being Lectures Delivered to the Calcutta University in 1917, as Ramtanu
Lahiri Research Fellow in the History of Bengali Language and Literature) (Calcutta:
University of Calcutta, 1920), pp. 136-50; also Ramendra Barman, ed. and
compiled, Ghazinama (Agartala: Akshar Publications, 1998).
49. Offg. Comr. of Dacca to Sec. GOB, 6 January 1869, NAI, Foreign Political A,
1869, February, no. 73, enclosure.
50. Commr. Dacca to Offg. Sec. to GOB, Political, 24 April 1871, NAI, Foreign
Political, A, May 1871, no. 646.
51. A. WB. Power to Secretary to Government of Bengal, Political, 31 October
1873, in Dipak Kumar Chaudhuri, ed. , Administrative Report of the Political
Agency, Hill Tipperah, 1872-78 (Agartala: Tripura State Tribal Council Research
Institute and Museum, 1996), vol. 1, p. 22.
52. Ibid. , pp. 22-3.

53. See correspondence between Superintendent of Cachar and Political Agent at

Manipur between 1841 and 1853, in D. Datta, compiled, Cachar District Records
(Silchar: Jayanti Press, 1969), pp. 98-201.
54. Letter to D. E. Jones, cited in J. Meirion Lloyd, History of the Church in
Mizoram (Harvest in the Hills) (Aizawl, Mizoram: Synod Publication Board,
1991), pp. 6-7.
55. T. H. Lewin, A Fly on the Wheel, or How I helped to Govern India (1884; 2nd
edn 1912; rpnt. Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1977), pp. 276-7.
56. For the willingness to return a young captive girl in 1844, prevented by the
difficulties of identification, see Suhas Chatterjee, Mizoram Under British Rule
(Delhi: Mittal Publications, 1985), p. 20; for another four-year-old girl taken from
a plantation and returned in 1872, see R. G. Woodthorpe, e Lushai Expedition
1871-72 (London: 1873; rpnt. Gauhati: Spectrum Publications, 1980), p. 253;
Diary of Capt. John Shakespear from 10 to 16 October 1890 in Memo from
Commr, 5 November 1890, in Mss Eur/ Photo Eur/89/1, OIOC, f. 25.
57. For an account of recovered 207 captives, some of who had been in captivity
for thirty years by 1872, see Friend of India, 1 February 1872.
58. See story of the older Naga woman taken from Manipur in 1869 who refused
to leave her Kholel lord, in Woodthorpe, Lushai Expedition, p. 237.
59. Christopher A. Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten Armies: e Fall of British
Asia 1941-1945 (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2005).
60. For cases of Oojolla and Ohilla, see Commissioner of Burdwan to Officiating
Secretary to Government of Bengal, Judicial, 17 January 1873, in Government of
Bengal, Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, March 1873, nos 132-4.
61. See letter of G. Verner, Officiating Superintendent of Cachar to Political Agent
at Manipur, 3 May 1848, re local protests about supplying '80 coolies to carry 30
boxes and two bags of ammunition' to Manipur, in D. Datta, ed. , Cachar District
Records, p. 147.
62. G. Verner to Sessions Judge, Sylhet, 20 November 1849, in D. Datta, ed. ,
Cachar District Records, pp. 157-9.
63. Official Tour Diary of John Shakespear, Asst. Political Officer, Diary from 7 to
25 December 1890, in Memo of Commr. 12 January 1891, Mss Eur/ Photo Eur/
89/1, British Library, OIOC, f. 30.
64. Ibid. , f. 6a.

65. John Shakespear to McCall, 28 August 1938, ibid. , ff. 8a-b.

66. I owe this phrase to Bruce Grant, 'e Good Russian Prisoner: Naturalizing
Violence in the Caucasus Mountains', paper presented to School of Historical
Studies, Institute of Advanced Study, 4 October 2004.
67. Official Tour Diary of John Shakespear, Diary from 5 to 25 February 1891, in
Memo from Offg. Commr of Chittagong Division, 16 March 1891, Mss Eur/Photo
Eur/ 89/1, British Library, OIOC, f. 43.
68. e Story of Dara, Chief of Pukpui, in A. G. McCall Papers, Mss Eur E 361/4,
OIOC, London, ff. 3-4.
69. W. B. Oldham, Commr Bhagalpur Division to Chief Secretary to Government
of Bengal, 23 July 1896, in OIOC, IOR, Bengal Political Proceedings, September
1896, no. 2.
70. Sec. to Government of India Home Dept. , to ChiefSecretary to Government
of Bengal, 13 July 1896, in BPP, September 1896, no. 1, and from H. J. S. Cotton,
Offg. Sec to GOI, Home, to Chief Sec. to GOB, 18 August 1896, BPP, September
1896, no. 4.
71. Letter of R. B. McCabe, Political Officer North Lushai Hills to ChiefCom-
missioner of Assam, 2 March 1892, in Mss Eur/Photo Eur. 108.
72. Diary of R. B. McCabe, Political Officer of North Lushai Hills, for the week
between 23 January and 1 February 1892, in Mss Eur/Photo Eur 108, British
Library.
73. Ibid, Entry for 8 May 1892.

74. Ibid, Diary of McCabe, 28 April, 2 May, 3 May 1892. e latter reports that
two men came to the officer asking for their wives, and were told that the women
had been transported to Aijal, and that they could be recovered only if the men
could ensure the surrender of the rest of the village.
75. Political Agent at Manipur to Secretary GOI, Foreign, 5 March 1871, NAI,
Foreign Political A, May 1871, no. 576.
76. Political Agent at Manipur to Secretary GOI, Foreign, 20 March 1871, NAI,
Foreign Political, A, May 1871, no. 588.
77. Statement of Shalutri [Shabitri?] Culini of Alexanderpur Garden, 9 February
1871, NAI, Foreign Political A, March 1871, no. 527. Emphasis added.
78. I have borrowed the term from Edwin Black, Rhetorical Criticism: A Study in
Method (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978).
79. e term is taken from Kyo Maclear, 'e Limits of Vision: Hiroshima Mon
Amour and the Subversion of Representation', in Ana Douglass and omas A.
Vogler, eds, Witness andMemory: e Discourse of Trauma (New York and
London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 233-47.
 9

Incredible Stories in the Time

of Credible Histories
Colonial Assam and Translations of
Vernacular Geographic*

BODHISATTVA KAR

A man can never say: 'I am a bull, a wolf. . .' But he can say; 'I am to a
woman what the bull is to a cow, I am to another man what the wolf is
to the sheep.' Structuralism represents a great revolution: the whole
world becomes more rational.—Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari 1
Unlike territory, stories cannot be so easily stolen.—Sara Suleri2

A
llusions to the erotic excess and magical prowess of Assamese
women were commonplace in colonial India, particularly in
colonial Bengal. at voluptuous and sexually insatiable women
of the perilous frontier could—and in many instances actually
did—turn male strangers into sheep was a widely shared belief. Stories
circulated, images were drawn, and in fact even now the colloquial
expression 'Kāmākhyā's sheep' continues in everyday conversations to
excite the image of an enchanted docile male who is entirely under the
control of a seductive woman. e strikingly long career of this
expression—wavering between metaphor and literalness—is unevenly
dispersed across various registers of nineteenth- and twentieth-century
vernacular imagination.3 Reading around some of these scattered
records, this essay chases the strange destinies of untutored
imaginations in a historicist environment where sincere efforts were
made to glean history from every tradition.
In one sense, this essay is about the translative process of historicist
rationalization and its scandals. What happens to the elements 'that
cannot enter history ever as belonging to the historian's own position',
to use Dipesh Chakrabarty's well-known formulation of 'subaltern
pasts'?4 How do these recalcitrant, disenfranchised elements strain and
reconfigure the 'hierarchies of credibility' that structure expert
discourse and 'common sense'?5 Where does the realm of the plausible
end? Actually, in another sense, this essay is about borders and
geographies: the realm of the plausible and the place of the absurd, the
surface of the literal and the depth of the allegorical, the provincial
landscape of colonial Assam and the dispersed geographies to which we
give the name 'vernacular'. However, we must clarify what we mean by
the word 'vernacular'. In our usage, vernacular is not another addition
to the long litany of irreducible identities: it is not a stand-in for the
native, the primal, the indigenous, and the uncontaminated. Vernacular,
for us, is the promise of full translatability which necessarily fails itself.
It occurs at the moment of translation when it is forced into an act of
exchange. It remains exchangeable to the extent that the master
language remains prepared to be shortchanged. I hope to illustrate this
formulation through my work, but now it is time for stories.

I
e 'stories' are many, and we do not know which one is not ours. In the
case of Circe, who of course will come to mind when we are thinking in
terms of a seductive shape-shiing enchantress, it has been pointed out
that the schematic nature of the relevant Odyssey episode 'takes it for
granted that you know a fuller story of which this is an abbreviated
version.'6 We wish we knew what the 'fuller story' was. Indeed, as the
following paragraphs suggest, by the seventeenth cen-tury a number of
cognate tales in non-Sanskrit narrative networks which had spread
along the entire Gangetic valley appear to have been in circulation. But
is the 'fuller story' a cumulative aggregate of these tales? Or are they
versions with no originals? Frankly, it is not possible to determine this
because they come to us through a long fractal history of remembrance,
textualization, compilation, editing, and translation over three
centuries. erefore it is not fruitful either to attempt a model of
'literary evolution' in the manner of Charles Segal.7
e sources are scattered. But there is another difficulty too: What
should be taken as those essential and indispensable elements of our
stories without which we cease to recognize them? Is it the turning-
into-sheep part? Is it the connection between magical charms and erotic
might? Is it the mention of Kāmarūpa, the name by which apparently
Assam was known in the pre-British textual world of South Asia? Or, is
it the reference to an exclusive land of women? Not everything is
present everywhere. To complicate the matter further, unlike Circe
there is no single figure into which the forces of magic, enchantment,
and carnal pleasure could be condensed. Women are oen present in
the stories, but in some versions they too disappear, leaving the
impression that the stories are more about a country of magic and
miracles than about its women.
Even for the most unforgiving postcolonial avenger, it is difficult to
presume that the magical women caught up in these stories were
completely 'new symbols for new times', as Luise White has argued for
the somewhat comparable vampire stories current in East and Central
Africa in the 1910s and 1920s.8 Rather, almost all nineteenth- century
collectors of the stories claimed they were simply recording a
longstanding tradition in the country, and subsequent exposures of
precolonial manuscripts to a wider public have not seriously challenged
their claims. Our regular whipping boy, it seems, needs some rest: the
land of magic that these stories mention was not what Anne McClin-
tock calls 'a porno-tropics for the European imagination—a fantastic
magic lantern of the mind onto which Europe projected its forbidden
sexual desires and fears.'9
However, to save the specificities of the stories from indiscriminate
onslaught of 'Enlightenment metaphysics' is not to revert to the more
conventional secular explanations which naggingly insist that these
stories are not completely lacking in analogies. Predominantly male
anxieties about 'a land of women, where men lose their customary
position of dominance and live—when they live at all—as slaves or
victims of magic' constitute almost an anthropological universal. us,
Verrier Elwin, to my knowledge the only trained anthropologist who
examined these Assam stories, explains away their peculiarity by citing
multiple analogous traditions from areas as varied as Greece, Arabia,
New Guinea, and China.10 While this homespun structuralism still fails
to answer the simple question 'but why Assam?', it can be nicely
combined with a more historically sensitive rationalization. One may
think of Mary Douglas's classic, for instance, which seeks to
demonstrate that the vulnerability of societies at their margins is
greatest since the contrast between form and non-form is strikingly
visible: 'one is at the edge of organized reality and can feel the anomic
terror of uncertainty and confusion.'11 Assam, we are told, was anyway
removed from the major theatre of Indian history and, therefore, as an
ill-connected frontier constituted a kind of terra incognita mir-roring
the ignorance and psychosis of the neighbouring people and states. at
is how most nineteenth-century enlightened responses explained these
stories; it is how they continue to be understood today.
Such explanations do little more than eternalize the issue of Assam's
marginality. Moreover, they hypostatize 'anxiety'. Undefined worries (of
a sedentary population?, of a self-conscious masculinity?, of a stabilized
state?) seem to be the only running thread connecting these diverse
stories dispersed in time and space. How can we think of a history of
that anxiety which keeps itself impervious to multiple historical
practices? One of the more articulate samples of these precolonial
narratives, as recorded by Briggs in his Gorakhnāth and the Kānphāṭā
Yogīs, is as follows:
 Once he [Gorakhnāth] took the form of a fly in order to avoid guards on the
border of a certain king's country; at another time he changed himself into iron,
and again into a frog. He transformed certain of his disciples so that half of
their bodies became gold and the other half iron. He turned himself into a leper
before Vāchal. e disciples who were sent by Gorakhnāth to Kāru to get the
thread with which to draw Puran [another disciple] from the well, were turned
by magic into bullocks. is was reported to him and he took ashes from his
bag, charmed them and tossed them into the air. ereupon the bullocks came
to him and he patted them and changed them back into man. In return, being
angry, he dried up all the wells, bringing their water near himself. When the
women came, all together, at his request to draw water, he took charmed ashes
and, in the name of Matsyendranāth [the first guru of the cult], turned the
women into asses. Long ears, small hoofs (had they, and) grazed on the dung
heaps.12
We are tempted to remember similar stories from other, overlapping
narrative networks. One among them comes from the seventeenth-
century janam-sākhīs or biographies of Nānak, the first guru of
Sikhism. It almost repeats the situation. But, of course, the saint here is
not Gorakhnāth but Nānak, and the disciple is not Puran, but Mardānā,
and the country is not Kāru but Kaurū or Kāvarū. Nānak's disciple was
turned not into a bullock, but into a sheep, and in his retaliatory move
the guru turned these women into bitches. McLeod observes:
Sākhī 23 is set in a land called Kaurū, or Kāvarū, a land ruled by female
magicians. e queen's name is given as Nūr Shāh. Mardānā [Nānak's disciple]
went ahead to beg for food and was turned into a lamb by one of the
enchantresses. Gurū Nānak, following him, caused a pot to adhere to the
woman's head, and told Mardānā to restore himself by saying Vāhigurū and
bowing down. e female magicians all converged on Gurū Nānak when they
heard what he had done, some riding on trees, some on deerskins, some on the
moon, several on a wall, and some on a whole grove of trees. When their efforts
to enchant him failed Nūr Shāh herself came and tried magic and various
sexual temptations. All failed and the women finally submitted.
is is the more popular Purātan janam-sākhī version. In the older Bālā
sākhī version, which is 'much simpler and briefer', McLeod says:
[t]here is no reference to a queen called Nūr Shāh, and the miracles described
differ from those of the Purātan account. According to the Bālā story, two
women who seek to seduce the Gūrū are changed, one into a ewe and the other
 into a bitch (Oriental and India Office Library, Punjabi Manuscript B41, folio
71a). In the earliest of the Bālā printed editions most of the manuscript version
has been dropped and the Purātan version substituted in its place.13
In the broadly shared narrative collection of the pre-colonial lower
Gangetic Valley, known as the Bengali Nath Literature, a comparable
tale seems to have been very popular. Till date, seventeen such
adaptations of the story are said to be extant in manuscript form in
Bengal, although only three of these manuscripts have been edited and
published.14 According to this story, commonly known as Gorakṣa-
Vijay, the first guru of the Nāth order, Mīnanāth or Matsyendranāth,
was punished by the goddess Gaurī to the Kadalī country, which was
purely a land of women. Forsaking his ascetic obligations, the yogi there
'got enamoured with six[teen?] hundred women and was passing his
days with them in erotic dalliances.'15 But his worthy disciple,
Gorakhnāth, entered the city of Kadalī posing as a dancing girl and in
the course of a musical performance reminded the preceptor of his
duties. Rescuing the guru from the hands of the magical enchantresses,
Gorakhnāth with a curse changed the women into bats.16 (Interestingly,
the account of Matsyendranāth's trip to Kadalī is rather different in the
Marwari manuscript of Nāthacaritra, collected and edited during the
early nineteenth century in Jodhpur. According to this version it was
Matsyendranāth who secretively entered the dead body of the deceased
king to enjoy sexual relationships with the queens and pursue a luxu-
rious life. e queens, however, soon discovered the trick, and Mats-
yendra was in trouble.17)
As there is very little space to discuss them in detail, I shall briefly
raise a few issues about these stories from the male ascetic tradition. To
put it simply, it is not the whimper of anxiety but the laughter of
mastery that organizes these narratives. e Kāru, Kaurū, or Kāvarū
women are certainly in possession of some supernatural powers—they
turn the gurus' disciples into animals; but their power exists only in a
subordinate relation to the overpowering might of the gurus. And their
tenor is not exclusively feminine: Gorakh and Nānak play the same
tricks with them—turn them into asses, bitches, and bats. Magical
prowess is not necessarily a feminine attribute within these narratives;
neither is siddhi or the attainment of supernatural power split into two
moral halves of white and black magic. Gorakh turns himself into other
forms as well. In fact, as the last set of stories demonstrates, the Kadalī
women do not display any remarkably miraculous power as such;
instead, they are the precise opposition to any magical operation
because such powers can derive, as Gorakh reminded his guru, only
from a strict adherence to the rules of asceticism and yoga. e Kadalī
women manage to wean Matsyendranāth from these rules, in
consequence of which he loses his own magical potency and falls victim
to carnal and worldly temptations.
Let us skip a couple of centuries and proceed to the following extract.
is was collected in the late nineteenth century by a Christian
missionary, P.O. Bodding, from Santals in Chhotanagpur—which had
by then become a major recruiting area for Assam tea garden labourers.
e [Kāmru] country is very rich and fertile, and there are only women living
there, or else the women predominate, and no one is able to go there and stay.
Another report is that there are men also, but they are not liked by the women
(definite reasons that cannot be recorded are given). Once a Santal had gone
there and was at once caught by a woman. He told that he had come to learn
their 'science', and was kept for five years by the Kāmru woman who during
daytime had him covered by a dirmi, a large bamboo basket, and instructed
him during the night. At last he got his sid ['science']; the woman turned him
into a kyte [sic] and he flew back into his own country.
Another story tells of a Santal child who was caught by a vulture and
carried to Kāmru country; here he grew up and ultimately married. He
wanted to get back to his own country and with much difficulty
persuaded someone to help him. But every time having started to go in
the morning, when it became evening he found himself coming back to
the place he started from. At last a woman told him that he must leave
everything behind, not take anything of that country along; else he
would never succeed. On doing this he got away.
And so on. e traditional Kāmru country is a country of strange
people with strange powers; the inhabitants can at will turn a man into
a dog or any other animal. In those parts of the world the fabulous
ekgudia and ghormūhā are found, with one leg and heads like that of
horses, otherwise like human beings, who buy and eat people.
All in all, Kāmru country is a land full of magic and witchcra; but
the stories told seem to imply that it is the women who are so
dangerous and powerful. 18
e painful gathering of a belongingness disrupted by programmed
migration is only too evident in these stories. Even Bodding noticed
how in these stories the experience of 'many. . . living Santals [who had]
been in Assam as labourers in tea gardens and otherwise' was
contributing to 'the tales current about the Kāmru country, e.g., telling
how they ha[d] been caught and kept for years by women who during
daytime ha[d] kept them hidden or made them into rams or the like
and let them out at night, who ha[d] taught them sorcery, and so on,
and from whom they ha[d] only escaped with the greatest difficulty,
risking their lives.' Even the most literalist of historians would not say
that Matsyendra had returned as the Santals in these stories. If there is
an anxiety here, it is more about being deprived than about
overconsuming. e sense of displacement, which is expectedly less
acute in the accounts of wandering ascetics, invents a sign of
escapability not in the might of the redeemer Yogī but in the science of
the Kāmru women. At the end of the day it is always a Kāmru woman
who tells the Santal his way home. When Odysseus sails away, Circe
sends a favourable breeze.
It is this continual dispersal of the received unity of the story along
the incessant interjections of disjunctive temporality that we must
engage. It will always spill over an evolutionist paradigm, we know, and
yet we must make it speak to the master language of linear time. at is
our trade. We are ready to be shortchanged. But we proceed with the
understanding that the figure of the sheep-converting women did not
arise at a pristine moment of the primitive pre-colonial, and since then
evolved smoothly through the ignorance and folly of people—as the
modernist accounts would have it. Nor was it the 'successive
configurations of an essentially identical meaning', to borrow a phrase
from Foucault,19 a slow but gradual exposure of the hidden
transhistorical 'anxiety'. On the contrary, irreconcilable elements
emerge and disappear in dense, heterogeneous time, leaving the myth
of the origin scattered and challenged. e challenge is, as Ann Laura
Stoler urges us to remember: 'How do we represent that incoherence
rather than write over it with a neater story we wish to tell?'20

II
Bodding alleges in passing that the Santals were just 'mix[ing] up the
present Kāmrup district [in Assam] with the traditional Kamru
country.'21 is essay wishes to chase this idea of mix-up seriously—
beyond its accusative ring. e ambiguous line between geographies
experienced and geographies fabled not only confounded the colonial
ethnographer, it produced contestation over the very spatial strategy
along which the whole edifice of Indian history was erected. By the
beginning of the twentieth century, place name identification was
considered a major, almost foundational, step towards constructing an
authentic history of India and its regions. Experts, writing usually in
English, started publishing thickly footnoted volumes to prove or
disprove particular identifications of locations mentioned in the
Purāṇas and other Sanskrit texts with existing localities on the British
Indian map. As I have argued elsewhere:
Preparing an inventory of names from the 'classical' Sanskrit texts was
rationalized in the name of retrieving the true tradition of India by
disentangling the historical from the mythical. Names of persons and places
functioned as stable signposts in an otherwise opaque and slippery network of
shared narratives. eir recurrence was understood as corroboration, as a mark
of their historicity, and the stories in the context of which they were recognized
were imagined as having been rendered interpretable within the language of
history. Particularly, the names of places occurring within the said texts ensured
the idea of fixity and continuity without which a culture seemed unmappable.
To stage a beginning, the historical discipline needed a theatre of immobility, an
indisputable site or foundation of space upon which the temporal plots could be
unfolded . . . Re-inscribing the extant localities on Indology's onomastic register
justified British India's claim to—as the 1828 East India Gazetteer put it—'the
Brahminical geography'.22
Translated into the new language of history, the epic-purāṇic
geographies energized interesting dynamics. On the one hand the
disciplinary exigency acted as a constraint: what Sheldon Pollock has
called the 'open-endedness of . . . spatializations' in the pre-colonial
textual economy was increasingly threatened with a historicist closure.
Sites that had been arguably 'infinitely reproducible' across the vast
'uncen- tered world of Sanskrit' were now incarcerated in specific,
exclusive, and delimited territorialities.23 ere was only one Gangā,
only one Mount Meru, and, more ominously for us today, only one
Ayodhyā.
is, on the other hand, also structured the scope of local responses
to some extent, at least among a section of the educated middle class.
Increasing access to print and the unpretentious dependence of
etymology on aural semblances encouraged many a local educated
person, well versed in the village and district traditions and broadly
acquainted with the identification methodology of Indology, to debate
and discuss the possible locations of a scripted territory. As the focus
gradually expanded from high Sanskrit texts to more popular pre-
colonial vernacular narratives, the promise of earning a place of repute
for one's own locality—understood variously as region, province,
district, or village—in the national tradition seemed ever more
tempting. Diverse traditions were mobilized, pitted against one another,
and with a little help from flexible etymology, contenders oen
passionately tried toinscribe their preferred places into the organic core
of the nation-space.24
e remarkable sense of urgency and angst that animated many of
the vernacular histories in colonial Assam over this issue appears
particularly sharp in the context of Assam's belated emergence in the
map of British India and the lack of what historians perceived as a clear
Aryan ancestry. It was in this context that epic-purāṇic references to
Kāmarūpa and Prāgjyotiṣapura were taken as Assam's passport to the
eternal space of the essential nation. Working through scattered
references in Sanskrit texts, early historians of colonial Assam tried to
negotiate a coherence of history which could not be otherwise
guaranteed. Although cast aside by Edward Gait in 1905 as 'dubious and
fragmentary references',25 local and nationalist scholarship clung to
these allusions as indispensable proof of Assam's Aryan nucleus.26
However, this essay wishes to seize on the other, less classicized
careers of Kāmarūpa—careers which had little to do with the epic glory.
Indeed, Kāmarūpa featured very frequently in the 'large and highly
diverse body of texts and traditions' collectively understood as the
tantras.27 Among early Indologists, the tantras were considered the
'worst and most corrupt stage' of Hinduism—the farthest point from its
pure Aryan core.28 Consisting of coded chants and ritualistic dia-
grams—what appeared to baffled colonial commentators as 'silly
mummery of unmeaning jargon and gibberish'29—these texts, unlike
the epic-purāṇic narratives, frequently presented positive resistance to
literal-historicist reading.
Not every allusion to Kāmarūpa in the tantras could be reduced to a
simple notion of mappable territoriality. In fact, some tantras
categorically denied that there could be any earthly place called
Kāmarūpa.30 Many of the Sanskrit texts which were slotted into the
category of tantras (and many other texts which were not) incessantly
and creatively played with the word Kāmarūpa, maintaining a
purposeful polyvalence which could alternatively or simultaneously
refer to a place in the world, women's genitalia, profile of a god, and
forces of passion.31
Although Kāmarūpa was not so much an object of poetic skill in the
popular vernacular ballads, and although its geographicality was never
explicitly contested in these narratives, they posed another set of
problems to the historicist truth-seeker. Richard Temple, while
collecting materials for his Legends of the Panjab in the middle of the
nineteenth century, recorded a song from an Ambala gathering where
the hero, Gūgā, the raja of Bagar, relates his sorrow to Tatīg Nāg aer
his marriage has suddenly broken off:
My friend, I command thee: do this.
It is across seven rivers: its name is Dhūpnagar.
 Its name is Dhūpnagar: the king's daughter is Siriyal.
She was betrothed (to me) and then he drew back. is is what I want.
is is all I want: I have told the whole facts.
e country is Kārū; the Goddess Kamachhya; (the people) are great sorcerers.
An incredulous Temple was particularly amused by the last two lines—
'Ye itnā hī kām hamārā; kahī haqīqatsārī/Karū Des, Kamachhya Debī,
'ilm ghazab hai bhārī—and exclaimed: 'but it never seems that the king
who broke the marriage (Rājā Sanjā) or his daughter (Siriyal
Rājkañwār) are from Kamrup etc. Rather throughout the text their
place has been called Dhūpnagar and Tatīg Nāg, who helps Gūgā, goes
to that place and performs charms; not people thereof. e lone line
seems to be more like an expression of faith than a geographical
location.'32
Temple ironed out this doubt in his brief introduction to the tale by
explicitly identifying Gūgā's wife as 'a princess of what appears to be the
line of the Aham rulers of Kāmrūp in Assam.'33 As we shall continue to
see, nineteenth- and twentieth-century collectors and historians
unfailingly identified these wondrous countries—Kārū, Kaurū, Kāvarū,
Kāmru, Kadalī, Kāmrūp-Kāmākhyā—with the secular geography of
Assam. But the logic of the vernacular geographies was different. As in
the case of the Ambala song, so in the Songs of Gopichand collected in
northern Bengal, the territorialities were not always locatable on
profane maps. Let us follow the trajectory of Kānuphā, for instance,
when he travels widely in the world in search of the Guru Jalandhar. He
starts from Udayagiri, 'the place of the rising sun', goes to Kiṣkin- dhyā,
the famous den of the Rāmāyaṇa monkeys, and then to Deva- purī the
paradise, via Ayodhyā, Vrindāban, Kailāśa, Astagiri, and Sumeru, all
canonical landmarks in the epic world of Sanskritic culture. From the
paradise Kānuphā moves through the Ekṭthengiyā country, via Gayā
and Pāṭnā, to Strī Rājya, Kadalī and Kāmarūpa.34 Similarly, when the
birds set out to look for Gopichand, they pass through the countries of
Ekṭhengiyā (where the people 'cook, serve and eat food while standing
on one leg'), Kānpaṛā (where 'one ear rolls on the ground and the other
ear flies'), Maśārājā (where 'mosquitoes comparable to crows and eagles
in size fly around'), Mecpārā (where everybody is strong and stout, and
eats too much), Tripāṭan (where 'the men cook rice and the women sit
and eat/and even beat the men when they bring rice late'), along with
Gayā, Kāśī, and Vrindāban.35
Classicized places, familiar places, and incredible places followed
each other in rapid succession, which was at best confusing to the
historicist. Which of the names were transparent, and which not?
Which place names should be translated and etymologically reduced to
produce a historically defensible meaning, and which place names
should be treated as proper names, as inalienable, non-transferable
properties of the nation? In 1922, while working on an early-
nineteenth-century manuscript of 'barphukanargīt, the eminent
Assamese historian Surya Kumar Bhuyan was particularly intrigued by
a number of geographical allusions in the text. He published a series of
questions in a local periodical asking help and clarifications from
readers: 'I suppose Dhaka is being referred to as the Mogul Country.
But which countries are being called Ghoṛāmuṛā and Eṭhengiyā? In Mr
Scott O'Conner's book on Burma called Silken East, there is a
description of the Chind- win river, a tributary of the Irrawaddy. By this
river, there is a country called Ayaung amya. Is it the same as the
Eṭhengiyā country?'36Evidently, Bhuyan had already decided against
translating 'Ghoṛāmuṛā and Ethengiyā' as 'horse-headed and one-
legged', which some of us might be tempted to try today. e reference
to 'the Mogul Country' probably added up to his faith in the accuracy of
treating every place listed in the text as 'a real place'. e proper names
of Ghoṛāmuṛā and Eṭhengiā, for Bhuyan, were not alienable through
language. Two years later, confronted with 'Ekṭhengiyā' country in
Gopīcandrer Gān, Dineshchandra Sen and Basantaranjan Ray decided
otherwise. ey made no attempt to spatialize the countries of
Ekṭhengiyā, Kānpaṛā, Maśārājā, and Tripāṭan. ese were, for them,
unreal countries, imaginary places. Mecpāṛā, on which the information
was not absolutely incredible, they connected with the Mech-
dominated regions in Koch Bihar. But the really interesting manoeuvre
happened around the vernacular geographies of Strī Rājya and Kadalī.
ese were poised, so to speak, between the realm of the plausible and
the domain of the absurd.
 Nalini Kanta Bhattashali, in his 1915 introduction to Mīnacetan, had
glossed Kadalī as 'the land of women's liberty', which he thought could
be located broadly in Assam, Manipur, or Burma. In 1917 Abdul Karim
had declared in his introduction to Gorakṣa-Vijay: 'while it is true that
the places mentioned in the relevant manuscripts have still not been all
determined, but none of these places appear as imaginary.' His
contention was that Kadalī, Strī Rājya, and Kāmarūpa were one and the
same place. He referred to 'popular proverbs' about the magical and
enchanting powers ('mohinī vidyā') of Kāmarūpa women, and to the
striking public visibility of the women in Koch Bihar and Assam, which
he read as a token of 'women's liberty'. Karim further conjectured that
'In those days men must have been numerically less in that country.
Why else would the women assume so much predominance? . . . Even
now the common people believe that the men who enter Kāmarūpa are
turned into sheep. Probably Mīnanāth suffered the same fate. It appears
that this proverb became well known only aer his fall.'37
Dineshchandra Sen and Basantaranjan Ray went by Abdul Karim's
identification. Kadalī and Strī Rājya were 'Kāmarūpa and the adjacent
territory'.38 e description of these geographies in the manuscript was
as follows:
e norms of that country are strange
ere is no trace of man, there are only women
King is woman, subjects are women, minister is woman too
Woman becomes the king and takes care of the kingdom
According to the Song, women go to the city of Kāmarūpa for sexual
intercourse, 'where men live'. Women who give birth to male children
are beheaded along with their babies. 'ere is no respite for men in the
law of women/and therefore there is not a single male in the country.'39
Was the country on the side of the irredeemably incredible? Like the
countries of the one-legged and of the Mosquito King? Or, with a little
explanatory pull, could it be brought back on the side of the plausible
and the mappable? Our Indologists, as we have already seen, went for
the second option. Kāmarūpa, as I have argued elsewhere, was
becoming a frozen archive of pre-colonial traditions for belated entrants
into British Indian state space.40
It is in the context of the arresting interplay between the literalist
fixing of Kāmarūpa as one irreproducible historical space and the
unmanageable mobility of Kadalī, Kārū, Kaurū, Kāmru, and similar
vernacular versions of Kāmarūpa in the scattered registers of unsanc-
tioned imaginations, that the status of Assam as a land of magic and
witchcra came to be discussed in the new cultural histories. ese acts
of translation were expected to transfer one condition of reading— let
us say, a temporary suspension of disbelief in fictive narratives—to
another—a permanent abolition of disbelief in nonfictive histories. e
idea of multiple localizations could not be entertained in these
transferential operations. e truth of tradition could only be expressed
through the truth of unequivocal location. Such literalist readings, such
assumptions of direct correspondence between the name and the place,
had logically an unshakeable 'faith in the power of etymological thought
to recuperate an original order of the world.'41 It would not be out of
place to situate this etymological thought in the context of early colonial
discourses on Assam.
While travelling in the last decade of the eighteenth century through
Ava, Assam, and Arakan, Francis Buchanan prepared the manuscript of
his General View of the History and Manners of Kamrup while
consulting a locally produced Sanskrit text, Yoginī Tantra. Trying to
understand the categories that this Sanskrit text offered, Buchanan
suggested a connection between the discourses of toponymy and
immorality:
Kamrup is said to have been then divided into four Pithas or portions which
may naturally be expected to have appellation suitable to its name and tutelary
deity. ey are accordingly called Kam P. Rotno P. Moni P. and Yoni P. alluding
to desire, beauty, and some circumstances not unconnected with these qualities,
which our customs do not admit to be mentioned with the plainness that is
allowed in the sacred languages of the east. In fact the country by the natives is
considered as the principal seat of amorous delight, and a great indulgence is
considered allowable.42
e discovery by officials that the very name Kāmarūpa could be
translated as 'form of desire' excited much colonial fancy. An article in
the 1853 Calcutta Review in fact chose to translate it as the 'Land of
Lust'.43 In 1841 Robinson rendered it as 'the region of desire'.44 In the
earlier and more influential Topography of Assam, M'Cosh conjectured,
'Kamroop, as its name implied, was in ancient times a sort of Idalian
Grove—a privileged region for mirth and dance and revelry and all
manner of licentiousness.'45e magic of translation which promised to
render a territory interpretable within the language of a master morality
refused to perform the translation of magic: 'e Assamese are by the
inhabitants of most provinces looked upon as enchanters; and hence the
universal dread they have at exposing themselves to be spellbound in
the vale of the Brahmaputra. e women come in for a large share of
suspicion; indeed they are believed to be all enchantresses, and the
influences of their physical beauty is very unfairly attributed to their
skill in the magic art.' Evidently, M'Cosh was sceptical about the
magical power of Assamese women. He acknowledged that Assamese
women were indeed beautiful—they 'have a form and features closely
approaching the European'. However, this beauty was not related to
their magical powers, but to their morals: 'Unfortunately their morality
is at a very low ebb ... It is a very common thing for them to break the
bond of celibacy; nor is the giving birth to a child or two considered any
disgrace to them, or any impediment to their marriage. e Assamese
women are not remarkable for their fecundity, indeed they are rather
the reverse.'46
e nineteenth-century archive abounds in such descriptions and
judgements. Locked in a closed economy of etymology and
anthropology, where one set of data could only refer back to the other,
the colonial discursive regime fastened the forces of magic and
immorality on the figure of the Assamese woman. is understanding
continued to vibrate in and through metropolitan retellings of the
stories.

III
One can hardly miss the oppressive persistence of the particular story
form in the colonial epicentre of Calcutta from the late nineteenth
century, where the event of magical metamorphosis by Kāmākhyā
women was unfailingly invested with an evilness, where the sheep-
maker was neither a saint nor a liberator but wickedness incarnate, the
distilled essence of immorality, criminality, and oppression. And it was
on these grounds that the credibility of these stories now came to be
negotiated in the educated vernacular world of Calcutta.
Judhishthir asked me, 'What have we come to do in Kamrup? is is the
country of witches. All the women here are witches—that's what we hear in our
country, but I haven't seen a single witch here. So where do the witches stay? If
males from other countries come to Kamikhye, they become sheep; where are
those sheep? ere's no trace of men among sheep ranging on the ground, then
where do those men-sheep graze?'
Belief, disbelief: these are matters of opinion. I do not believe; many
people believe: how can this problem be resolved? e women of
Kamrup induce alien males into enthralment; the enchanted men do
not go back to their own country, they cannot go back: this proposition
seems rather plausible. e pandas say the situation now is not what it
used to be. ey also say that even now those male strangers that are
greatly driven by sexual passion end up being captivated by the good-
looking women of Kamrup. I have been mulling over these things.
Suddenly, I remembered a Sanskrit couplet which I heard from a court
clerk in Kashi. I cannot say whether this couplet is ancient or modern,
the work of a truth-seeking poet or an ill-meaning fabrication of a fun-
loving mudslinger. But many people do enjoy this couplet. It is:
'Neither married, nor widow, nor loyal to husband
e women residing in Kāmarūpa relish duck and pigeon'
Relying on this couplet, I answered Judhishthir, 'ere can be many
stories. One can see magic with one's own eyes and be amazed. But
nothing [in magic] is true. It may be true that the women of Kamrup
know the art of magic. It may also be true that with the help of the
illusion of magic, males driven by passion can be kept mesmerised. But
it can never be true that a two-legged man becomes a four-legged sheep.
I have heard from some people that adultery is widely prevalent in
Kamrup. Here, faithful wives are very few in number. Married women
as well as widows indulge in adultery. It is probably true that these
licentious women try to trap good-looking men from among pilgrims.
It is impossible that there are real witches or real sheep. Men becoming
animals, birds and trees, or animals talking like human beings: I have
no belief in these miracles.'47
is bhadralok rationalization in the 1903 edition of Haridāser
Guptakathā of 'impossible' subaltern beliefs adequately reflects the
broad contours of the moral cosmos of middle-class men in colonial
Calcutta. Explanation of the strange tales about Kāmākhyā women in
terms of depravity and licentiousness was something I did not find in
vernacular traditions. e stories, it is interesting to note, were not
completely set aside as baseless and spurious; on the contrary, rationales
for their circulation and persistence—defensible in the logic of the
historicist culture—were formulated. is helped their selective
appropriation and abrupt reconfiguration in the new metropolitan
space of cultural production. e major characteristic of this recon-
figuration seems to have been an increasing allegorization of the stories
from the early twentieth century. Haridas explains to Judhishthir here
that what can continue to exist in the landscape of the modern are not
'real sheep' but only coded allusions to naughty seduction. is was the
precise irony of the situation: the more the literalist reading in history
foreclosed the non-historical-geographical possibilities of Kāmarūpa-
Kāmākhyā, the less the trust that could be put on the literalness of the
stories current about that geography.
To illustrate this point further I present two more excerpts. e first,
from Panchkari De's Manoramā, constitutes the second volume of the
first detective trilogy in Bengali. It was first published in 1896, but the
only edition I could find is that of 1902.48 To follow the lead of the
story, Phulsaheb, the original villain, is guilty of 'innumerable murders',
robberies, frauds, and conversion to Islam. An 'immoral', sexually
attractive woman called Jumelia accompanies him in all his crimes.
Although the detective, Debendra Bijoy Ghosh, manages to put
Phulsaheb behind bars, Jumelia takes charge of the underworld empire.
However, aer many evasions, she is also captured. e de-tective
firmly resists her attempts to 'seduce' him and this conversation follows:
Debendra: Do you want to say anything before your death?
Jumelia: Yes. I am married to Phulsaheb. Phulsaheb is a Muslim.
erefore I am a Muslim too. I would prefer to be buried.
Debendra: at's all right. Jumelia, what is your birthplace?
Jumelia: Kamrup. ere is a Kacim country in the north-east of
Kam- rup. I was born there. We are Mishmis by race [jati]. e
beauty of Mishmi women is unparallelled in the whole world.
Debendra: Yes, I know. I have heard about that. Jumelia, how old
are you?
Jumelia: As old as you are.
Debendra: I am thirty-six.
Jumelia: So am I.
Debendra: irty-six! How can it be?
Jumelia: Why? You seem perplexed.
Debendra: is is unbelievable! You look, at most, twenty. You are
still in the full bloom of your youth.
Jumelia: Deben[dra], women from our country don't sag at the age
of twenty, as the women from your country do. Our women know
how to preserve their youth forever. ... If you get to see me aer ten
years, you'll find me the same: this fair face like a green palm- fruit,
this pleasant sweet voice, this playful stare in my eyes, the seductive
smile on these red rosy lips, this golden skin colour, everything will
remain the same. ere won't be the slightest difference. We know
[magical] medicines.
Debendra: How do you get them?
Jumelia: I knew [how to make] them. Phulsaheb also taught me a
few.
Debendra: Why have you come here [in Calcutta]?
Jumelia: . . . For love.
 [Here Jumelia narrates how Phulsaheb went to her country to
collect 'medicines', and how both of them felt attracted to each
other.]
Jumelia: . . . Had it been any other male, I would have turned him
into a sheep and tied the sheep to the bedpost. But what a smart
fellow he was! I couldn't keep him spellbound in my country;
instead he tricked me out of that country. is is no joke,
Deben[dra]. It is not easy to come back from our hands. You must
have heard about this.49
It is too easy to read this extract as a conversation between a male
detective and a female criminal, between rationality and magic,
between metropolis and frontier, framed quite significantly in a
situation of confession before imposed death. Let us pay attention not
only to the fantasies and fears about an abnormal land of eternal youth,
but also to the curious mishmash of geographies whereby the women of
a community pushed beyond the Inner Line were invested with the
traditional magical attributes of Kāmarūpa. Writing in the shadow of
the violent massacres in Mishmi villages (the major 'punitive
expeditions' of 1888 and 1899), De—whose epigrams in Manoramā
came from the canonical texts of Shakespeare, Dodd, Byron, and Lytton
—was creatively fusing the colonial codes of sexuality and criminality
on the new register of Kāmarūpa.
e inflections of new concerns and sensibilities that entered stories
by the middle of the nineteenth century were related to the
contemporary growth of the so-called fake tantras in Calcutta,
accompanied by an expansion of the interdependent market for
aphrodisiacs and amulets. Apart from directives for sex acts and
medicinal preparations, almost all these texts—which pretended a
solemn ancientness— simply contained a limited collection of chants,
magic charms, and incantations written in an interesting mix of
languages (Sanskrit, Santali, Bengali, Hindi, Assamese, and even
English in at least one case!) that did not render any unified meaning
beyond the ritualistic. e majority of these tantras—which oen
included short fictions and promotional propaganda—claimed that
they, and only they, contained the authentic secrets of the women of
Kāmākhyā. An early example of this literature forms my second
example:

Means for Prostitutes to

Captivate Paramours
Assam is the Kāmrūp country which is famous as Kāmākhyā. e pre-valence
of mantras, magical movements, the cultivation of the art of enchantment,
discussions of magical arts, and the goddess Kāmākhyās abode: all these exist in
that place. Everybody in Bengal knows that those who go to Kāmākhyā do not
return. e women of Kāmākhyā cast their spell over these people and keep
them in thrall.
Once upon a time a famous and well-read trader of Gaur [Bengal] set off for
Kāmākhyā with a large amount of money to pay offerings to the Goddess. His
wife's character was stainless, although the two oen quarrelled. e very news
that the trader was going to Kāmākhyā was a bolt from the blue for this woman.
She could not bear the shock and fell senseless.
e trader went to Kāmākhyā, visited the temple, paid his offerings, and rented
a house. Every morning, aer his bath, he would visit the temple. is was
noticed by an elderly ugly prostitute who took pains to find out, without
allowing herself to be seen, whether the man had enough money or not. Aer
she was assured that he was indeed a rich man, she clandestinely followed the
trader and spotted his house. e trader was young and the elderly woman was
ugly, so it was absurd to think that they could be together.
en, one Monday, taking a bath in the morning and keeping a fast for the
whole day, she took a charm along with her to bed. (We shall not name the
article here: the charm is available with us.) On Tuesday, she avoided seeing the
face of any other male and went straight to the trader's house. She threw the
charm through the window on the body of the trader as he lay on his bed. e
trader was surprised and gave her a startled look; she began to laugh and
collected the article to keep it fastened to her clothes. Immediately all his
feelings of religious devotion vanished. e man began to stay with the
prostitute and, aer some time, grew penniless but still could not leave
Kāmākhyā.50
is text, originally in Hindi, comes from a curious collection compiled
in Calcutta in 1869. is particular narrative, partly descriptive and
partly promotional, is stitched with a story of an Italian chemist who
apparently discovered methods to identify fake diamonds, a history of
German lithography, an account of a local holy man who could dip his
hand into a bowl full of hot oil, guidelines for chewing glass, and
instructions for preparing French varnish. Let us not miss the fact that
in this enormous demand for the novel and the strange, the Kāmākhyā
story was being inscribed in two overlapping registers of economics and
ethics. As in the detective story, the suggestion that there is something
morally wrong in casting spells flows through this narrative as well.
However, the moral message, which works through the all-too-familiar
indissociable binary of the prostitute and the housewife, is enmeshed in
a relation of money and commodity. e prostitute's motive is neither
carnal pleasure ('elderly ugly prostitute . . .') nor display of supernatural
power. It is the trader's money. And there is no getting away from the
promotional parenthesis of the text: 'We shall not name the article here.
e charm is available with us.' In the emerging market, the secret of
Kāmākhyā could appear only as a purchasable fact. ings become the
repository of magical power: 'medicines' for Jumelia and the unnamed
article for the prostitute.51 ings come to form the grounds of
credibility. ings can be bought, sold, possessed, and tried. Polyvalent
geographies are unified under the sign of univalent money—the
ultimate metaphor in the modern world.
It is important to remember here that, even until 1899, at least two
other locations of the Kāmākhyā pīṭha were known to different audi-
ences: one in the Punjab near the river Devīkā, which the compiler of
e Geographical Dictionary significantly informed his audience, was
still 'a place of pilgrimage'; and the other was Māyāpurī near Benares.52
But, as I have been suggesting, multiplicity or polyvalence of locations
was posited in the historicist culture as an object needing rectification.
Kāmākhyā was not in the Punjab or in Benares. Nor was it, as
Gorakṣaśatakam or Gopīcandrer Gān categorically said, in the human
body. It was a place on the map and it was in Assam. When Haliram
Dhekiyal Phukan, a sheristadar in the Gauhati Collectorate in the early
nineteenth century, published hi s Āsām Burānji from Calcutta in 1829
(the book is regarded as the first modern vernacular history of Assam),
he justified his novel project by saying: 'Many are vaguely aware that
there is a country called Assam Kāmarūpa etc. But leave alone proper
information or news, the people from other countries hardly know how
that country is or even where it is located.'53 roughout the book
Dhekiyal Phukan referred to this sorry state of knowledge about Assam
and in fact promised soon to come up with a Sanskrit Kāmākhyā
YātrāPaddhati ('Ways to Go to Kāmākhyā'), so that disputes and
ignorance about the location of Kāmākhyā could be resolved.54
'Kāmākhyā of Kāmarūpa is famous in all countries. But nobody actually
possesses any proper knowledge of it. Everywhere there exist numerous
stories about making trees walk and turning males into sheep, casting
magic charms, etc. at is why persons willing to visit Kāmākhyā shy
away.'55 Dhekiyal Phukan summarily dismissed the stories as 'mere
legends' and implored prospective job seekers and pilgrims to visit the
latest colonial acquisition on the eastern frontier.56
Even if banished from the new world of history, unauthorized
geographies of Kāmarūpa did not disappear into obscurity and silence.
ey crept back into modern vernacular fictions in apologetic scare
quotes. Nor were stories about the magical land of Kāmarūpa things of
the past, as another early Assamese historian, Goonabhiram Barooa,
chose to write in his Āsām Buranji in 1884. Barooa, somewhat like
Dhekiyal Phukan before him, considered the origin of such 'sayings' a
consequence of poor communications between Aryans and non-
Aryans.57 In 1885 an article in Āsām Bandhu, a monthly journal in
Assamese, echoed the same idea: 'the reason why in Bengal the proverb
of Kāmarūpa being a land of lion-riding witches is popular is lack of
communications.'58 In 1887 an article in Mau similarly argued: 'Till
now, the belief was current in Bengal that the Bengalis turn into goats
and sheep when they come to Assam. e belief might be true or false,
but it is ingrained in the mind of the Bengalis that Assam is an out-of-
the-way place.'59
 is was an agreeable explanation for the unhappy historicist
consciousness. By 1899 two routes were open for pilgrims to the
Guwahati Kāmākhyā temple from Calcutta: one was from Sealdah to
Goalundo by rail and from Goalundo to Guwahati by steamer; the
other from Sealdah to Jatrapur by rail and from Jatrapur to Guwahati by
steamer.60 Soon, Dhubri was also connected to Guwahati by rail, and
from the number of vernacular travelogues published in the early
twentieth century it becomes clear that a large number of travellers
were now able to visit Guwahati. Almost all these travelogues referred
to current 'proverbs' in order to dismiss them. A pilgrim from Rajshahi,
Anukulchandra Bhattacharya, opened his journal saying:
Hardly anybody from our country visits Kāmākhyā. As a result, no true account
there of is available in any book or oral report. Even when ordinary people
come across the very few travellers who have indeed visited the place, they feel
quite discouraged aer hearing some baseless and exaggerated descriptions
instead of authentic information. [e stories are] that men in particular lose
their potency in Kāmākhyā at the roar of lions, that the women there are very
beautiful and the men few and ugly; therefore the Kāmākhyā women cast their
magic charms on male visitors, turn them into sheep, and do not allow them to
return to their own country. Most people suffer from this illusion and do not
dare visit the residence of the Mother [Kāmākhyā].61
Similarly, Mahimchandra Gupta categorically denied the truth of the
four kinds of stories in circulation (that men failed to return home; that
women kept them in their thrall; that lions spoke like men thanks to the
'power of mantra'; and that men assumed the forms of animals or birds
'at will').62 Mrs Nalini Dasi assured her readers that a train trip to
Kāmākhyā with family was safe and rewarding.63 Priyakumar Chat-
topadhyay, author of the popular travelogue Giri-kāhinī, made fun of
friends who had feared that before reaching Shillong the author would
be turned into a sheep. Such incredible stories as 'lions roaring in the
daylight and a foreign man being turned into sheep as soon as he sets
foot in Kamrup', said Chattopadhyay, were on account of the 'ignorance
of geographical knowledge'.64
But as these multiple retellings in the colonial epicentre continued to
indicate, the relation between the state of communications and the
growth of such stories could not be mechanical and simple. e stories
were not residues of medieval insularity which could be progressively
dispelled with the growth of travel, commerce, and interaction. Rather,
as active elements within the world of colonial modernity, they
continued to travel and proliferate along the axis of modern
communications—if no more with udāsī sādhus and khatri traders,
then with migrating tea garden workers, agricultural hands, job seekers,
and lower division clerks.

IV
In untranslatably playful prose, Panchkari Ghosh wrote about the sheep
stories aer he described the various 'types of beauties' one could see in
Assam: Assamese women, he remarked, were all beautiful but in very
different ways. eir locations, dress, and sentiments were varied, but
there was some commonality too:
e beauties are very hospitable, generous and caring. Moreover they are free.
ey do not bother much about injunctions. Nor are they entirely behind veils.
To act as good hosts, they do not even desist from massaging the feet of an
unknown male guest. Earlier, a number of young Bengali men came to Assam
to stay as 'sheep' to avail of such hospitality and care. e road to Assam was
then difficult, and people did not feel like travelling all the way back; owing to
the difficulties of communication no one dared come with his family. Besides,
the unadulterated affection of the 'Assamese beauty' [apostrophes signify a
deliberate pun to simultaneously mean unparallelled beauty and Assamese
beauty], the extraordinary care-giving! Which heartless man would not be a
'sheep' in such a situation? Now such fear exists no more. e road is easy, and
the 'care' [they bestow] has decreased. Now, Bengal's beauties can send their
husbands to this foreign country without fear.
Written in a peculiar form of witty Bengali, which I cannot replicate in
translation, this excerpt provides yet another explanation in terms of
distance and communication difficulties, while consciously insinuating
the 'objectionable moral character' of Assamese women. Ghosh also
quoted 'a Manipuri proverb' as well as the same Sanskrit couplet which
Haridas recited to Judhishthir to conclude that 'we politely submit that
something must be true in all that circulates'.65 Like Haridas, Ghosh
believes sheep is a metaphor for the trapped male stranger. But this was
not universally true:
ere was a legend in Calcutta that men turn into sheep if they go to Assam.
e lawyers studying with me in the [Calcutta] Law College asked me about it. I
joked, 'Yes, the Assamese know magic. If some charmed water on kachu leaves
is sprinkled on someone, he becomes a sheep and begins to eat grass.' A friend
of mine, frightened aer hearing this, would not come near me any more. He
would greet me only from a distance and beseech: 'Brother, don't make me a
sheep.' We Assamese boys really had a lot of fun over this.66
Inversely, this little snippet from Krishnanath Sharma's autobiography,
describing a scene in 1915—16 Calcutta, confirms the power of
allegory. To be able to read an expression as a metaphor is to muster
that sense of distance without which a joke ceases to function as a joke.
Without metaphor, we have no means to assuage the horror of
metamorphosis. Metropolitan understandings do not set aside
incredible stories, subaltern pasts and presents, but treat them, as is said
of a commodity, 'like a character on stage, as something representing
something further'.67 Transactions between the ideology of value and
the culture of allegory are not exactly our focus here. But it is a helpful
parallel, particularly because we argue that the literalization of
Kāmarūpa— Kāmākhyā and the allegorization of stories connected
with them are not purely matters of stylistic and linguistic convention.
e twin strategies contribute to the larger, almost disciplinary, project
of enframing the not-accessed.
I deliberately invoke Heideggerian jargon in order to suggest a
parallel between the rendering of nature as 'standing reserve' and the
translation of the supernatural as allegorical.68 e very splitting of the
popular imagination into a surface of representations and a depth of
hidden truths enables such translations to safely pass through 'the trial
of the untranslatable'.69 With the codebook of allegories, the distance
thus set up between the superficial and the deep, between the said and
the meant, between the represented and the real, can be traversed as
well as travestied in order to selectively appropriate and make use of
untutored imaginations. In other words, the new historicist culture took
it upon itself to determine what was to be understood as happening on
the register of the literal, and what was not. is differentiation was not
only integral to that culture of verification; it was also a condition of its
possibility.
e relationship between historicist-literalist translations of
vernacular geographies and the allegorization of stories is best
represented by Rajmohan Nath's works on Kadalī, published
intermittently in Assamese, Bengali, and English between 1941 and
1964. Dissatisfied with both Bhattaśali's indistinct identification with
'the land of women's liberty—Kamrup, Manipur, Burma' and
Shahidullah's identification of Kadalī with Cachar, based on pure
etymological conjecture,70 Nath's 1941 Bengali book argued that
Kandali of Nowgong was the true Kadalī, the simplest proof coming
from the fact that the area is still full of banana (kadalī) trees.
oroughly sceptical of the lore of magical strangeness of Kāmarūpa
('Even in the modern times many believe that men are turned into
sheep here!'71 ), Nath tried to explain the Gorakhnāth curse (which
changed Kadalī women into bats) in a matter-of-fact manner:
ree miles north-east to the Kandali tea estate, there is a cave in the hill called
Badulikurung. . . . Within this cave live millions of bats. . . . e local
inhabitants honour the cave as a divine place and believe that those bats are
Kamaladevī's [local deity] protected consorts. . . . e imagination of
Kamaladevī's sixteen hundred women companions having been changed into
bats has been derived from [seeing] these bats of Badulikurung.72
Miracles or marvels, in other words, were inadmissible for this serious
amateur (an engineer by profession). In order to prove that the Oddi-
yāna Piṭha was within Assam (which was seriously contested by Kanak
Lal Baruah),73 he diligently gathered scattered references to magical
arts in Kāmarūpa from the tantras, but never tried to cross the literalist
border he drew around his own work.74 However, perhaps owing to his
increasing entanglement with the Nath community movement, in a
later note on Kadalī our literalist historian deliberately switched to
fashion an allegorized version of his earlier literal rendition:
Although the country—kadalī vana [banana garden], kadalī ksetra
[banana site] or kadalī rājya [banana kingdom]—was named aer
banana trees, metaphysical theories lie in its foundation: 'tvaksārāh
kadalīkāntāh tvaci vyādānadyutim . e banana tree consists only of
covers [valkala], one cover aer another, and finally there is the essence
[munja]; fruits and flowers grow out of that essence. is world is like
that: enveloped only by covers. But there is Munjanāth [the Lord of
Essence] in the deepest cell. e human body is like that too: cells of
anna, prāṇa, manah, vijñāna.
And hence, 'Everything is the play of the woman principle [prakṛti], the
men [puruṣa] are spellbound.'75 e spell could now be explained in
terms of cosmic principles; the image of the trapped male stranger
could now be cross-mapped onto the idea of the inert puruṣa. e
mode of allegory marked the boundaries of credibility beyond which,
according to 'the historical sense', one must not trespass. It was the
mode of allegory, again, which enabled the continual reproduction of
the story in widely separated contexts, pursuing completely different
agendas, and adding invisibly but surely to 'common sense'. I shall not
dwell on the well known and extensive literary deployments of these
stories in Abanindranath akur's Buṛo Ānglā or Rajshekhar Basu's
Kāmrūpinī, but rather present two relatively little-discussed examples.
In 1911 a little-known theosophist, Surendramohan Bhattacharya,
published an account of mesmerism and theosophy in Bengali. Largely
given to explaining the esoteric details of hypnotism, his book also
contained a long historical introduction which opened with these lines:
In ancient times nymph-like women used to reside on top of the hills or inside
deep forests in the Kāmarūpa-Kāmākhyā region of our country. ey possessed
miraculous powers aer obtaining siddhi in the restraint test. very likely, they
did not get entangled in marriage— maybe because marriage would have been
a hindrance to their mantras, tantras, and modes of worship. is community
used to call its members ḍākinīs. Ḍākinīs and yoginīs are companions of the
Goddess Kāmākhyā. Most probably, these beautiful women were originally
born in Kāmākhyā and its adjacent areas, and then joined this community to
learn those arts. Many strange stories are current about these women.
ey did not marry, but they were no celibates. When the passion of
youth made them yearn for the sweet moment ['madhumuhūrta,] they
would wait the whole night with their so, flower-like bodies for a man
to arrive. If any man who had lost his way or who was on a pilgrimage
happened to face them, they would attract the man as a flame attracts
insects and kept him enthralled forever. anks to the mesmeric art of
the ḍākinīs, the hypnotized man forgot his country, his family, his wife
and children, and became almost like a sheep. And until favoured by
another ḍākinī, he was there—prostrate at the ḍākinī's feet. Perhaps
many did not receive the favours of another ḍākinī in their whole life;
so, the sheep could not be unfettered.
Now, what is the use of disseminating the darkness of superstitious
tales of yesteryears in this well-lit age of Western knowledge? Many so-
called educated young Bengali men may raise this question. Before
stating the justification that we have, we wish to give you another piece
of information . . . Recently, everywhere in Europe, a little hint of the art
of those ignorant women hiding in hilltops has created a great sens-
ation.76
is vernacular history of hypnotism, shot through with an obvious
orientalism, creatively invented in the figure of the magical women of
Kāmarūpa—Kāmākhyā the prehistory of modern European science.
Repeatedly referring to Kāmākhyā ḍākinīs throughout the text, Bhat-
tacharya claimed that ḍākinīvidyā or witchcra was not irrational
mumbo-jumbo but a well-learned art—rather, 'science'. As any reader
of Gyan Prakash's work will readily recognize, this was a fairly
commonplace narrative strategy of Hindu intellectuals of the time who
untiringly 'projected science as the true heritage of [their] religion and
culture' and never gave up discovering allusions to steam engines and
aircras in the Vedas. Prakash argues, with reason and subtlety, that it
was 'in the disturbing intimacy with myths and metaphysics, that the
modern nation loom[ed] out of nowhere in the conditional and
uncertain image of archaic Hindu science.'77 Prakash's insistence on the
interruptive effect of the consequent temporality, however, should not
lead us away from the integrative functions of the spatial fantasies that
such archaicization came to generate. Rather than acting as 'stubborn
knots that stand out and break up the otherwise evenly woven surface
of the [historicist] fabric',78 the recognitions of the incredible enabled
early-twentieth-century historicists to invent a depth, a 'standing-
reserve', an inexhaustible stock of rationally defensible explanations. It
was this fantasy of interiority, this invention of a distance downward,
which helped expertise to emerge as a science of the deep. e absurd
was not inaccessible, outside a reason that took pride in its abstractive
power. e absurd became a stock, a supply store, an incitement to
further intensifications of disciplines: Foucault's infamous 'counter-
stroke'.
e pun that enlivens the word discipline allows us to end with an
excerpt, without comment, from a famous nationalist speech. is was
the welcome address by Tarunram Phukan, Gandhi's lieutenant in the
province, to the delegates to the 1926 session of the ri-ridden All India
Congress Committee in Guwahati. is was the first session to be held
in Assam, and Phukan was terribly self-conscious of what he perceived
as his historical responsibility at that moment: introducing the old glory
of Kāmarūpa to representatives of the nation. In a predictably
emotional speech infused with a strong historicist spirit, he went over
the details of the historical contribution of Kāmarūpa to the nation
from time immemorial, only to conclude somewhat abruptly, in this
manner:
e magic land of Kamarupa has an old tradition that people staying over three
nights here are converted into sheep, and we all know that the sheep have the
peculiarity of following the leader faithfully. Let us hope, therefore, the magic
influence of this land shall enable the fighting groups to settle their differences
and make the Hindus and Muham- madens united in love and brotherhood
and follow the Congress like innocent lambs tended by the gentle shepherd of
Sabarmati.79

* e research for this paper was made possible by a grant from the South- South
Exchange Programme for Research on the History ofDevelopment (Sephis) of the
International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam. I had the privilege of
presenting amazingly different versions of this paper to different audiences in New
Delhi, Guwahati, Oxford, Calcutta, and Bangalore. It is difficult to name
everybody who did me the honour of publicly responding to the presentations.
But my debt to the interlocutors is immense. I would like particularly to thank
Gautam Bhadra, Neeladri Bhattacharya, Kunal Chakrabarti, Partha Chatterjee,
Vivek Dhareswar, Shail Mayaram, Sanghamitra Misra, Rochelle Pinto, Rajat Kanta
Ray, Tanika Sarkar, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Asha
Varadharajan, and Milind Wakankar for their erudite comments, unsparing
criticisms, and stimulating questions. I must reserve a line to gratefully
acknowledge the extraordinary patience of Raziuddin Aquil. All translations from
Assamese, Bengali, Hindi, and Sanskrit, unless otherwise stated, are mine.
1. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A ousand Plateaus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia, translated by Brian Massumi (Minneapolis and London: University
of Minnesota Press, 1987), p. 237.
2. Sara Suleri, e Rhetoric of English India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1992), p. 7.
3. Sushil Kumar De, BānglāPrabād: Chaṛā o Calti Kathā (1945; Calcutta: A.
Mukherjee amp; Co. , 2002), provides eight instances o2f the expression in
Bengali literary usage: one from Gopal Ure's song, two from Pearichand Mitra's
Ālāler Gharer Dulāl, one each from Dinabandhu Mitra's Sadhabār Ekādasī and Nīl
Darpaṇ, one each from Amritalal Basu's Bāhabā Bātik and Grāmya Bibhrāṭ, and
one from Sarat Chandra Chatterjee's Srīkānta: nos 1710, 2543, 6333.
4. See Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial ought and
Hzstorz'calDzfere"ce(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), ch. 4: 'Minority
Histories, Subaltern Pasts'.
5. is phrase is from Ann Laura Stoler, ' "In Cold Blood": Hierarchies of
Credibility and the Politics of Colonial Narratives', Representations, 37 (1992), pp.
151-89.
6. Denys Page, Folktales in the Odyssey (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press,
1973), p. 57.
7. See Charles Segal, 'Circean Temptations: Homer, Virgil, Ovid', Transactions and
Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 99 (1968), pp. 419-42. See
also Kerry K. Wilks, 'Tan faciles son mis lazos de romper?': Circe, the
Seventeenth-Century eatrical Enchantress' (unpublished PhD dissertation,
University of Chicago, 2004), ch. 1, for a similar evolutionary account.
8. Luise White, 'Cars Out of Place: Vampires, Technology, and Labor in East and
Central Africa', in Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, eds, Tensions of
Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley and London: University
of California Press, 1997), pp. 436-60.
9. Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial
Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 22-5.
10. Verrier Elwin, Myths of the North-Eastern Frontier of lndia (Shillong: North
East Frontier Agency, 1958), pp. 199-202.
11. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and
Taboo (New York: Pantheon Books, 1966).
12. George Weston Briggs, Gorakhnāth and the Kānphāṭā Yogīs (London:
Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1938), pp. 187-8. Ann Grodzins
Gold, 'e Once and Future Yogi: Sentiments and Signs in the Tale of a
Renouncer-King', Journal of Asian Studies 48: 4 (1989), pp. 77086, states a version
collected from Rajasthan where Gopi Chand was locked in a contest 'with seven
female magicians who wield unrestrained power in the land of Bengal. e
magicians hold Gopi Chand captive in various transformations. In one instance
he is made into an ox and forced to turn an oil press while slave girls flog him with
a seven-tailed whip and poke him with iron prods': p. 775.
13. W. H. McLeod, GurūNānak and the Sikh Religion (Delhi: Oxford University
Press, rpnt. 1996), p. 41.
14. ey are Nalini Kanta Bhattashali, ed. , Mīnacetan (Dacca: Dacca Sahitya
Parishat, c. 1915); Abdul Karim, ed. , Gorakṣa-Vijay (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya
Parishat, c. 1917); Panchanan Mandal, ed. Gorkh-Vijay (Santi- niketan:
Visvabharati, copy undated).
15. Shashi Bhushan Dasgupta, Obscure Religious Cults as Background of Bengali
Literature (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1946), p. 378.
16. Bhattashali, ed. , Mīnacetan; Karim, ed. , Gorakṣa-Vijay.

17. Hazariprasad Dwivedi, Nāth-Sampradāy (Allahabad: Hindustan Academy,

Uttar Pradesh, 1950), p. 51.
18. P. O. Bodding, Studies in Santal Medicine and Connected Folklore (1925- 40;
rpnt. Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1986), p. 126.
19. Michel Foucault, 'Nietzsche, Genealogy, History', in Paul Rabinow, ed. , e
Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), p. 83.
20. Stoler, 'In Cold Blood', p. 154.

21. Bodding, Studies in Santal Medicine, p. 125.

22. Bodhisattva Kar, What Is In a Name: Politics of Spatial Imagination in Colonial

Assam (Guwahati: CENISEAS, 2004)
23. Sheldon Pollock, 'Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in History', Public Culture 12:
3 (2000), pp. 604, 606.
24. For a discussion of the fabrication of the organic core of the nation-space, see
Manu Goswami, Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space
(Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 2004), ch. 6.
25. Edward A. Gait, A History of Assam (Calcutta: acker, Spink amp; Co. ,
1906), p. 1.
26. For a detailed discussion, see Kar, What is in a Name.

27. Hugh B. Urban, e Economics of Fantasy: Tantra, Secrecy, and Power in

Colonial Bengal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 162.
28. H. M. Monier Williams, quoted in Kathleen Taylor, Sir John Woodroffe, Tantra
and Bengal: 'An Indian Soul in a European Body? (Richmond: Curzon, 2001), p.
124.
29. L. A. Waddell, quoted in Taylor, Sir John Woodroffe, p. 119.

30. D. L. Swellgrove, ed. , e Hevajra Tantra: A Critical Study (London: Oxford

University Press, 1959), p. 69, n. Kāmākhyātantram (Calcutta: Nababharat, 1978),
11. pp. 28-9.
31. See, for example, Rāmaćaritam of Sandhyākaranandin, edited by Haraprasad
Sastri (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1910), p. 80.
32. R. C. Temple, e Legends of the Panjab (Bombay: Education Society's Press
and London: Trübner amp; Co. , 1884), vol. 1, no. vi: 'e Legend of Guru Gugga,
as played annually at Jagadhri at the Holi Festival in the Ambala District', pp. 121-
209. e extract is from lines 179-80.
33. Temple, Legends of Panjab, p. 121.

34. Gopīcandrer Gān: Uttar Bange Sangrihīta, edited by Dineshchandra Sen and
Basantaranjan Ray and collected by Bisweswar Bhattacharya (Calcutta: University
of Calcutta, 1924), vol. 2, pp. 421-5. See also GopīchandrerGān, edited by
Ashutosh Bhattacharya (Calcutta: University of Calcutta Press, 1959), pp. 229-30.
35. Ibid. (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1922), vol. 1, pp. 265-8.

36. Surya Kumar Bhuyan, 'Mānar Dinar Kathā', Argha, 1: 3 (c. 1922), p. 33.

37. Karim (ed. ), Gorakṣa-Vijay, pp. xxvi, xxxi-xxxii.

38. Sen and Ray, eds, Gopīcandrer Gān, vol. 2, p. 101.

39. Ibid. , vol. 1, pp. 424-5.

40. Kar, What is in a Name.

41. R. Howard Bloch, Etymologies and Genealogies: A Literary Anthropology of the

French Middle Ages (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1983), p.
146.
42. 'General View of the History and Manners of Kamrup', pp. 2-3, Private Papers
of Francis Buchanan Hamilton, Oriental and Indian Office Collection, British
Library, Mss. Eur. D 98.
43. 'Assam since the Expulsion of the Burmese', Calcutta Review, xix (1853), p.
436.
44. William Robinson, A Descriptive Account of Asam: With a sketch of the local
geography, and a concise history of the tea-plant of Asam to which is added a short
account of the neighbouring tribes, exhibiting their history, manners, and customs
(London: omas Ostwell amp; Co, 1841), p. 147.
45. John M'Cosh, Topography of Assam (1837; rpnt. Delhi: Sanskaran, 1975), p. 84.
Robinson repeats this paragraph in his book, Descriptive Account, p. 258.
46. M'Cosh, Topography, p. 23 (emphasis added).

47. Bhuvanchandra Mukhopadhyay, Ār Ek Nūtan! Haridāser Guptakathā! (Nūtan

Likhita: Ādhunik Banger Samāj-Citra) (Calcutta: Basu amp;Co. , 1903/1310 bs), p.
185.
48. e extract here is from this edition and I am not sure if this particular bit had
appeared in the earlier editions as well. Why I am stressing this fact is because this
used to happen quite frequently in the late-nineteenth century popular literary
circuit of Calcutta, where authors/publishers quickly responded to the changing
moods or shiing concerns of their readership by adding or deleting substantial
portions in subsequent editions. Haridāser Guptakathā, which contains the most
extensive narrative treatment of the Kāmākhyā sheep story (a whole chapter) in its
1903 version, does not even mention the place in its first edition of 1872.
49. Panchkari De, Manoramā (1902 edn. ; RPNT. Calcutta: Banipith, 1953), pp.
197-200.
50. Bhuvanchandra Basak, Digvijay vā Āścarya Candrikā, corrected by Jagan- nath
Shukul, Pundit of Fort William College (Calcutta: Author, 1869), pp. 42-3.
51. One can be referred to the short story 'Miśmīder Kabac' published by
Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay in 1942. Here, Janakinath Barua, a merchant,
becomes possessed by an amulet which he has stolen from some Mishmi temple.
e uncanny power of the amulet to excite the warring, bloodthirsty, and mean
qualities in an otherwise normal human being is the main focus of the story.
Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, 'Miśmīder Kabac', in Bibhūti Racanābalī
(Calcutta: Mitra Ghosh, 1996), vol. 4, pp. 511-48.
52. Nundo Lal Dey, e Geographical Dictionary of Ancient and Medieval India
(1899; London: Luzac amp; Co. , 1927), p. 86.
53. Haliram Dhekiyal Phukan, Āsām Buranji, ed. Jatindramohan Bhattacharya
(1829; rpnt. Guwahati: Mokshada Pustakalaya, 1962), Anuṣṭhānpatra, or prefatory
page.
54. Which apparently he did in 1830. But though published only within a year's
gap, the two volumes have received distinctly different treatment from posterity.
While the Bengali volume is still paraded as an unmistakable token of the modern
genius of Assam, the Sanskrit book is long out of circulation and today considered
quite an unremarkable piece of work, despite evidence that the book was fairly
well received in the contemporary Calcutta gentry circuit, the targeted addressee
of the author. I have been unable to locate this work.
55. Dhekiyal Phukan, Āsām Buranji, p. 79.

56. Ibid. , p. 84. It is interesting to note that Dhekiyal Phukan also rejected the
Ahom kings' claim to divine origin as 'extremely unbelievable', p. 24.
57. Gunaviram Barua, Āsām Buranji (1884; rpnt. Guwahati: Publication Board,
Assam, 2001), p. 8.
58. A. B. , 'Āmār Mānuha', Āsām Bandhu, 1, 4 (1885), p. 131.

59. 'Ucca Śikkhā', Mau, 2 (January 1887), p. 54.

60. Mahimchandra Gupta, 'Kāmākhyā', Pradīp, 3, 2 (1899), p. 54. I am grateful to

Kamalika Mukherjee for drawing my attention to this piece.
61. Anukulchandra Bhattacharya, Kāmākhyā Bhramaṇ (Calcutta: Author, c.
1899), p. 1.
62. Gupta, Kāmākhyā, p. 54.

63. Nalini Dasi, Kāmākhyā-Yātrā (Calcutta: Ashokshri Ghosh, c. 1924).

64. Priyakumar Chattopadhyay, Giri-Kāhinī (Shillong: Author, c. 1911), p. 74, n.

65. Panchkari Ghosh, Āsām -Prabāser Aṣphuṭa Smriti (1895; rpnt. Calcutta: S. C.
Adhya amp; Co. , 1927), pp. 28-9, 31-2.
66. Krishnanath Sharma, Kriṣna Śarmār Diary (Guwahati: Publication Board,
Assam, 1972), p. 59.
67. Timothy Mitchell, 'e Stage of Modernity', in Timothy Mitchell, ed.,
Questions of Modernity (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press,
2000), p. 21.
68. Cf. Martin Heidegger, e Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays,
translated by William Lovitt (New York: Harper amp; Row, 1977).
69. Jacques Derrida, 'What is a Relevant Translation?', translated by Lawrence
Venuti, Critical Inquiry, 27, 2 (2001), p. 178.
70. See M. Shahidullah, Les chants mystiques de Kānha et de Saraha. Les Dohā-
kosa (en apabhramsa avec les versions tibétaines) et les Caryā (en vieux Bengali),
avec introduction, vocabulaire et notes, édités et traduits par M. Shahidullah.
Préface de M. Jules Bloch. Textes pour l'étude du boud- dhisme tardif. (Paris:
Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1928), p. 27, n.
71. Rajmohan Nath, Kadalī Rājya (Gauhati: Trio Store, 1941), p. 23.

72. Ibid. , pp. 36-8.

73. Kanaklal Barua, 'Kāmarūpa and Vajrayāna' Journal of Assam Research Society,
2, 2 (July, 1934), pp. 44-9.
74. Nath, Kadalī Rājya, pp. 23-4.

75. Rajmohan Nath, Vañgīya Nāthpanther Prācīn Puthi (Calcutta: Assam- Vanga
Yogi Sammilani, 1964), Appendix-2: 'Kadalī Rājya', p. 261.
76. Surendramohan Bhattacharya, Ḍākinīvidyā (Calcutta: Bengal Medical Library,
1911), pp. i-iii.
77. Gyan Prakash, 'e Modern Nation's Return in the Archaic', Critical Inquiry,
23: 3 (1997), pp. 538, 556. See also Gyan Prakash, Another Reason:
ScienceandtheImagination of Modern India (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1999).
78. Cf. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, p. 106.

79. e full text of Tarunaram Phukan's speech is available in Kakati (ed. ),

Discovery of Assam. Mahendra Mohan Chaudhuri, 'Deśbhakta Tarunrām Phukan',
in Tarunrām Phukan: Smṛtigrantha (Guwahati: Publication Board, Assam, 1977),
mentions that Phukan's allusion to the legend 'particularly drew attention of the
audience and the delegates': p. 14.
 10

e Study of Islam and Indian History at the

Darul Musannefin, Azamgarh*

RAZIUDDIN AQUIL

I e Context

I
slamic contestations in the nineteenth and twentieth century are
marked by the emergence of the Dar-ul-Ulum of Deoband, the
Nadwat-ul-Ulama, the Aligarh Movement, the spread of pan-
Islamic tendencies, the ascendance of fundamentalisms of different
shades, and the struggles of devotional Sufic Islam to safeguard its
traditions and religious practices. ese serve as the political, social,
and intellectual context in which the scholarly intervention of Darul
Musannefin, Azamgarh, becomes intelligible. Of the various
competitive forms of Islam which emerged during this period, those
that are inward looking invoked religious symbols, traditions, an idea of
the glorious Muslim past, etc., which needed to be protected. e more
outgoing modernist movements attempted to address the questions of
the present more directly but tended to end up seeking solace in history.
e Darul Musannefin at Azamgarh in eastern Uttar Pradesh has
been devoted to research and publication on the history and culture of
Islam and Muslims for nearly a century now. In deference to one of its
leading founding fathers, Allama Shibli Numani (1858-1914), the
institution is also called Darul Musannefin Shibli Academy. Allama
Shibli is well known to scholars of modern South Asian Islam for his
voluminous writings on a vast range of themes—from a classic two-
volume study of the life of Prophet Muhammad entitled the Sirat-un-
Nabi, to a multi-volume history of Persian poetry entitled the Sh'er- ul-
Ajam. A 'modernist' alim, religious scholar, Allama Shibli has also been
associated with the Islamic seminary Nadwat-ul-Ulama at Lucknow,
where attempts were reportedly made by his 'conservative' colleagues to
sideline him. His intellectual legacy was inherited by an equally prolific
Syed Sulaiman Nadwi (1884-1953), who, like his mentor, straddled
many worlds. Nadwi extended the Sirat-un-Nabi project further, adding
five volumes to the first two by Shibli.1 Besides, he wrote a large
number of articles on diverse themes; these were subsequently
compiled in several volumes collectively titled Maqalat-i-Sulaiman. His
study of relations between India and Arabia from ancient times, Arab-
wa-Hind ke T'alluqat, has become a classic. He also delivered the
presidential address of the medieval India section in the 1944 session of
the Indian History Congress held in Madras. However, Nadwi's career
was overshadowed by the emergence of Mau-lana Azad (1888-1958) as
a leading Muslim intellectual and political figure. His personal
problems with the Maulana added to Nadwi's marginalization. At
Azamgarh his mission was carried forward by Syed Sabahuddin Abdur
Rahman (1911-87), who spent a lifetime on a more focused study of
Islam and Muslims in medieval India. Abdur Rahman published over
thirty books in Urdu on many aspects of religion and politics in the
period (see Appendix I for a list of his books). He also edited the Darul
Musannefin's monthly journal, Ma'rif, considered one of the most
serious periodicals published in Urdu on a regular basis.
e present essay is a preliminary attempt to introduce the relatively
unknown third man in the series, Abdur Rahman, and his works to the
world outside Urdu circles. is is a part of my larger research project
which includes a study of the Sh'er-ul-Ajam, the Sirat-un-Nabi project,
Darul Musannefin's engagements with the Orientalists, and with a
further mapping out of the twentieth-century Indian Muslim
intellectual milieu through a survey of contributions in Ma'rif.2
To proceed to the theme of this essay: Abdur Rahman's writings are
substantial. Some run to several volumes, and the individual mono-
graphs comprise on an average 300 pages. His three major and early
works (published over 1948-54) consist of the Bazm (literally assembly,
or gathering) trilogy: a history of Sufism in the Delhi Sultanate entitled
Bazmi Sufiya: Ahdi Taimuri se Qabl Akabir Sufya (1949); and two
monographs on the literary history of the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal
India, entitled Bazm-i-Mamlukiya (1954) and Bazm-i-Taimu-riya
(1948), respectively. ese are followed by a rather unusual magnum
opus, Hindustan ke Ahd-i-Wusta ka Fauji Nizam (e Military System
of Medieval Hindustan, 1960). His works on Islam and politics include
Hindustan ke Salatin, Ulama aur Masha'ikh ke T'alluqat par ek Nazr
(An Overview of the Relations between the Sultans, Ulama and the
Sufis of Hindustan, 1964); and Musalman Hukmaranon ki Mazhabi
Rawadari (e Religious Tolerance of Muslim Rulers, 3 vols, 1975-84).
is corpus is strengthened by a work of a theoretical nature, Islam
Mein Mazhabi Rawadari (Religious Tolerance in Islam, 1987). His
attempts to outline the social and cultural history of the period
(primarily a response to Elliot and Dowson's political history of India
As Told by its own Historians') may be seen in the following three
publications: Hindustan ke Ahdi Wusta ki ek Jhalak (Glimpses of
Hindustan in the Medieval Period, 1958); Hindustan ke Musalman
Hukmaranon ke Ahd ke Tamadduni Jalwe (e Cultural Contours of
Hindustan During the Reign of Muslim Rulers, 1963); and Hindustan ki
Bazmi Raa ki Sachchi Kahaniyan (True Accounts from the Social Past
of Hindustan), 2 vols, 1968-74. For a kind of patriotism, one may
consult his Salatine Dehli ke Ahd Mein Hindustan se Muhabbatwa-
Sheagi ke Jazbat (e Passionate Expression of Love and Affection for
Hindustan During the Period of the Delhi Sultans, 1983); and a
typically pluralist book, Hindustan Amir Khusrau ki Nazr Mein
(Hindustan as Viewed by Amir Khusrau, 1966). Further, as part of the
'Heroes of Islam' series of the Darul Musannefin, Abdur Rahman wrote
a huge biography of none other than the founder of the Mughal empire,
Zahir-ud-Din Muhammad Babur (1967/revised in 1986 in the wake of
the Babri crisis). Finally, in consonance with the general thrust of the
institution since the time of Allama Shibli, Abdur Rahman published a
five-volume compilation on Islam and Orientalism, including the
proceedings of a 1982 conference on the theme (Islam aur
Mustashriqin, 1985-6, see Appendix II for the papers presented to the
conference and published as Volume II of the above series).3
As one can see, Abdur Rahman was a prolific writer and the themes
he covered in his books have a contemporary resonance. However, the
author is hardly known to those who do not have access to Urdu
material on the Sultanate and Mughal periods. is is perhaps for the
following three reasons. (i) Language: Abdur Rahman wrote in Urdu
and therefore his works were disseminated only to those who could
read that language. A wider dissemination, even if only within elite
academia, would have required the books to be written in, or translated
into, English. Some vernaculars—say Bengali, Marathi, and Malaya-
lam—have had effectively bilingual scholars, such that their English/
vernacular boundary is more porous than that of English/Urdu.
Bilingual scholarship in English/Urdu is scarcer because far fewer of
those at home in Urdu go on to master the apparatus of scholarship in
English and vice versa.4 (ii) Location: e author was based in
Azamgarh, which can at best be called an academic backwater. Even
though the Darul Musannefin has a huge collection of Islamic literature
in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, including manuscripts, the kind of
exposure that scholars get in a university department or research centre
in metropolitan cities was lacking for Abdur Rahman. Institutions play
an important role in setting standards for both research and its
dissemination. (iii) Ideology: No matter how balanced his account of
medieval India, the author's approach may be characterized as
maulwiyana (or the approach of a maulwi, a theologian or Islamic
scholar). Abdur Rahman celebrated the achievements of Islam in
medieval India, which broadly conformed to the 'nationalist'
construction of the history of the period, even as the pan-Islamic
strands within it are clearly visible. e author persisted with this
approach at a time when the thrust of study had shied to economic
history under the influence of Marxism. Scholars, broadly identifiable
as leists or secularists—who dominated the study of medieval Indian
history in the latter half of the twentieth century—would dub Abdur
Rahman's kind of work as communal and conservative, and would have
ignored him even if he had been located in, say, Aligarh. No established
scholar seems to have cited Abdur Rahman's work, even though the
latter sought to engage with them. His approach was perhaps
comparable to that of one Aligarh-based scholar of Sufism, K.A.
Nizami. Unlike Abdur Rahman, however, Nizami's approach was
mu'taqidana (devotional) in relation to the career of Sufis—mainly the
Chishtis of the Sultanate period. Nizami was amongst the few late-
twentieth-century historians who also wrote in Urdu,5 but who is
recognized by his books in English.6
Incidentally, Nizami contributed a number of articles in Ma'rif, which
Abdur Rahman edited. However, I am not aware of any instance where
Nizami refers to Abdur Rahman's writings, though he does take note of
the works of Shibli Numani and Sulaiman Nadwi, mainly in his Urdu
histories. e works cited are not central to Nizami's concerns, that is,
to the career of the Chishti Sufis. Abdur Rahman's book on the Sufis,
Bazm-i-Sufiya, he overlooks altogether. Nizami also discounted S.A.A.
Rizvi, another scholar of religion who wrote primarily on Sufism in
medieval India.7 Rizvi, though a Shia Muslim, competed with Nizami
for the same intellectual space. Both were patronized by the Aligarh
historian Mohammad Habib. Rizvi had an edge over Nizami as he was
also backed by the institutionally powerful historian S. Nurul Hasan. It
might appear that Rizvi broke into the international circuit in a modest
way; some of his books were published in Canberra. e study of
religion and culture by these scholars was, in turn, sidelined by the
emergence of agrarian or economic history as the most influential, even
intellectually hegemonic, field in the early 1960s. Similar complaints
may be heard about scholars working on painting and architecture.8 It
would appear, then, that even as the use of a dominant language
(English) and a prominent institutional location (possibly a university
department) have been important determinants for recognition,
ideology, the politics of historiography, and the personal preferences of
certain influential historians have also led to lack of recognition for a
figure like Abdur Rahman within mainstream scholarship on medieval
India.9 e scene in Hindi may be more or less similar—except perhaps
for more translation activity.
All this notwithstanding, Abdur Rahman's work was considered
important by a cross-section of the Muslim intelligentsia, including the
liberals, before the study of economic history came to acquire its near
stranglehold on the field. Abdur Rahman mentions, in the preface to his
1964 work Hindustan ke Salatin, Ulama aurMashaikh, that this is an
expanded version of a lecture he delivered at Jamia Millia Islamia, New
Delhi, on the invitation of its vice chancellor, Mohammad Mujeeb,10
and the head of the Department of Islamic Studies, Maulana Abdus
Salam Kidwai. Dr Syed Abid Husain chaired the session,11 which was
attended by a number of leading lights of the city, including Maulana
Muhammad Miyan (nazim, Jami'at-ul-Ulama-i-Hind), Maulana Abul
Lais (amir, Jama'at-i-Islami Hind), Hakim Abdul Hamid (proprietor,
Hamdard Dawakhana), Qazi Sajjad Husain (principal, Madrasa
Aminiya), and Shah Zamin Ali Nizami (sajjada- nashin or chief
caretaker of the Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya dargah).
It may be noticed that Abdur Rahman was addressing a Muslim
intelligentsia, mainly conservatives, rather than people cosmopolitan in
their outlooks; few among these could be deemed academic notables.
us, he was not getting any critical feedback from professional
academics. ere seems a double sterility to the milieu: the participants
lived in a limited mental universe. Almost none of them were of the
bent that would know anything about the world outside of Islam; nor
would they have had much clue about the numerous currents
constantly rising in the wider oceans of thought in the varied
disciplines and their countless specialities.
Abdur Rahman's work thus received uncritical appreciation for its
celebration of the social and political roles of the ulama and Sufis in the
Delhi Sultanate. at lecture was revised and serialized in the journal
Ma'rif before being put together as a book. I look later at its main
arguments, which, according to the author, were well received by the
audience in Delhi. e lecture's date is not mentioned, but the book
version appeared in 1964. (As we shall see below, this was not the first
visit of Abdur Rahman to Jamia Millia.) Similarly, another book by
Abdur Rahman, Musalman Hukmaranon ki Mazhabi Rawadari,
originated in a lecture organized by the Islamic Research Association,
Bombay, at the Sabu Siddiq Technical Institute, in 1972; the talk was
chaired by Rafiq Zakaria, then a minister in the Maharashtra
government.12
We also have evidence to the effect that Abdur Rahman enjoyed a lot
of respect from scholars in such disciplines as Urdu Literature
(excluding the 'progressive' Urdu writers who may have had
reservations with Darul Musannefin's approach, once again on
ideological grounds), Persian, Arabic, and Islamic Studies. is may be
inferred from (i) the success of Ma'rif under his editorship, and the list
of its contributors (see Appendix III for samples of articles published in
the journal); (ii) his association with some key institutions dealing
primarily with Islam and Muslim culture, including Anjuman Taraqqi
Urdu Hind; Hindustani Academy, Allahabad; Nadwat-ul-Ulama,
Lucknow; Jamia Urdu Aligarh; Idarah-i-Tahqiqat-i-Arabi wa Farsi
Bihar, Patna; Indian Council of Cultural Relations, Delhi; and Indo-
Iranica, Calcutta;13 (iii) his major work on Sufis of the Delhi Sultanate,
Bazm-i-Sufiya, is oen cited in Urdu histories,14 and in an article by
Carl W. Ernst, a leading historian of Sufism, even ifonly to dismiss it as
unimportant.15 Abdur Rahman's books have a huge market in Pakistan,
where they were being reprinted and sold without involving the author.
Eventually, Abdur Rahman's meeting with Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto
sometime in 1975 facilitated a contract, according to which the
National Book Foundation, Ministry of Education, Pakistan, got the
rights to print and sell his books in that country. e Darul Musannefin
got a sum of Rs 15 lakh, at the time a big amount for a cash-strapped
small-town insti-tution.16 In India his popularity and recognition may
also be seen in a tribute paid by Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi. e
organization has published a biography of the author in Urdu by
Mohammad Hamid Ali Khan, a professor of Urdu literature in Bihar
University, Muzaf- farpur.17
An isolated example of a historian recognizing Abdur Rahman's
contributions may also be noted; but then this again is in Urdu. His
works have been evaluated by Syed Jamaluddin in his Tarikh Nigari:
Qadim wa Jadid Rujhanat (Historiography: Ancient and Modern
Trends), published by Maktaba Jamia Limited, the publication unit of
the Jamia Millia Islamia.18 e links with Jamia Millia may again be
noted. A favourite student of M. Mujeeb, Jamaluddin studied medieval
India with Muzaffar Alam in Jamia's Department of History and
Culture and went on to be a professor there. His chapter on Abdur
Rahman was originally presented in the Inaugural Syed Sabahuddin
Abdur Rahman Memorial Lecture, held in Delhi, on 2 December 1989.
But Abdur Rahman's connection with Jamia Millia went back over half
a century. With double MAs in Urdu and Persian from Patna University
and a two-year teachers' training course (B.Ed.) from Aligarh Muslim
University, Abdur Rahman wanted to conduct research under Professor
Mujeeb in Jamia Millia, but apparently could not impress him
sufficiently. He therefore le Jamia to teach in Shibli College,
Azamgarh, before being inducted in the Darul Musannefin by Syed
Sulaiman Nadwi. It may be useful to keep in mind that Nadwi was a
maternal uncle of Abdur Rahman. e family belonged to the
intellectually fertile Muslim belt of Bihar Sharif in modern South Bihar.
At the level of localized, intra-academy politics, this was the source of
occasional discontent pushed by the Azamgarh 'lobby'.
At the Darul Musannefin under Sulaiman Nadwi, Abdur Rahman
was asked to work on its Indian history project. Habibullah had pointed
out in his 1961 article that 'the Azamgarh group's historical writings
have been mostly in the field of literature and theology. It has shown
little interest in political history'. e author had, however, noticed a
shi in the Darul Musannefin's approach leading to the inclusion of
India in its literary and cultural histories, which was attributed to 'the
pressure of the rising tempo of the freedom movement'.19 In this
context, Abdur Rahman's two early writings, Bazm-i-Mamlukiya and
Bazm-i-Taimuriya, are referred to in one of Habibullah's footnotes.20
Considering the fact that a vast corpus of writings on Indian history
came up in Urdu in the latter half of the twentieth century, Habibullah's
suggestion that the 'nationalistic approach to India's history' in Urdu
was losing ground from the 1930s is no longer convincing.21
Even though Abdur Rahman was following the tradition of scholar-
ship established by Allama Shibli and Sulaiman Nadwi, many of his
formulations on the early history of Islam in India show striking
similarities with Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi's (1914-99) interpretations in
his multi-volume history of Islam in Urdu, Tarikh-i-Dawat-wa-
Azimat.22 A former rector of Nadwat-ul-Ulama, Lucknow, and one-
time chairman of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, Nadwi,
also known as Ali Miyan, was a member of the management committee
of the Darul Musannefin as well as a member of the editorial board of
Ma'rif. Like Ali Miyan, Abdur Rahman was eclectic in his ideological
and intellectual positions. It is clear then that the author was part of an
established Muslim tradition of scholarship spearheaded by a section of
Sunnite ulama who were trained in or influenced by Nadwat-ul-Ulama,
but who did not actively participate in movements such as the ones led
by the Jama'at-i-Islami or Tablighi Jama'at (though Nadwa is sometimes
confused as providing intellectual mentors to the latter); neither did
they identify themselves with the Barelwis, or the Ahl-e Sunnat wal
Jama'at, despite the respect they showed to leading Sufis of the medieval
period. ey are generally referred to as the 'nationalist' ulama, who
opposed the idea of Pakistan, identified Muslim interests in a united,
historical India or the subcontinent (barre-saghir), and called for reform
amongst Muslims, even as they campaigned for communal harmony.
Contrary to the later celebrations by Indian nationalist historians and
political propagandists, the scope of the idea of composite nationalism
advanced by this 'nationalist' ulama was limited to fighting the British
rather than aimed at defining political and cultural loyalties for the
lasting project of a secular public culture in the sub-continent.
Moreover, opposition to separatism and the Partition of 1947 stemmed
from their understanding that the interests of Islam could be
safeguarded better in a united India than in fragmented nation-states.
e idea of pan-Islam is central to these political and intellectual
concerns.

II. e Contents
In the light of the foregoing, it would be useful to look at Abdur
Rahman's writings: selection of themes, treatment of sources,
interpretations, and the purpose of undertaking such a huge project. By
way of illustration I will mainly pick up some issues of crucial import to
the history of Islam in the medieval period. us, I will refer to Abdur
Rahman's understanding of the emergence of the Delhi Sultanate, the
nature of the polity under the Turk, Afghan, and Mughal rulers, the
political and social roles of ulama and Sufis, debates around the
demolition of temples, the imposition of jizya, and, more generally, the
position and status of non-Muslims in a Muslim regime. One might as
well argue that, in some ways, this is 'centripetal' scholarship: it turns
around issues that successive generations revisit again and again
because they are unable to ask fresh questions owing to lack of stimuli
—those that come ultimately either from awareness of somewhat
different traditions, or from the power of general theory. Such
limitations apart, these are some of the critical issues for any
understanding of Islam in the period—which 'secular' historians are
reluctant to talk about for contemporary political reasons. In the
following pages, I shall give examples from Abdur Rahman's writings
around the themes mentioned above.
According to Abdur Rahman, it was possible that the actual motive
of the people coming through the Khaibar and Gumal passes was
merely conquest and loot, but they came raising the slogan of Islam.
Also, instead of establishing an Islamic and religious government
(Islami aur dini hukumatein), they established dynastic rules (qabaili
aur khandani saltanatein) and their court culture did not conform to
Islamic ideals. Yet it was only because of their presence that religious
scholars, social reformers, and Sufis were able to establish themselves
on a firm footing, and Islam could thus flourish in this land. Moreover,
though they themselves made no effort to propagate Islam, these rulers
facilitated the activities of Muslim preachers, and the Muslim
population kept increasing.23 Elsewhere, Abdur Rahman claims that
the Muslim conquerors had to resort to bloodshed and great sacrifice to
establish their rule, but their history is not about violence alone. For
him, it also involved the redeeming features of justice, tolerance, and
humanitarianism, recognized even by certain Hindu scholars such as
Tara Chand, Sri Ram Sharma, K.M. Panikkar, and Ishwari Prasad.24
Further, Abdur Rahman notes that the new kings, whether 'good or
bad', did many things while rhetorically deploying Islam. Contrary to
the teachings of the faith, they fought battles for succession; yet once
they ascended the throne, they took their oaths of allegiance as per
Islamic tradition. ey also tried to garner religious support (mazhabi
tausiq) to strengthen their badshahat and hukumat by taking sanads
(investitures) from the caliphs of Baghdad, and by projecting
themselves as advocates of the religion of the Prophet by, for instance,
adopting grand titles. Further, according to Abdur Rahman, hardly any
ruler resisted seeking out the blessings of the Sufi shaykh of the time,
even as the ulama had become an important part of their court.25
ough the kings did not conform strictly to the injunctions of Islam,
they strove to ensure that their officers worked towards establishing
righteousness and destroying falsehood, and towards curbing violations
of the shari'at, Muslim law (conforming to the Qur'anic command: amr
bil ma'ruf wa nahi anil munkir). ough the most pietistic of Muslim
rulers could not match the example set by the Umayyad caliph Umar
bin Abdul Aziz, when the question of safe-guarding the honour of Islam
(hammiat-i-Islami) arose even the worst and self-centred amongst them
would rise to the occasion with all their religious zeal:
Ye jab faateh ban kar umara ke jilu mein Hindustan aye tow apne
sath hijazi, sasani, turkistani, tatariaur irani rewayaat bhi laaye,
aurHindustan mein rahkar Hindustani mahaul se bhi mutassir huye,
aur unki ma'asharati, tamadduni aur tahzibi zindagi mein
mukhtalif anasir ki amezish rahi jis par un farma-rawaon ki shauri
aur ghayr-shauri koshishon se Islami rang ki aisi chhaappadi ke woh
 ghalatya sahi islami ma 'ashart wa tahzib kahlane lagi aur usko
furogh dene mein har mumkin koshish ki gayi.26
(When the rulers came along with their nobles conquering
Hindustan, they also brought with them the traditions and customs
of Hijaz, Sasanid Persia, and Turkistan, and while staying in
Hindustan they were influenced by the Hindustani environment as
well. us, the texture of their social and cultural lives drew on
various sources, which acquired the coating of Islam because of the
deliberate or subconscious efforts of these rulers, to such an extent
that, rightly or wrongly, it came to be known as Islamic culture and
society, and all possible effort was made to give a veneer of
splendour to it.)
Abdur Rahman also points out that the exorbitant amounts spent
constructing palaces and, especially, tombs cannot be considered
legitimate (jayez) from the point of view of Islam. However, in building
them (both) rulers and architects felt that by contributing to the growth
and development of Islamic architecture they were enhancing the
grandeur of Islam. No matter how erroneous (bidat aur israf the
construction of the Taj Mahal from the standpoint of the faith, even the
most pious among the ulama who visit the tomb are compelled to feel
that the building has established the majesty, grandeur, power, and awe
(jalal-wa-jabrut aur azmat-wa-shaukat) of the adherents of Islam, if not
Islam itself. Further, according to Abdur Rahman, the courts of the
rulers who built the Qutb Minar, and the forts at Agra and Delhi,
though noted for their extravagance and for observing pagan rituals
and customs, caused people to feel they were gazing upon the exalted
(rafat-wa-hashmat) standard of Islam fluttering from parapets, towers,
domes, and minarets.27
Clearly, this kind of history functions on the premise that whatever
has helped the spread of Islam is good. One finds the same in I.H.
Qureshi, Hafeez Malik, and others (they have soul-mates everywhere).
is kind of ethnocentrism violates the basic canons of historical
scholarship today. No wonder such historians have difficulty taking into
account the feelings of non-Islamic others (though that is something
which, not to miss the point, is not encouraged in secular scholarship
either).
For Abdur Rahman, another painful aspect of this history is the fact
that though the ulama derided the lives of such sultans and nobles as
un-Islamic, they made no organized effort (ijtamayi koshish) to bring
them closer to Islam. Indeed, the ulama kept lamenting but were
content to use their tongues as swords in a war of words (lisani jihad
aur tegh-i zuban). For instance, Maulana Ziya-ud-Din Barani and his
fellow ulama were extremely grieved to see that the government of the
sultans of Delhi was un-Islamic and felt their functioning could not be
forgiven in the light of the shari'at. However, the arguments put forth in
the Fatawa-i-Jahandari reveal that the religious thought (ijtahadi fikr)
of the contemporary ulama was of no help in dealing with the
exigencies that the rulers had to face when administering their
dominion in Hindustan. Maulana Barani ended up suggesting that the
dindari of the faithful and the dunyadari of the government could not
work together.28
For Abdur Rahman the Muslim period, or the age of the Muslims
(musalmanon ka daur) in Hindustan lasted 650 years, from the
beginning of the thirteenth century to the mid-nineteenth (which is
also identified as the ahd-i-wusta or medieval period: more on this
later). Nevertheless there is not a single example from this period of the
ulama making efforts to resolve through unanimous consent (ijma) the
problems facing the rulers. Some Muslim rulers certainly desired that
their government should conform to the tastes/manner or model of
Islam (islami tarz), but they could not implement this desire for they
had no clear understanding of the nature of Islamic rule. ey certainly
had the example of Khilafat-i-Rashida, or the rightly-guided caliphate of
the first century of Islam, but did not have a model of Islamic dominion
wherein the majority of the population, as in Hindustan, was non-
Muslim. In short the ulama did not come forward to help rulers with
clearly formulated norms based on Islam; therefore, the dynastic
systems continued.29
 Abdur Rahman laments the fact that there were terrible battles for
succession to the throne in every age, leading to the death of brave,
experienced, and competent soldiers. ese wars adversely affected
political and economic conditions, and threatened the existence of the
Sultanate itself. e ulama of the time kept fighting on such issues as
the legality of sama (musical assemblies of Sufis) and over the wearing
of clothes of saffron/yellow colour, and of satin. However, they could
never use their mujtahidana fikr, or authoritative understanding of
Islam, to devise principles or laws pertaining to succession to political
power which could be implemented in the Sultanate. ey kept
preaching that religion and politics were two separate domains in Islam
but took no direct, practical steps (amali koshish) to reconcile these.30
erefore, according to Abdur Rahman, the rulers did not follow the
teachings of Islam properly. Had they done so, their victorious sword,
like Islam, would have heralded an era of peace and tranquillity. At the
same time, they alone cannot be held responsible for straying from the
righteous path of faith, and their barbarity should not be attributed to
Islam or Islamic principles. For instance, if a Muslim becomes a thief,
Islam is not responsible for his activities; it is more appropriate to say
that a criminal has joined the ranks of Islam. Ergo, certain barbarous
warlords entered the fold of Islam and tarnished its image.31
Abdur Rahman notes further that it is unfair to say that Muslim
conquerors completely ignored those tenets of Islam which advocated
peace and justice in society. Even though they could not meet the
standards set by Muhammad bin Qasim, the early-eighth-century Arab
ruler of Sindh, compared to other contemporary conquerors their
swords were reserved for the purposes of conquests. Occasionally, their
swords were drawn for administrative purposes, such as establishing
law and order, but they were not used for the expansion of Islam. An
important evidence for this is the fact that the Muslim population has
always been small in the regions of Agra, Delhi, Awadh, Bihar, and the
Deccan—major centres of Muslim power and strength. By contrast, in
territories such as far-off Bengal, Kashmir, and Sindh, where their rule
was not very strong, the Muslim population increased.32
 Writing from a different perspective, Harbans Mukhia notes that the
heaviest Muslim concentration exists in those regions of the sub-
continent which now comprise Pakistan in the west, Kashmir in the
north, and Bangladesh in the east, regions which not only constituted
the geographical peripheries of the subcontinent, but were also at the
margins of medieval Muslim states. Mukhia concludes: 'Indeed, there
seems to be an inverse relationship between the concentration of
political and administrative power on the one hand and the regional
density of Muslim population on the other.'33 is is a Delhi-Agra-
centric view, typical of medievalists working from North India.34 In a
measure, this may be attributed to the pervasive Mughal-centrism of
medieval Indian history, for it is clear that the regional histories of
Punjab, Bengal, and Kashmir, as also of the Malabar coast, have
different trajectories altogether. As argued by Richard Eaton, the
making of Muslim communities in certain regions, such as eastern
Bengal, could also be linked to the extension of agriculture, though this,
in turn, was related to revenue-free land assignments to the Mughal
elite.
Abdur Rahman's approach thus differs from a completely
'secularized' narrative of the political history of the period by liberal
scholars. For the latter: (i) irreligious/secular rulers had nothing to do
with Islam; (ii) pietistic/ascetic Sufis always avoided the rulers; and (iii)
the corrupt/worldly ulama, who were invariably irresponsible vis-h-vis
their understanding of Islam, were not taken seriously.35 Muzaffar
Alam has provided more sophisticated propositions recently, even
though his work is not entirely free from that trademark of the modern
secularist agenda where primacy is given to happy coexistence while
glossing over any embarrassing evidence in the sources.36
Unlike discomfited liberal scholars, Abdur Rahman does not fight
shy of the reign of Aurangzeb. He points out that non-Muslim writers
generally refer to Aurangzeb as a biased ruler, but his policy for
recruiting officers belies such a characterization. Aurangzeb believed
that religion should not interfere in matters of governance, nor should
religious bias. In support of this position, the ruler cited the Qur'anic
instruction lakum dinakum wa liya-din (To you your religion, to me
mine). Abdur Rahman speculates that had Muslim rulers not adopted
such a policy towards non-Muslims, then perhaps their government
would not have lasted so long.37 Jadunath Sarkar's views of Aurangzeb's
religious policy are contested by Abdur Rahman, who largely extends
Allama Shibli's position. Abdur Rahman questions Sarkar's motives in
projecting Aurangzeb as a villain and Shivaji as a hero. He is
particularly outraged by Sarkar's suggestion that the Mughal monarch
behaved in the light of the Qur'an and teachings of Islam which
condone violence, thereby alienating non-Muslims from the Mughals
and leading to the emergence of Shivaji as a saviour of the Hindus—as
also the fall of the empire. For Abdur Rahman, Aurangzeb's orders to
destroy certain temples were not aimed at suppressing Hindus in
general; were that the case, he would not have given so many land
grants to Hindu temples, nor destroyed the Jama Masjid of Golconda.
Abdur Rahman asserts that attacks on places of worship should be
understood in their local contexts, and that such examples should not
be used to provoke one set of people against another. According to him,
scholars like Sarkar contributed to the divisive agenda of the British and
were rewarded with honours in return.38 Abdur Rahman's language,
though generally very elegant, is very harsh on Sarkar's portrayal of
Aurangzeb. However, this is a rare example of a detailed critique of
Sarkar's writings, for liberals have given up on both Aurangzeb and
Sarkar (see, for instance, Satish Chandra).39 Sarkar's contributions do
not figure in two recent collections of classic historiographical
interventions on the eighteenth century.40 Taking a liberal Muslim
position, Syed Jamaluddin rebukes Abdur Rahman and Muslims in
general for 'unnecessarily' making a ruthless ruler like Aurangzeb an
academic 'liability', and for according him a saintly status.41
is seems ironic, for in fact Abdur Rahman's position on the
demolition of temples is in general closer to that of the liberals.
According to him, Aurangzeb and various Muslim rulers certainly
destroyed some temples to demonstrate their superior strength and
position in the wake of victorious campaigns, as also for loot—which he
says is now attributed to the religion of Islam, though, from the point of
view of Islamic law, old temples cannot be destroyed under any
circumstances. And yet, regrets Abdur Rahman, certain non-Muslim
authors do not refrain from publicizing the personal acts of a ruler as
the law of Islam. On the other hand, certain Muslims are making a great
deal of effort to defend them or apologize. (Compare this with the more
sophisticated approach of Richard Eaton and Romila apar on the
same question.42)
Similarly, Abdur Rahman says jizya was viewed as a humiliating
(tauhin-amez) tax, which was only because both sultans and the ulama
did not fully explain its positive features (raushan pahlu). For this
writer, jizya was actually a tax that an Islamic state levied on its non-
Muslim subjects to compensate for the services it rendered in
protecting their political, social, and religious rights. Such taxation also
made it a religious obligation of government to protect the lives and
property of zimmis, or the People of the Book; so a regime which failed
to ensure this had no right to collect jizya. Ifinstead of this, says Abdur
Rahman, scholars or jurists provided different interpretations of jizya, it
was their fault and not that of the tax.
is, I think, is a rather misleading proposition. Muslim theorists
have clearly outlined the discriminating nature of the tax, which Abdur
Rahman is ignoring here. From the point of view of contemporary
notions of politics and governance, one might ask—why not levy a tax
on everyone to protect everyone's rights? Sultans and ulama could keep
explaining away until judgment day—to use a frequently deployed
religious metaphor in Muslim writings—but it would not convince
those who saw themselves subjected to a discriminatory tax.43 Abdur
Rahman points out that, despite the ulama's insistence, during the
entire period of Muslim rule only three rulers—Ala-ud-Din Khalji,
Firuz Tughluq, and Aurangzeb—imposed the jizya tax. It was not
considered as provocative (ishta'al-angez) then as it seems now.44 He
insists that, despite this truth (haqiqat), raising the question of
destruction of temples and the imposition of jizya causes Muslim rulers
to be blamed for their religious biases and violence, while a more
general accusation attributes the expansion of Islam in Hindustan to the
sword of its rulers.45
Surprisingly, Abdur Rahman notes, the ulama disparaged the rulers
because they did not follow the ulama's suggestion, which was to give
Hindus the option of death or Islam (amma al-qatl wa amma al-islam);
thereby they did not contribute to the spread of the light of Islam in the
whole of Hindustan. However, according to the author, the ulama
themselves could be accused of not displaying the spirit of any
organized endeavour for teaching and spreading Islam of the kind
demonstrated by Christian missionaries during the British period. Had
they been active, the situation (taswir: literally, image) in Hindustan
would have been very different today.46 Much of all this appears to be
superficial: Abdur Rahman's sense of the problem is shallow. He shows
little understanding of the sharp contrasts between the nature of the
cultural legacies to which ulama and Christian missionaries,
respectively, were heir.
Abdur Rahman notes that the chiefsubject of interest for the Indian
ulama has been jurisprudence (fiqh). e ulama who came from
outside were jurists (faqih), not commentators on the Qur'an (mufassir)
or scholars of the Traditions of the Prophet (muhaddis). Jurists had easy
access to sultans and nobles, for they were regularly approached for
guidance in resolving certain problems (masa'il) faced by the rulers.
Consequently, Islam was mostly understood in Hindustan through
jurists generally known for their rigidity. On the other hand, Islam
would have been much more effective had it been understood in
Hindustan through Qur'anic commentators and scholars of the
prophetic Traditions.47 Abdur Rahman's emphasis on the Qur'an and
the sunna of the Prophet as chief sources for understanding and
disseminating Islam links him to the reformist ulama who tended to
reject taqlid (the blind following of one of the four schools of Sunni
jurisprudence, mainly Hanafi in North India) as well as traditional
customs and rituals.
Abdur Rahman says that amongst the rulers of Hindustan, Turks and
Mughals were neo-Muslims. Islam had provided them with a casing of
culture and politeness, but they had not been able to completely forget
their tribal and racial moorings. erefore, they could not do much to
give an Islamic colour to their territory. e ulama who accompanied
them were also from Turkistan and Mawara-un-nahar (Transoxania),
and therefore their religious thought and understanding was not free
from racial particularities (nasli khususiyaat) either. ey could
conceive of the relationship between the ruler and the ruled only along
these lines; they could never make the required effort to determine their
position as guardians of Muslim law and kept issuing fatwas, keeping in
mind the requirement of the time or expediency. Abdur Rahman
suggests that if, instead of Turks and Mughals, the rulers of Hindustan
had come from the Arab lands, their accompanying ulama would have
been from Hijaz. e latter, being the true representatives (haqiqi
hamil) of Islam who understood its character (mizaj shanas), would
have projected Islam and Islamic life in a light that would have made
the history of Hindustan very different.48 is view reminds us of
religious exclusionism in Saudi Arabia today. It needs also to be pointed
out that—contrary to Abdur Rahman's assertion—the Hanafi Islam
which came to North India from Central Asia was considered to be
liberal towards the Hindus, which recognized the legal status of Hindus
as resembling the People of the Book. By contrast, the Shafi'i Islam
which was developed in Hijaz did not accord the same status to Hindus,
treating them as infidels. However, Abdur Rahman appears here to be a
ghayr-muqallid—one who seeks to do away with the authority of the
mazahibs, schools of jurisprudence, taking guidance directly from the
Qur'an and the life of the Prophet, rejecting later traditions, and
approving the struggles of reformist ulama. is is identified, in
modern times, with Wahabi, fundamentalist Islam.
Conforming to this tradition, Abdur Rahman laments:
Musalman salatin Qutb Minar, Lal Qila aur Taj Mahal banakar
musal- manon ki siyasi aur tamadduni zindagi ka rob-wa-jalaldikha
chuke thhe, is liye zarurat iski thee ke ulama wa sulaha apne dil
betab aur nigah mard momin se musalmanon ke akhlaq wa kirdar
ke Qutb Minar aur Taj Mahal banakar un ki taqdir badal dete lekin
 woh aisa na kar sakey aur jab iski koshish ki tow us waqt bahut
takhir ho chuki thee, jis waqt janbaaz, sarfrosh aur kafan burdosh
ulama kepaida hone ki zarurat thee us waqt unka fuqdan ho gaya
tha.49
(e Muslim rulers had already demonstrated the grandeur and
awe of Islamic political and cultural life by constructing Qutb
Minar, Lal Qila, and Taj Mahal; it was le to the ulama and sulaha
to engage their anxious hearts and devoted minds to building the
Qutb Minar and Taj Mahal of the moral conduct and character of
Muslims, and thus transforming their fate. However, they could not
do this, and by the time some initiatives were taken [read: efforts
made by Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi and Shah Waliullah], it was too
late. At the time when daring, self-sacrificing, and shroud-wearing
ulama were required to rise to the occasion, they were
conspicuously absent.)
Abdur Rahman is, however, not entirely dismissive of the roles the
ulama played in medieval India. His own commitment to a reformist,
pristine Islam comes out once again in a passage on religious
movements which were evidently characterized as heresies. He writes
that the ulama made all possible effort to ensure that people followed
the true path. It was because of their campaigns that the shor of the
Ibahatis, the tahrik of Kabir, the hangama of Mahdawiyat, the fasad of
the Raushaniyas, and thefitna of Din-i-Ilahi were eventually
suppressed.50 It may be pointed out here that the expressions shor,
tahrik, hangama, fasad, and fitna have strong negative connotations as
violent movements. Abdur Rahman notes approvingly that the
contribution of the ulama in keeping the religious sensibilities of
Muslims alive cannot be forgotten.51
Unlike liberal Muslim scholars, Abdur Rahman does not see much
merit in religious borrowings, appropriations, or syncretism. According
to him, the attempts made to establish some kind of spiritual unity
between different religions were unmitigated failures. Hindu religious
leaders and Muslim poets attempted to reconcile and unite the inner
meanings of Islam and Hindu dharam. Such movements are of interest
to scholars of the history of religion, but when confronted with the
divergent principles, beliefs, customs, and forms of worship of different
religions, none could flourish. Aziz Ahmad, a noted separatist Muslim
scholar, has also expressed similar views.52 However, Ahmad's
approach is different from that of Abdur Rahman; for the former, Islam
and Muslims have no future in India, whereas Abdur Rahman cannot
agree with such a proposition. Further, according to Abdur Rahman,
both 'true' Hindus and Muslims were not really drawn to the
syncretistic movements. In fact, when the ulama found some Muslims
participating in such movements, they opposed them and issued fatwas
of apostasy against them. erefore, he thinks it appropriate to say that
propriety, graciousness, kindness, and love were required to conquer
the hearts of people; attempts at unity or the integration of religious
beliefs, as well as spirituality and faith, were futile, for these were
opposed not only by the ulama but also by the pandits.53 Clearly Abdur
Rahman, once again, departs from the framework of liberal historians
on syncretism and synthesis, particularly with reference to Hindu-
Muslim interactions through Sufi institutions such as khanqahs and
dargahs. His view also represents a critique of M. Habib's approach to
the study of Chishti Sufi literature of the Sultanate period.54 Habib's
major propositions, mainly the classification of Chishti records as
authentic or spurious, and his rejection of the latter as useless, are
reiterated by liberal historians, and little attempt has been made to re-
evaluate the sources.
Abdur Rahman intersperses his arguments with interesting posers. I
quote one here:
Yeh Hindustan ki Tarikh ki ajib sitam zarifi hai ke jin musalman
hukmaranon par mazhabi ta 'sub, hindu-kushi aur mandiron ke
inhadam ka ilzam lagaya jata hai, woh ziyada tar hindu maon ke
batn se thhe, aam taursemuarrekhin inhadam-i
mandirkesilsilemeinFiruzShah Tughluq, Sikandar Lodi, Jahangir,
Shah Jahan aur Aurangzeb ka zikr karte hain, awwal-uz-zikrcharon
hukmaranon ki mayen hindu theen, aur Aurangzeb ki maan tow
nahin lekin dadi Rajputshahzadi thhi, aur isi liye baaz hindu ahl-i
 nazr ki raiyeh hai ke un makhlut shadiyon se jo naslenpayeda huyin
woh hinduon ke liye khalis khun wale musalmanon se ziyada
mukhalifaur muta'ssib sabit huyin, aur phir yeh taslim kar liya jaye
ke Aurangzeb ke mazhabi ta'ssub ki bina parShivaji payeda hua
towAkbar jayese rawadar hukmaran ke ahad mein Rana Pratab ka
wujudsamajh mein nahin aata, yeh dono hinduon ke qaumi hero
ban gaye hain jin ko bade se bada watan- parast musalman bhi apna
qaumi hero taslim karne ke liye tayyar nahin.55
(It is a travesty within Indian history that amongst Muslim rulers—
most of whom are accused of religious discrimination—those that
killed Hindus and demolished temples were born to Hindu
mothers. Generally, the writers [of this travesty] mention Firuz
Shah Tughluq, Sikandar Lodi, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb
in connection with the destruction of temples. e mothers of the
first four were Hindus; in the case of Aurangzeb, it was not his
mother, but his grandmother who was a Rajput princess. erefore,
certain Hindu observers have remarked that the descendents of
mixed marriages were much more biased and antagonistic towards
Hindus than those of pure Muslim blood. Now, if it is accepted that
Aurangzeb's discriminatory religious policy led to the rise of
Shivaji, then the existence of Rana Pratap under a just emperor like
Akbar is unintelligible. Both of them [Rana Pratap and Shivaji]
have become national heroes of the Hindus, but even the most
patriotic Musalman is not willing to accept them as his national
heroes.)

III. Conclusions
Quite evidently, Abdur Rahman's work is different from the historical
literature produced by (a) the le/liberal/secularist academic
scholarship (represented by historians such as M. Habib, K.A. Nizami,
S.A.A. Rizvi); (b) by the Hindu Right (S.R. Sharma, K.S. Lal, and here
Abdur Rahman would like to include J.N. Sarkar as well); and (c) by
separatist Muslims (I.H. Qureshi, Aziz Ahmad). e above
classification of hist- orians is based on their commitment to varying
strands of contemporary politics in modern times, whether espousing
the cause of Indian secularism, Hindu majoritarianism, or Muslim
separatism. As I said earlier, Abdur Rahman belonged to a group of
Sunnite ulama who supported the idea of Indian nationalism yet
located themselves in the grand tradition of the Muslim world. Further,
the thrust in Abdur Rahman's work is on social, cultural, religious, and
intellectual history, unlike the other sets of scholarship which focus
primarily on political and/or economic history. It is also distinct from
writings in English, the reach of which is limited to elite academic
institutions (as noted above). Finally, it is different from research
undertaken in universities for the award of degrees and doctorates, for
the professional advancement of teachers—though the latter form too is
not free from political agendas. Nevertheless, the aims and objectives of
research in the universities are different from Abdur Rahman's project.
Despite all its limitations, the former represents a professionalization of
the discipline, whereas the latter may be identified as a community-
based history required within certain socio-political contexts. Abdur
Rahman wished to establish the righteousness of Islam and Muslims in
medieval India. is was partly in response to criticism of Muslim
rulers within modern writings, particularly on the question of their
religious attitudes. He also wanted present-day Muslims to take pride in
the achievements of the people of their faith in the past, and learn
lessons from their mistakes. us, a long period of 650 years of Muslim
history is covered in his work to show the glory of Islam following the
emergence of the Sultanate. is he believes was eventually frittered
away by the later Mughals; for Abdur Rahman, whatever hope there was
for Islam's revival was extinguished by the removal and exile of
Bahadur Shah Zafar.
It needs mention that though Abdur Rahman says India's Muslim
history (musalmanon ka daur), identified as the medieval period (ahdi
wusta), properly begins c. 1200 (though he occasionally refers to the
Arab conquest of Sindh in the early eighth century), he makes hardly
any attempt to elaborate on his scheme of periodization. is is
obviously because his framework is the rise and fall of Islam in India.
e dominant idea of 1750 as the sharp cut-off date for the end of
'medieval' did not make much sense to Abdur Rahman, though he may
have noted the warning signals of the consequences of British intrusion
and conquests in the latter half of the eighteenth century. e more
recent suggestion that the fieenth-eighteenth centuries period be
viewed as Early Modern—instead of Later Sultanate + Afghans and
Early Mughals + Great Mughals + Later Mughals + the Mughal
successor states—could ironically be perceived from the perspective of
Abdur Rahman and his readers as divisive. ough somewhat
Eurocentric, Early Modern is a broad, inclusive formulation,56 unlike
those little periods identified by political regimes. For Abdur Rahman,
however, even a rather late introduction to the idea of the Early
Modern, in the eighteenth century, was something to be justifiably
resisted, even opposed. e examples from the careers of the 'Heroes of
Islam', Shah Waliullah (in the mid-eighteenth century), and Shah Abdul
Aziz and Syed Ahmad Shahid (both in the early nineteenth), are there
for all to see, though it is regretted the efforts of these heroes came too
late to stem the tide of 'decline'. us, the identifiable categories of
Abdur Rahman's Muslim period are Turks, Afghans, and Mughals as
rulers; ulama and Sufis as the torchbearers of Islam; Persian and Urdu
as vehicles of refined expressions; and of course the Qutb Minar and Taj
Mahal as symbols of power and grandeur. All these do not fit with the
idea of the Early Modern.
Apart from the problems of periodization and reluctance to spell out
the geographical limits of Hindustan (Abdul Majid Daryabadi
appreciates the fact that Abdur Rahman uses the historic term
Hindustan, which includes territories constituting Pakistan such as
Lahore and Multan57), Abdur Rahman's writings seldom offer evidence
of the canons of modern historiography, though it might seem
unreasonable to demand such compliance. ings become simpler if we
recognize his work as good, informative ethnohistory, innocent of the
modern technology of scholarship. e following features mark his
historiography: (1) sources are not always critically analysed and
utilized. Neither the genre of writings, nor the different political and
social milieux of authors separated by centuries (say Barani in the
fourteenth and Syed Ahmad Shahid in the nineteenth) are clearly
delineated; (2) many of his conclusions are not really verifiable (for
instance, the claim that Hanafis were more rigid than the Hijazi ulama,
and the latter were the only true representatives of Islam); (3) the ideals
of objectivity that are professed in modern historiography but not
always adhered to exist in Abdur Rahman also. Apart from the ideology
of a reformist Islam, his approach is blatantly present-minded and full
of regrets (if Muslims in the past had acted as 'true' Muslims, the
present would have been very different is a common refrain); (4) Abdur
Rahman regularly passes value judgements (good/bad, right/wrong) on
the dead; (5) finally, he does not follow any uniform or standard
modern practice of citation and referencing. Habibullah points out that
supplying 'exact details as to edition, year of publication, or even page
references' are unusual in Urdu histories in general.58 Some allowance
must be made for the fact that modern practices of scholarship such as
these have only spread through the academic system in recent decades.
Abdur Rahman seems to follow a more vernacular Indo-Persian
tradition of citation. e persistence of 'the traditional Persian method'
of citing authorities, or of mixed styles of citation (for instance, with
notes placed at the foot of the page or in the body of the text within
parenthesis), should not take away from the value ofAbdur Rahman's
work. e criticism of Urdu authors on this ground smacks of
intellectual arrogance, especially as 'professional' or 'modern' historians
themselves do not always adhere to the standard conventions.
is said, the fact still remains that even though one may not entirely
agree with the established le-liberal 'modernist' Muslim scholarship,
strands such as the one led by 'Islamists' and written in the vernacular
(in this case Urdu) do not really provide a worthwhile alternative
approach within the field. I wish to stress here simply that such writings
do exist, and that they command a fairly wide readership.Modern
historical writings in English hardly reach 'Urduwalas'; I suppose this is
also true of other languages. e impact of translations of the 'classics' is
yet to be assessed; and translations can be either very different from the
original or very indifferent towards intended readers.
 I would like to avoid the word 'parallel' while comparing these works
with those within mainstream academic institutions written in English.
For, I think the two streams join in their claims to the liberal face of
medieval Islam by citing examples from the careers of Sufis as well as
the tolerance shown by Muslim rulers in their policies or actions
towards non-Muslims, etc. e agenda of communal harmony exists in
the vernacular Islamist tradition as much as in the English. In the
preface to the first volume of Musalman Hukmaranon ki Mazhabi
Rawadari, Abdur Rahman clearly states the purpose of writing this
book: Zerinazr kitab dilon ko jodne ke liye murattab kigayi hai, is mein
nafrat wa adawat ke jazbat ubharne ke bajaye muhabbat wa yaganagat
ki khushgawar laher daudti nazr ayegi.59 (e present work has been
written to unite the hearts of the people. Instead of raising the
sentiments of hatred and animosity, the pleasant themes of love and
unity will run through the book.) is is further stressed in the
dedication to the volume (Intisab): Hindu-Muslim ki yaganagat,
mawanasat aur jazbati ham-ahangi ke naam (For Hindu-Muslim unity,
affection and emotional harmony).
Clearly, secularists were not the only academics working for religious
tolerance and communal harmony. is was recognized by Dr Zakir
Husain in his presidential address to the Golden Jubilee celebrations of
the Darul Musannefin:
Jabke hamare aksar mu'arrikh qarune wusta ke Hindustan ko ek
bahre tufan cheez banakarpesh karte thhe jis mein Islami tahzib aur
Hindu tahzib ke dharey ek dusrey se ulajhtey aur takratey rahte thhe,
Darul Musannefin ke mu'arrikhon neyeh dikhane ki koshish ki ke un
donon ka milna tasadum nahin balke imtazaj, sangharsh nahin
balke sangam thha.60
(At a time when most historians were portraying medieval
Hindustan as a complex of violent upheaval which saw the various
strands of Islamic and Hindu cultures getting locked in conflict, the
historians of Darul Musannefin attempted to demonstrate that the
interaction between the two cultures led to commingling and not
quarrel, confluence and not clashes.)
 In sum, such historians wanted to show that peaceful commingling
and not violent struggles marked Hindu—Muslim interactions. is
was the aim and objective of the tradition of scholarship founded by
Allama Shibli and nurtured by Syed Sulaiman Nadwi. Abdur Rahman
was the third and last major figure in this Urdu tradition of scholarship
on Islam and Indian history.
Given the near impossibility of any meaningful engagement between
the 'Muslim Right' and secularists on issues such as the character of the
Muslim past, the adherents of these two opposing camps remain
confined to their little boxes, with hardly any space for those who did
not adhere to either orthodoxy. is essay has argued for the need to
explore alternative histories to enrich our understanding of the period,
or at least acknowledge other ways in which histories are written: for
instance, by a set of Muslims in Urdu. A certain inner dynamic drives
all clusters of scholars, with each cluster being influenced by internal
and external critique. e Darul Musannefin's publication project
represented an attempt on the part of a section of the Sunni ulama to
distance themselves from crude political propaganda. ey were
exploring a middle ground. eir engagement with new literary
modernity, Orientalist scholarship on Islam, and professional histories
of medieval India was serious. In this respect, authors like Abdur
Rahman carried forward a tradition of Muslim historical writings going
back to pre-modern times—at least in terms of form and the citation of
authorities. It is important to emphasize, thus, that history writing is
not merely a colonial legacy, and that our new forms of history have not
annihilated the tradition inherited by the likes of Abdur Rahman. e
difference between Abdur Rahman's 'traditional' Muslim approach and
that of the dominant university-based modern professional history
seems to me similar to that between a Sufi healer and a modern doctor
competing for the same 'patient'. Each of these traditions is meaningful
in specific contexts.61

Appendix I
List of Syed Sabahuddin Abdur Rahman's Books (prepared by Hamid
Ali Khan, Syed Sabahuddin Abdur Rahman, pp. 12—14).

1. Bazm-i-Taimuriya (1948). e book was subsequently revised and

expanded into three volumes: vol. I (1973), vol. II (1980), and vol.
III (1981).
2. Bazm-i-Sufiya (1949). Revised editions appeared in 1971 and 1979.
3. Diwan-i-Fughan (1950).
4. Bazm-i-Mamlukiya (1954).
5. Heroic Deeds of Muslim Women, translated from the original Urdu
(1954).
6. Hindustan ke Ahd-i-Wusta ki ek Jhalak (1958). Revised edition
published in 1981.
7. Hindustan ke Ahd-i-Wusta ka Fauji Nizam (1960).
8. Hindustan Arabon ki Nazr Mein, 2 vols (1962).
9. Hindustan ke Musalman Hukmaranon ke Tamadduni Jalwe (1963).
10. Hindustan ke Salatin, Ulama aur Mashaikh ke Talluqat par ek Nazr
(1964).
11. Maqalat-i-SyedSulaiman, vol. I (1966).
12. Hindustan Amir Khusrau ki Nazr Mein (1966).
13. Ahd-i-Mughaliya Musalman-Hindu Muarrikhin ki Nazr Mein
(1967).
14. ZahiruddinMuhammadBabur(1967). A revised edition appeared in
1986.
15. Hindustan ke Bazm-i-Raa ki Sachchi Kahaniyan, vol. I (1967) and
vol. II (1974). Second edition (1984-86).
16. Daktar SyedMahmud (1972).
17. Hindustan ke Ahd-i-Mazi Mein Musalman Hukmaranon ki
Mazhabi Rawadari, vol. I (1975), vol. II (1983), and vol. III (1984).
18. Ghalib Mudah wa Qadah ki Raushni Mein, vol. I (1977), vol. II
(1979).
19. Amir Khusrau Dehlawi (1979).
20. Salibi Jang (1980).
21. Sufi Amir Khusrau (1980).
22. Bazm-i-Reagan, 2 vols (1981).
23. Maulana Muhammad Ali ki Yaad Mein (1982).
 24. Amir Khusro as a Genius (1982).
25. Salatin-i-Dehli ke Ahd Mein Hindustan se Muhabbat wa Sheagi ke
Jazbat (1983).
26. Pir Husamuddin Rashidi aur unke Ilmi Karname (1984).
27. Intikhab-i-Mazamin Syed Sulaiman Nadwi (1985).
28. Maulana Shibli Numani par ek Nazr (1985).
29. Islam aur Mustashriqin, 5 vols (1985—6).
30. Islam Mein Mazhabi Rawadari (1987).
31. Yar-i-Aziz (n.d.).
32. Mazamin Syed Sulaiman Nadwi ki Tasanif: ek Muta'ala (1988:
posthumous).
33. Mughal Badshahon ke Ahd Mein Hindustan se Muhabbat wa
Sheagi ke Jazbat (1988: posthumous).

Appendix II
List of Articles Presented to the Conference on Islam and Mustashriqin
(1982), Published in Volume II of Islam and Mustashriqin, ed. Syed
Sabahuddin Abdur Rahman (Azamgarh: Darul Musannefin, 1986)

1. 'Mustashriqin and Tibb-i-Islami' by Hakim Muhammad Sayeed

Dehlawi, Hamdard Foundation, Karachi, Pakistan, pp. 1-10.
2. 'Mustashriqin ke Aar-o-Nazariyat ke Mukhtalif Daur' by Khaliq
Ahmad Nizami, Department of History, Muslim University,
Aligarh, pp. 11-27.
3. 'Mustashriqin aur Ulum-i-Islamia' by Shaikh Nazir Husain, Edi-
tor, Urdu Encyclopaedia of Islam, Punjab University, Lahore, pp.
28-38.
4. 'Professor Ignaz Goldziher' by Maulana Sayeed Ahmad
Akbarabadi, Aligarh, pp. 39-47.
5. 'Mustashriqin, Ishtaraq aur Islam' by Dr Sharfuddin Islahi, Reader,
Islamic Research Institute, Islamabad, Pakistan, pp. 48-59.
6. 'Sir Hamilton Alexander Wiskin Gibbs' by Professor Ziya-ul-
Hasan Faruqi, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, pp. 60-72.
7. 'Mustashriqin ke Tasawwur-i-Islam ke Tarikhi Pasmanzar' by
Professor Khwaja Ahmad Faruqi, Delhi University, pp. 73-81.
 8. 'Mustashriqin aur Islam (Part I)' by Anwar-ul-Janadi, Cairo (Urdu
translation by Amir-us-Siddiq Daryabadi Nadwi, Rafiq Darul
Musannefin), pp. 82-94.
9. 'Wilfred Cantwell Smith' by Professor Mushirul Haq, Department
of Islamic Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, pp. 95-103.
10. 'Quran aur Mustashriqin' by Syed Athar Husain, IAS (Retd),
Lucknow, pp. 104-14.
11. 'Brown aur Islam' by Dr Amir Hasan Abidi, Department of
Persian, Delhi University, pp. 115-19.
12. 'Quran Majid mein Qissa-i-Ibrahim aur Mustashriqin ke I'trazat'
by Ziyauddin Islahi, Darul Musannefin, Azamgarh, pp. 120-37.
13. 'Joseph Sacht aur Usul-i-Fiqh' by Muhammad Tufail, Idarah-i-
Tahqiqat-i-Islami, Islamabad, Pakistan, pp. 138-49.
14. 'Mustashriqin aur Sirat-i-Nabiwi' by Dr Imaduddin Khalil, Mosul
Universtiy, Iraq (Urdu translation by Amir-us-Siddiq Daryabadi
Nadwi, Rafiq Darul Musannefin), pp. 150-67.
15. 'Mustashriqin aur Islam (Part II)' by Anwar-ul-Janadi, Cairo (Urdu
translation by Amir-us-Siddiq Daryabadi Nadwi, Rafiq Darul
Musannefin), pp. 168-85.
16. 'Hamare Asri Talimi Idaron par Mustashriqin ke Asrat' by Mau-
lana Qazi Zainul Abedin Sajjad Merathi, Delhi, pp. 186-90.
17. 'Mustashriqin aur Tarikh-i-Turki' by Dr Akmal Ayyubi, Idarah-i-
Ulum-i-Islamia, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, pp. 191-207.
18. 'Montgomery Watt ki Kitab "Muhammad at Mecca" par ek Nazar'
by Syed Sabahuddin Abdur Rahman, Darul Musannefin,
Azamgarh, pp. 208-49.
19. 'Ilm-i-Hadis aur Mustashriqin' by Dr Taqiuddin Nadwi Mazahiri,
Jamia-ul-Ain, Abu Dhabi, pp. 250-66.
20. 'Islam aur Mustashriqin ke Mauzu par ek Sarsari Nazar' by
Maulana Abul Lais Islahi Nadwi, Amir Jama'at Islami Hind, pp.
267-72.
21. Extracts from the Presidential Address 'Islamiyat aur Maghribi
Mustashriqin wa Musalman Musannefin' by Maulana Syed Abul
Hasan Ali Nadwi, Nadwat-ul-Ulama, Lucknow, pp. 273-83.
 Appendix III
Samples of Articles Published in Ma'rif, edited by Syed Sabahuddin
Abdur Rahman:

1. Volume 137, Rabiul Akhir-Jamadi I 1406/Jaunary 1986, No. 1:

i. 'Mustashriq Nouldiki aur Qur'an' by Maulana Muhammad
Owais Nadwi Nigrami Marhum, pp. 5-16.
ii. 'Sirat-i-Aisha' by Syed Sabahuddin Abdur Rahman, pp. 17-48.
iii. 'Rudad-i-Iqbal' by Professor Jagannath Azad, Jammu,
Kashmir, pp. 49-64.
iv. 'Maulana Abdur Rahman Jami ka Kuchh Ghayr-Matbua
Kalam' by Syed Amir Hasan Abidi, Delhi University, pp. 65-
71.
2. Volume 137, Jamadi II 1406/February 1986, No. 2:
i. 'Imam Ash'ari aur Mustashriqin' by Mirza Muhammad Yusuf,
Sabiq Ustad, Madrasa Aliya, Rampur, pp. 85-104.
ii. 'Hindustan ke Islami Adabi Dabistan, uske Wujud waTaraqqi
ke Asbab aur uski Imtiyazi Khususiyat' by Maulana Syed Abul
Hasan Ali Nadwi, pp. 105-18.
iii. 'Khutbat-i-Madras' by Syed Sabahuddin Abdur Rahman, pp.
119-46.
3. Volume 137, Jamadi II 1406/March 1986, No. 3:
i. 'Imam Ash'ari aur Mustashriqin' by Mirza Muhammad Yusuf,
Sabiq Ustad, Madrasa Aliya, Rampur, pp. 165-86.
ii. 'Maulana Shibli Bahaisiyat Muarrikh' by Professor Khaliq
Ahmad Nizami, pp. 187-215.'Kalkatta mein Kul-Hind Farsi
Usataza Conference' by Dr Muhammad Amin, Calcutta
University, pp. 216-26.
4. Volume 137, Rajab-ul-Murajjab and Sha'ban-ul-Muazzam
1406/April 1986, No. 4:
i. 'Imam Ash'ari aur Mustashriqin' by Mirza Muhammad Yusuf,
Sabiq Ustad, Madrasa Aliya, Rampur, pp. 245-62.
ii. 'Khayyam' by Syed Sabahuddin Abdur Rahman, pp. 263-88.
iii. 'Hazrat Mujaddid Alf-i-Sani aur Faizi wa Abul Fazl ke
Talluqat wa Ekhtalafat par ek Ijmali Nazar' by Muhammad
 Ishaq, Ismail Street, Calcutta, pp. 289-300.
5. Volume 137, Ramzan-ul-Mubarak 1406/May 1986, No. 5:
i. 'Abul A'la Ma'ri ke Muta'lliq Mustashriqin Europe ki
Ghalatiyan' by Maulana Abdul Aziz Memon Marhum, pp.
32548.
ii. 'Maulana Syed Sulaiman Nadwi ki Sirat-un-Nabi Jild Som par
ek Nazar' by Ziyauddin Islahi, pp. 349-72.
iii. 'Muhammad bin Zakariyya Razi ki Kitab-ul-Fakhir' Maulana
Hakim Muhammad Zaman, Calcutta, pp. 373-91.
6. Volume 137, Shawwal-ul-Mukarram 1406/June 1986, No. 6:
i. 'Abul A'la Ma'ri ke Muta'lliq Mustashriqin Europe ki
Ghalatiyan' by Maulana Abdul Aziz Memon Marhum, pp.
40525.
ii. 'Maulana Syed Sulaiman Nadwi ki Sirat-un-Nabi Jild Som par
ek Nazar' by Ziyauddin Islahi, pp. 426-50.
iii. 'Shari'at Islamiya ek Da'imi wa Fitri Qanun' by Maulana
Shams Tabrez Khan, Rafiq, Majlis Tahqiqat wa Nashriyat,
Nadwat-ul-Ulama, Lucknow, pp. 451-69.

Notes
2.1 I am grateful to Muzaffar Alam, Gautam Bhadra, Partha Chatterjee, Anjan
Ghosh, Gyan Pandey, and Satish Saberwal for their appreciation of the value of
Azamgarh's Urdu history project and for comments and suggestions on earlier
versions of this essay. English translations provided herein are mine. Urdu
passages are provided in transliterated versions.
1 A 'deluxe' edition of the entire set, seven volumes bound in four, has been
published in Pakistan (Lahore: Maktaba Madaniya, ah 1408). Translations of the
first two volumes are available in several languages.
2 For a critical appreciation of the role played by Azamgarh historians, mainly
Allama Shibli Numani and Syed Sulaiman Nadwi, in the development of Urdu
historiography in the first half of the twentieth century, see A.B.M. Habibullah,
'Historical Writing in Urdu: A Survey of Tendencies', in C.H. Philips, ed.,
Historians of India, Pakistan and Ceylon (London: Oxford University Press, 1961),
pp. 481-96.
3 e first volume of Islam and Mustashriqin (1985) contains a report on the
conference held at Darul Musannefin, Azamgarh, 21-23 February 1982. e
second volume (1986) contains twenty-one papers which were presented to the
conference (see Appendix II). e third volume (1986) contains six articles on the
topic; they were written and received aer the 1982 conference. e fourth
volume (1986) has articles and book extracts on Islam and Orientalism by Allama
Shibli Numani. Similarly, the fih volume (1985) reproduces Syed Sulaiman
Nadwi's writings on the theme. ese and other Urdu titles by Abdur Rahman,
cited below, were published by Darul Musannefin, Azamgarh. e year of
publication for individual volumes has been given in Appendix I.
4 Isolated examples of Abdur Rahman's works in English may be mentioned here:
'A Critical Study of the Dates of Birth and Death of Hadrat Khwajah Mu'inu'd-
Din Chishti of Ajmer', Indo-Iranica, 17, 1 (1964), pp. 29-32; idem, 'Appreciative
Study of Variegatedness of Ameer Khusrau's Poetry', in Life, Times & Works of
Amir Khusrau Dehlavi (Delhi: Seventh Centenary Amir Khusrau Society, 1975),
pp. 83-102; idem, Amir Khusrau as a Genius (Delhi: Idarah-i-Adabiyat-i Delli,
1982).
5 K.A. Nizami, Salatin-i-Dehli ke Mazhabi Rujhanat; idem, Tarikh-i- Mashaikh-i-
Chisht; idem, Tarikhi Maqalat.
6 K.A. Nizami, e Life and Times of Shaikh Fariduddin Ganj-i-Shakar (Aligarh:
Aligarh Muslim University, 1955); idem, Some Aspects of Religion and Politics in
India During the 13th Century (Aligarh: Aligarh Muslim University, 1961); idem,
e Life and Times of Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya (Delhi: Idarah-i-Adabiyat-i Delli,
1991); idem, e Life and Times of Shaikh Nasiruddin Chiragh (Delhi: Idarah-i-
Adabiyat-i Delli, 1991).
7 S.A.A. Rizvi's works include A History of Sufism in India, Vol. I, Early Sufism and
its History in India to 1600 A.D. (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1978); idem,
Muslim Revivalist Movements in Northern India in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries (Delhi: rpnt. Munshiram Manoharlal, 1993).
8 See, for instance, M. Juneja, 'Introduction', in idem, ed., Architecture in
MedievalIndia: Forms, Contexts, Histories (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001), pp. 1-
105.
9 For a more detailed discussion on what passes as the authoritative secondary
literature on medieval North India, mainly the Delhi Sultanate, see Raziuddin
Aquil, 'From Dar-ul-Harb to Dar-ul-Islam: Chishti Accounts of Early History of
lslam in Hindustan', International Seminar on Assertive Religious Identities, New
Delhi (16-18 October 2003); idem, 'Scholars, Saints and Sultans: Some Aspects of
Religion and Politics in the Delhi Sultanate', Indian Historical Review, 31, 1-2
(2004), pp. 210-20.
10 For an example of M. Mujeeb's study of Islam in India, see his Indian Muslims
(Delhi: rpnt. Munshiram Manoharlal, 1985).
11 One of the leading lights of Jamia Millia Islamia, Abid Husain, wrote both in
Urdu and English. His Destiny of Indian Muslims (Bombay: Asia Publishing
House, 1965) is a classic.
12 Musalman Hukmaranon ki Mazhabi Rawadari, vol. i, Preface, p. 1.

13 Mohammad Hamid Ali Khan, Syed Sabahuddin Abdur Rahman (Delhi: Sahitya
Akademi, 1996), p. 15.
14 Shoaib Azmi, Farsi Adab: Ba-ahd Salatin Tughluq (Delhi: 1985), p. 325; Abdur
Rahman Momin, Khwaja Nizamuddin Auliya (Delhi: 1998), p. 254.
15 Carl W. Ernst, 'e Textual Formation of Oral Teachings in Early Chishti
Sufism', in Jeffry R. Timm, ed., Texts in Context: TraditionalHermeneutics in South
Asia (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992).
16 Mohammed Hamid Ali Khan, Sabahuddin Abdur Rahman, p. 18.

17 Mohammed Hamid Ali Khan, Sabahuddin Abdur Rahman.

18 Syed Jamaluddin, TarikhNigari: Qadim wajadidRujhanat(DeVn:i: Maktaba

Jamia, 1994).
19 Habibullah, 'Historical Writing in Urdu', p. 492.
20 Ibid., p. 492, fn. 25.

21 Ibid., p. 493.

22 Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, Tarikh-i-Dawat-wa-Azimat.

23 Hindustan ke Salatin, Ulama aurMashaikh, p. 2.

24 Musalman Hukmaranon ki Mazhabi Rawadari, vol. i, pp. 140-7.

25 Hindustan ke Salatin, Ulama aur Mashaikh, pp. 2-3. For Abdur Rahman's
detailed account of the careers of the Sufis of the Sultanate period, see his
voluminous Bazm-i-Sufiya. is work is, in many ways, close to that of scholars
like M. Habib and K.A. Nizami. More recent researches have moved away from
the image of ascetic and otherworldly Sufis as representing the 'true' face of Islam.
See, for instance, Richard M. Eaton, Sufis of Bijapur, 1300—1700, Social Roles of
Sufis in Medieval India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978); idem, Essays
on Islam and Indian History (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002); Simon Digby,
'e Sufi Shaykh as a Source of Authority in Medieval India', Purushartha, 9
(1986), pp. 55-77; idem, 'e Sufi Shaikh and the Sultan: A Conflict of Claims to
Authority in Medieval India', Iran, 28 (1990), pp. 71-81; Muzaffar Alam,
'Competition and Coexistence: Indo-Muslim Interaction in Medieval North
India', Itinerario, 13, 1 (1989), pp. 37-59; idem, 'Assimilation from a Distance:
Confrontation and Sufi Accommodation in Awadh Society', in R.
Champakalakshmi and S. Gopal, eds, Tradition, Dissent and Ideology: Essays in
Honour of Romila apar (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 164-91;
idem, e Languages of Political Islam in India, c. 1200—1800 (Delhi: Permanent
Black, 2004); Raziuddin Aquil, 'Miracles, Authority and Benevolence: Stories of
Karamat in Sufi Literature of the Delhi Sultanate', in Anup Taneja, ed., Sufi Cults
and the Evolution of Medieval Indian Culture (Delhi: ICHR and Northern Book
Centre, 2003), pp. 109-38.
26 Hindustan ke Salatin, Ulama aur Mashaikh, p. 3.

27 Ibid., pp. 3-4. For a secularist understanding of the Islamic architectural

heritage as reflected in the Qutb complex in Delhi, see M. Mujeeb, 'e Qutb
Complex as a Social Document', in idem, Islamic Influence on Indian Society
(Meerut: Meenakshi Prakashan), 1972, pp. 114-27, reprinted in Juneja, ed.
Architecture in Medieval India, pp. 290-300.
28 Hindustan ke Salatin, Ulama aurMashaikh, p. 37. For a condemnation of
Barani from a secularist perspective, see Mohammad Habib, 'Life and ought of
Ziyauddin Barani', a work reprinted several times. Here I cite the last version, in
Politics and Society During the early Medieval Period, Collected Works of
Mohammad Habib, edited by K.A. Nizami (Delhi: People's Publishing House,
1981), vol. ii, pp. 286-366. For a more accurate reading of Barani's understanding
of the Sultanate polity, see Alam, Languages of Political Islam in India. Also see
Raziuddin Aquil, 'On Islam and Kufr in the Delhi Sultanate: Towards a Re-
interpretation of Ziya-ud-Din Barani's Fatawa-i-Jahandari,'Rethinking a
Millennium', International Seminar in Honour of Professor Harbans Mukhia,
New Delhi (2-4 February 2004).
29 Hindustan ke Salatin, Ulama aur Mashaikh, p. 38.

30 Ibid., pp. 37-8.

31 Musalman Hukmaranon ki Mazhabi Rawadari, vol. i, 2nd edition, 1984, p. 26.

32 Ibid., pp. 26-7.

33 Harbans Mukhia, e Mughals of India (Delhi: Foundation Books, 2005), p. 28.

34 For a criticism of such an approach in the context of the eighteenth century, see
Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, 'Introduction', in idem, eds, e
Mughal State, 1526-1750.
35 Examples of such formulations recur in the writings of M. Habib, K.A. Nizami,
and S.A.A. Rizvi, among others.
36 Alam, Languages of Political Islam in India.

37 Hindustan ke Salatin, Ulama aur Mashaikh, pp. 42-3.

38 Musalman Hukmaranon ki Mazhabi Rawadari, vol. III.

39 Satish Chandra, Essays on Medieval Indian History (Delhi: Oxford University

Press, 2003). Little work has been done on Aurangzeb since the publication of M.
Athar Ali's e Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb (Bombay: Asia Publishing
House, 1966). e reprint of the book (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997)
inaccurately advertises it as a 'Second Revised Edition', whereas the author himself
writes in his new preface that researches in the last thirty years have only further
confirmed his findings or conclusions: therefore, there was no need for revision.
40 Seema Alavi, ed., e Eighteenth Century in India (Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2002); P.J. Marshall, ed., e Eighteenth Century in Indian History, Evolution
or Revolution? (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003).
41 Jamaluddin, 'Bazm ke Mua'rrikh', in Tarikh Nigari: Qadim wa jadidRujha- nat.

42 Richard Eaton, 'Temple Desecration and Indo-Muslim States', in idem, Essays

on Islam and Indian History; Romila apar, Somanatha: e Many Voices of a
History (Delhi: Penguin, 2004).
43 Also see Satish Chandra, Essays on Medieval Indian History, for a different
opinion.
44 Hindustan ke Salatin, Ulama aur Mashaikh, pp. 45-6.

45 Ibid., p. 46.

46 Ibid., p. 46.

47 Ibid., p. 58.

48 Ibid., pp. 43-4.

49 Ibid., p. 85.

50 For samples of modern writings on Kabir, see Charlotte Vaudeville, A Weaver

Named Kabir—Selected Verses with a Detailed Biographical and Historical
Introduction (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993); for the Mahdawis, see
Qamaruddin, e Mahdawi Movement in India (Delhi: Idarah-i-Adabiyat-i Delli,
1985); Rizvi, Muslim Revivalist Movements in Northern India. For Raushaniyas,
see S.A.A. Rizvi, RawshaniyyaMovement, reprinted from Abr-Nahrain, edited by J.
Bowman (Leiden: 1967-8; rpnt. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, n.d.); Tariq
Ahmed, e Raushaniya Movement (Delhi: Idarah-i-Adabiyat-i Delli, n.d.).
Despite much trumpeting about Akbar's attitude towards religious traditions,
there is actually very little in terms of research work. Major propositions on
Akbar's 'religious policy' were formulated in the 1940s and 50s. More generally, a
modern biography of the ruler is awaited. For recent collections of disparate
articles, see Irfan Habib, Akbar and His India (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1997).
51 Hindustan ke Salatin, Ulama aur Mashaikh, p. 60.

52 Aziz Ahmad, Studies in Islamic Culture in Indian Environment (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1964); idem, An Intellectual History of Islam in India
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1969).
53 Hindustan ke Salatin, Ulama wa Mashaikh, pp. 48-9.

54 Mohammad Habib, 'Chishti Mystic Records of the Sultanate Period', in Politics

and Society During the Early Medieval Period, Collected Works of Mohammad
Habib, edited by K.A. Nizami (Delhi: People's Publishing House, 1974), vol. i, pp.
385-433; Bazm-i-Sufiya, 3rd edn, pp. 631-96.
55 Hindustan ke Salatin, Ulama aur Mashaikh, p. 45.

56 Sanjay Subrahmanyam, PenumbralVisions: MakingPolities in Early Modern

South India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001).
57 Abdul Majid Daryabadi, 'Taqrib', Bazm-i-Sufiya, 3rd edn (19 January 1950).

58 Habibullah, 'Historical Writing in Urdu', pp. 495-6.

59 Musalman Hukmaranon ki Mazhabi Rawadari, vol. i, preface, p. 8.

60 As quoted in Jamaluddin, TarikhNigari: Qadim wa jadid Rujhanat,p. 139.

61 See, in this context, Seema Alavi, Islam and Healing: Loss and Recovery of an
Indo-Muslim Medical Tradition (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2008).
 11

'Searching for Old Histories'

Social Movements and the Project of Writing
History in Twentieth-Century Kerala*

SANAL MOHAN

Introduction

H
istoriography has acquired a radical turn with the coming of
'history from below' and the debates on alternative histories. It
has necessitated a critique of the dominant paradigms of
historiography from the margins in order to engage with
dominance and subordination. is opens up the possibility of various
articulations of history by subordinated social groups to explore the
prospect of a radical practice of the discipline. It is in this
historiographical context that the engagement with written history
problematized by Poyikayil Yohannan, one of the dalit thinkers of
twentieth-century Kerala, acquires significance. While there is an
emphasis in the radical practice of subaltern history on non-written as
well as written histories of subaltern castes and classes, it is difficult to
find articulations of the subaltern regarding the inevitability of written
history as a resource for countering hegemonic structures. In other
words, what I intend to emphasize is the centrality ascribed to the
written word and written history for a possible salvation of exploited
and oppressed dalits. Such an engagement, I argue, was instrumental in
introducing a discourse of history by Poyikayil Yohannan which
deployed fragments of dalit history that eventually became central to
their idea of history. ese constructions of history were formulated
and popularized by the movement called Prathyaksha Raksha Daiva
Sabha (PRDS). e movement developed in 1910 in iruvalla, in the
central Travancore region of Kerala. e ideas of dalit history
introduced by this movement were carried forward by its followers in
subsequent decades and made it a living tradition as well as an integral
part of their faith. e PRDS was founded by Poyikayil Yohannan and
his colleagues who belonged to dalit communities such as Pulaya,
Paraya, and Kurava. is movement originated as a radical response to
the continued existence of caste inequalities between upper-caste Syrian
Christians and dalit Christians within the Church Missionary Society
and other church denominations.
e PRDS movement created from its very beginning alternative
institutional structures for its followers, together with radically different
readings of the Holy Bible. Within a few years, there was a phenomenal
increase in the membership of the movement as it gradually spread to
other villages in Travancore.1 Poyikayil Yohannan, founder of the
movement, encouraged his followers to acquire wealth in the form of
land by accumulating whatever little they could save from their meagre
resources, and use this to acquire modern education by establishing
schools on such land. ere were mass mobilizations for claiming
access to public space. Following the death of Yohannan in 1939, his
wife Janamma took over the reins, following a brief spell of leadership
provided by Njaliyakuzhi Simon Yohannan, who was second only to
Poikayil Yohannan in the movement. In the power struggles that
followed, Yohannan's wife succeeded and came to control the affairs of
the movement that by then was established.
In 1950 one section of the followers of the movement under the
leadership of Janamma proclaimed themselves Hindus, leading to the
reversal of many practices construed as Christian.2 It was during this
phase in the history of the movement that the posthumous identity of
Yohannan developed as Sree Kumara Guru Devan. He began to be
considered as the God who had taken birth as an untouchable slave to
redeem the descendants of slaves from their inhuman suffering. ere
were substantial changes in the foundational canons of the PRDS with
the coming of this new notion of Yohannan as Sree Kumara Guru
Devan. e emergence of the Gurudevan cult could be identified with
larger processes of the deification of the social and religious reformers
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, leading to the construction of
their holy images. is was probably the milieu in which new
discourses evolved within the movement. e new discourses had to be
foundational, as the movement had erased the originally foundational
categories derived from Christian discourses. In the same period, they
had introduced narratives of slavery as an integral part of their
discourse of history. While accepting the fact that there is an overlap
between discourses of slavery and history, they are separated here for
analytic convenience.
Before analysing the discourse of history, it would be appropriate to
focus on the relationship between the PRDS movement and similar
movements of dalits in the Travancore region of Kerala in the first half
of the twentieth century, when they were really decisive in the social
sphere. e most important dalit organization of that period was the
Sadhu Jana Paripalana Sangham (Society for the Protection of the
Poor), founded by Ayyankali, who was undoubtedly the most important
dalit leader. He had led movements that were brutally opposed by
upper-caste landlords in South Travancore region because his
movements challenged caste hierarchy and demanded access to public
space and resources.3 ere were other organizations, such as
Cheramar Mahajana Sabha led by Pampady John Joseph, Brahma
Prathyaksha Raksha Dharma Paripalana Parayar Mahajana Sangham of
Kantan Kumaran, and other popular dalit leaders such as Paradi
Abraham Isaac and Vellikkara Chothi (Matthai), who were nominated
as members of Sree Mulam Praja Sabha, the popular legislative
assembly of Travancore state.4 ere was a great deal of unity among
the leadership, although they were leading movements independent of
one another. In spite of the similarities that we find in the
organizational strategies of the movements—such as leading agitations,
submitting representations to the government, arguing their case on the
floor of the legislative house—the PRDS remains unique because
Poyikayil Yohannan had problematized the lack of written history
among dalit communities that had experienced slavery for millennia.
Aer Yohannan's phase, the community kept alive this concern with
history, as exemplified in narratives of the history of dalit communities
and the PRDS movement that are circulated in both written and oral
forms.

e Prathyaksha Raksha Daiva Sabha and the Question of

History
e question of history that the movement had put forward brings to
centrestage the problem of the absence of history for dalits in Kerala,
which they considered a fundamental problem. One could argue that
this engagement with the history of a people without history anticipated
later radical historiographical propositions, such as history from below,
but these are not connected. e reflections on history articulated by
the PRDS movement achieve significance in this academic context. One
of the main concerns of the movement was history, and the movement's
engagement with the past emerged therefrom. e imaginative
reconstruction of the history of dalits in turn became a resource for
those who were searching for such a history. In the following sections, I
discuss 'notions of history' introduced by the founder of the movement,
Poyikayil Yohannan, that are accepted by the community of believers
today as prophetic revelations.
In the ethnographic context of the movement, history is turned into
some kind of prophecy. History becomes prophecy, as the history of the
slave experience of dalit communities—Pulayas, Parayas, and Kuravas
—expressed through the revelations of Yohannan. According to
Yohannan, the slavery that the dalit communities had experienced in
Kerala historically was their single-most decisive experience. Here,
prophecy is not just limited to foreseeing a future that is yet to unfold,
but to outlining experiences of the past that were never recorded and
can only be intuitively expressed in a prophetic language. What
Yohannan did when he addressed exclusive dalit congregations was give
them speeches on their history by resorting to oral narratives that were
available on the slave experience. It is important to restrict the use of
'notions of history' in the context of the statements of Yohannan, for
this phrase refers immediately to the lack of an authentic written history
of dalits in Kerala, even as it focuses on slavery as well as their history
before enslavement, when they were free.
It is important to ask why, at a certain stage of social change,
subordinated people raise the question of their history. In the case of
the PRDS movement, it seems that ritually rendered history becomes
part of their social identity. Closely following this, I explore the process
by which a particular perception of history became the organizing
principle of a community of believers. It should be noted that the
articulated notion of history became the ideological base on which the
communitas got constituted.5 Representations of history become
important in the formation of the communitas because a regular ritual
rendering of anything is important in the discourses and prayers and
everyday ritual practices of the movement.
e concern with history and the varying interpretations given to the
past were related to the question of agency that, in turn, would enable
dalit subjects to emerge as distinct social actors. Following this, it
becomes necessary to reflect on the relationship between such a
theorization of history and the social movement that projects such a
view of the past. is is important, also because no other social
movement of dalits in Kerala considers reflections on their history as a
vital component of the social movement, even if their search for self-
identity relied on historical data or history in a looser sense. Along with
this, we need to consider the efforts of the ideologues of the movement
to write histories of the movement, and the distinct practice of writing
history that emerges from such effort. ese distinctive practices are
evident in the effort, on the one hand, at writing a history of dalits in
general, although at a rudimentary level; and, on the other, the history
of the PRDS movement in particular. In the case of the latter, two trends
seem visible. e first tries to approach history from the perspective of
historical knowledge; and the second tries to mythologize the life of
Yohannan and construct hagiographies accordingly. Mythology is their
preferred genre, even though the canons of history writing are oen
invoked.
Equally important is the fact that we do not find the practice of
writing history being initiated by other dalit movements in Kerala.
ere is quite another dimension to the writing of history that is
undertaken by the PRDS, for this project is integral to the discourse of
equality and liberation that the movement initiated. A central position
is ascribed to written history by Yohannan: he identified the lack of
written history as one of the reasons for the enslavement of dalits.
Following the experience of the PRDS movement, it has been argued
that the imagining of a history for dalits is fundamental to their project
of liberation. Quoting the verses of Yohannan, his latter-day followers
developed the theme of slave experience as the most decisive historical
experience of dalits in Kerala.
If sold it is saleable again.
If to be killed it could be transferred and again
Sold as absolute property.
How could we forget it?
Paired with bullocks and buffaloes,
Forced to plough the fields,
Oh God! How can we forget the intense grief? 6
e oral tradition and the religiosity of slaves that have together
preserved memories of slavery are of enduring value from the
perspective of culture.7 e writing of history, or even a recalling of
certain experiences of the past, enables dalits to claim equality with
other social groups on an existential plane, where rootedness in the past
is a prerequisite. Moreover, in the case of dalits we find a radical
reinterpretation of the past that enables them to emerge as socially
significant actors. e recalling of the most decisive aspect of their
history— slavery— ultimately becomes a resource that will enable them
to provide a critique of the past and expose the politics of knowledge
that downplays their subservience through history. Remembering
slavery is complex, for it involves redeeming and transmitting that
experience to future generations. It also involves exorcising certain
aspects of the experience through a process of renegotiation. It is in this
context that the discourse of history becomes a major part of the
discourse of equality for the PRDS movement. Equality is imagined
both in historical social locations as well as in contemporary structures
of society. Such historical imagining of equality refers to the possible
existence of dalit communities in a non-hierarchical society before their
eventual enslavement.
One of my concerns here is to see if the project of the movement to
'search for the old histories' offers any challenge to the reigning
paradigms of history. is is contextualized in the genre of writings that
tries to conceptualize problems of identity and consciousness along
with changing perceptions of the past.8 Historical knowledge plays a
pivotal role in the process of identity formation and the consciousness
that evolves out of it. It is perceived sometimes as the embodiment of
'true' knowledge of the past—though without considering the process
by which a particular understanding of the past is created. e term
'true' knowledge stands for a history which provides a true version of
the past, and which nullifies any other probable interpretation of the
past. Such a perspective does not consider history as an interpretation
of past events based on sources that historians engage with. In the wider
contemporary practice of the discipline, the centrality once ascribed to
totalizing claims of historical knowledge has lost ground to fragments,
giving rise to fundamentally different readings of power relations in the
margins. Equally significant is the current situated- ness of knowledge
production that problematizes theoretical assumptions behind
particular interpretations. I draw on the experience of the PRDS
movement to engage with these historiographical problems.
People recapitulate their past in several ways, and in the context of
social and political movements these different versions of the past can
be harnessed to their specific requirements. In such situations, history
constitutes knowledge that informs people of a desired course of action.
In the case of the PRDS movement, Yohannan introduced the notion of
history in his discourses to emphasize that dalits are heir to a historical
past that was destroyed by conquering races, and that retrieval of that
idyllic past was their way to their salvation.9 His followers believe that
Yohannan descended to earth from heaven to redeem dalits from their
sufferings as slaves by revealing precisely this history. is standpoint
was articulated in order to contest the claims of the upper castes on the
nature of dalit labour, and the systemic subjection of the latter to the
former.
How is the past available for such an exercise? If we go by the
discourses of the movement, the term history is used in multiple ways,
but there is a definite privileging of the 'past' in their idea of history.
'Past' is used cautiously as it helps them historicize, specifically, the
experiences of the slave castes of Travancore. e other meaning of
history—as the actual practice of recording and interpreting past events
on the basis of cause and effect—is marginal to the project, although
there are attempts towards writing histories: intellectuals of the
movement here tried to write histories of dalit communities as well as
of dalit social movements. It is of great value to observe that in the
contemporary discussion on history in Kerala, particularly that of
subaltern castes/ classes, there is thus renewed interest in the
understanding of history that Yohannan introduced. So, while academic
history is very much part of the politics of knowledge, it is necessary to
make a distinction between history as a discipline and history as a
political act as seen by social movements. Both aim at reclaiming the
past, but academic history is in certain important ways determined by
the 'evidential paradigm'. And even if 'history as politics' is oen not
bound by the 'evidential paradigm', historians still have to engage with
it.
Yohannan's 'search for history' took place in the context of colonial
modernity. In fact the project of history writing that tries to retrieve the
experiences of suffering and pain that dalits once endured in
Travancore was made possible only by the context of colonial
modernity. e engagement with history in this context made possible a
project conceptualizing alternative narratives of history that focused on
dalit subjection. Such alternative histories facilitated notions of Self and
Other. e significance of Yohannan lies in the fact that he begins by
stating that none of the available histories of Kerala contain any
reference to the 'story of my race'.10 e new discourses of Yohannan
make dalits realize their collective erasure because of the complete
absence of any 'valid written history' of their own. e notion of 'valid
written history' refers here to a possible authentic representation of the
past; it refers also to the authority that historical knowledge tends to
acquire, and, in the case of the lower castes, its liberating function in
allowing them to challenge the dominance of the upper castes. History
in both senses—as the past, and knowledge of the past—can be
interrogated from this perspective. e past here connotes the
experiences of the ancestors of present-day dalits rather than any
textual constructions of such experiences. At the same time, it is
difficult to conceptualize such experiences outside textual
representation. It is through the written account, or the lack of it in the
written account, that the causes of 'lack of history' are traced to the
harshness of slavery that dalit ancestors experienced, which tore
asunder the formation of their identity and the articulation of their
social life. Being slaves, they were alienated from their material and
spiritual worlds. us, the new religious thinking in the wake of the
spread of Protestant Christianity, and the later critique of it, provided
the context for the dalit historical imagination privileging written
history, as well as their specific location in the past, by inventing new
social identities.11 is argument follows the fact that the preachers of
the PRDS, including Yohannan, considered the Old Testament, which
provides the history of Jewish tribes—as extremely significant.
Accordingly, they considered it equally important for Kerala's lower
castes to possess a genealogy of their own. Similarly, a critique of the
slave past was to be part of the fundamental theoretical questions to be
addressed.
It is important to identify and explore the process by which the
textual construction of the past circulated by the PRDS movement is
transformed into theological exegesis. e ethnographic accounts of
slavery that they provide takes on a new life of its own as a theological
resource through 'ritual speeches'. It is through such contexts that
religious authority and the experience of the divine are created.12
Recent studies in the Indian context have suggested that theology
aspires to make sense of, find meaning in, and determine order for
living collectively under the divine,13 although none of this is free from
constraints. I argue here the possibility of locating the interpretive
exercises of the PRDS within the theoretical framework ofreinterpreting
the resources that develop critical consciousness, although these involve
complex strategies. In the present example, Yohannan himselecomes
the God incarnate who was born 'in the body of a slave' to salvage
generations of slaves from inhuman exploitation and social and cultural
alienation. We find here the embeddedness of history, a historical
narrative of 'rememoration', a theologizing of the secular, a process of
incarnation, and thus a fulfilment of the project of salvation. In this way
the notion of dalit history circulated within the PRDS community
becomes the critical resource that legitimizes the religious interventions
of the movement.
It is important to observe the historical imagination articulated by
Yohannan in the context of the changes that colonialism brought about
in the lives of the lower castes. He stumbled upon the lack of history. In
one of his early verses we read:
I behold the histories of many races
Every history in Keralam was searched for
ere was nothing written on my race
ere was none on the earth to write the story of my race
And it was drowned in the abysmal
Darkness of the nether world. 14
I would argue that the disquiet in the above lines with the 'lack' of
history led to a problematization of the absence of 'history' itself, and
reiterate the fact that the term history refers to both the lived past and
its textual constructions. is particular argument regarding the textual
account of the past emerges from the fact that, in the lines quoted
above, we see written history privileged above all forms of possible
histories. In the early twentieth century, when Yohannan made this
observation on the importance of written history, lower-caste people
had already had roughly half a century of interaction with the written
word. As members of missionary churches, many had had close
interaction with the world of the literate. Yohannan's desire for the
history of slave castes is articulated at a time when histories of regional,
national, and social identities were already written. Administrators and
historians had written state manuals and histories of Travancore and
other geographical regions of colonial Kerala preceding this
theorization by Yohannan.15
What are the implications of Yohannan's notion of 'history'? It would
seem that, on the one hand, he tries to foreground the experiences of
lower castes that have been erased from historical memory, and, on the
other, the necessity of writing their history while privileging the written
word. is augurs well for a radical agenda, considering the overall
social contexts in which the challenge is put forward. is particular
desire to write a history of 'peoples without [written] history' enables
such people to claim history. It is equally significant to ask how the
project of writing such a history proceeds, for the radical intent of such
a project could deploy certain notions of the past that seem necessary to
engage with the present. As a result of this, the claiming of history
becomes not merely an exercise in understanding the past; instead, it is
also a purposive engagement with the present.
e second aspect of the dalit engagement with history is also,
naturally, a selective use of the past, and the valorizing of certain
moments. Quite oen, such a valorized past exists on the borderlines of
history and fiction. is is due mainly to certain tropes that are
deployed within the textual construction of valorized elements of the
past. In the PRDS movement, theologizing the slave experience of dalits
and the ritual performative rendering of it help blur the borderlines of
history and fiction. is double bind becomes more pronounced
because such attempts to write history are trapped within the dominant
paradigm of history which ultimately privileges national or elite
histories.
Social Movement, Religiosity, and History: Recasting History
Yohannan's movement emphasizes the position that religion is
instrumental: it is a particular instrument to rationalize the world. My
concern is primarily to see how the projects of this social movement
suggest a different way of conceptualizing the past, and thereby the
nature of its radicalizing historiography. In such a historical
imagination, given the absence of literacy among the people who
require a history, the most oppressed section of society becomes the
subject of that history. e project of history is therefore ethnographic
and experiential, and open to questions of popular religion and
mentality. is particular engagement brought in new themes within
the discourses of Yohannan. For example, he considered history
important because it helps situate social groups in relation to others
over a struggle within which the dominant erased the history of lower
castes. He also privileges written history above collective memories
shared intersubjectively by people in the community, even if they lived
in a society fast acquiring literacy. At this time, literacy was slowly
spreading among dalits too. ey were beginning to realize the power of
the written word, as against fuzzy notions of the past held in their
collective memory. At the same time, Yohannan never argues an
absolute rejection of collective memory; it remains a repertoire of
resources for the PRDS movement. Moreover, collective memory is the
fount of resources for a ritual rendering of history.
Yohannan's project included constructing an account of the past by
taking recourse to the lower-caste oral tradition. eir originary stories,
along with stories of slave experiences, suffering, and eventual salvation
are articulated in the same manner. e retrieval of history is a strategy
to claim social agency. is, in turn, subverts structured relations of
dominance and subordination at the discursive level. One of the
prominent issues encountered by the movement was the necessity of
writing history, or making their presence felt in history and
contemporary society. is coincides with efforts to write the history of
various kingdoms and geographical identities within Kerala. Similarly,
well-ordered historical information and narratives were considered
important in colonial ethnographic writings and became the dominant
mode in which colonial knowledge was created.16 Without exception,
all such histories saw the lower castes as residual categories. By and
large, they reproduced the colonial ethnographical texts, showing no
awareness of the politics of representation: official histories did not
require a reflexive understanding of their own categories.
With the PRDS, history must validate contemporary action. is
happens in the context of certain institutions that the movement gave
rise to. For instance, modern educational institutions established by the
movement should be understood as efforts at subverting a history of
domination and dehumanization that existing caste structure had
imposed. Highlighting configurations of dominance and subordination
in caste society is important to such a historiography.
To Yohannan, slavery represented an institution that had fractured
the dalits by its forced trade in human beings, with an absolute
disregard for familial relations, and by dismembering families and kin
groups. is, according to him, was the core historical problem of dalits
and explains why they were dominated by upper castes and classes.
is, in fact, was his reinterpretation of a popular song in the Pariah
oral tradition, 'Father is sold inthara', in which the narrator describes
with heartrending words the harshness of slave labour to which the
lower castes were subjected:
Yoked with oxen and buffaloes
We were forced to plough the fields
Father is sold thinthara . . .
Mother is sold thinthara . . .
We sobbed incessantly thinthara . . . 17
Collective memory is used here to illuminate the historical past. Here,
dominance and subordination bear the inscription of caste hierarchy.
Although such perceptions are central to the experiences of subaltern
social groups, they are not always explicitly stated.
It is important to observe how new symbolic orders are created by
popular religion and the rationality these engender. Popular religion,
following Bakhtin, is a collection of attitudes and modes of behaviour
based on the inversion of values and hierarchies; its corrosive laughter
and derision erect a spontaneous and constantly demystifying counter-
system to the established order and to established religion.18 ese
insights are helpful in understanding the inversion of values and
hierarchies that the PRDS effected. On one of the occasions when
Yohannan addressed the public in a cattle market, he said to the cattle
buyers that he had come to sell a very good bull: it was healthy, with
two big horns, and that because it was very strong it was tied with four
ropes. Many were attracted to his description of the bull and asked to
see it. When the crowd increased, he told them the bull he had for sale
was Christ resurrected from the dead, and that four Apostles had tied
the risen Christ to seven churches. He said if anyone was prepared to
accept the risen Christ, he would free them from the bondage of the
churches.19 is served as a powerful critique of the practices of the
churches, including those of the missions that prevented the message of
Christ from reaching the people. Similarly, we find an inversion of
categories from the very inception of the movement, when the founder
claimed he had received his prophetic power from on high.
at the desire to create an alternative symbolic order did not mean
an absolute break from the Christian life-world is also important here.
is aspect of derision and laughter is involved in some of the instances
that are recollected of the public speeches of Yohannan even during his
career as a pastor with the missionaries.20 He is reported to have made
fun of the Apostles, whose teachings he found not convincing
enough.21 One of the religious functionaries of the PRDS later provided
testimony of the incident, which shows the quality of derision in
Yohannan's speeches. At a speech in the Kottayam cattle market he
informed people, using his favourite metaphor, that he had with him
four bulls for sale. He continued his speech in the manner of one who
had actually come to sell bulls, revealing to a shocked audience that the
names of the bulls were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. He argued that
the Apostolic Church and its work, including Gospel work, was the
same as the work of bulls, in the sense that none cared for the value of
their blood and flesh.22 is is recalled in the contemporary narrative
as an example of the critique that Yohannan developed. In fact, of
course, the counter-system that he evolved stretched to its limits the
theological arguments of the church but did not reject these completely
—until the eventual split in the PRDS in 1950, which happened more
than a decade aer Yohannan's death in 1939. is explains the liminal
nature of the movement in Yohannan's time.
Popular religious practices, it has been seen, sometimes become a
resource for emancipation, particularly for the lower orders of society.
So it is necessary to contextualize the notion of popular religion in
order to explore its emancipatory project, and to look closely at the new
universe of myths and symbols that are created in the process of making
a new popular religion. Following Michel Vovelle, I argue in favour of
the concept of popular religion as being quite plastic, undermining the
notion of the masses as passive and conservative, or as victims of a
coercive, received message. e concept of popular religion I discuss
here is not one based on some unchanging reality. It includes all forms
of assimilation and contamination, and appears as a specific
manifestation of popular creativity.23 In other theoretical traditions,
popular religion is analysed to understand the consciousness of the
masses; or rather, religion is considered an important aspect of the
worldview of people. In the context of dalit religions, it has been argued
that resistance to the domineering religious productions of caste
communities, as well as the creative emancipatory resymbolization of
their own religious particularities, are 'weapons of the weak' within the
religious subjectivity of dalits.24 My effort here is to make sense of the
dynamism of subaltern religiosity as distinct from dominant religious
practices, but at the same time to show certain features of dalit
subjectivity and agency in the context of the making oheir new
religion. Two significant issues emerge from this: first, 'the new
symbolic worldview in the face of severe domination becomes the basis
of hope, not just for their resistance but, more importantly, for the
working out of their common subjectivity'; and second, the
'interweaving' of subaltern and dominant religious practices.25
 e writing of the history of such movements has so far centred on
several stereotypes. A rethinking of the history of lower castes now
makes it necessary to theorize the recovery and narrativization of their
past/history, and of the problems involved in the processes. e power
of written history and the historical imagination were considered
important for claiming agency for dalits; this was accomplished through
a process of retrieval in which the memory of cultural practices among
the marginalized assumes centrality. In the process, they borrowed from
the dominant religious traditions and cautiously pieced together the
available symbolic resources required for an emancipatory history.

Reconstituting History
What precisely was this project of retrieval of the tortured self within
the slavery-caste complex in Kerala, and the eventual liberation of
people from such slavery? In Yohannan's scheme, as we have seen,
history is called upon to perform certain tasks for the present which are
political and cultural. e idea was to 'retrieve' a history of lower castes
which would empower dalits within the present. ose who have no
valid knowledge of the past cannot think of a future. Such historical
knowledge is thought to be liberating inasmuch as it provides a new
and different self-perception to the oppressed. A seamless past is
harnessed towards imagining the history of Adi-Dravidas—the
preferred nomenclature for lower castes—in some of the early
statements attributed to Yohannan. Viewed in this context, the
historical accounts projected by Yohannan are subversive. He
conceptualized a period of social equality and development in the
history of the 'slave castes' of Travancore, a time free of caste
distinctions and practices which existed in the early phase of their
history.26 eir subsequent decline was due to their enslavement by
Aryans. He used the generic term Adi-Dravida to designate all those
who had shared the harsh experience of slavery in Travancore.27
In mythical modes of history, a later fall is attributed to the will of
superior powers, or to certain unclean practices of important
personalities of the community, whereby they were condemned. In
certain cases, it is seen to have occurred on account of a trick played
upon the befallen people by divine powers, or by dominant castes.28 In
many such stories, we find as the focal theme, certain skills that the
lower castes possessed and which were indispensable for agricultural
tasks. In the case of Travancore, the physical labour of lower castes, and
their skills in performing tasks related to wetland paddy cultivation,
were decisive. In order to make these skills available, the lower castes
were forced by upper castes to remain chattel slaves. e ways in which
lower castes were reduced to chattel slavery took up much of
Yohannan's thought. In his discourses, this process underwent a
mythical transformation that ultimately necessitated his project of
salvation. His interpretation contrasts with dominant theories that
explain the origin of caste, or enslavement as based in caste. is is a
repeated theme of the songs sung during ritual congregations of the
PRDS.
In contemporary discussions on agrarian slavery in South Asia, there
is a renewed interest in exploring particular discourses that were
instrumental in constructing various categories of agrarian population
as un-free/bonded, etc.29 e thrust is to see how varying forms of
labour appropriation that involved unfreedom were brought under the
universal category of slavery—following metropolitan notions of
freedom as the essential core of human existence, irrespective of
historical context. In other words, such arguments try to identify the
universal triumph of the Enlightenment notion of freedom, and its
antithesis unfreedom, as operative notions to categorize people across
the world. A similar phenomenon is identified in the universal march of
capital, which was instrumental in defining people across the world, by
stretching the theoretical assumptions of capital. As a result, it has been
argued that highly differentiated forms of labour control were brought
under the single rubric of slavery, a view which oen misses the
particularities of such control regimes. All efforts at understanding
slavery in the modern context, according to Gyan Prakash, suffer from
this theoretical problem.
 It is in this context that the opposition of notions of free/un-free or
slavery/freedom are problematized in the context of Kerala, in order to
understand their specific complexity. To what degree is the free/un- free
opposition valid when we consider pre-colonial Kerala? Or do we find a
strict opposition between the two only in the colonial context?30 We
have no recorded evidence for pre-colonial antecedents of lower- caste
slaves juxtaposing slavery and freedom as oppositional states of being.
Yet their oral tradition certainly contains songs celebrating a possible
life outside the absolute control imposed by upper castes within the
caste-slavery complex. In this context, it is difficult to agree entirely
with Gyan Prakash's argument that the free/un-free binary emerged in
the colonial period and was not necessarily valid for earlier times. At
the same time, missionary writings are explicit that they were
mobilizing support for the abolition of slavery. eir reports and
petitions on the conditions of lower castes, submitted to the local rulers
as well as to the British Resident, worked towards this end. ey worked
through several categories of thought introduced by the Enlightenment
worldview, in the process creating a substantial body of information on
the conditions of the lower castes. ese issues are valid when we
consider the problem of slavery and the debates that centre on it.
Debates in Travancore on the abolition of slavery introduced the notion
of a free individual that included slaves too.
e official proclamation granting liberation to lower-caste slaves, in
fact, redefined their position in Travancore society and visualized their
evolution as free people scaling the summits of civilization once they
were granted property rights.31 e proclamation considered the
enjoyment of and access to property as the beginning of civilization,
which was perceived to be evolving in Travancore. is was projected as
a means to surmount the 'lacks' that were created by the social
structure. For Yohannan, however, a recalling of the experiences of
slavery in its entirety was necessary to initiate his emancipatory
programme, although he was aware of the crucial importance of
property ownership in the project. In other words, there was an
emphasis on the social memory of the slave castes when agendas of
liberation were thought of, even as the political and economic
dimensions of the problem were not privileged in his scheme of things.
It is in this context that the experiences of slavery were recounted and
kept alive as a source for achieving equality. e story that narrates the
experiences of slave children who were orphaned by the sale of their
parents became a central canon of the PRDS. is was recalled
endlessly to highlight the experience of alienation and the sufferings of
the slaves.32
e separation brought about by the sale of slaves was reworked to
suit the new movement and constituted one of the cardinal themes of
the PRDS. Images of slavery and freedom were worked out again to
constitute the discourse that the movement initiated. One of the themes
that dominated the conventions of the PRDS from the very beginning
was the 'subject of the descendants of slaves', and the movement itself
was projected as one that tried to bring together those who were
separated by the harsh practices of slavery.33 It stood for the eventual
merger of identities that had been separated and dehumanized.
e fulfilment of the prophecy that speaks of eternal salvation is
eventually affirmed through this process. is is something that takes
place in real life due to Rakshanirnayam, othu, and Trithua Yogams,
or conventions.34 ese are occasions for sharing the historical
memories of slavery, in the course of which Yohannan revealed himself
as the God who had come to redeem them from suffering.35
It is obviously not productive to attempt a verification of the truth of
such narratives and statements made during Rakshanirnayam, and
similar occasions. History as the past in the ethnographic mode is
invoked here, and the 'lacks' that the slave castes experienced are called
upon to stake their claim to the future: the whole project is oriented to a
future towards which the desired social structure will evolve. e
deified image of Yohannan is significant in this vision as he mediates
the direction of future changes for his people. According to
contemporary teachings of the movement, Yohannan is someone who
stands beyond history, linking the worlds of the human and the divine.
 Historicizing 'Lacks'
Following contemporary social theory influenced by the psychoanalytic
tradition, 'lack' is understood as an incompleteness in the structure and
is a result of structural dislocation. It refers not to a subject's lack of a
particular object, but to the failure of the structure to constitute a fully
structured objectivity.36 An important theoretical question is whether
we can understand the 'lack' that the discourses of the PRDS emphasize.
At a primary level, it might appear that this lack refers to the subject's
lack of particular objects. But the moment we consider structural
determinants of slavery in pre-colonial and colonial times, we gain
more insight. e structural determinants refer to the fact that lower-
caste slaves were dominated by upper-caste landlords, to the extent that
they could not evolve as a significant social group with its own
subjectivity, and at a time when other social groups were by and large
evolving as a significant social presence.
e notion of lack is used here to deal more specifically with this
problem and the sites where the lack was experienced. As social agents
who were on the threshold of change, a fundamental lack was identified
in terms of history: it is to be interpreted as a problem pertaining to the
very process of constructing knowledge about the past. Ifwriting history
is understood as a violent and stifling process with its own detailed
procedures that inscribe one version of the past, it becomes equally
compelling to think of alternative histories that were erased in the
process. Once this has been suggested, it becomes part of the PRDS
project to retrieve the history of dalits who were denied historical
representation. is engagement with history led them to problematize
the history of Adi-Dravidas, whom the PRDS categorically refer to as
indigenous people.37
is history further unfolds as the gradual coming of the Aryans and
subsequent destruction of the first Dravidian civilization, leading to its
eventual decline and annihilation. According to these narratives,
exposed to the machinations of the Aryans, Adi-Dravidas were enslaved
and their women forced to fall even as they vowed to be truthful to
their men by keeping their chastity. Yet the enslavement of Adi-
Dravidas has also been explained as a direct consequence of the fall of
'mothers'. us, 'sin' entered the face of the earth through women. e
entire history is, later, woven more around the practice of slavery. In
this mould, what comes into prominence is a particular paradigm
within which the entire history of the Adi-Dravidas is conceptualized,
namely a period when Adi-Dravidas were rulers of the land, when they
had kings and a kingdom, priesthood, wealth, power, and knowledge.38
In these narratives, in fact, a prominent position is given to
spirituality and religious practices that were no less important to the
lower castes. e struggle for material resources is complemented by
emphasis on the spiritual realm. Both aspects of social life are the 'lacks'
which the discourses of the PRDS address. ese 'lacks' are to be
located within the structural problems of society rather than anywhere
else: the process of transgressing the 'lack' is to be situated in the
structural domain, not at the level of individual or collective experience.
At the same time, the notion of 'lack' is taken up to explain problems at
the individual or collective level. is is apparent if we follow some of
the verses current among adherents of the movement. ese verses are
on the tragic condition of slave children orphaned because their parents
were sold off to various landlords.
Father is no more . . . thinthara
Mother is no more . . . thinthara
We have no one any more . . . thinthara
is particular verse reminds us of the loss of the family and the
emotional security the family offers. It is a song which is repeated
endlessly as part of a ritual rememorialization of slavery and the
subsequent orphaning of slave children. It is, in other words, a story
that recalls and situates the experience of social alienation and rejection
resulting from the practice of slavery. e slave experience contradicts
the immediate reality of the people who sing these songs now. At the
same time, the discourse of slavery and similar themes, which are
repeated continually, resolve the contradiction between the binary of
true/false, and a better reality is imagined through such repeated
singing. e people who sing such songs and who participate in the
discourses experience the pain and sufferings imposed on their
ancestors by the caste-slavery complex. We need an approach that
privileges such discourses as the organizing principle of peoples' lives,
and an understanding which yields deeper meanings for situations
where explanations are multiple, mutually contradictory, and shiing.
My argument is that it becomes imperative to consider the nature of the
'lack' that is to be overcome. In the context of the PRDS movement, the
ideas that are circulated regarding the slave experience emerge as an
enduring social ideology. It is an engagement with a slave past that leads
to the imagining of a history of oppression, one which also springs from
the repertoire of their social memory, and which preserves their
community's experience of slavery.
To interrogate the varied history of oppressions, PRDS
representations allude to the harsh treatment meted out to 'slaves'.
Several verses graphically and emotionally describe how slaves were
yoked to oxen and buffaloes, and made to plough fields. e intensity of
pain and exhaustion are highlighted in lurid detail.39 Narratives of the
everyday lives of slaves tell us nothing but a history of oppression that
the 'slave bodies' suffer, a condition which is unclean and requires to be
salvaged. I use the term 'slave body as it is frequently used in the
discourses of the PRDS, as well as in songs that are sung during their
prayers. e term 'slave body is used by them to emphasize the bodily
sufferings that slaves endured.40
What are the functions of these histories of oppression that are
recalled on such 'religious' occasions? It is equally significant to ask: to
what extent could these sufferings and oppressions be both history and
non-history. ey could be history even to a conventional historian, for
some of these narratives are well documented. Yet they clearly perform
a further function, providing subjectivity and agency to people who
recall this collective suffering. is history is, in such a perspective,
basically a critical view of the unjust sufferings of dalits. It is also an
interpretation of history which enables a social movement to provide a
rational critique of the power structures of the past.
 Another important dimension of the whole process is the fuzzy
boundary of secular/non-secular history. e everyday discourse by
which history is transformed into a metaphor makes possible this PRDS
valorization of history. Such histories and historical thinking are far
from being historical explanations or historical practices that vouchsafe
the objectivity of the knowledge they produce. e most significant
aspect of this version of history is situatedness of knowledge production
that takes into consideration the experiential aspect of slavery. It may be
considered as an attempt to analyse contemporary structures of
domination. Notions like Adi-Dravida and discourses of slave
experience, rather than providing well-grounded historical analysis,
introduce a fragment of historical experience.41
Similarly, followers of the movement accept state-centric notions of
history that make them feel at home with kings, queens, and royal
reigns which legitimize the ruling class. While these contradictions
exist in the constructions of the PRDS, they do serve the purpose of
questioning some of the reigning paradigms of history. For example,
they propose a different understanding of the emergence of caste
society in Kerala, going against prevailing interpretations. At bottom,
even if such insights assist historians, their purpose is not historical
enquiry, but a negotiation which seeks to overcome domination.
Historical texts formulated in such contexts are deployed to impart
significant religious teachings to followers of the movement. At the time
of the Rakshanirnayam (ritual occasion for the determination of
salvation), young people are initiated into the Sabha by dramatically
recounting stories of slave experience. is is the moment of a
performative rendering of history, the context that informs followers of
the movement about the subordination they experienced in relation to
dominant religions, i.e. Hinduism and Christianity. It was in this
context that Yohannan sang:
Like orphans we travelled
rough the peripheries of Hinduism.
Like orphans we travelled
rough the peripheries of Christianity.
 Hindus did not include us
Christians did not include us. 42
As we are concerned here with the way the people understand their
past, it is important to see how they constitute their past through a
variety of activities. e PRDS shows that it was in the context of
modernity that they felt an intense need to understand their past, or to
search for a past which was not available in any of the dominant texts. It
was in this context that the founder of the movement sang verses
expressing the necessity of searching out their history. A number of
similar verses are repeated during the ritual occasions of the movement,
alluding always to the history that has been erased.
ink, my mind!
Search for the old histories
Who is there to remember me?
To keep for me
To weep for me? 43
Emphasized here is the necessity of written history over non-written
histories. Implicitly, this questions the status of history as an academic
discipline. e discourses of the PRDS show how people themselves set
parameters for imagining their history. e 'history' provided by such
constructions is of interest to a critical history of such movements and
social groups. Whereas academic history is bound by modern rules and
methods of history writing and presents its materials mostly in a
language current exclusively among practitioners of the discipline,
historians using material generated by social movements on the
experiences of the lower castes need to consider the value of accessible,
'non-academic' forms that can provide a radical agenda to history
writing. Such work can attempt a construction of the experiences of the
oppressed that may not be otherwise available. As narratives current
among dalits become part of the sources used by historians, the search
for the past becomes an extremely significant political act for the
oppressed people. e songs which deal with history refer to the social
location of people at the threshold of the culture of writing, reminding
them of the significance of the written word as the guarantor of truth.
At the same time, they are aware of the epistemic violence that the
written word can perpetrate through an erasure of their remembered
experience. erefore the most important themes of the songs are those
of slavery and suffering.44 We know today that for historians of all hues,
truth is important, but also that their truth is determined by the social
location and situatedness of knowledge production. e search for
history initiated by Yohannan happened roughly within fiy years of
dalit literacy in Kerala, although literacy was still not widespread and
Yohannan did not have much formal schooling. In this context, history
had to be teleological, for it was an essential aspect of the project of
salvation for the oppressed. It necessitated a conception of history that
was eclectic, in the sense that it drew its sustenance from various
sources. It opened up the possibility of understanding the history of
dalit communities in a manner that contradicted the deployment of
history in dominant discourses.
Yohannan himself had occasion to give his bit of history to the
maharaja of Travancore when he decided to give a reception to the king
in 1915 at Chengannur.45 Various groups organized receptions for the
maharaja during his visit to the eastern plantation districts of
Travancore; Yohannan also sought permission for organizing a
reception, which was granted only aer lengthy consultations because it
had been deemed inappropriate for the ruler to meet untouchables. By
the time Yohannan got permission to receive the king, all the important
junctions of the town had been occupied by others who had put up
reception pandals. Yohannan and his followers were given the outskirts
of the town, the town's waste-dump. ey cleaned the place and erected
a reception stage, spending Rs 1000. e king visited their pandal and
asked Yohannan about his people. Yohannan replied that they were the
original inhabitants of the land; some of them were actually kings and
queens and belonged to the royal lineage; they had later been enslaved.
Some of them were Brahmins, but were now considered untouchables.
e king was intrigued by this bit of history and is said to have asked
Yohannan if it was really true.46
 Yohannan considered dalit communities, whom he steadfastly
termed Adi-Dravidas, as the original inhabitants of Kerala. He silenced
critics who felt he had squandered an opportunity to ask help of the
king by saying that the true inheritors of the land and its resources
should not hold out begging bowls. is was important to Yohannan's
view of the history of dalits, and it became entrenched in the minds of
his people. It has been repeated endless times, through print as well as
in ritual discourse. Many who did not share the religious views of the
PRDS still accepted this notion of history. Today, with the rise of dalit
politics, this particular perception of history finds currency among
people and gives them interpretive space to construct new meanings.
For instance, in the course of fieldwork I listened to a PRDS preacher
who could effortlessly recount the contents of several historical
documents, such as the Copper Plates of eresa Church which contain
important information on the ancient history of Kerala, particularly on
the rights, privileges, and positions of different castes.47 is concern
with documents, and their verbal reproduction in discourses, is an
important aspect of the ritual practices of the movement. It is through
such remembering that a particular fact enters the popular imagination
and becomes history.

On the Borderlines of History and Fiction: Mythologizing

Slavery
Our problem here is to understand how, in the context of social
movements, the slave experience was recalled and brought on par with
authentic histories, contesting the textual representation of slavery
familiar to us as academic histories. is is achieved by fictionalizing
the history of slave experience, or by erasing the difference between
fiction and history. Sometimes, this meant a performative rendering of
the slave experience. is is apparent in the discourses of the PRDS as
well as in the prayers they chant. A second, and corollary, act consists of
using writings on slavery, sometimes making use of and quoting from
historical documents that refer to transactions involving slaves. Such
use has also helped in normalizing this particular discourse on
slavery.48
e recalling of slave experiences raises two questions. e first is
related to the acceptance or rejection of the reconstruction of history
that is made when slave experiences are recalled. To achieve acceptance,
such history argues the basis of evidence available within historical
sources to substantiate its argument. e second issue, equally relevant,
is the ethnographic nature of the data that is culled out of these
discourses and the interpretation of the process of mythologizing.
Among the empirical examples within the discourses of the PRDS, the
mytho- logizing of slave experiences is analogically linked to certain
historical accounts that are available in missionary discourses. is
analogy then motivates a fresh look at existing historical accounts of the
past. It is in this domain that the professional historian's role becomes
explicit. e professional historian is led by the search for evidence, and
the ethnographic data is interrogated to yield evidence. Why is the
historian compelled to use ethnographic data? Precisely because for the
history of this movement, ethnographic data provides information on
various discourses that open up the terrain of collective memory among
slave castes in Travancore, which is quite contrary to what is available in
the written sources.
Within discourses of race, ethnicity, and colonialism, there is now
renewed interest in theorizing slavery in the colonial era. e
understanding of slavery as a process, and the differentiated existence of
slaves on the borderline of circulation as commodities, have been seen
as a methodological breakthrough in understanding slavery in modern
times.49 I am not referring here to forms of slavery that existed in the
ancient world, which have been theorized in the context of modes of
production and transition debates, but to forms of slavery which
developed as part of colonialism and which were theorized by drawing
upon discussions on the capitalist mode of production.50
e PRDS remains engaged in a continuous process of constructing
images of the past which do not constitute a linear narrative. is
nonlinearity is evident from the ruptures existing in their
interpretations. At the same time, certain textual images of the past
have also gone into the making of such histories. And, these histories
apart, it is possible to identify 'the baggage of imagined histories' that
has also become part of the history that they recount. In short, it is
through this process of selective appropriation, erasure, and
reinscription that a particular version of the past has been created and
circulated. is has helped in the making of an identity for people who
have not themselves experienced slavery.
In other words, the situatedness of individuals in the contemporary
cultural milieu, which is far removed from slavery as a social
experience, challenges historians to analyse how images of slavery are
created through 'ritual rememory'. e concept of 'rememory' has been
used in other contexts to analyse the slave experience.51 'Rememory... is
something which possesses (or haunts) one, rather than something
which one possesses.'52 In the context of the experience of the Sabha,
the rememory of slavery is normally invoked in ritually significant
contexts. In course of time, this rememory has come to acquire
significance far exceeding all other constructs of the movement. It has
been observed in other contexts that if individuals and collectivities
have been produced in discourses, it is possible to 'imagine discourses
that will produce new selves'.53 e experience that I am recounting
here produces new selves by providing a different version of their
history in which slavery is central.
What is the metamorphosis that such a history is passing through? It
is beyond doubt that conventional histories do not speak of emotional
and somatic 'feelings' as the 'psychosocial history of [slavery's]
impact'.54 e theorizing of slavery from the existential perspective that
I refer to makes the history thus handed down appear as a 'history of
the present'. Such spatial and experiential dimensions of slavery have
been observed in the African and African-American contexts. e
experiential dimension of slavery is significant, for there were constant
shis in the status of individual slaves as they shied between the life as
commodity and as individual at different points of their sale and
purchase. In such a situation, history as retold by the community
undergoes a process of 'fictioning'. In other words, it is only through an
imaginative reproduction of the past that history can be produced.
Perhaps this is a necessary condition for a 'critical revisiting' of history.
For there remains the inescapable fact that a collectivity 'reconstitutes
the past, through the practice of personal/social narrative or story
telling'.55
Yohannan/Sree Kumara Guru Devan visited his followers in their
humble huts to mitigate their sufferings. is lasted till the early
decades of the twentieth century and he became their saviour. He came
sporting a thoppipala (cap made of areca fronds) and kachathorthu
(small cloth worn around the waist), the dress of toiling slave labourers.
e same dress is used today on the ritually significant occasion of the
memorial day of the founder. During the religious services which begin
aer the memorial hour of the death of the founder, religious
functionaries of the PRDS appear in the dress of slave agricultural
labourers. In the course of their ritual discourses they recollect the fact
that they were not allowed to wear any other dress and, worse, that they
had only the barks of trees, leaves, and twigs for clothes. Hence the act
of duplicating the dress of slave labourers is symbolically a form of
protest as much as rememoration.
Reflecting on historiography, Michel de Certeau has observed the
significance of fiction. '(F)iction in any of its modalities—mythic,
literary, scientific or metaphorical—is a discourse that "informs" the
"real" without pretending either to represent it or to credit itself with the
capacity for such a representation.'56 Following this argument, I would
like to consider the effects of slavery narratives that the PRDS circulates,
as well as the rituals and objects that pertain to the slavery that they
venerate. For example, veneration of the 'column of slaves' in the
vicinity of the headquarters of the PRDS reminds followers of ancestors
who died because of slavery. e logo of the PRDS shows chained
hands that remind followers of the harshness their ancestors
experienced. is complements the use of clothing as a mnemonic.
Such signs stand collectively for a discourse that 'informs' the 'real'
without pretending to represent it. Similarly, a procession to
commemorate the annual day of the abolition of slavery is also
significant from this particular point of view.

Making Community through History

It has been argued by many contemporary social theorists that the
process of identification and emergence of community is rooted in
certain forms of social practice. In this case, the emergence of a
community, even if fragile, takes place at the level of a practice in which
history, and a specific way of rendering it, assumes significance. It may
seem strange that history and its rendition become part of a practice
that contributes significantly to the making of a community. Of
significance in our case is that a particular understanding of history as
embodying suffering, oppression, and alienation, causes certain
historical moments to become ritually significant. Such moments, sans
ritual connotation, remain important to other genres of historiography
as well.
is existential notion of history shared by a ritual community is
situated as the bedrock of practice—in fact it makes the community
possible. At the same time, we can observe other realms of social space
created in the course of the existence of the sabha. While it is at the
interactive level that I identify the construction of this social space,
once constituted, it generates its own new spaces. Subsequently, with
the growth of new institutional spaces, the already existing discourse of
history is entrenched. e fledgling institutions in which the PRDS
movement started to train its followers in new skills in the early decades
of the twentieth century, such as schools, weaving centres, and places of
worship, were suddenly equated with aspects of the state and its
functions, for which again legitimacy was sought in history. As contests
developed over resources with the state and the dominant castes, the
movement itself gradually adopted the vocabulary of the state for its
internal matters. is became quite clear when the movement had to
negotiate with development and social change. e movement had to
develop the language and practice of governmentality for success with
its programmes.
 Our ritual rendering of history posits the nation within certain forms
of the past, and as containing no social contradictions. But when it
comes to retrieval of their past history, it is not for the PRDS a non-
stratified society constructed of the Adi-Dravida past that is recalled,
but rather a history when kings, queens, and courtiers loomed large.
What is in fact celebrated is the notion of an Adi-Dravida past
untainted by any kind of social differentiation, and which, at the same
time, had an established polity. is peculiar situation is, as earlier
mentioned, the effect upon the PRDS of the dominant paradigm of
history which privileges national and elite histories. In the ritual
rendering of history, the Adi-Dravida past is rendered as part of an
ancient nation peopled by Adi-Dravida communities, though the
geographical location of it has changed.57 ere is an uncritical
acceptance of traditional notions of the past, even when the effort is to
create a national space of their own for the Adi-Dravidas. is kind of
historical thinking need not necessarily be radical, although it might
appear as the alternative to existing historical knowledge on a particular
problem. It has to be remembered all the same that the PRDS
movement began with the radical intent of searching for old histories
that were never recorded because there was no one to record them. is
existential history is in fact history embodied by the people that they
remember and retrieve. is is the possibility and the limit set by the
historical thinking deployed by the followers of Yohannan/Sree Kumara
Guru Devan.
is agenda of history propounded by Yohannan did in fact
foreground a radical programme for alternative historical thinking in
Kerala, although the immediate effect of it was not felt in the practice of
academic historians. For historical thinking and practice to be really
radical and transformative more broadly, the PRDS will have to
question the categories that they themselves deploy. In the absence of
such reflexivity, this radical movement may even regress into a
caricature of itself.
e other genre of history that is current among followers of the
sabha is a completely mythical account of Yohannan. In such histories,
everything emerges according to a well-laid-out plan and divine
intervention, which ultimately lead to the project of salvation. Similarly,
with the transformation of Yohannan as Kumara Guru Devan, his real
life as Yohannan is portrayed as inauthentic or camouflaged.58 e
camouflage is for the higher purpose of the eventual coming of Sree
Kumara Gurudevan. is, ironically, demolishes the radical intent of
the project.59

Notes
* is essay is a revised version of a paper presented at the International Seminar
on Vernacular Histories at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, 28
—30 December 2004. I am grateful to the organizers of the conference for giving
me the opportunity to present that paper. I am also grateful to Anjan Ghosh, who
was the discussant for the paper, and to Raziuddin Aquil, Partha Chatterjee,
Janaki Nair, Gyan Pandey, Kunal Chakrabarti, Gautam Bhadra, and other
participants of the seminar for discussing my paper. I acknowledge the
discussions I had with Nizar Ahmed and T.M. Yesudasan. Translations from
Malayalam to English are my own.
1 It was noted that the movement had a following of 7000 people in the early
phase. For details, see the Census of India, vol. xxv, Travancore, part i, Report
(Trivandrum: Government Press, 1942), p. 141, and part ii, Table, p. 229.
2 For details, see P. Sanal Mohan, 'Religion, Social Space and Identity: e
Prathyaksha Raksha Daiva Sabha and the Making of Cultural Boundaries in
Twentieth century Kerala', South Asia, n.s. 28, 1 (April 2005), p. 52.
3 T.H.P. Chentharassery, Ayyankali (Trivandrum: Prabhatam Publications, 1979).

4 T.H.P. Chentharassery, Poykayil Sree Kumara Gurudevan (Trivandrum:

Navodhanam Publications, 1983), pp. 58-9.
5 I use the term 'communitas' in the sense in which Victor Turner has used it. For
details, see Victor Turner, Ritual Processes: Structure and Anti-Structure (New
York: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 94-165.
6 PoikayilSree Kumara Gurudeva Geethangal (Eraviperoor: PRDS Publication,
1996), p. 29.
7 For a discussion on slave religion and its significance for other aspects of their
social life, see Michael T. Taussig, e Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South
America (Chapel Hill: e University of North Carolina Press, 1980), pp. 41-69.
8 H.L. Seneviratne, Identity Consciousness and the Past: Forging of Caste and
Community in India and Sri Lanka (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 3-
22.
9 Poikayil Sree Kumara Gurudeva Geethangal, pp. 78-9.

10 Poyikayil Yohannan, 'Keralathil Pandu Pande', in Poyikayil Sree Kumara

Gurudeva Geethangal.
11 P. Sanal Mohan, 'Imagining Equality: Modernity and Social Transformation of
Lower Castes in Colonial Kerala', unpublished PhD thesis, Mahatma Gandhi
University, Kottayam, 2005, pp. 210-35.
12 For a similar argument on indigenous religiosity in the context of missionary
Christianity, see Matthew Engelke, 'Text and Performance in an African Church:
"e Book, 'Live and Direct" ', American Ethnologist, 31, 1, p. 77.
13 Sathianathan Clarke, Dalits and Christianity: Subaltern Religion and Liberation
eology in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 180.
14 Poikayil Sree Kumara Gurudeva Geethangal, pp. 78-9.

15 Nagam Aiya, e Travancore State Manual, 3 vols (Trivandrum: Government

Press, 1906); William Logan, Malabar Manual (Madras: Government Press, 1887).
16 See, for example, Edgar urston and K. Rangachari, Castes and Tribes of South
India (1909; rpnt. Delhi: Cosmo Publications, 1995).
17 Mariyamma John, Manikkam Pennu (Changanassery: Manusham Publications,
1998), pp. 33-4.
18 Michel Vovelle, Ideologies andMentalities (London: Basil Blackwell, 1990), p.
86.
19 K.T. Reji Kumar, Poykayil Sreekumara Guru Charithraruparekhayil
(Vakathanam: Sahodaran Publication, 2005), p. 34.
20 Today the spirit of derision is visible even on the occasion of Rakshanirnayam
(the ritual convention to determine salvation), particularly when they talk about
the relationship of the lower castes, such as Pulayas and Parayas, to Christianity.
For instance, on one such occasion the Upadeshtavu (religious man) made fun of
the attitude of lower-caste Christians who took pride in carrying the Bible even
though, according to him, it contained nothing about them and many of them
could not read the book properly. Many biblical images are similarly criticized and
made fun of for being far removed from the lived experiences of the lower castes
in Travancore. On one occasion, he refers to the biblical comparison of human life
with that of crossing the desert and says that the lower castes in Travancore would
not have understood this because they have never seen or experienced a desert
(Gurukula Upadeshtavu, Rakshanirnayam discourses at Venkotta, near
Changanassery, Kottayam, September 2001).
21 Ethnographic fieldwork data in the village of Amara near Changanassery (20
September 2000).
22 C.K. Ravindran, 'Four Bulls for Sale in Eraviperoor', Aadiyar Deepam (Annual
Number, 1994), p. 1.
23 Vovelle, Ideologies and Mentalities, pp. 81-8.

24 Clarke, Dalits and Christianity, p. 125.

25 Ibid., p. 126.

26 In biographies of Yohannan written decades aer his death such histories are
recalled. Grantha Rachana Samiti, Sree Kumara Guru Devan (Ettumanue: R.K.
Press, 1983), pp. 12-18.
27 According to the version current today, the Aryans introduced image worship
in place of the monotheism of the Adi-Dravidas. is was equal to destroying the
existing achievements of Adi-Dravidas because their development was based on
monotheism. e servants of gods who took care of the spirituality of the Adi-
Dravidas were replaced by rituals, and were followed by the idol worship and
ancestor worship that went hand in hand. e repeated warnings of the servants
of gods were ignored, and thus began the decline of the Adi-Dravidas, leading to
their eternal fall—with its own Satan and God bent upon testing each other. What
came out of the fall was the decline of even the material prosperity of the Adi-
Dravidas; this helped the outsider to strike his roots deeper. Ibid.
28 Gyan Prakash, Bonded Histories: Genealogies of Labor Servitude in Colonial
India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 48-50.
29 Ibid.

30 Ibid., pp. 1-12.

31 Diwan Peshkar A. Sankariah, Memo on the Condition of the Freed Slaves in

Native Cochin, 16 April 1872, quoted in K. Saradamony, Emergence of a Slave
Caste: Pulayas of Kerala (Delhi: People's Publishing House, 1980), pp. 103-6.
32 'Landlords chased away orphaned children when their parents were sold out.
What happens to children thus orphaned? ey starve to death sooner or later or
become prey to some wild animals. Once, three young children were orphaned
when the landlord sold their parents. e unity of the family and its souls was
broken. In the absence of their parents the children searched for food and shelter.
Unable to find anyone, the elder child tried to console the younger ones. At last
they found shelter beneath a big tree. While the two young children slept out of
hunger and fatigue, the elder one prayed to the god of the forests and told their
stories to the wild animals. Far above the sky a she-hawk was flying, and he
repeated his tale of sorrow to it. Aer some time, the she-hawk came and settled
down along with the children. It was God himself who had descended in the form
of the she- hawk. It consoled the children and gave them the promise that she
would come back to redeem them when the time came. And then she
disappeared.'
33 Joseph, Poyikayil Sree Kumara Guru, pp. 60-4.

34 e first convention of 'Raksha Nirnayam', convened at Parukkara, lasted for

about seven days. For these seven days the discourses centred on the theme of
slavery. Aer the Raksha Nirnaya Yogam (Convention to Determine Salvation),
separate conventions were conducted for the redeemed. is special convention,
'thothuyogam (Convention of Measurement), was convened at Marankulam. In
this convention he revealed what should be the thothu or measurement and plan
for the salvation of descendants of slaves. It was reasoned that they were doomed
to slavery as their forefathers had deviated from his path. According to Yohannan,
descendants of slave castes cannot deviate from the institutionalized 'thothu plan'
structured for them.
35 Today his followers believe that he had come to fulfil the promise that was
given to the orphaned children when he appeared to them as the she-hawk.
Hearing this, all those who were assembled for the convention confessed their
sins, and prayed to him to save them. He promised them redemption from sins
and eternal damnation, which filled their hearts with hope. ey realized that the
humanity of slaves was one and the same—all who were le and cast away due to
the practice of caste. And they were extremely happy to have received the light of
spiritual yearning which their forefathers had lost.
36 Jacob Torfing, New eories of Discourse: Laclau, Mouffe, Zizek (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1999), p. 302.
37 Poikayil Sree Kumara Gurudeva Geethangal, p. 89.

38 Prathyaksha Raksha Daiva Sabha Sthapakan Poykayil Sree Kumara Guru

Devande Njanopadesam (Kottayam: PJIM Press, 1981), pp. 19-24.
39 e horrors of slave labour are made further explicit in such stories on how
slaves were killed and their blood spilt to propitiate evil spirits. Such spirits would
cast spells that would eventually damage the bunds of rice fields, particularly
those rice fields that were reclaimed from backwaters.
40 In other words, the significant point here is to attempt an understanding of the
pain that lower-caste slaves endured; an exploration of this is necessary to
understand their social world. More intense stories are narrated which emphasize
the cruelties of slavery. Landlords forced women to work in fields even before they
had recovered from postnatal care. ey were made to work for hours together,
transplanting and weeding paddy fields, regardless of torrential rain and scorching
sun. Not even permitted to feed their newborns, many infants died and became
prey to ants (Rakshanirnayam Discourses).
41 e Adi-Dravida past is constructed here as something that is not affected by
the internal contradictions or stratification. While the Adi-Dravida theorists
speak of the great achievements of the past, they seldom remember the fact that
such a society depends on classes of people who should have been engaged in
specialized economic activities leading to social stratification and inequalities
endemic to it.
42 Poikayil Sree Kumara Gurudeva Geethangal, p. 222.

43 Ibid., p. 141.

44 Ibid.

45 Rev. W.S. Hunt, 'Mass Movement Phenomena', e Harvest Field, xxxix (June
1919), pp. 208-17.
46 Ibid., p. 217.

47 Ethnographic field data in the village of Amara (20 September 2000).

48 Poikayil Sree Kumara Gurudeva Geethangal; V.T. Rajappan, Adima Vyapara

Nirodhana Vilambarangalku Oramukham, 1986; PRDS Vikasana Vedi; Visakasana
Rekha, 1999.
49 Igor Kopyt off, 'e Cultural Biography of ings: Commoditization as
Process', in Arjun Appadurai, ed., e Social Life of ings (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 64-94.
50 Most of the empirical materials that I have used are from colonial Kerala and
these can provide certain insights for comparison with other historical contexts.
One of the major differences between the agrestic slavery in vogue in Kerala and
that of New World slavery could have been that the slave trade of Kerala was not
of comparable magnitude. Similarly, the other fundamental feature of slavery in
Kerala was that it was part of caste formation during the pre-colonial period, and
the practice continued to exist during the colonial period. Slaves were transacted
within Kerala and occasionally sold outside, with complete disregard for the
person or family of such slaves. Slaves, according to historical documents, were
bought and sold like cattle, along with land. It may be observed that even before
the emergence of a proper land market, slave transactions prevailed in Kerala. We
don't yet have a history of such relations of production. e labour process
involving outcaste labourers was not merely creating value: it brought in the worst
forms of misery and suffering, it caused a crisis in forms of basic living. e roots
of this experience lie deep and remain a part of the multiple effects of caste
hierarchy that the lower castes experienced. In spite of studies on agrarian social
structure, Marxist historiography has never adequately dealt with this aspect of
history. For details, see K. Saradamony, Emergence of a Slave Caste: Pulayas of
Kerala (Delhi: People's Publishing House, 1980); K.K. Kusuman, Slavery in
Travancore (Trivandrum: Kerala Historical Society, 1973).
51 Carl Plasa and Betty J. Ring, eds, e Discourses of Slavery: Aphra Ben to Tony
Morrison (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 191-216.
52 April Lidinisky, 'Prophesying Bodies: Calling for a Politics of Collectivity in
Toni Morrison's Beloved', in Plasa and Ring, eds, e Discourses of Slavery, p. 193.
53 Ibid., p. 192.

54 Ibid.

55 Ibid.

56 Michel de Certeau, 'Heterologies: Discourse on the Other', eory and History

of Literature, 17 (1986), p. 202.
57 On certain occasions during the ritual rendering, the Adi-Dravida nation is
referred to as the Indus valley, and on certain other occasions as ancient
Tamilakam.
58 V.V. ankasamy, PRDS Charithrathil(PRDS in History) (Taskh Publications,
1883), p. 27; also see V.V. Swami, 'Vyavasthayude Padapusthakam', in Soochakam
Magazine (February 2002), pp. 13-21.
59 A good example of this genre of history is the recent work Sathyam (e Truth)
in Malayalam, combining the history and biography of Gurudevan in a
mythologized manner. For details, see M.S. ankappan, Sathyam (Trivandrum:
Ravisree Publications, 2001).
 12

History in Poetry
Nabinchandra Sen's Palashir Yuddha
(Battle of Palashi) (1875) and the
Question of Truth*

ROSINKA CHAUDHURI

One day, lord L . . . visited the Babu and his family in Calcutta, and
having surprised Aru with a novel in her hand, he told the two girls,
'Ah! You should not read too many novels, you should read histories.'
Toru replied, 'We like to read novels, lord L . . .'
'Why?'
e bright young girl replied smilingly, 'Because novels are true, and
histories are false.'—Prefatory Memoir of Toru Dutt, in Clarisse Bader's
Introduction to Toru Dutt, Le Journal de Mademoiselle D'Arvers, 1879.1

I
n the process of writing about how modern Western history
essentially began at the moment of differentiation between the
present and the past, Michel de Certeau notes without
disagreement that, in India, 'new forms never drive the older ones
away'.2 Already, right at the start of e Writing of History, Certeau
establishes that in historiography, as in modern Western culture,
'intelligibility is established through a relation with the other, it moves (or
"progresses") by changing what it makes of its "other"—the Indian, the
past, the people, the mad, the child, the ird World'.3 e otherness of
India is then compounded, a few pages later, by the assumption that in
India, that first step, wherein historiography separates its present time
from a past, does not exist.4 Aer all, Dumont had certified, in 1964,
that there, the 'march of time' does not need 'to be certified by distances
taken from various "pasts"', that, on the contrary, 'a "process of
coexistence and reabsorption" is the "cardinal fact" of Indian history'.5
Just like the Merina of Madagascar, in India too, history is very far from
'being an "object" thrown behind so that an autonomous present will be
possible, the past is a treasure placed in the midst of society that is its
memorial . . .'6
is denial of an autonomous time of the present to Indians, for
whom the self-conscious construct of history was not in evidence even
as late as 1975—when Certeau's text was first published in French—is
an old Orientalist perception, stretching back, as Rao, Shulman, and
Subrahmanyam suggest in Textures of Time, a thousand years to 'the
great polymath scholar al-Biruni', who complained that 'the Hindus do
not pay much attention to the historical order of things . . .', an
allegation that they believe is almost certainly wrong.7 Refuting the
notion that history 'was an "alien" import brought in . . . by colonial
rule', Rao et al. show, through a literary close reading of texts in various
genres, from folk epics to court poetry, 'that history in South India has
been written in many genres and that writing history is not a matter of
strict adherence to formal characteristics and types'—unlike in modern
Western history as it emerged in the same period.8 e methodology
employed by these historians, in this recent attempt to establish an
autonomous time of modernity in which historiography exists in the
early modern period in India, is in fact a sophisticated inversion of
older nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century attempts to fill the lack
of history and historical consciousness in India as perceived by Western
historians from the mid eighteenth century onwards. Attempting to
construct an autonomous time of the present, behind which Indian
history stretched into the mists of antiquity, was, in fact, one of the
earliest preoccupations of Indian historians from the nineteenth
century onwards. is essay will attempt to trace some of the early
attempts, in Bengal, to separate myth from history by amateur and prof
essional historians struggling to define 'history' and its relation to
literature and to truth.

History, not Poetry

When the nineteenth-century Bengali poet Nabinchandra Sen's stirring
epic poem Palashir Yuddha (e Battle of Plassey) was finally released
in the public sphere on the 15th of April 1875 in Calcutta, a huge storm
erupted in the literary world almost instantly. Aer several well-known
journals of the time brought out extensive reviews, Bengal's most
eminent man of letters, Bankimchandra Chatterjee, published a detailed
discussion in his own periodical, Bangadarsan. By September of the
same year it was put up as a play by a group called 'e New Aryan
eatre', where the famous actor/director Girishchandra Ghosh is said
to have first made a name for himself when he acted the part of Clive.9
e controversies and disputes that arose with the publication of this
work were so great in number and so complicated in nature that they
continued well into the turn of the century, returning time and again to
haunt the author at every juncture.10 But by far the most pointed charge
among the many that Nabinchandra faced in his lifetime was made in
1897 by the historian Akshaykumar Maitreya, who, for the first time,
raised the question, apropos Palashir Yuddha, of the relationship of
history to poetry and to truth.
In his book Sirajuddaula (which had been appearing serially in the
journals Sadhana and Bharati since 1896), Maitreya devoted an entire
section of the crucial chapter describing the actual battle at Palashi in
1757 (called e Battle of Plassey by the British) to Nabinchandra Sen's
work. He said there that he had written to the poet asking him why he
had invented imaginary depravities for the character of Nawab
Sirajuddaula in the poem, and whether he had any historical
information on the subject. In reply, an interlocutor (the editor of
'Sahitya', Sureshchandra Samajpati) said, on behalf of the poet, 'Not a
single line [was based on historical fact]. (ek line o not). Palashir Yuddha
is poetry, not history—that is what he has permitted me to write to you.'
Maitreya continued, 'Not everyone realises that Palashir Yuddha is not
history! A lot of people will not easily have the courage to surmise that
a patriotic, erudite man of letters like him would have followed his
poetic muse so far as to unnecessarily stain Siraj's character from head
to toe with scandals created in his own imagination—many people
accept his Palashir Yuddha as history!'11
In his turn, when Akshaykumar Maitreya's Sirajuddaula was
reviewed by Rabindranath Tagore in 1897, Tagore had just a single
complaint against the historian:
In only one department has he [Maitreya] broken the laws of history. Although
he has not tried to conceal any of the flaws in Siraj's character, nevertheless, he
has taken his side with a shade too much of enthusiasm. Instead of presenting
his material calmly with the sole aid of historical witness, he has revealed his
own opinion at the same time with a little too much impatience and ardour.
Fighting a rigid and hostile prejudice and facing blind and unfair received
opinion at every step, he naturally becomes extremely agitated. But the peace
that resides in truth has been destroyed in the process, and the reader has
occasionally been a little troubled by the thought, quite without foundation, of
favouritism.12
'e laws of history' and 'truth' come together again in this passage, and
Akshay Maitreya's excitability is deprecated; certainly Maitreya seems
to have made something of a career out of violently attacking many
established reputations in the various genres of poetry, the novel, and
art.13 In his view, writers of fictions were supposed to invent everything
in their narratives—characters, events, plots, and themes—whereas the
historian invented nothing but certain rhetorical flourishes or poetic
effects to tell a 'true story'. But as for the writer at the conjunction of
history and poetry, who was depicting past events under the rubric of
the novel or the poem—did his practice belong to history or to
literature?
e relationship between historiography and literature is a tenuous
and difficult one. 'In part', Hayden White has suggested that
 this is because historiography in the West arises against the background of a
distinctively literary (or rather 'fictional') discourse which itself took shape
against the even more archaic discourse of myth. In its origins, historical
discourse differentiates itself from literary discourse by virtue of its subject
matter ('real' rather than 'imaginary' events) rather than its form. But form here
is ambiguous, for it refers not only to the manifest appearance of historical
discourses (their appearance as stories) but also the systems of meaning
production (the modes of employment) that historiography shared with
literature and myth.14
In India in the nineteenth century, where the discourse of myth
belonged not to the 'archaic' past but the recent past, and the newly
constructed site of a scientific Indian historiography seemed ever to be
in danger of slipping back into 'fictional' discourse, Akshaykumar's
agitation can perhaps be understood a little more sympathetically than
Tagore did when he condemned him for violating the 'laws of history'
which demand objectivity, or 'calm'. Recent theories of discourse solve
the problem in their own way by dissolving the distinction between
realistic or historical discourse and fictional discourse based on the
presumption of any ontological difference between their respective
referents, the real and the imaginary. Instead, what is emphasized is
their common aspect as semiological apparatuses that produce
meanings by the systematic substitution of signifieds for those extra-
discursive entities that serve as their referents. In these semiological
theories of discourse, narrative is held up as a particularly effective
system of discursive meaning; for to conceive of narrative discourse in
this way allows us to account for its universality as a cultural fact. It also
adds perspective to the debate on 'historical objectivity' by showing that
there really is no such thing as 'complete objectivity'.
e distinction between historical and fictional discourse has been
discussed, in the wake of such post-structuralist interpretations, by
Jacques Ranciere, the French political philosopher, who has written, in
e Names of History, about the 'poetics of knowledge' that constitute
the discourse of history, and of the 'set of literary procedures by which a
discourse escapes literature, gives itself the status of a science, and
signifies this status'.15 Distinguishing the characteristics that give
certain texts the status of history, he writes: 'history can become a
science by remaining history only through a poetic detour that gives
speech a regime of truth ... It doesn't give this to itself in the form of an
explicit philosophical thesis, but in the very texture of narrative: in the
modes of interpretation, but also in the style of the sentences, the tense
and person of the verb, the plays of the literal and the figurative.'16
History, it seems, has to attain a degree of scientificity before it can be
called history. is scientificity is resident in the truth-value of its
narrative, which then distinguishes it from the purely literary or the
purely political. 'e essential poetic structure of the new historical
knowledge', Ranciere claims, is such that it can possess 'at once, the
logic of narrativity and the appearance of truth'.17
Nabinchandra Sen's Palashir Yuddha confounded the public because
it contained at once both the 'logic of narrativity and the appearance of
truth', thus resembling, in its essential poetic structure, the new
discourse of history. In its form, however, and style, in the texture of its
narrative, and in the play of the literal and the figurative, it remained
embedded within the field of poetry, which was constructed, at the
time, as belonging to the higher moral plane. is was not only because
poetry, following Vico in the early eighteenth century and Hegel in the
nineteenth, was considered as 'originary' and 'primordial', as belonging
to a time prior to that of prose; indigenous theories of rasa, which came
to Bengali intellectuals not only from the high Sanskritic texts of
Abhinavagupta and Anandavardhana, but also through the Vaishnav
influence, were equally important in formulating a living tradition for
late-nineteenth-century writers such as Bankimchandra and
Nabinchandra.
e matter was further complicated by the fact that Nabinchandra's
Palashir Yuddha had been published in a textbook version by Sanyal
and Company of Calcutta, with a Preface attached to it that vouched for
it as 'the history of Bengal' and attested to its suitability as a textbook for
use in schools. In a footnote, Maitreya quotes from the Preface to this
'history' book edition: 'Not only has a complete poem like this a merit of
its own superior to that of mere compilation of fugitive pieces but as it
is also the history of Bengal of the period in verse, the introduction of
such a book into our schools will be doubly beneficial to the students
and an encouragement to real talent and for the literature of Bengal.'18
Maitreya took exception to this, asserting:
It may be that 'the poet's path knows no impediments', but in his selection of
historical portraiture he cannot in all places act without restraint. If the poet
had stuck to 'real history' [prakrita itihas] while writing about this unfortunate
young king who was tricked, imprisoned, and then met with an untimely death,
his composition would have touched our hearts much more. In fact, it would
perhaps have been better had the poet taken refuge in his own imagination,
then his imagination would not have been so much in the mould of Macaulay at
every step. Macaulay's Battle of Plassey is also poetry—it is not history. If the
poet had not clung to him with all the eagerness with which a blind man
clutches his cane then the unfortunate Sirajuddaula's ghost could have been
protected from the harsh hand of so many baseless attacks. at is the only
reason that has compelled me to write an analysis of the calamitous mistakes
made by one of our country's most celebrated poets.19
is distinction between history and poetry, whereby Macaulay's
history is sarcastically identified as poetry because, presumably, it bears
so little resemblance to 'truth' or factuality, is based not merely on a
certain formalization of the style, frame, and method of history writing
in early-twentieth-century India, when, following Western philosophers
from Hegel onward, prose was identified as the most appropriate
medium suited to a history that claimed to embody truth. Macaulay's
history is prose, but lacks credibility as history because it does not tell
the truth. On the other hand, Nabinchandra's so-called history is also
not history, not because it is written in verse, but because it fails, once
again, the test of truth.

History as 'A Method of Science'

A closer look at Akshaykumar Maitreya's understanding of the role of
the historian explains this impatience with the famous poet's
interpretation of poetic license. In an appendix to Sirajuddaula,
Maitreya attaches an article in English first delivered as a lecture at the
Calcutta Historical Society and later published in their journal, called
'e Black Hole Story' ('Andhakoop-kahini').20 Here, right at the start,
he lays down his own preferences in historical method. 'I must confess,
at the outset', he says, 'that I find it more reasonable to adopt the critical
methods of investigation recommended by "the historians of the
modern school in Europe" than to follow the time-honoured practice of
swallowing all extravagant stories without any sort of investigation.' For
these European historians are not mere 'iconoclasts', having 'shown by
example that if they are obliged to destroy any old fetish of faith they
destroy it only to replace fiction by truth' (p. 416). (Since he was
speaking here in the context of the outrageous stories surrounding the
Black Hole episode, it should perhaps be pointed out that his allegation
regarding the 'time-honoured practice of swallowing all extravagant
stories' is aimed at English rather than Indian historians.) Maitreya
continues that in this critical method, the 'main thing' for the historian
is 'not the art of accumulating material, but the sublimer [sic] art of
investigating it,—of discerning truth from falsehood'. J.S. Mill had
pointed out, he says, the necessity of going 'to the fountain-head' for our
'knowledge of history', but the 'modern critical method' goes a step
further even than that, for it tests even first-hand information for its
unbiased veracity. Maitreya then substantiates this with the example of
how Clive wrote a letter to the Mughal emperor aer Palashi about
Sirajuddaula's retreat, which, though a first-hand report, was
deliberately misleading. e story of the Black Hole of Calcutta
therefore needs to be carefully investigated afresh, 'according to the
well- established system of modern critical method, which is a method
of Science' (p. 417, my emphasis).
Attempting to set the record straight, Maitreya's defence of Siraj's
character had begun with a rebuttal of the poet's description of the
night before the battle at Palashi—the lilting lines composed by the poet
depicting a drunken Siraj enjoying the company of a dishabille dancing-
girl might have been exceedingly enjoyable to a majority of Bengali
readers, he says, but it was very far from the truth. e scene, when it
was subsequently enacted on a well-lit stage with the help of prostitutes,
must have helped many a person along the road to moral decrepitude,
Maitreya asserts, but rather than the character of Siraj, the illuminated
theatre only served to show up an exact reflection of the modern, filthy-
rich Bengali (p. 361).
Maitreya begins this section, in fact, with a description, from
historical sources, of the night preceding the battle at Palashi. at the
English soldiers had undertaken a long and arduous march through the
night in heavy rain to reach Palashi, and that Clive had not slept that
night in expectation of the coming battle had been attested to by British
historians such as Orme; Maitreya actually misattributes a line from
Palashir Yuddha ('ki hoi ki hoi rone, jayparajay!'), spoken, in the poem,
by Siraj rather than Clive, to portray that moment of anticipation for
Clive. e night as it passed for Siraj is then described—he too did not
find the time for sleep, counting the hours in solitude and loneliness
until dawn in his tent. Assessing the situation, a cunning thief departs
with the hookah kept in front of him, and when a startled Siraj pursues,
he finds that his guards have deserted him. A stricken Sirajuddaula then
murmurs to himself—Alas, they count me as dead even before I have
died.' e footnote to this section mentions: 'Scraon's Reflections.—A
different version of this incident has been described in Stewart and it
has also found a place in various other histories' (p. 359).
Maitreya then goes on to assert that Sirajuddaula had given up drink
before he ascended the throne, in accordance with a vow he had made
at his grandfather Alivardi's deathbed—this inalienable fact had been
acknowledged as true even by the English historians who were his
enemies. Footnotes quoting from both Scraon and C.S. Beveridge
prove his point, but, Maitreya sarcastically continues, it needed his
fellow Indian poet to write of that contemplative solitary moment in the
tent in the following manner:
Pour the wine into the golden cup, pour again
Come and make your of ferings to these flames of desire
Drink, pour, pour, and drink! e ocean of love
Shall overflow, modesty's island will be exiled.
Oh you dishabille beauty! Wine glass in hand
Where do you dance and go?—To the Nawab?
Go then, wearing a smile on your lips,
 Your plait, like a serpent, swaying behind you.
Let the dance go on, let the feet lose their balance,
Let the banner of love fly—tomorrow we go to war. 21
is portrait of a besotted, befuddled nawab is to be found, apparently,
in Charles Stewart's description, in his pioneering History of Bengal
(1813), of Nawab Shaukatjung in his tent at Nawabgunj; so Maitreya
concludes that Nabinchandra had read Stewart and had 'unhesitatingly'
used the description of Shaukatjung for his own portrayal of
Sirajuddaula—for aer all was not 'the poet's path free of all
impediments'? (p. 361) In a footnote to a later edition, however,
Maitreya then concedes that, aer the first edition of his book
Sirajuddaula appeared, Nabinchandra had told him that he had not, in
fact, read Stewart before he wrote Palashir Yuddha.
Further calumnies attributed to Sirajuddaula are then listed one by
one to show up the inaccuracies in Nabinchandra's poem. A rumour
entertained by the common people with reference to Sarfaraz Khan—
that he had, in a distracted frame of mind, happened to see the face of
Jagat Seth's daughter-in-law, and in penance, had given up his life at the
battle of Giriya—is embellished and attributed to Siraj by
Nabinchandra, Maitreya asserts. In fact, he says, the descendants of
Jagat Seth himself did not acknowledge this story to be true. Again,
with reference to the battle at Hooghly, Nabinchandra writes of Siraj, 'a
blade of grass held between his teeth', fearfully escaping the battle. But,
says Maitreya, this young king, who from childhood had been reared
sword in hand within one tent of war or another, and who had been
unfairly tricked and defeated at Palashi, was not even present at
Hooghly. It was the English who had attempted at dead of night to gain
unfair advantage at Hooghly but had been repulsed, and Clive had
retreated, head bowed, on that occasion. Finally, it was the nawab Mir
Qasim who had imprisoned Raja Krishnachandra Ray and his son at
Munger fort, but the poet Nabinchandra flies in the face of chronology
and shows Siraj as responsible for this deed. In the appendix to Palashir
Yuddha, the source for this story remains unnamed as 'a friend, well
known in the literary world', and that is how, Maitreya concludes, the
poet escapes responsibility. Maitreya then ends this long discussion
with a lament: 'In a country in which narrative poetry has undertaken
the responsibility of history writing, is it any wonder that Siraj-scandals
should become cumulatively indelible?' (p. 363).
Maitreya's concerns, which belong to the realm of traditional
Western historiography, are best encapsulated in the remarks made by
Hayden White in his Preface to e Content of the Form:
Since its invention by Herodotus, traditional historiography has featured
predominantly the belief that history itself consists of a congeries of lived
stories, individual and collective, and that the principal task of historians is to
uncover these stories and to retell them in a narrative, the truth of which would
reside in the correspondence of the story told to the story lived by real people in
the past. us conceived, the literary aspect of the historical narrative was
supposed to inhere solely in certain stylistic embellishments that rendered the
account vivid and interesting to the reader rather than in the kind of poetic
inventiveness presumed to be characteristic of the writer of fictional
narratives.22
It is Nabinchandra's transgression of this brief that causes Maitreya
such intense annoyance: the kind of 'poetic inventiveness' that
Nabinchandra displays is a characteristic of fiction, not of history or
historical narrative. At the time that Maitreya was writing, Indian
historiography in the Western sense of the term was still in its formative
stage. History as an academic discipline had begun to be
institutionalized from the time of Rajendralal Mitra (1822-91), who was
admiringly described as 'the man who raised studies in Indian history
and culture to a scientific status' by a later historian.23 Rajendralal's
major works stretched from his study of the Pala and Sena kings of
Bengal in 1855 to the psychological tenets of the Vaishnavas in 1884,
and, notwithstanding his immense achievement, he remains a singular
figure in his time. It was only with the next generation of scholars,
which included his student Haraprasad Sastri—whose career was more
or less coterminous with a galaxy of other names such as Akshay
Maitreya and Ramaprasad Chanda—that history writing began to
acquire a prof essional community and a disciplinarian outlook that was
then further reinforced by the following generation, which comprised
Rakhaldas Banerjee and Jadunath Sarkar. e very notion of the prof
essional historian thus solidified at a gradual pace between the 1890s
and 1915, the period in which Maitreya wrote some of his most
influential works.
roughout this period, well-known writers of poetry and prose
intervened in the construction of the nation's history in their own right.
Bankimchandra's drive in reconstructing the history of Bengal, his
famous edict that a nation cannot come into existence until it has a
history, his numerous essays between 1872 and 1884 towards building
up the edifice of history writing (Bangadeshiya Krishak [e Bengal
Peasant], BangalirBahubal [e Bengali's Strength], Bangalar Itihas
[e History of Bengal], Banglar Itihas Sambandhe Koyekti Katha [A
Few Words on the History of Bengal] and Banglar Itihaser Bhagnangsha
[Fragments of Bengal's History]), and above all his powerful historical
novels, which created a unique awareness of India's past at a popular
level, have been repeatedly acknowledged by commentators since then.
is tradition continued in the figure of Rabindranath Tagore into the
twentieth century, although by then the field had expanded from the
provincial to the national, as indicated by the repeated use of the term
Banga' (pertaining to Bengal) in Bankim and Bharat (pertaining to
India) in Tagore. Apart from his numerous historical poems, plays, and
novels, between 1898 and 1912, Tagore wrote significant prefaces and
introductions to contemporary Sikh, Maratha and Muslim histories,
contributing eighteen serious articles on history, now collected and
published as a separate book called Itihas [History]. Apart from these,
there exist other articles such as Bharatvarser Itihas [Indian History],
Bharat-Itihas-Charcha [Indian Historiography], and Bharatvarse
Itihaser Dhara [e Flow of Indian History], which attest to his
interventionist interest in Indian history and culture.24
Quite obviously, then, it was an accepted convention that a
distinguished man of letters in Bengal should be concerned also with
the writing of its history—this much was never a matter of dispute.
Essays or articles written about history or history writing were
undoubtedly the entitlement of the writer in nineteenth-century India
(in complete contrast to the situation today), but what happened when
literary texts represented history? How far could a literary
representation claim to be a 'history' of a period or a country? e lines
between literature and history that had so far been blurred, causing
Palashir Yuddha to be read now as a narrative poem and now as a
history textbook, began to be drawn with increasing firmness.
Increasingly, by about the turn of the century, as the discipline of
history began to become institutionalized, the authenticity of historical
representation in some of the most influential literary works of the time
began to be challenged—and in this matter Akshaykumar Maitreya was
undoubtedly one of the first to show the way. e strenuous defence of
history as a 'method of science' that we find in Maitreya has, therefore,
to be understood in the context of a powerful literary scene in which
eminent novelists like Bankimchandra and popular poets like
Nabinchandra were the agents who first depicted the history of India to
its people in stirring lines of poetry and prose.

e Transcendence of Eternal Truth

For Hegel, early in the nineteenth century, poetry was figured in terms
of development in the history of Spirit (Geist). In this history, poetry
emerged first, prior to prose, and was characteristically united in 'the
original presentation of truth, a knowing which does not yet separate
the universal from its living existence in the individual . . .'25 Prose
came later, splintering this unity into a relativity that was constitutive of
History, for History feeds upon prose. e conditions for the
production of History were then made complete, aer the advent of
prose, by the state, 'which not only lends itself to the prose of history
but actually helps produce it.'26
Hegel's characterization of poetry as the 'original presentation of
truth' was in accord with a Romantic conception of the poetic that
dominated the nineteenth century, elevating all that was 'literary' to a
domain above the merely historical. It was also a view that animated
Jadunath Sarkar—a student and teacher of English literature before his
turn to history—in his Preface to Bankimchandra's Anandamath, in
which he spoke in terms of what he called 'chirasatya' or 'eternal truth'.
is quality, he felt, inhered to the elevated sphere of the successful
work of art, and transcended the demands of the merely 'historical'.
Jadunath Sarkar, in the 'Historical Introduction' he wrote to some of
Bankimchandra's novels for the 'Centenary Edition' publication by the
Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, launches into a detailed discussion of what
constitutes literature, and what history, with specific reference to the
conception, an entirely new one in Bankim's time, of the 'historical
novel'. is discussion was a continuation, in a manner, of extensive
argumentation among many eminent Bengali historians following
Akshaykumar Maitreya in the first few decades of the twentieth century
on the status of literature and history with reference to
Bankimchandra's historical novels. Bankim himself, in his introduction
to Rajsingha, had not wanted any of his 'historical novels' to be read as
such, adding that Rajsingha was, in fact, actually the first historical
novel he had written. of these, the novel Sitaram alone had invited
reams of indignant commentary from the likes of Satishchandra Mitra,
author of Jashor Khulnar Itihas [e History of Jessore and Khulna]
(1922), Ramaprasad Chanda, Akshaykumar Dasgupta, Rakhaldas
Banerjee, and others. Satishchandra Mitra, whose work on the history
of the eponymous king Sitaram was the most extensive and
authoritative, made a charge against Bankim in 1922 that replicated,
almost word for word, Akshaykumar Maitreya's original complaint
against Nabinchandra Sen: 'So the Emperor of Literature has asked us to
disbelieve the historicality of his novel. But will the self-forgetful [atma-
bismrita] Bengali reader listen to his advice? Or will he place the
novelistic story above history and stain the face of Sitaram with black?
It is because the novel is engaged in bringing about the ruin of history
that I have had to say so many things.'27
at the Bengalis were 'a self-forgetful race' (atma-bismrita jati) was a
statement made famous by Haraprasad Sastri in his seventh address to
the Bangiya Sahitya Sammelan in 1914; commenting upon this
statement, that had subsequently attained the status of a proverb among
Bengalis, Bhabatosh Dutta characterized that period as the age of the
'search for history'.28
In direct contradiction of the stand taken by fellow historians such as
Satishchandra Mitra, Jadunath Sarkar maintained that all seven novels
from Durgeshnandini to Sitaram were, indeed, historical—some had
more historical characters, some less, but in all of them 'the society, the
houses, the thought processes, the rites and manners of past times has
been truthfully reflected. However, historical truth has not been
preserved at each and every step in these books; because Bankim has
deliberately painted over such pictures of truth with the colours of an
extraordinary light. . .'29 Bankim's understanding of the historical novel
was rather constricted and limited, Sarkar complained, bolstering his
argument of his own understanding of Bankim's historical novels with
examples from categories of the arts such as painting and photography.
According to Sarkar, the 'creative mystery' and 'literary form' of these
novels show us the way towards understanding them. For here, Bankim
has given us quite a bit of historical truth in his depiction of events,
characters, manners and speech, but he has deliberately not reduced
this delineation to the level of purely 'true photography'. Sarkar
explains:
Almost every picture is a lifeless delineation of man's external appearance; but
in the hands of the great artists—like Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt or Sir
Joshua Reynolds—the famous portraits seem to show us the souls of those men
and women through the expressions on their faces, the look in their eyes; once
you see them you cannot forget them, and the more you see them, the more
they give rise to new feelings in the spectator's mind. Bankim's novels have just
this quality, and that is why they will remain immortal.30
'How close is Anandamath to historical truth?' asks Sarkar, echoing the
amateur historian Akshaykumar Maitreya, who had asked exactly the
same question apropos Nabinchandra's Palashir Yuddha. e prof
essional historian, paradoxically, then proceeds to give a startlingly
different answer, asserting, essentially, that the truth of historicism is
limited, whereas the truth in Bankimchandra's historical novels is above
the historical truth and in the realm of that which is eternally true, for
which his word is 'chirasatya'. Sarkar claims that although the
characters in Anandamath are not historical characters, in the portrayal
of the politics, society, and main events of the time they represent, the
novel is certainly entirely borrowed from history. Sarkar then furnishes
supporting historical evidence from all the sources at his disposal, both
medieval and modern, to show Bankim's fidelity to the historical. 'It
might be true', he concedes, that 'ifpeople investigate every particularity
of dates and events they may find, in this genre of novels, much that is
wanting and self-created; in fact, in comparison even with the current
prescribed school-textbook histories they may appear wrong or a bit
lacking in many places. But in these are contained man's living picture'
(p. vii).
Could it be said that in e Names of History, Ranciere, using very
dissimilar techniques, attempts a similar rereading of Michelet's History
of the French Revolution? Speaking of a work of history rather than of a
novel, Ranciere substitutes Sarkar's 'dates and events' with 'words',
locating the revolutionary moment in Michelet's work in a metaphor 'by
which the narrative of the event becomes the narrative of its meaning.'
Michelet's words constitute 'an essential poetic structure of the new
historical knowledge', that Ranciere champions in e Names of History
as being 'very much a question of the truth, insof ar as the truth
signifies more than the exactitude of the facts and figures, the reliability
of the sources, and the rigor of the inductions, insof ar as the truth
concerns the ontological modality to which a discourse is devoted'
[1994, 49].
Forty-three years aer Maitreya first complained about creative
licence in relation to historical truth, strenuously arguing for the
'scientific' status of the latter, we find Jadunath Sarkar turning the tables
on him by arguing for the primacy of creativity in relation to historical
truth. 'Why do these novels [of Bankimchandra] not incorporate the
most minute and exact truths from history? Because, Bankimchandra
did not at all want to give us a photograph of those eras; he wanted to
create them in the form of prose-poetry, as instruments for the
education of the people.' For Sarkar, the great validity of
Bankimchandra's project lay not only in the realms of creativity, but
also in the morally unimpeachable impulse towards patriotism and
national regeneration that was behind Bankim's impulse in these works.
Referring to 'Bharat-kalanka', 'Banglar Itihas', and 'Banglar Itihas
sambandhe koyekti katha' earlier in the Introduction, Sarkar had already
put forward the thesis that Bankim had not rested content merely with
the success of his 'domestic novels' because he was, 'in his heart of
hearts, in every sinew of his body even, a lover of this land, a devotee of
the people' (p. iv). us Bankimchandra's achievement in these novels
consisted of 'taking a few material truths from history, adding to these
his incontestable talent in imaginatively creating characters, and
pouring into it all his high-minded idealism, thus breathing life into
these novels and giing Bengali literature an astonishing thing' (p. vii).
Sarkar makes a distinction here between what he calls 'a 'stony,
scientific' history' and Bankimchandra's historical novels, which are the
'life of the age' (p. viii). e words 'stony, scientific' are coupled and put
within quotation marks, but there is no accompanying note to explain
the origin of the term. Sarkar takes for granted the familiarity the reader
must have had at this time with the term because of the raging
controversies surrounding the issue in Bengali historiography since
1910. e words 'stony' and 'scientific' were first put into controversial
circulation by Haraprasad Sastri, who, in the introduction to his 1919
historical novel Bener Meye (Merchant's Daughter), had used the words
in close proximity: 'Bener Meye is not history; therefore it is also not a
historical novel. Because, nowadays, in the time of "scientific" histories,
one cannot write history without recourse to stony evidence
[pathurepraman]. We have bodies made of flesh and blood, we are not
made of stone, nor do we ever want to be. Bener Meye is a story. Just like
many other stories.'31
e entire thrust towards 'scientific' history writing was being led at
the time by Rakhaldas Banerjee, whose reliance on the dateable
archaeological artefact and preoccupation with precise dating and
epigraphic evidence had perhaps lent themselves to the adjective 'stony'
or pathure being used by Haraprasad. Maitreya and the group belonging
to the Barendra-Anusandhan Samiti (Varendra Research Society) were
among the more ardent believers in the use of rock inscriptions and
copperplate edicts, using these as their primary evidence in the Gauda
Lekhamala [Inscriptions of Gaur] in 1910, which they considered the
only reliable indices of historical proof . Paradoxically, the most fervent
champion of scientific history and archaeology, Rakhaldas Banerjee,
had then declared, in the introduction to his monumental Banglar
Itihas (Bengal's History, 1915), that what he had 'constructed' was
merely the 'skeleton' of a history, and that he 'could not say whether it
would ever attain body and become complete.'32 In order to achieve
that corporeal state, he had, like Haraprasad, turned to his historical
romance, revealingly titled Pashaner Katha, or e Stone's Story, which,
he clarified, 'was a narrative written in the image of history, not a
history written in the scientific method.'33 A decade aer Jadunath
Sarkar wrote his historical introductions to Bankim's novels in 1939,
the issue was still alive and kicking, and the historian Niharranjan Ray
resurrected the imagery of a dead history when he wrote, in 1949, in his
own Introduction to his Bangalir Itihas [e History of the Bengalis]:
'My Bengal and Bengalis are not there in the pages of any old
manuscript [punthi], nor in any royal epigraph and decree; that land
and the people are what exist before my eyes and reside in my heart.
e ancient past is for me as real and as alive as today's present. And
that palpable living past is what I have endeavoured to bring forth in
this book, not the skeleton of a dead history.'34
As this brief discussion shows, many eminent historians in Bengal,
starting perhaps with Romesh Chunder Dutt, had written historical
novels since the late 1870s, some of them, including Dutt, with direct
encouragement from Bankim. is attempt by historians to make of
history a living thing was manifest both in historical novels as well as in
the writing of history itself, and Jadunath Sarkar's historical
introductions to Bankim therefore take up and continue some of the
same issues that I have been tracing so far. Painstakingly pointing out
numerous factual inaccuracies in Anandamath (the Santans were North
Indians, not Bengalis; illiterate—not capable of quoting from the
Bhagavad Gita; Shaivite, not Vaishnav), he still concludes (and note how
he conflates the highest creative impulse in these novels with 'poetry'): 'I
accept all this. But the nectar [amritaras] that is there in Anandamath,
Debi Chaudhurani, and Sitaram is not present in other historical novels
a hundred times closer to "truth". at nectar [rasa] flows from its
source in the high-minded idealism of Bankimchandra's heart. . . is is
the sign of the greatest poetry; herein lies the immortality of
Anandamath, Debi Chaudhurani, and Sitaram.' Harnessing support, in
conclusion, somewhat eclectically from Buddhist inscriptions to the
Bhagavad Gita, Sarkar ends his discourse in an ecstatic crescendo, using
the most popular image of an emergent Hindu nationalism of the time,
that of the militant ascetic in the hills, an image that had been
inaugurated in Hemchandra Bandyopadhyay's BharatSangeet (1870),
used in Bankimchandra's Anandamath (1882), and in Aurobindo's
potent blueprint for action, Bhawani Mandir (1906):
It has been forty-four years now since Bankimchandra has been taken from us.
But he who has drunk the secret 'rasa' of Anandamath has seen, with his inner
eye, the rishi who initiates us into national awareness [swajatiyata] standing
upon a mountain-top in the Himachal, his body bathed in light, calling to the
entire people:
Awaken from selfishness, awaken from poverty,
Awaken from all stiffness, oh awaken,
In a powerful, uplied splendour.
is is the answer to the question: whither freedom? (p. x) 35

Anti-Muslim Rhetoric
If Akshaykumar Maitreya had been angry about Nabinchandra Sen's
depiction of Sirajuddaula in his first work in 1897, in a later publication,
Mir Qasim (1904), he was absolutely apoplectic about Bankimchandra's
portrayal of Mohammed Taqi Khan in his novel Chandrashekhar. In a
chapter entitled 'e Battle at Katoya', Maitreya, following the
methodology of his first book, initially carefully presents the historical
accounts of this battle, citing sources such as Malleson's Decisive Battles
of lndia and Ghulam Husain Tabtabai's Sairal-mutakkherin, depicting,
in emotionally charged language, the bravery of Mir Qasim's foremost
general, Mohammed Taqi Khan, who had fought with such courage and
aggression that he had single-handedly almost turned the tide of the
battle in favour of the nawab, until his unfortunate death in an English
ambush. Following this, he turns his attention to the gross
misrepresentation of historical fact in the scenes in Chandrashekhar,
which he does not name, that dealt with Taqi Khan, asking, at the
outset: 'Why have such infamous and baseless allegations been put up
against someone as loyal and brave as Mohammed Taqi? Why was it
necessary to cast such an indelible stain upon so patriotic a Muslim
king as Mir Qasim?' e blame, as usual, lies at the door of the literary
impulse, and he answers: 'Perhaps it is the novel that is culpable, as the
historical mode has been put aside in the interests of the creation of
beauty. Let history be abandoned—the novel has certainly become
brighter!'36
e novel Chandrashekhar shows the character of Taqi Khan going
personally to kill the 'beautiful seventeen-year-old wife of Mir Qasim',
renamed (and Maitreya is sarcastic about this) from Daulat un Nisa as
'Dalani Begum'; Maitreya comments: 'Even in the days of the "cow-
slaying, shaven-headed" [go-hatyakari, kshaurita-chikur] Muslim's rule,
the Faujdar was never sent personally for executions—a prof essional
executioner was always employed for the purpose.' (Here he identifies
in a footnote the phrase describing Muslims as shaven-headed cow-
slayers as occurring in a historical essay by Bankim in which the mere
mention of a Muslim historian calls forth such a phrase.37) e
narration in the novel continues with Taqi Khan, smitten by the ripe
beauty of Dalani, ending up propositioning her, to which she reacts by
kicking him. e unlikely end to all this in the novel is Dalani's
subsequent death by self-poisoning, and Taqi Khan being slain by Mir
Qasim's sword! 'e novel is thus made appetising', Maitreya concludes,
outraged, and 'when it is acted on the stage, the applause is resounding!
e genuine contempt in which the Hindu heart holds the "cow-slaying,
shaven-headed" Muslim is also revealed. But alas! Neither Taqi Khan
nor Mir Qasim can be recognized any more as historical characters.'38
is sacrifice of history at the altar of the creative impulse of fended
Maitreya, and impelled him to a strident condemnation of the
communal feeling that he detected residing in the heart of so many
works by Bengali stalwarts in their respective fields. Certainly, he has no
rival among the protagonists of the so-called Bengal Renaissance in the
disinterestedness of his objective idealism; in his defence of history and
historical accuracy, it can be said without a doubt that Akshaykumar
Maitreya did not take sides. He, too, was motivated by a patriotic
impulse similar to the high idealism Jadunath Sarkar had identified as a
validation of Bankimchandra's immense gi, for he repeatedly
marshalled his argument in favour of historical 'truth' with a view
towards strengthening the nation. 'British writers proclaim the triumph
of British heroes who are dedicated and dutiful in poetry, history,
literature and the novel—at every place they maintain the historical
character intact, and these examples then serve to illuminate their
national life. e literary guru of New Bengal has read, from beginning
to end, the history of a dedicated, dutiful, and self-sacrificing Muslim
hero, resident of Bengal, such as Taqi Khan, yet when he composed his
novel he concealed the natural beauty of the historical character and
disfigured it with the stain of chicanery, betrayal, and cowardice'.39
Mohammed Taqi Khan's defeat was, according to Maitreya, 'a
vanquishing of the entire Bengali race', and his memory has been lost
among our people.
Otherwise it would not have been possible for the name of somebody as dutiful
and brave as Mohammed Taqi Khan to be defiled in a novel. It is only where the
common people of the country do not feel any pain in their hearts at painting
so unrestrainedly black a stain upon so brave a character that the novel has
gained such genuine enthusiasts; it is only in such a country that the stage has
reverberated with the sound of clapping; it is only in such a country that people
have the courage to fight with historians in order to establish the absolute
authority of the poet's clan.40
In a rousing climax of indignation and righteous wrath, Maitreya then
declares, in conclusion: 'Nevertheless, the independent historian will
announce this as an indelible stain upon the Bengali. If Muslim society
had life in it, this would not have been possible even in this country. A
prostitute kicking Taqi Khan in front of so many—this is an indelible
stain on the theatre of Bengal!!'41
 Maitreya underlines the deliberate nature of Bankimchandra's
distortion of Taqi Khan's character by mentioning in a footnote that
while Bankim had been posted in Murshidabad on of ficial duty, he had
read, in the famous scholar Dr Ramdas Sen's library there, the English
translation of Sair al-mutakkherin with much care, marking the text in
places, and even mentioning, in the introduction to the novel, his
reading of this then relatively little-known text. As that text, both in its
English and Urdu editions, mentions explicitly and in great detail the
bravery of Taqi Khan (describing how twice he had been impeded; once
when his horse was shot, and then upon a bullet entering his shoulder;
yet he had pressed on regardless, exhorting his men to fight, and was
advancing well, when a sudden discharge by hidden English soldiers
caused a bullet to pierce his brain and killed him instantly, creating a
turnaround in fortunes that resulted in the battle, and subsequently
Bengal, being lost), Bankimchandra's inventions do appear
unforgivable, culpable, and remorseless to the reader. Why then did
Jadunath Sarkar not address this particular charge in his Introduction
to Chandrashekhar at all, and why did he defend Bankimchandra from
the charge of historical inaccuracy, and from the allegation of
communal ill will?
e answer seems to lie in Sarkar's perception of the role of creativity
and the creative artist in relation to history or the historical novel. e
fact that literature differs significantly from historiography in dealing
with historicality was the point that Sarkar was making in
Bankimchandra's defence, and this very issue has been taken up for
discussion by Ranajit Guha as recently as in 2002, in his History at the
Limit of World-History.42 In that book, taking the example of Tagore,
Guha identifies 'wisdom' as the most essential category in a 'truly
creative writer', whose task it is to renew the past creatively through
language in a manner not available to the academic historian. Hegel's
concept of world-history is governed by a 'narrowly defined politics of
statism'; to escape it, one must turn away from the narrative of public
affairs, the concern of the historian, towards the poet's eye, which
engages with the past as a story of man's being in the everyday world.
Using one of the poet's last recorded essays, SahityeAitihasikata (1941)
as a manifesto, Guha feels it is Tagore's intention here to declare:
'Historicality, too, demands facts', but the historicality that resides in the
creative impulse is somehow free of 'the bounds of historiography' (p.
79). Guha quotes from Heidegger to establish that the factuality
involved in the work of the creative artist is 'ontologically totally
different from factual occurrence of a kind of stone', a metaphor that
uncannily echoes the whole Bengali debate on 'a stony scientific
history'. e concept of 'facticity', which, according to Heidegger,
'implies that an "innerworldly" being has being-in-the-world in such a
way that it can understand itselfas bound up in its 'destiny' with the
being of those beings which it encounters in its own world' (p. 79), is
then harnessed by Guha to explain that the poetic moment resides in
this understanding of facticity, which is opposed to the 'object-
historical conventions of historiography'.
Tagore suggests, according to Guha, that 'it is only by confronting
historiography with creativity' that 'we can hope to grasp what
historicality is about. . . . As the two sides are lined up, it turns out to be
a confrontation between, on the one hand, the externality and public
ness [sic] of academic historical representation and, on the other, the
inwardness of the self 's labour of creation and its claim to what accrues
inalienably from it' (p. 87). In this contest, for Guha, it is the creative
process that wins, for that is the side that argues for 'a notion of the past
so big and broad' that it allows for 'history. . . [to] fulfil its promise in
the plenitude of historicality' (p. 90). Jadunath Sarkar did not put it in
quite these words, and whereas Guha emphasizes Tagore's 'inward eye'
or 'inner soul' compared to Sarkar's highlighting of Bankim's 'high-
minded idealism', the end result describing the transcendence of the
creator or the work of art is remarkably similar. e words used by
Sarkar to describe Bankimchandra's triumph in the historical novels
('taking a few material truths from history, adding to these his
incontestable talent in imaginatively creating characters, and pouring
into it all his high-minded idealism, thus breathing life into these novels
and giing Bengali literature an astonishing thing') are strikingly of a
kind with those of Rabindranath that Guha uses to validate the creator
above the historian: 'e creator gathers some of the material for his
creation from historical narratives and some from his social
environment. But the material by itself does not make him a creator. It
is only by putting it to use that he expresses himself as the creator' (p.
98). Where the two may have differed fundamentally, however, would
have been in their understanding of the role of the historian, for Sarkar
never confuses the historian with the litterateur, whereas Guha clearly
says that it is to the neighbouring field of literature that the historian
must now turn to avoid the pitfalls of the academically pedantic
historian. Sarkar, one can be reasonably certain, would not have gone so
far, only claiming for the creative artist a higher plane and a greater
achievement than any historian could hope to accomplish.
is national and cultural self-consciousness of the status of art,
which presented itself as a principle of integration overriding all others,
is in large part to be accounted for by the pre-eminence accorded to it
throughout the long nineteenth century. Overturning the usual notions
of this period as a time of convention and conformity, Harold Bloom
and Lionel Trilling have remarked, in the context of the English literary
scene: 'Nothing so much shaped the identity of the Victorian Age as its
consciousness of being modern , and this, of course, was only the
continuation 'of a defining trait of the preceding cultural epoch of the
nineteenth century' in the Romantic period, which also was marked by
a lively awareness of progress and change.43 A defining feature of this
awareness of modernity in the colonial context in the time of
Nabinchandra was the view of art and its function held by the great
writers and critics of the time. In England, Coleridge had represented
poetry as the mediator between man and the universe, whereas Shelley
had said that the true basis of ethical life was in the exercise of the
imagination as it was brought into activity by poetry; poets were the
unacknowledged legislators of the world. A little later in the century, the
great prose stylist omas Carlyle wrote an epochal essay, 'On Heroes,
Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History' (1840), in which he set out
his intensely held view that the decisive element in all cultural
achievement is the individual person of genius, and John Stuart Mill
wrote 'What Is Poetry', an essay that shows him to be one of the best
readers of poetry of that age. Nabinchandra Sen may have read one or
the other of these influential works—a direct correspondence does not
need to be drawn. What matters, rather, is the general awareness in this
time of the power of poetry, which gathered into itself the hegemony of
spirit that had hitherto been found in the domain of religion, in an
accelerating commitment to what Hegel called, in his Philosophy of
History, 'secular spirituality', a commitment that, in the colonial
context, was indispensable in creating a space for the commitment to
nationalism.
Nabinchandra Sen's lof ty response to Maitreya, that Palashir Yuddha
was not history, but poetry, was therefore precisely meant to indicate
perhaps that his poem was not concerned with dispelling false beliefs
about the past; instead, it endowed real events with the kinds of
meaning that only literature enables. Art and literature, wherever and
however they are produced, are paradigmatic in that they claim an
authority different in kind from that claimed by both science and
politics. is notion of the authority of 'culture', always a problematic
notion, was what gave Nabinchandra Sen the space to transcend, in an
Arnoldian formulation, the nitty gritty of historical fact to create an
autonomous zone of creativity, a zone that Tagore invoked in a different
way when he stated, 'in his own field of creativity, Rabindranath
[referring to himself]' was 'tied to no public by history', a view that also
seems to inform, essentially, Jadunath Sarkar's perception of universal
truth or chirasatya.

Notes
*An earlier version of this essay was published in the Journal of Asian Studies, vol.
66, no. 4 (November 2007), pp. 897-918.
1. Toru Dutt was the first Indian woman to publish English poetry to great critical
acclaim; she also translated French poetry and wrote a novel in French. is
quotation is taken from the Introduction to the original French edition of her
novel, Le Journal de Mademoiselle D'Arvers (1879) by Clarisse Bader, reprinted by
Penguin, 2005. Toru Dutt, e Diary of Made- moiselle D'Arvers, translated by N.
Kamala (Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2005).
2. Michel de Certeau, Introduction to e Writing of History, trans. Tom Conley
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), p. 4.
3. Ibid., p. 3. Emphasis in the original.

4. Conceivably, it could be the American Indian that Certeau has in mind when he
says 'Indian' here, following from his discussion, in the preface, of Jan Van der
Straet's etching for Americae decimapars, 1619, in which Vespucci is shown
confronting the Indian America; this confusion of the Americas for India has,
ofcourse, an old and venerable history. Nevertheless, India would still figure as a
constituent of the ird World, the last mentioned entity on his list.
5. Certeau, Writing of History, p. 4. He is quoting from Louis Dumont, 'Le
Probleme de l'histoire', in La Civilization indienne et nous (Paris, Colin, Coll.
Cahiers des Annales, 1964), pp. 31-54.
6. Ibid.

7. V. Narayana Rao, David Shulman, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Textures of Time:

Writing History in South India 1600—1800 (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001),
p. 1.
8. Ibid., p. 3.

9. Nabinchandra Sen, Amaar Jiban, in Nabinchandra Rachanabali (Calcutta:

Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, 1985), vol. 1, p. 359.
10. ese ranged from literary criticism that judged it with reference to another
poem, Hemchandra Bandyopadhyay's mythological epic Brittasan- ghar, to a feud
between East and West Bengali writers, to its selection as a textbook, to the British
government's queries about certain objectionable passages.
11. My translation. All subsequent translations from the Bengali are mine.
Akshaykumar Maitreya, Sirajuddaula (1897) (Calcutta: Gurudas Chatto- padhyay,
6th edn, n.d.), p. 364.
12. Rabindranath Tagore, 'Sirajuddaula', Itihas (Viswabharati, be 1395), p. 129.
13. Akshaykumar Maitreya took issue with Abanindranath regarding certain
pieces the latter wrote in Bharat Shilper Katha, while he charged Surendranath
Ganguly with ahistoricality in 'e Flight of Lakshman Sen' in Modern Review
(January 1909), pp. 61-3. Maitreya rejected the historical foundation of
Surendranath Ganguly's painting, 'e Flight of Lakshman Sena', exhibited under
the aegis of 'the Indian Society of Oriental Art', reproduced in black and white in
the January 1909 issue of Prabasi (p. 62). Maitreya argued that recent
archaeological evidence unearthed by Rakhaldas Banerjee at Bodh Gaya, among
other proofs, showed that the story of the seventeen horsemen of Bahktiyar Khilji
putting an aged Lakshman Sena to flight was a complete fabrication, a false myth
in Indian history. Subsequently (March 1909), Coomaraswamy defended the
painting, writing, 'Art is not archaeology... It can never be the function of an
archaeologist, as such, to criticise the work of an artist.' For a fuller discussion, see
Tapati Guha-akurta, Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in
Colonial and Postcolonial India (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), p.
220.
14. Hayden White, e Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical
Representation (Baltimore/London: e Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), p.
45.
15. Jacques Ranciere, e Names of History: On the Poetics of Knowledge, trans.
Hassan Melehy (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1994),
p. 8.
16. Ibid., p. 89.

17. Ibid.

18. Akshaykumar Maitreya, Sirajuddaula (1897), 6th edn.

19. Ibid., pp. 364–5. e phrase, 'the poet's path knows no impediments', literally
'the poet's path has no thorns' (nishkantak), that Maitreya quotes in this passage is
from Nabinchandra's one-page appendix to Palashir Yuddha, in which he gives
the reader somewhat sketchy details of his sources for certain historical events
portrayed in his narrative, concluding, in the last instance: 'whether this story is
true or false its author could not tell me, nor is it necessary for the poet to know;
for his path knows no impediments' (p. 120). is last phrase so irritated Maitreya
that he quoted it many times in his text within quotation marks, sometimes
ironically, sometimes sarcastically, repeatedly drawing attention to the absurdity
of such an assertion.
20. Ibid., pp. 415-43.

21. Nabinchandra Sen, Palashir Yuddha, in Nabinchandra Granthabali (Calcutta:

Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, be 1391), vol. 4, p. 55.
22. White, e Content of the Form, pp. ix-x.

23.Bimala Prosad Mukerji, 'History', in A.C. Gupta, ed., Studies in the Bengal
Renaissance (Calcutta: National Council of Education, 1958), p. 368.
24. Ibid., pp. 361-85.

25. Cited in Ranajit Guha, History at the Limit of World-History (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2003), p. 15. G.W.F. Hegel, Aesthetics (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975),
vol. 2, p. 973.
26. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World-History, trans. H.B. Nisbet
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 136.
27. Satishchandra Mitra, Jashor Khulnar Itihas (Calcutta: Dasgupta and Co.,
1965), vol. 2, p. 598.
28. Bhabatosh Datta, Haraprasad Sastri O Banglar Itihas (Calcutta: Sanyal
Prakashan, 1978), p. 261.
29. Jadunath Sarkar, 'Historical Introduction', in Bankimchandra Chatterjee,
Anandamath, ed. Brojendranath Bandyopadhyay and Sajanikanta Das (Calcutta:
Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, be 1345), p. iii.
30. Ibid., p. v.

31. Haraprasad Sastri, Preface to Bener Meye, in Haraprasad Sastri Rachana

Sangraha, ed. Satyajit Chaudhury (Calcutta: Pashchim Banga Rajya Pustak
Parishad, 1984), vol. 1.
32. Rakhaldas Banerjee, Preface to the first edition of Banglar Itihas, vol. 1.
33. Rakhaldas Banerjee, Preface to Pashaner Katha: A Historical Romance
(Calcutta: Bengal Medical Library, 1914).
34. Niharranjan Ray, 'Nibedan', 30 Ashvin, be 1356 [16 October 1949], in Bangalir
Itihas, Adi Parva, trans. Tapati Guha-akurta, in idem, Monuments, Objects,
Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Post-Colonial India (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2004), pp. 133, 335.
35. For a discussion on this image as a nationalist trope, see Rosinka Chau- dhuri,
'Hemchandra's Bharat Sangeet (1870) and the Politics of Poetry: A Pre-history of
Hindu Nationalism in Bengal?', Indian Economic and Social History Review, 42, 2
(2005), pp. 213-47.
36. Akshaykumar Maitreya, Mir Qasim (Calcutta: Puthipatra, 2004), p. 94.
(Originally published in 1904.)
37. Bankimchandra Chatterjee, 'Bangalar Itihas Sambandhe Koyekti Katha' [A
Few Words on the History of Bengal], Bankim Rachanabali (Calcutta: Sahitya
Sansad, 1998), vol. ii, p. 291. Because Muslims did not shave their heads
completely, 'shaven-headed' may have been a representation of the vulgarized
word commonly used for converts, 'nede', which itself could conceivably have
been a legacy from converts to Buddhism.
38. Maitreya, Mir Qasim, p. 96.

39. Ibid.

40. Ibid., p. 97.

41. Ibid., pp. 97-8.

42. Guha, History at the Limit of World-History.

43. Lionel Trilling and Harold Bloom, 'Victorian Prose', in e Oxford Anthology
of English Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 4.
 13

Autobiography as a Way of Writing History

Personal Narratives from Kerala and the
Inhabitation of Modernity

UDAYA KUMAR

I
n 1939, at the age of seventy-five, K. Kannan Nair, a well-known
figure in the Nayar reform movement, decided to write his
autobiography.1 At the outset, he reassured his readers about the
sources on which he had based his account:
In the year 1879, when I was a student of Class Five—the Fih
Form of today—following the advice of my teacher Sri
Selvanayakam, I took up the habit of keeping a diary. is practice
continued till 1932. My teacher felt that it would be a good means
of literary training on an easy subject. On some occasions,
conversations were also recorded in the diary, in the language in
which such exchanges took place. e details included in this
autobiography [swajivacaritram] for the period from 1888 to 1932
are summaries of those diary entries. ose for later years have
been written on the sole basis of memory.2
Kannan Nair belonged to the first generation of Malayalis who adopted
this new habit: committing their daily experiences to paper and ink. As
his case shows, the practice of diary writing, in its early days, was oen
linked to new projects of education. In addition to its usefulness as a
mnemonic, the diary helped in the cultivation of literary competence
and a disciplined survey of everyday activities. Some of the new writers,
the poet Kumaran Asan for example, wrote their diaries exclusively in
English, while others like Kannan Nair primarily used Malayalam.3
ese diaries were hardly a space for intimate confessions; Asan's diary,
for example, mainly recorded ordinary events from his daily life.
Diaries were one of the several forms of first-person enunciation which
developed in Kerala at this time. In the latter half of the nineteenth
century, coherent autobiographical narratives began to be written in
Malayalam, and a distinctive genre took shape in the first half of the
twentieth century. Like the novel, the autobiography appeared on the
literary scene as an expressive form associated with modernity.4
e late emergence of autobiographical writing in India has been
viewed at times as a sign of civilizational difference or historical lack: it
has been argued that the idea of a reflective individual subject, essential
for the development of the genre of self-writing, was alien to Indian
culture, or unavailable in the country until the colonial encounter.5 is
position has, however, been contested in recent years, with a growing
acknowledgement of figures of individuality in premodern and early
modern India. Perhaps excessive concern with the origins and
development of the genre has distracted our attention from another,
more important, question: what is the nature of autobiographical
practice in India? Readers schooled in the Western canon are
sometimes struck by the indifference that Indian autobiographies—
especially those written by male authors in the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries—oen display towards the private, interior lives of
their protagonists. Most of these self-narratives present themselves as
resolutely public utterances.
Arguably, all autobiographies written with a view to publication—
and perhaps even the others—may be considered public utterances in a
larger sense. However, we need to make distinctions: the 'publicity'
assumed by the majority of Indian self-narratives seems to be different
in kind from the exposure effected by personal confessions. Unlike a
Rousseau, who justified his autobiographical effort by pointing to his
singularity as a person, the Indian autobiographer oen highlights the
typicality or representativeness of his or her experiences. Even Gandhi,
whose autobiography displayed a clear differentiation of himself from
others, stated in his Preface that the book was the story not of his life
but of his 'experiments with truth'; his narrative had taken the shape of
an autobiography only because his life contained nothing but such
experiments.6 Gandhi's autobiographical gesture, according to this
claim, was not one of intimate self-revelation, but of an experimenter
sharing notes with others engaged in a similar project—there was
nothing private about this exchange. e periodicals in which Gandhi's
autobiography first appeared and the range of audiences it addressed
show that the space of such exchange was clearly tied to modern
notions of publicity.7
What do we make of the disavowal of the private in the majority of
Indian autobiographies? It is oen regarded as a sort of silence or
reticence adopted by authors in deference to social norms. Such a view
assumes the prior existence of a fully expressive autobiographical desire
in the author, upon which the normative structures of society come to
enact their constraining work. is is problematic, for social norms are
seen here as external to—rather than shaping—subjects and their desire
for self-articulation. If we are to understand practices of self-narration
in India in positive terms, we need to move away from this model and
engage more centrally with their avowedly public character. is would
mean considering autobiographies as a particular means of intervening
in a field populated by diverse genres of public utterance. Insofar as the
autobiographical act involves an exhibition of one's lived life before the
gaze of a reading public, paradigms of spectacle and performance may
be more relevant to the study ofself-narrat-ives than models of
authentic expressiveness.8
We may also need to be cautious about regarding autobiography as a
unified genre with a distinctive identity. Are we right in approaching,
with the same set of generic protocols, an entire range of personal
narratives which perform widely varying functions? Should we not
rather consider such narratives as belonging to different discursive
forms with distinctive objects?9 But, if we were to do that, how would
the role of the personal be assessed? Even when self-narratives turn
away from focusing on the protagonist, their mode of writing remains
tied to a first-person voice and a lived history. Even when the story does
not steadfastly keep the narrator's own life at its centre, what it makes
visible is shaped by an 'autobiographical mode' of enunciation. How do
we give this feature its due while stressing the public nature of
autobiographical writing?
e intersection of autobiography and history provides a useful site
for exploring these issues. A quick glance will show us that a large
number of Indian self-narratives written in the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries were obsessively preoccupied with the experience of
historical change. Using the life of the author at times as a mere pretext,
they sought to provide their readers with a 'slice of history'. Truth
claims made in these narratives were simultaneously historical and
personal: the veracity of the account of the past was grounded in a
testamentary claim made by the narrating voice. Even as they made
statements of an intimate nature about the personal life of the author or
ofother individuals, they were also intervening in ongoing processes
that shaped a collective memory. e autobiographer in these texts is,
simultaneously, the author of an individuated act of truth-telling and
the subject of a shared historical memory.
It may be an error to regard the conjoining of these two elements as
an accidental feature of particular autobiographies. Given the frequency
of such convergence, we should in fact look at this as a vital feature of
the genre in modern India. In fact, an important challenge that
autobiography studies in India face today is how to investigate the
mutual involvement and interpenetration of the personal and the
historical. While the former connects the autobiographical text to a
history of subjectivation, the latter links it to processes of collective
memory-making.
Here I discuss some autobiographical narratives from Kerala and
indicate the ways in which stories of a social past were written in the
autobiographical mode by authors who were well aware of their role as
historians of a sort. e narratives discussed were written in the middle
decades of the twentieth century, when the state of Kerala emerged as a
political unit; they speak mainly about a period that has come to mark
in public memory the advent of Kerala's modernity. e second half of
the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth witnessed
major transformations in Kerala's society. Colonial rule, directly in
Malabar and indirectly in Cochin and Travancore, occasioned the
introduction of new institutions and practices in governance and
administration; missionary initiatives, governmental technologies, and
social movements of the lower castes resulted in crucial changes in the
nature of communities and the relations between them; initiatives of
'social reform' led to the introduction and consolidation of modern
caste and gender identities; the emergence of a print culture and the
spread of new forms of education brought about contestations over an
emergent public domain. All these are well-worn themes in social
histories of modern Kerala. ese processes also transformed individual
lives, not only in what people did for a living or how they dressed and
spoke, but also in the ways in which they inhabited their personal lives.
Autobiographies provide a richly variegated body of testimonies to
these changes in life practices. In this sense, the self-narratives I look at
may be seen as interventions in public discussions on the provenance
and nature of modernity. Two questions seem central in reading them:
how did the autobiographical project inflect the conception and
performance of history writing for these authors; and, equally
important, how did the form of historical reminiscence make possible
for them a certain presentation of their newly produced sense of
selood?
e evidentiary value of personal narratives has always been, in
positivist terms, highly unreliable. e fallibility ofindividual memory is
not the sole issue here; problems of verifiability and the interests at play
in self-articulation—both conscious and unconscious—make
truthfulness in autobiographies a vexed issue. Ironically, the very
features that make self-narratives unreliable witnesses to events in the
real world can also make them interesting for the social or intellectual
hist-orian. It is not only their narrated content that links
autobiographies to history; acts of self-narration, the way subjects insert
themselves into discourses of public reminiscence, also possess a
historical dimension. Autobiographies that consciously take on a
historiographical task, like the ones I look at, are no exception to this.
Apart from the events they narrate, they also exhibit a snapshot of
history embodied in the particular form assumed by the remembering
subject.
Writing one's life story in order to provide an account of wellknown
events in the past has been most common among people who played an
active role in public life. Several prominent bureaucrats, political
leaders, and social reformers have justified their autobiographies in this
vein.10 However, this privilege is not limited to them: an ordinary life,
precisely by virtue of its ordinariness, can become a locus for historical
reminiscence. e autobiography of Kanippayyur Sankaran
Nambuthirippad (1891-1981) shows an interesting negotiation of this
situation. Kanippayyur was a renowned Sanskrit scholar and astrologer,
and the author of several books, including a Sanskrit-Malayalam
dictionary and texts on Kerala history, traditional architec-ture, and
rituals practised by Nambuthiri Brahmins. Kanippayyur began his
three-volume autobiography by reflecting on the absurdity of
committing his life story to print:
Mr Kuttippuzha Krishna Pillai suggested that I write my autobiography. I felt
like laughing. Would anyone like to read autobiographies, except those by great
personages? ... In my reply to him, I wrote: 'It is not difficult to write my life
history. Bathed in the morning, had breakfast, lunch, a coffee in the aernoon,
and dinner at night, slept: now the history of a day is complete. If you change
the date, and write "ditto", the history of the following day is done. I am sixty-
eight years old. If you write down the dates in all these years and a ditto against
each of them, my life history will be complete. However, I do not have the
audacity to publish this. If someone is ready to print and circulate it, I will
happily give away the copyright for free.'11
Kanippayyur believed that it was 'only great men like Mahatma Gandhi,
Prime Minister Pandit Nehru and President Rajendra Prasad' who
deserved to write their autobiographies. Like the heroes of epics in
ancient times, the protagonists of the modern age also had to possess
special qualities. e genre of autobiography (atmakatha) belonged to
these new heroes who had 'made history' by authoring the new nation.
e commemoration of venerable persons, an important function of
much traditional life writing in India, thus continued to be relevant
even in modern times.12 Early magazines in Malayalam oen published
short biographies of famous persons—the intent was pedagogic— and,
aer a textbook committee was set up in Travancore in 1865,
biographies were included as part of the school curriculum. Reform
initiatives laid special stress on life stories. A leader of the Nayar reform
movement, C. Krishna Pillai, went to the extent of arranging on his
sixtieth birthday a reading of Booker T. Washington's biography,
instead ohe traditional recitation ohe Bhagavata!13 So it was in a
sense natural for early autobiographers in Malayalam to feel the burden
of associating the exemplary with the enterprise of life writing.
Kanippayyur, however, overcame the hurdles posed by his
unremarkable life: he wrote three volumes of memoirs and issued them
from his own publishing house, Panchangam Book Depot. His strategy
was to turn the emptiness of his individual life into the site for a work of
memory that would be different from the autobiographies of national
heroes. Kanippayyur's lifetime had been witness to enormous 'changes
and transformations . . . in the lives of the Malayalis—especially the
Hindus, the upper castes in particular, and more specifically the
Nambuthiris.' is meant that 'almost everyone below the age of forty
or forty-five' had no idea of how their predecessors lived. e older
generation, along with the Kerala they inhabited, would soon disappear
from collective memory, making it necessary to 'record, at least as
history, those practices and traditions and the changes that happened to
them.'14
is project of historical documentation takes Kanippayyur back to
the possibility of an autobiography. 'If I write my life story, some of
these historical facts may be brought into it. And, writing in an
autobiographical form will be more convenient for describing them
adequately.' Nonetheless, he felt his humbler labour of documentation
should keep its distance from the grand aspirations of nationalist
autobiographies; he decided not to use the title 'Autobiography' and
chose 'My Reminiscences' (Ente Smaranakal) instead.15 Recent studies
on nationalist autobiographies in the colonial world have observed an
allegorical relationship between the individual and the emerging nation
in many of them, oen with a paradigm of progress and development
linking the two.16 Kanippayyur's unremarkable life did not claim such
parallels; but he had his own specific perspective on the times of change
that he had lived through.
e basic compositional impulse in Ente Smaranakal is descriptive
rather than narrative; descriptions of rituals, caste practices, objects of
everyday use, attire, and jewellery fill its three volumes. Documenting a
wide range of practices—from the gesture with which a Nayar greeted a
Nambuthiri to the details of the ritual trial of Nambuthiri women
charged with adultery—Ente Smaranakal has become, over the years, a
standard reference text in discussions of nineteenth-century Kerala.17
Kanippayyur's descriptions are oen accompanied by photographs or
drawings. Many of the pictures, like those that accompany colonial
ethnographic texts, have a staged quality to them: people from the
present are dressed up in anachronistic attire to play the role of
proxywitnesses from a lost world. Autobiography is turned into an
autoethnography of the past, and the life of the author-subject, bere of
interest or significance in its own right, is reconfigured as the site of a
historical rupture: the advent of modernity. By resolutely separating the
past from the present, it is this temporal hiatus that makes memory
possible and even necessary for Kanippayyur.
e events that announce modern transformations in histories of
Kerala—changes in legislation and institutions, and the emergence of
community organizations and political parties, for instance—are not
directly discussed in Kanippayyur's text. Instead, the volumes of Ente
Smaranakal teem with descriptions of customs, rituals, and objects of
use in the past. ey also provide implicit testimony to the empty space
in the present world created by the disappearance of all that is described
in the book. is sense of emptiness is constantly confronted by the
irremediable promiscuity modern spaces: Kanippayyur finds new
multitudes of people and things crowding into the world. He notices
this newness, at times even with fascination; but it does not contain the
proper objects that he wishes to describe and document.18 'Nostalgia'
may be too simple a word for his attitude, if it is understood as a
longing to return to the past and to occupy a space that the work of
time has made unavailable. Kanippayyur sees transformation as
inevitable. In fact, he takes advantage of opportunities created by
modernity, as his ventures in printing and publishing clearly indicate.
What preoccupies this Nambuthiri Brahmin in changing times is an
unredeemed debt of contemporary memory. e principles of
coherence that shaped the old world, he feels, are all too easily
forgotten; what appears to the present as absurd and unjust had a
coherent meaning and function in the past. Kanippayyur's aim is to re-
present the past world of Kerala from the perspective of an insider.
is raises an interesting question of right: who is entitled to give
voice to a shared historical memory? When Kanippayyur wrote his
autobiography, a powerful critique ofNambuthiri dominance in Kerala
was being made by scholars such as Ilamkulam Kunjan Pillai.19 In a
series of publications, Ilamkulam claimed that the Nambuthiris, who
came from outside, were responsible for instituting an inegalitarian and
exploitative caste society in Kerala. Aer acquiring considerable
economic and effective political power by the fourteenth century,
Ilamkulam argued, they imposed new practices which allowed them
sexual access to women from non-Brahmin upper castes. Contentions
such as Ilamkulam's need to be understood in the larger context of
shis in power relations between communities. From the late
nineteenth century, the practice of sambandham (temporary marital
alliance) between Nambuthiri men and Nayar women had become a
flashpoint in discourses of reform.20 Nayar social reformers, interested
in a shi from a matrilineal to a patrilineal form of inheritance, had
sought a redefinition of the sexual mores of their community,
characterizing sambandham arrangements with Nambuthiris as
primitive. ey had argued that a morally degenerate Nambuthiri caste
had imposed such 'uncivilized' practices on other castes in Kerala. From
the 1920s, the Nambuthiri reform movement also began criticizing
sambandham, seeking to limit marital relations to one's own caste.21
Although the Nambuthiri and Nayar communities moved to new
arrangements for marriage and inheritance by the middle of the
twentieth century, making sambandham a thing of the past, the issue
continued to hold considerable symbolic value in the historical
imagination of Malayalis. It became an important element in arguments
made at several fronts. For example, Ilamkulam, in his studies of
medieval Malayalam literature, noted a preponderance of erotic
versification and attributed this to the moral turpitude of the dominant
caste, the Nambuthiris.22
For Kanippayyur, these criticisms were symptoms of a modern
inability with historical understanding. e normative frames of the
present, according to him, impeded entry into the past on its own
terms. His own autobiography and historical accounts were aimed at
remedying this problem, which thus established an alliance between
autobiography and the writing of history. In one of his volumes on
Kerala history, Kanippayyur proposed an analogy between history and
biography:
Generally speaking, the biography of an individual is written in order to
provide information ... on his qualities, how he came to acquire them, what
sorts of difficulties he encountered, and how he overcame them. erefore, the
task ofwriting a person's biography is usually entrusted to friends who have
affection and esteem for him and have had opportunities to interact closely or
live with him. . . . Nobody would appoint as biographer an enemy who tries to
humiliate and malign his protagonist . . . Now let us examine those who have
set out to write a history of Kerala . . . e people of Kerala have few everyday
practices that are not linked to religion. An accurate history of Kerala, then, can
only be written by those who have seen the core ohese rituals and practices,
and who—even if they do not hold these in respect—are not hostile towards
them. In this light, all will agree that many of the educated Nayars are not
qualified to write a history of Kerala.23
History, therefore, was like the biography of a society, and the best
biographers were those who knew their protagonists from the closest
proximity. Biographies are here judged from the vantage point of
autobiography, within which external observation and self-perception
merge. e ideal biography—in this view—should coincide, in its
content and tone, with autobiography. Kerala history was thus best
written by the protagonists of Kerala's social past, for they alone
possessed an insider's knowledge of the principles of coherence that
shaped caste society in Kerala. In Kanippayyur's view this position
belonged solely to Nambuthiri Brahmins.
is move clarifies how Kanippayyur could turn his personal
autobiographical project into another sort of life narrative: his new
project was to write the biography of the society which he had lived in
and known from within, and which he thought he could describe
intimately as an insider. us, the biographical and the autobiographical
referred to distinct but interrelated levels of authorship: the biographer
Kanippayyur was a Nambuthiri from the Kerala of the past; as an
autobiographer, he was the subject of an unremarkable personal life.
e author-subject of Ente Smaranakal was located at the point where
these two planes of subjectivation intersected. In order to write an
autobiography, Kanippayyur had to assume the roles of biographer and
obituarist in relation to Kerala's past. is explains the strand of
mourning that runs through his text. However, it runs alongside a less
prominent narrative of his personal enchantment with new artefacts
and technologies. us, a complex intermingling of wonder and
discomfiture marks the affective economy of Ente Smaranakal.24
On rare occasions, intimate experiences make a hesitant entry into
this narrative, as when Kanippayyur comments on his first
sambandham with a lady from the royal family of Kochi.25 Life at her
Kovilakam, or royal family house, in Trippunitura afforded him new
comforts as also opportunities to study Sanskrit and English. However,
Kanippayyur also felt a growing disparity between this new life and his
own ways (sampradayam), leading him eventually to end the
relationship and leave Trippunitura. In a rare personal vein,
Kanippayyur notes his sense of pain at ending the sambandham as there
had been no conflict between him and his spouse; in fact, they were
very fond of each other. An instance of intimate personal grief thus
appears fleetingly as a minor detail in a story of changing life practices.
is is entirely in tune with Kanippayyur's narrative principles.
However, it is also important to note that the displacement of the
personal by the historical, promised by him in the Preface, is never
complete; a new sense of the personal, which derives its value solely
from the historicality of his experience, is produced by Kanippayyur's
narrative. is historicality of experience is different from the historical
interest possessed by the autobiographies of great national leaders.
I have dwelt at some length on this unusual text to highlight one of
the ways in which autobiography was used as a historiographical tool.
We must remember that Kanippayyur's was a narrative of privilege. As
we saw, it was his location of advantage in Kerala's caste society that
made him eligible to undertake his work of memory. Around this time,
other writers who possessed no such privilege also began writing about
their lives, claiming that ordinary life experiences in changing times
possessed historical value, and that this was reason enough for
narrating them.26 It is important to note the timing of these texts.
Debates around the formation of Kerala state and the movements for its
unification had produced, in the 1940s and 1950s, a number of
discourses on the identity of the region in social, cultural, and historical
terms.27 E.M.S. Nambuthirippad's seminal history of Kerala, Keralam
MalayalikaludeMathrubhumi (Kerala, the Motherland of the Malayalis),
and the writings of Ilamkulam belong to this moment.28 Quite a
number of the biographies and autobiographies that appeared in this
period in Kerala may be seen as occupying the same field as these texts
on account of their effort to forge connections between a modern
Malayali identity and the differentiated nature of the pasts that their
authors or protagonists had lived through.
E.M.S. Nambuthirippad's Atmakatha, serialized initially in magazines
and first published as a book in 1969, is an example of this. Readers
interested in Nambuthirippad's personal life are bound to be
disappointed by this text. Apart from early chapters that deal with his
childhood, Atmakatha focuses almost exclusively on the social and
political movements in which Nambuthirippad played an active role.
e personal element is oen confined to a discussion of the positions
he took on important issues. e 'I' of Nambuthirippad's narrative is a
political subject whose non-political life does not have much relevance
to the story. However, a detailed account of the author's political life is
not available in this text either. e narrative ends in the late 1930s,
when Nambuthirippad became a full-time activist of the Communist
Party of India. In later editions of his autobiography, a concluding
chapter was appended to clarify why the story ended where it did.
Nambuthirippad accepted the criticism that his Atmakatha lacked an
adequate display of the self (atmam), and that it was more a political
report than the emotional expression of an individual life:
While acknowledging this weakness without any hesitation, I believe that the
story—of how someone who was born into a 'world of gods and demons' and
spent his boyhood learning the Sanskrit language and the Rg Veda became a
communist—will be useful to tens of thousands of readers who have no
relationship with that life. Since the book has been written with this conscious
intent, it is better not to narrate the subsequent tale of my life, which is
inseparably linked to the story of the communist movement. Historians of the
movement will also have to tell the story of my life from 1938 till my death.
Leaving that task to them, I have been trying to spend the remaining part of my
life in efforts to nurture the movement.29
As in Kanippayyur, the customs of his time found ample room in
Nambuthirippad's book; but they performed a different narrative
function. ey supplied elements with which to build a framework for
'properly' historical explanation. Atmakatha showed an unreflective
child in its early chapters turning gradually into a selfconscious political
subject by recognizing this frame. For Nambuthirippad,
autobiographical narration was, by its very nature, marked by the
merits and flaws of a 'subjective approach'.30 In terms of its value, an
individual's autobiography was clearly subordinate to the history of the
society he or she lived in. Once the story of the emergence of a self-
conscious political subject was completed, there was very little le to be
told within the ambit of an autobiography; political history then
superseded the claims of personal narration.
 A different way of linking autobiography and social history can be
found in Jivitasamaram (Life Struggle). In this, C. Kesavan (1891—
1969), a leader of the Ezhava movement and later of the Travancore
State Congress, recounted his life experiences till the 1930s.31 Unlike
Nambuthirippad, Kesavan intended to write about the well-known
chapters ois active political life. He managed to publish two volumes
of his autobiography; the third and final volume, which was meant to
deal with the peak of his political career, remained unwritten when he
died in 1969. Jivitasamaram begins by introducing two interlocking
temporal sequences—the chronology of a personal life, and regional
and national history:
I was born in Kollam-Mayyanadu in an Ezhava household that no one could
call prosperous, on a day of the full moon, Saturday, 23 May 1891, under the
star Anizham. It is startling to think about the enormous difference between the
socio-political situation then and now. ose were the times when the tremor
of political unrest spread all over India. e Indian National Congress was
formed five years before I was born. e Malayali Memorial, which marked a
new chapter in the history of Travancore, was submitted when I was a year old.
It was the first instance of a political agitation in Travancore going beyond caste
and religious divisions. MalayalaManorama began to be published in 1064 or
1965 of the Malayalam Era [1889]. In 1067 [1892], the great scholar Paravur
Kesavan Asan founded the Keralabhushanam Press and the newspaper
Sujananandini. Malayali also started being published around this time: a
turning point in history, marked by the emergence of class-consciousness
[vargabodham].32
He continues in this vein for another four pages, bringing into his ambit
significant events from the political and social histories of Kerala—and
India—in the first five decades of the twentieth century. For Kesavan,
this is a narrative about democratization and increasing egalitarianism;
today, says Kesavan, kings, Brahmins, and Parayas enjoy the same
rights, a situation unimaginable five decades ago. e events ois
lifetime thus form 'chapters of a wondrous and revolutionary half-
century' and, in the making of this history, Kesavan admits with a
modesty tinged with pride that he 'too was not without some small
roles.'33 e politically active life of the protagonist ensures a link
between the principal events in his personal life and larger, regional and
national, histories.
Yet the historical narrative that runs through Kesavan's
autobiography is not confined to events in which he played an
important part. Much of what Kesavan has to say, especially in the early
chapters of Jivitasamaram, presents him less as an agent and more as an
observer, and sometimes as the mere context for comments on the
larger social milieu in which he lived. A macro-narrative of public
history is interwoven with the lesser narrative of events in Kesavan's
childhood and youth.34 His first memories of schooling, for example,
lead to a discussion of the establishment of a school for Ezhava children
in Mayyanadu, and then to the history of the education of lower castes
in Travancore. Kesavan is anxious to place his own experiences in a
larger historical frame. On many occasions he cites official documents
or earlier histories to provide this. He is unconcerned about the
originality of his historical account; he constructs it with elements from
a public repertoire of texts available to him. is includes state manuals,
missionary writings, and colonial ethnographic texts. Many of the
passages Kesavan cites from these texts were used frequently by lower-
caste writers before him. Kesavan also rehearses earlier accounts of the
past by prominent figures from his community, such as C.V.
Kunhuraman and K. Damodaran. e sense of a public history of
Kerala, and the position of the lower castes within it, form a necessary
part of his personal narration. In this sense, the larger history invoked
by Kesavan is not entirely external to his autobiography; it is as if his
personal story could not be told without it.
What distinguishes Kesavan's account is the way he develops, within
this frame, a variety of narrative strands to capture the rich dynamic of
popular practices. e account of his childhood provides several
examples of this. As a young boy, he was invited to act in a play
produced by C.V. Kunhuraman and his friends. Kesavan uses it as a
context for describing the state of theatre arts in Kerala at the time.
Musical plays had not yet arrived on the scene. Tamil drama troupes had not
started rushing into Kerala from across the ghats. Nor was the practice of an
 actor leaping with a song from the wings to centre-stage, as the curtain rises,
prevalent then. Malayalam theatre was entirely dominated by plays written in
manipravalam [a mixture of Sanskrit and Malayalam], like Valiyakoil
ampuran's Sakuntalam and Mannadiar's Uttararamacaritam. ere were no
songs; only slokas. But these slokas would be sung according to musical
schemes. Perunelliyil Krishnan Vaidyar was then widely liked as a Venmani of
the Ezhavas. Everyone could recite from memory the single slokas that he wrote
in periodicals like Vidyavilasini and his intoxicating erotic songs like the
Maranpattu. Several legends had formed around him. His play
Subhadraharanam appeared around that time. Naturally, it attracted the
attention of C.V. Kunhuraman and others.35
Kesavan moves away from high-cultural accounts of this period to
focus on popular initiatives in literature and theatre by Ezhavas, which
combined the resources of manipravalam, popular musical
performances, and the repertoire of erotic versification. is light-
hearted and playful scene stands in interesting contrast with the
literature commonly associated with Ezhava reform which was to reach
its peak in the early decades of the twentieth century—the disavowal of
sensuous eroticism in the poetry of Kumaran Asan and, indeed, Sree
Narayana Guru.36
Kesavan's intimate engagement with the world of popular
entertainment allowed him to adopt a double vision in relation to the
new idioms of cultural modernity that Ezhavas were adopting at that
time. is attitude extended beyond the world of literature. Kesavan
was, initially, not an active participant in Sree Narayana Dharma
Paripalana Yogam's initiatives. Later, he became the secretary of the
Yogam and led the Ezhava community into electoral politics.37 In his
youth, although Kesavan supported the efforts of his community to
create a new identity for itself, he also viewed some aspects of this
process with scepticism. He had high regard for Sree Narayanan, but
not for his sanyasi followers, many of whom he thought lazy and
covetous.38 Kesavan was more at home in the popular political culture
ofvirile contestation than in the new idioms of reformed civil conduct.
is introduced interesting complications into his lived experience of
modernity: even as he adopted its ideals, he did not fully fit into its new
disciplines. is lack of fit allowed Kesavan to observe and record not
only the past customs that contemporary Malayalis were moving away
from, but also the new practices they were adopting.
Like many autobiographies of its time, Jivitasamaram contains
numerous discussions of the embodied technologies of caste. Kesavan
provides interesting ethnography on distance pollution (teendal).
Unlike in many other parts of Kerala, Ezhavas were not generally
regarded as polluting by the Nayars in Mayyanadu, a village in southern
Kerala where Kesavan grew up. e Pulayas and the Parayas, much
lower in the caste hierarchy, bore the brunt of practices of pollution.
Kesavan has interesting anecdotes on casteism, including that of a
teacher at his school who devised a new technique of punishment for
lower-caste students: to avoid all polluting contact, he would throw his
cane at them rather than hit them with it! Many of Kesavan's stories
seem to be meant to evoke incredulity and disgust in the reader, in
marked contrast to the emotion of wonder that Kanippayyur's
descriptions had aimed at creating.
It is, however, the practices of his own community that occupy much
of Kesavan's descriptions in Jivitasamaram. Some of them are sarcastic
accounts of features of community life he criticized: traditional roles
performed in the community by the vatti or barber-priest, the
oppressive behaviour of elders, the false pride of jatis who claimed a
higher status within the community, and the arrogance of the new
Ezhava elite—all these become targets of his acerbic humour. Some of
his other stories are more complex, like his account of
talikettukalyanam (a symbolic wedding ritual performed before a girl-
child reached puberty, strongly criticized by the Sree Narayana
movement) or his pilgrimages to Kodungallur temple. Kesavan's
description of talikettu-kalyanam does not echo the reformists'
rejection, but captures the exuberance of the celebration through the
eyes of an enthusiastic insider. e perspective of childhood supplies
narrative justification for this device, but the energies of the description
arguably go beyond that. e domain of popular practices, irrespective
of a rational, reformist assessment, seems to provide Kesavan with an
energetic, even if unstable, space from which the setting in of
modernity can be surveyed. When Kesavan writes about the
tirandukalyanam feast, his gaze lingers not only on elements that have
disappeared, but also on new eating practices that would come in soon.
e main dish at Ezhava feasts in Travancore at that time was a fish
curry made with roasted coconut paste. Sambar was popularized
among the Ezhavas by the S.N.D.P. Yogam.39 Kesavan's autobiography
documents the emergence of many such practices which later became
naturalized as part of the everyday world of Malayalis.
His description of the Bharani festival at Kodungallur is another
example of this. When Kesavan was seven or eight years of age, he
accompanied some family members on a pilgrimage to the Kodungallur
temple. Lower castes were allowed entry into the temple premises
during the Bharani festival, and drinking as well as the chanting of
bawdy songs (purappattu) were a prominent part of the ritual
celebrations. Kesavan and his companions observed austerities for ten
days before they set out; he counts the boat journey to Kodungallur as
among the most marvellous experiences of his childhood. As the boat
approached Kodungallur, the pilgrims began singing purappattu.
Kesavan memorized several of these songs and, in all innocence, took to
singing them with gusto. Upon his return home he tried singing one of
them, but his father put a quick end to his effort with a stinging blow.
e journey to Kodungallur was repeated a second time a few years
later, during Kesavan's adolescence. His participation and enjoyment
now were even fuller, given his recent entry into the adult world of
masculinity. Years later, he went to Kodungallur once again, but this
time it was to campaign against these practices of worship, which were
by then seen as 'barbaric' by Ezhava reformers. In his autobiography,
Kesavan's language oscillates between the consciousness of the child
who relished the festival, and the critical consciousness of his adult
participation in the reform movement.
In the middle of his description of the festival with its animal
sacrifice and unrestrained, sexually suggestive behaviour by men and
women, Kesavan inserts his views as a reformer on the history of this
practice. Here he echoes the arguments of C.V. Kunhuraman and K.
Damodaran that this rite commemorated the destruction of a Buddhist
nunnery.40 In the 1920s and 1930s several Ezhava writers had suggested
that the community possessed a Buddhist past, using it as an argument
in support of conversion to Buddhism.41 P. Palpu, one of the foremost
leaders of the Sree Narayana movement, had made this view the kernel
of many ois petitions and campaign writings, suggesting that the
lower-caste status of the Ezhavas was the result of a Brahminical
usurpation ofpolitical power in a predominantly Buddhist Kerala.42
e historical argument invoked by Kesavan here is oriented towards a
rational programme of collective endeavours; the remembered
pleasures of his childhood, on the other hand, are grounded in what we
may call a non-intellectual estimation of popular practices.
Kesavan was not unique in foregrounding a popular, non-intellectual
strand in his autobiographical narrative. We can find something similar
in the life stories of A.K. Gopalan from the Communist Party and
Kumbalathu Sanku Pillai from the Travancore State Congress.43 Rather
than a disciplined and reflective apprehension of the world, their life
narratives privilege spontaneous moral reactions marked by a good deal
of physical courage and a strong sense of masculinity. Even their
participation in new disciplinary programmes is mediated oen by
strong-willed masculine assertion. Both Sanku Pillai and Kesavan
narrate strikingly similar instances oheir use of physical force in
controlling the drunken behaviour ofothers.44 Sanku Pillai was a
passionate practitioner of physical exercise and wrestling; he even
exhibited his wrestling skills at Congress conferences. A spontaneous
masculinity, which is unable to hide or control its just outrage and
turbulent emotions, underlies the conception of ethical agency in these
narratives. Kesavan and Sanku Pillai were also known for the strong
language of their public speeches. One such speech, delivered during
the Nivartana agitation, led to Kesavan's imprisonment by the
Travancore government in 1935. ese leaders, in contrast with the
educated elite that dominated the participation of their communities in
state politics, spoke in a language marked by the intense emotions of
indignation and enthusiasm. e strongest condemnation in
Jivitasmaram is arguably reserved for some of the prominent members
of the Ezhava elite in his time. Kesavan disapproved of their
condescending and unfeeling attitude towards the poor within the
community. He also disagreed with their style of politics, which for him
was far too removed from popular sentiment or authentic moral
passion.
e presentation of history in Kesavan's autobiography is informed
by an ambivalent estimation of the new norms and disciplines that
came to mark life practices in modern Kerala. Even as he endorsed the
values upheld by the reform movement, Kesavan's account of its
innovations retains a sense of their initial strangeness. is, I argued,
allows him to make visible a level of popular practice irreducible to
public historical accounts. A most fascinating incident reported in
Jivitasamaram provides a good example ohis, and allows us to reflect
on aspects of the link between autobiographical memory and social
history. While discussing changes in the attire and appearance of men
and women in his time, Kesavan writes of the coming in of a sartorial
practice, namely the wearing of the blouse (ravukka) and the upper
cloth (melmundu). He draws here on Nagam Ayya's Travancore State
Manual and the correspondence between British officials and the
Travancore government regarding the agitations around the wearing of
a breast cloth. ese well-known chapters from a history of clothing are
followed immediately by a personal recollection of Kochikka, who was
C.V. Kunhuraman's wife and Kesavan's mother-in-law.45 In a
fascinating passage that Kesavan cites, Kochikka remembers the time
she first wore a blouse. Two of her cousins from Trivandrum, who had
come to visit her at Mayyanadu, brought a blouse for her as a gi. She
tried this new garment, felt that it tickled her a little, but found it
altogether quite nice. Showing it to her mother, she was warned by her
not to appear in such an obscene dress in public. Kochikka tried it again
the following day, and inadvertently came out oer room wearing it,
only to be beaten by her mother for dressing up like a Muslim woman.
At a time when unclothed breasts were part of the 'proper' appearance
of Ezhava women—and ofwomen ofother non-Brahminical castes—the
blouse appeared scandalously obscene. Kunhuraman, the Ezhava
reformer, however, liked his wife in her new blouse. Because her mother
would not let her wear it outdoors, Kochikka would wait patiently for
the night to come, and, aer her mother was safely in bed, wear her
blouse within her room and wait for her husband to arrive!46
How do we understand this fragment from the past which presents
before us a complex field of visibility and an equally complex set of
performative acts? In an excellent study of transformations in women's
apparel within the context of caste reform movements in the twentieth
century, J. Devika highlights a tendency to clothe women with 'culture'
and to aestheticize them, producing them as providers of enjoyment for
their modern spouses in monogamous arrangements.47 She cites the
testimony of Kunhuraman's wife to illustrate this movement,
contextualizing it within a wide range of discourses of the time. e
figure of the 'husband' in the testimony, she argues, 'emerges out of a
combination of the images of "Vasanthy's father", " Vadhyar' (teacher)
and " Gandharvan' (celestial lover, seeker of beauty, favouring young
virgins). It is for such a man—modern in tastes and inclination—that
the woman in the account dupes traditional authority and wears the
blouse.'48 e night-time act of wearing the blouse in the privacy of
conjugal space thus involved constituting oneself as the object of the
tasteful, modern gaze of one's husband. is act is embedded in a range
of disciplinary performatives which produced new forms of gendered
identity in modern Kerala.
Does Kochikka's testimony, as cited by Kesavan, possess a dimension
that cannot be exhausted by this disciplinary paradigm? e passages of
her testimony also seem to bear witness to the pleasures of a new mode
of embodied subjectivation. Indeed, this is not entirely separable from
mechanisms that produce women as objects of domestic, marital
enjoyment for their partners. e question is whether the acts of the
subject—trying out this new piece ofclothing which covers her breasts
and tickles her body; turning and twisting to look at herselfin it;
wanting to wear it everywhere, and, when that proves impossible,
rebelliously deciding to wear it indoors at night for approbation by her
husband— are all ultimately reducible to a desire for objectification
before a husband's gaze. Or could it be that, alongside this, and
inseparably entwined with this, we can also discern a different, if closely
related, gesture in the history of individuation and self-fashioning—a
moment of subjectivation—at work? Is the gaze that we find Kochikka
training on herself solely a disciplinary one, or does it create a new
relationship to herself, the trajectory of which is not determined in
advance nor in its entirety? ese questions could be important when
unravelling the relations between personal narratives and historical
accounts. While embracing new disciplines, the subject also performs a
certain 'work' ofimprovisation in negotiating new forms of normativity,
and we may need a fresh set of analytical tools to understand these.
But how do we proceed from here? In the testimony that we have
been considering, this problem is complicated by the nature of
Kesavan's text and its mechanism of citation. It would be nai've to
consider Kochikka's words as an utterance from earlier times retrieved
in their original authenticity. eir status as a fragment from the past is
coloured by the strategies of historical recollection at work in Kesavan's
autobiography. is makes it difficult to arrive at precisely what
Kochikka said and did. In some sense, the passage works as a typical
anecdote in Kesavan's narrative, with its ironic reversal of the public
and the private in times of change. Like Kesavan's account of changing
fashions in relation to the shape ofwomen's earlobes—growing them
long was the preferred practice earlier, and later a modern set of
aesthetic norms and new kinds of jewellery led to their shortening—the
anecdote of the blouse also appears as part of Kesavan's ironic history of
normative practices.
e pleasures of etho-poetic acts of self-making may not be reducible
to normative prescriptions; in fact, they may arise precisely from a
temporary suspension of secure normative frames. Judith Butler,
following Foucault's work on 'technologies of the self ', makes a
distinction between 'conducting oneself according to a code of conduct'
and 'form[ing] oneself as an ethical subject in relation to a code of
conduct'.49 e latter involves a stylization of the acts and pleasures of
the subject. e acts generated in the context of a new normative frame
may thus involve forms of stylization that are not reducible to the rules
ofconduct foregrounded by the frame. It is precisely this lack offit that
makes testimonial anecdotes important for autobiographies written in
changing times.
Stephen Greenblatt and Catherine Gallagher touch upon a similar
problem when they revisit the status of anecdotes and the possibilities
these open up for historical understanding. ey argue that some
anecdotes compel us with a cluster of individualizing details that may
not fit into the frame of the larger narrative within which they appear:
[T]he undisciplined anecdote appealed to those of us who wanted to interrupt
the Big Stories. We sought the very thing that made anecdotes ciphers to many
historians: a vehement and cryptic particularity that would make one pause or
even stumble on the threshold of history. But for this purpose, it seemed that
only certain kinds of anecdotes would do: outlandish and irregular ones held
out the best hope for preserving the radical strangeness ohe past by gathering
heterogeneous elements— seemingly ephemeral details, overlooked anomalies,
suppressed anachronisms—into an ensemble where ground and figure, 'history'
and 'text' continually shied. . . . Approached sideways, through the eccentric
anecdote, 'history' would cease to be a way of stabilizing texts; it would instead
become part of their enigmatic being.50
Autobiographies and other genres of first-person narration play a
prominent role in the production and circulation of anecdotes: many a
time, it is the autobiographical voice testifying to an odd detail that
supplies the unorthodox historian with that stimulating combination
ofeccentricity and authenticity. is produces two sorts ofdisturbances:
a narratological disturbance effected by the little story on the big one,
and the presentation of a new kind of subject on the scene. However,
the use of the anecdote by the historian, for Greenblatt and Gallagher,
also risks a certain paradox: 'the strong desire to preserve the energies
of the anecdote by channelling them into historical explanation, which
is followed by frustration and disappointment when the historical
project stills and stifles the very energies that provoked it.'51 is irony
underlies the peculiar pathos of anecdotalism: 'the (coun-ter)historian
clutches the life of the anecdote, but it expires in his or her grasp.'52
 is analysis is relevant to the fortunes of the anecdote, not only
within the work of professional historians but also in Kesavan's
historical project within his autobiography. Nonetheless, as in the case
of the blouse, some anecdotes in Kesavan's text, regardless of the
apparent uses to which he puts them, do allow us to think about the
diverse ways in which modern identities were negotiated in Kerala. is
space of play owes something to the relationship that Kesavan's
narrative maintains with the domain of the popular, enabling a
suspension of strict normative disciplining.
Did autobiographical writing provide everyone with such elo-quent
and entertaining remembrance? Or did it also introduce for some a new
relationship between solitude, silence, and self-narration? Lalitambika
Antarjanam (1909-87), one of the most important women writers of
Kerala, did not write a full-scale autobiography, although Kunhuraman
had encouraged her to write one when she was young. She did not heed
his advice, but three decades later, brought out a collection ofessays and
fragments, some ohem previously published, under the title
Atmakathayku Oru Amukham (An Introduction to [My]
Autobiography).53 A novelist and writer of short stories, Antarjanam
explained her hesitation in writing her autobiography via the new set of
demands that this genre placed on her talents. Novels might give room
to the autobiographical element, but the fictive had no place in
autobiography. In that genre, art had to give way to truth in all its
nakedness. Antarjanam tells us that she regarded 'the hundred-headed
serpent of the ego' as the worst enemy of self-narratives; being unsure of
conquering it, she did not want to venture into this new form of
writing. She also had a more immediately personal reason for her
reluctance—even decades aer she turned down Kunhuraman's
suggestion, whenever she thought of presenting herself in public
through autobiographical narration, she felt as diffident as a young
Nambuthiri woman stepping into the world without the protection of a
veil or a shielding umbrella.54
It is not accidental that the autobiographical act is so closely linked in
Antarjanam's imagination with her difficult—and desired—entry into
the public realm. In her youth, girls from Nambuthiri families were not
allowed to go freely out of the inner space of the household aer they
reached puberty. ey were not permitted to be seen even by most male
members of their own household.55 Nambuthiri reformers had
criticized this practice, and M.R. Bhattatirippad's play Ritumati, which
focused on the plight of a pubescent girl, was performed as part of their
campaigns in several places. Lalitambika was among the early
Nambuthiri women who shed their protective veil and umbrella.
e formative years in an Antarjanam's life, according to
Lalitambika, were spent in the dark recesses oer house. Her sense
ofself, even her desire for freedom, was forged not in an open,
collectively shared space, but in the solitude of inner rooms. She recalls
how, when she 'came ofage', everybody at home cried, moved by the
plight that awaited her. Her entry into adolescence signalled, to the
external world, her death. However, Lalitambika says her 'real'
education took place over the two and a half lonesome years she spent
in the inner rooms of her house. Her father had gied her a copy of
Tagore's Ghare Baire (Home and the World), which had lately appeared
in a Malayalam translation.56 Her emotions were nurtured less by real-
life contacts than by literature and by the real experience of unfreedom.
During this period, she had even begun writing a story in the manner
of Tagore's novel.
Entry into the larger public arena as a new woman put into crisis the
very sense of self that desired a wider world. Lalitambika's way of
coping with this new world was to use the protective veil oer
imagination, which enabled her to speak without speaking as herself.
Fiction allowed a displacement of one's self by all that one spoke about.
One could reveal things without revealing oneself, except obliquely.
is also made autobiography a difficult genre for Lalitambika. She did
not wish to rid herself of fiction's protective umbrella and, she believed,
there was no room for fiction in an autobiography. Lalitambika's
response to this problem was to incorporate this difficulty into the very
form of her autobiographical enterprise. Instead of an autobiography,
she would write only a preface to an autobiography, whereby she
adopted a fragmentary form to speak about a difficulty.
is hesitation, which also became an act ofspeech, was Lalitambika's
way of linking autobiographization with historical inscription. e very
form of self-narration, in its intimacy with solitude and silence,
revealed a historical moment in its amplitude. Her times entered her
autobiography in the form of a solitude that defined her location and
enabled her public enunciative acts. is configuration was of course
not representative of all women writers in Kerala in the early twentieth
century. Women from many non-Brahmin communities did not share
Lalitambika's experience in the same way, and the repertoire of their
personal expression from this period is far more diverse. Essays
published in women's magazines as early as the first decades of the
twentieth century show the emergence of strong autobiographical
voices which draw upon a variety of sources, including details
ofeveryday life in the domestic realm.57 Such forms ofenunciation, used
effectively by several Nayar and Christian women, were not easily
available to an Antarjanam. e modern subject that speaks in
Lalitambika's writing displays an uneasy relationship with her self-
avowedly autobiographical performance. Her preface to an impossible
autobiography also seems to suggest that her more elaborate practice of
self-narration was in the 'veiled' mode of fiction. is aspect of
Lalitambika's writing challenges students of autobiographical practice
to redraw generic boundaries, and to look more closely at a wider range
of expressive forms to write about themselves used by emergent subjects
in modern Kerala.
My aim in this essay has been to look closely at the moves by which
certain autobiographies in mid-twentieth-century Kerala brought
together personal narration and the recording of a shared past. As
selfnarratives written in times of change, they had to negotiate between
earlier and newer forms of subjectivity. Each of these texts shows a
distinctive set of strategies in setting about to do this. ey also
demonstrate some of the important ways in which new identities were
assumed in modern Kerala. At the same time, an elusive lack of fit
marks each of these stories of subjectivation. is is the perspective
from which we need to see the gap between the two orders of the
author-subject in Kanippayyur, the tensions between new regimes of
discipline and a domain of popular practices in Kesavan, and the refusal
of a direct autobiographical venture by Lalitambika. e value of these
self-narratives as histories lies in their ability to show us this lack of fit
in the inhabitation of modernity by its subjects.

Notes
1 K. Kannan Nair (1864-1941) was one of the founders of the Nair Service
Society; he also edited the periodical Nayar. He initially worked as a police
constable in Malabar, and later as a schoolteacher in Malabar and Travancore.
2 K. Kannan Nair, Foreword to Karuthodi Kannan Nayarude Atmakatha (e
Autobiography of Karuthodi Kannan Nair) (Calicut: Mathrubhumi, 1989), p. v.
All translations from Malayalam in this essay are mine.
3 See Kumaran Asan's Diary, Microfilm Collection, Nehru Memorial Museum
and Library, New Delhi. For a discussion of entries from Asan's Diary, see K.
Prabhakaran, Asante Diarikalilude (rough Asan's Diaries) (on-nakkal:
Sarada Book Depot, 1988).
4 is does not mean that all autobiographies were directly linked to the
experience of colonialism or Western education. See, for example, the brief
autobiographical account written by Pachu Mooothathu around 1875. e first
autobiographical account in modern Malayalam was a narrative of conversion to
Christianity, written by Yakob Ramavarman in 1856, and published by the Basel
Mission in Tellicherry in 1879. For a discussion of these texts, see my 'Subjects of
New Lives: Reform, Self-Making and the Discourse ofAutobiography in Kerala', in
Bharati Ray, ed., Different Types of History (New Delhi, forthcoming).
5 For a discussion of this view and the privileging of a paradigm ofcollectivity at
the expense of the individual in scholarship on South Asia, see David Arnold and
Stuart Blackburn, eds, Telling Lives in India: Biography, Autobiography, and Life
History (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004), especially the Introduction.
6 M.K. Gandhi, An Autobiography, or e Story ofMy Experiments with Truth,
trans. Mahadev Desai (1927-9; rpnt. London: Penguin, 1982), p. 14.
7 Gandhi's autobiography in the original Gujarati first appeared serially in
Navajivan, from November 1925 to February 1929. English translations appeared
simultaneously in issues of Young India, and were reproduced weekly by Indian
Opinion in South Africa and Unity in the United States. See e Collected Works of
Mahatma Gandhi (New Delhi: Government of India Publications Division, 1958-
94), vol. 44, p. 88, n. 1.
8 Two important arguments that move in this direction can be found in the recent
work of Adriana Cavarero and Judith Butler. Cavarero, drawing on Hannah
Arendt's notion of the political as the sphere of appearance, makes a strong case
for understanding autobiography in a relational rather than expressive paradigm.
See Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selood, trans. Paul A. Kottman (London
and New York: Routledge, 2000). See also, Judith Butler, Giving an Account of
Oneself: A Critique of Ethical Violence (Amsterdam: Koninklijke van Gorcum,
2003), and idem, 'What is Critique? An Essay on Foucault's Virtue', in the Judith
Butler Reader, ed. Sara Salih (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 302-22.
9 Drawing on the rhetorical features of texts, Paul de Man has made a case against
considering autobiography as a distinctive genre. See 'Autobiography as
Defacement', Modern Language Notes, 94: 5 (1979), pp. 919-30. e argument
developed in the present essay is sceptical about the usefulness of treating
autobiography as a unified genre with stable borders. However, it looks at this
issue in terms of discursive moves—enabled by self-narration in the public sphere
—rather than textual properties.
10 For example, see the autobiographies of figures such as C. Sankaran Nair, K.M.
Panikkar, K.P.S. Menon, Mannathu Padmanabhan, K.P. Kesava Menon, and
Joseph Mundassery. Sankaran Nair has this to say: 'To be an octogenarian in a
land where this species has become a rarity, and to have spent over half a century
in the front ranks of public life, form, perhaps, a sufficient excuse for recapturing
one's memories; but to have been in the citadel of the Government during the
most formative period of recent Indian history, namely the Great War, and to have
played a not inconspicuous part in launching "reformed" India on its course make
it almost imperative to pass on one's experiences to the public.' Introduction, in
Autobiography of Chettur Sankaran Nair (1966; rpnt. Ottappalam: Chettur
Sankaran Nair Foundation, 1998), p. xiv.
11 Kanippayyur Sankaran Nambuthirippad, Ente Smaranakal (My
Reminiscences) (1963; rpnt. Kunnamkulam: Panchangam Pusthakasala, third
edn, 2004), vol. 1, p. 1.
12 e word carita—oen used with reference to the life stories of spiritually
exemplary figures—signifies both history and character in many Indian languages.
Several early autobiographies were titled atmacarita. For a discussion of these
connections, see Sudipta Kaviraj, 'e Invention of Private Life: A Reading of
Sibnath Sastri's Autobiography , in David Arnold and Stuart Blackburn, eds,
Telling Lives in India, pp. 86-7. Partha Chatterjee differentiates the narrative
idioms of early women's autobiographies from those by men, and highlights a
distinction between smrithikatha and atmacarita. See Partha Chatterjee, e
Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1993), pp. 138-9.
13 Booker T. Washington's biography, written in Malayalam by M.A. Paramu
Pillai, who relied largely on Up From Slavery, was first published in 1904. is was
adopted as a textbook for high school classes in Travancore. Another prominent
Nayar leader, Mannathu Padmanabhan, provides an account of the reading at C.
Krishna Pillai's house in his autobiography Jivitasmaranakal (Memories ofa Life)
(Changanassery: N.S.S. Press, 1957), vol. 1, p. 68.
14 Ibid., p. 7.

15 Kanippayyur also clarifies how the structure of his narrative will be different
from autobiography proper: 'In this book, I may speak not only about my life but
also about many other related things, sometimes according to the context and
sometimes even without such connection. I wish to inform my readers that this is
due neither to sloppiness nor stupidity; this is by design.' Ente Smaranakal, pp. 7-
8.
16 See, for example, Philip Holden, 'Other Modernities: National Autobio-graphy
and Globalization', Biography 28:1 (2005), pp. 89-103. In his study of prison
narratives written by leaders of the Indian national movement, David Arnold
finds parallels between the prison and the state of the nation under colonial rule.
See David Arnold, 'e Self and the Cell: Indian Prison Narratives as Life
Histories', in Arnold and Blackburn, eds, Telling Lives in India, pp. 29-53.
17 See, for instance, P. Bhaskaran Unni, Pathonpatham Nuttandile Keralam
(Kerala in the Nineteenth Century) (Trissur: Kerala Sahitya Akademi, 1988).
18 Two sorts of fascination come up repeatedly in Kanippayyur's text: his
encounter, as a child, with modern objects such as the bicycle (his adult ex-
perience of air travel does not match this in excitement), and his grudging
engagement with new social spaces such as coffee clubs and tea shops, which
provide opportunities for him to reflect on how people, including himself,
negotiated them.
19 See, for example, the following works of Ilamkulam Kunjan Pillai: Kerala-
charitrathile Iruladanja Edukal (e Dark Pages ofKerala History) (Kotta-yam:
e Author, 1953), Chila Keralacharitra Prasnangal (Some Problems Relating to
Kerala's History) (Kottayam: Sahitya Pravarthaka Co-operative Society, 1955),
Keralabhashayude Vikasaparinamangal(e Development and Transformation of
Kerala's Language) (Kottayam: Sahitya Pravarthaka Co-operative Society, 1957),
and Janmisampradayam Keralathil (e System of Land Ownership in Kerala)
(Kottayam: Sahitya Pravarthaka Cooperative Society, 1959).
20 In the late nineteenth century, according to custom, only the eldest son in a
Nambuthiri household was allowed to marry within his caste; the younger sons
entered into sambandham alliances with women from the non-Brahmin upper
castes, especially the Nayars and the ambalavasis or temple-serving castes. For a
discussion of sambandham arrangements among the Nayars, see G. Arunima,
ere Comes Papa: Colonialism and the Transformation ofMatriliny in Kerala,
Malabar, c. 1850—1940 (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2003).
21 Autobiographies written by reformers from both Nayar and Nambuthiri
communities discuss these initiatives in detail. See, for example, C. San-karan
Nair, Autobiography of Chettur Sankaran Nair; V.T. Bhattatirippad,
Karmavipakam, rpnt. in V T.yude Sampurna Krithikal (e Complete Works of V.
T.) (Kottayam: D.C. Books, 1997).
22 Ilamkulam P.N. Kunjan Pillai, Sahityacaritrasamgraham (A Short History of
Literature) (1962; rpnt. Kottayam: National Book Stall, 1970), pp. 51-2.
23 Kanippayyur Sankaran Nambuthirippad, Aryanmarude Kutiyettam (Keralathil)
(e Aryan Immigration [in Kerala]) (1965-7; rpnt., 2nd edn, Kunnamkulam:
Panchangam Pusthakasala, 2000-2), vol. 4, pp. xii-xiii.
24 For a more detailed discussion of these emotions, see my 'Subjects of New
Lives'.
25 Kanippayyur, Ente Smaranakal, vol. 1, pp. 339-44.

26 T.K. Raman Menon, writing in the early 1960s, suggested that the lives of
extraordinary figures were atypical and partial, and that there is no reason to
privilege the lives of rulers and politicians over those of peasants and singers.
Vidwan T.K. Raman Menon, Ente Ayushkala Anubhutikal (My Life Experiences)
(Madras: Yasoda Ammal, 1989), p. 1.
27 For a discussion of some of the debates around the unification of Kerala, see J.
Devika, 'e Idea of Being Malayali: e Aikyakeralam Movement of the Mid-
Twentieth Century', paper presented at the conference on South Indian History,
Madras Institute ofDevelopment Studies, December 2004.
28 E.M.S. Nambuthirippad, Keralam MalayalikaludeMathrubhumi (Kerala, the
Motherland of the Malayalis), in EMS-inte Sampurna Kritikal (e Complete
Works ofE.M.S.) (1947-8; rpnt. Trivandrum: Chinta Publishers, 2000), vol. 9.
29 E.M.S. Nambuthirippad, Atmakatha (Autobiography) (1969; rpnt. Trivandrum:
Chinta Publishers, 2005), pp. 327-8.
30 In his Introduction to the autobiography of Cerukat, a communist novel-ist,
Nambuthirippad argued that the genre of autobiography involved a self-
confessedly subjective description of how a rapidly changing society transformed
an individual 'who was no more than a point within that so-ciety', and how this
individual in turn contributed to social change. E.M.S. Nambuthirippad,
Introduction to Cerukat, Jivitappata (e Path of Life) (Trivandrum: Chinta
Publishers, 1984).
31 C. Kesavan, born in Mayyanadu near Kollam in Travancore, entered public life
as an activist in the Ezhava movement. He became a prominent leader of the
Travancore State Congress and chief minister of Travancore-Cochin in 1950.
32 C. Kesavan, Jivitasamaram (Life Struggle) (2 vols, 1953-65; rpnt. as a single
volume Kottayam: Sahitya Pravarthaka Co-operative Society, 1990), p. 19.
33 Ibid., p. 23.

34 In many autobiographies about changing times, accounts of childhood play an

important role by virtue of their association with practices clearly identified with a
past that no longer exists. Childhood is also a narrative tool of defamiliarization,
especially within criticisms of discriminatory caste practices. e child's
perplexed encounters with untouchability and distance pollution (ayittam) orient
the rhetorical organization of historical remembrance in many texts. is
tendency is not confined to autobiographies by authors from lower castes such as
Kesavan. See, for example, B. Kalyani Amma, Ormayil Ninnu (From Memory), ed.
K. Gomathi Amma (Kottayam: Sahitya Pravarthaka Co-operative Society, 1964).
35 Kesavan, Jivitasamaram, p. 35.

36 A more detailed discussion of the links between the disavowal of sensuous

eroticism and the production of a language of interiority in Kumaran Asan's
poetry can be found in my essay, 'Self, Body and Inner Sense: Some Observations
on Sree Narayana Guru and Kumaran Asan', Studies in History, 13: 2 (1997), pp.
247-70.
37 C. Kesavan became secretary of the S.N.D.P. Yogam in 1933. He was one of the
foremost leaders of the Nivartana Movement spearheaded by Ezhavas, Christians,
and Muslims from 1932 to 1937. For an account of the politics of Travancore at
the time of the Nivartana Movement, see Louise Ouwerkerk, No Elephants for the
Maharaja: Social and Political Change in Travancore, 1921—1947, ed. Dick
Kooiman (Delhi: Manohar, 1994).
38 Kesavan, Jivitasamaram, pp. 235-40.

39 Ibid., p. 90.

40 C.V. Kunhuraman, Njan (1948), in C.V. Kunhuraman: Smaranika, ed. Hasheem

Rajan (Trivandrum: Kaumudi Public Relations, 2000), pp. 126-44, especially pp.
140-4; K. Damodaran, Ezhavacaritram (A History of the Ezhavas) (Trivandrum:
Keralakesari Press, 1935), vol. 1, esp. pp. 214-17.
41 See, for example, C.V. Kunhuraman, 'Buddhamathavadangal: Oru Sama-
dhanam' (Arguments on Buddhism: A Response), serialized over several issues in
Kerala Kaumudi Weekly, August 1923; and 'Adhakritarkku Bud-dhamathamanu
Nallathu' (Buddhism is the Appropriate Religion for the Oppressed), Kerala
Kaumudi Weekly, 7 February 1927, p. 4.
42 Dr P. Palpu's correspondence with colonial officials and his memoranda are
replete with these arguments. See, for example, 'Memorandum: Some Ad-ditional
Notes on Ancient and Modern History of Kerala, 30 June 1927', and 'Letter from
Dr. Palpu to Mr. Cotton, 25 March 1927', Dr Palpu Papers, Nehru Memorial
Museum and Library, subject file no. 6.
43 See A.K. Gopalan, Ente Jivitakatha (e Story of My Life) (1955; rpnt.
Trivandrum: Desabhimani Book House, 2004); Kumbalathu Sanku Pillai, Ente
Kazhinjakala Smaranakal (My Memories of Times Past) (1985; rpnt. Trivandrum:
Prabhat Book House, 2006).
44 See Kesavan, Jivitasamaram, pp. 145-6; Kumbalathu Sanku Pillai, Ente
Kazhinjakala Smaranakal, pp. 43-4.
45 Kesavan, Jivitasamaram, p. 73.

46 For a translation of this passage, see J. Devika, 'e Aesthetic Woman:

Reforming Female Bodies and Minds in Early Twentieth-Century Keralam',
Modern Asian Studies, 39:2 (2005), pp. 478-9.
47 Ibid., pp. 461-87.

48 Ibid., p. 479.

49 Judith Butler, 'What is Critique? An Essay on Foucault's Virtue', p. 310.

50 Stephen Greenblatt and Catherine Gallagher, 'Counterhistory and the

Anecdote', in Practising New Historicism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2000), p. 51.
51 Ibid., p. 68.

52 Ibid.
53 Lalitambika Antarjanam, Atmakathayku Oru Amukham (An Introduction to
My Autobiography) (Kottayam: Sahitya Pravarthaka Co-operative Society, 1979).
54 Ibid., p. 9.

55 For a similar situation among upper-caste Maharashtrian women, as gleaned

from their autobiographical writings, see Meera Kosambi, Crossing resholds:
Feminist Essays in Social History (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007).
56 Tagore's Ghare Baire was translated from an English rendering into Malayalam
by B. Kalyani Amma under the title Vittilum Purathum (Home and Outside).
57 For a fascinating selection from these writings, translated into English, see J.
Devika, ed. and trans., Her-Self Early Writings on Gender by Malayalee Women
1898-1938 (Kolkata: Stree, 2005). Manntaraveetil Lakshmy Amma's essay 'Ente
Jivacharitravum Grhnidharmavum', written in the form of a description of the
author's daily routine at home, is a good example of the malleability and
inventiveness of autobiographical forms at this time.
 14

A Nineteenth-Century Romance
of Counterfactual Time*

PRADIP KUMAR DATTA

M
ichael Madhusudan Dutt, the most original poet and
personality of nineteenth-century Bengal, was a schoolfriend
of Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay in the 1840s. ey had their
differences, including some that were considerable, but
Bhudeb never lost sight of his friend's extraordinary dedication, talent,
and intelligence. Aer Michael died, Bhudeb recalled that his friend's
intelligence was like lightning: it played everywhere. His own
intelligence, he observed self-deprecatingly, hinting at a certain
staidness, was nothing of that kind.1 Bhudeb's modest self-esteem may
have sprung from sobriety, but it also reveals the origin of his
reputation as a worthy if unexciting representative of nineteenth-
century high culture in Bengal.
Bhudeb's renown was overshadowed early and continued thus, for
even the length of Michael's considerable shadow was vastly exceeded
by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay's. Bankim had similar caste and
non-urban origins to Bhudeb's, a comparable career in the
administration (although he was in the judiciary, while Bhudeb was in
education), and he was like Bhudeb a novelist and journalist. Unlike
Bankim, however, Bhudeb wrote no novels featuring an anthem like
Bande Mataram, nor any mise en scene with a heroine openly declaring
her love and creating thereby a huge fictional precedent which
resonated through time and even shaped popular social and political
mores. Nor was Bhudeb a great novelist. But, this said, so dark has been
the shadow ofcontrasts between Bhudeb and his more illustrious
literary contemporaries that it has obscured even the few 'firsts' that
Bhudeb scored. He was the first to write a historical novel in Bengali,
called Anguriya Binimay (1857), which also featured a Hindu-Muslim
love affair, with the heroine declaring her love-admittedly a little
indirectly- and which provided the structural precedent for Bankim's
first Bengali novel, Durgeshnandini (1865). Bhudeb was also the one to
initiate, in Anguriya Binimay, the image ofa fictional militant Hindu
nationalism, as well as the first to figure the nation as a mother goddess
in his improvised puranic history called Pushpanjali (1876). And,
whatever its worth, over his career in the education department he
broke through many invisible and implicit barriers that prohibited
Indians from occupying positions enjoyed only by the British.2
But perhaps it was not only his self-assessment, and that of his
contemporaries, which caused the dimming of his stature. His life, in its
bare details, may be inspiring as an improvement story, but it is not
more than that. Born ofa poor Brahmin who was a 'judge pandit' (peo-
ple who officially helped out British judges with their expertise in
Sanskrit texts) in the 1830s,3and who lived in a village in Hooghly,
Bhudeb was born in 1826/7. Like other improving lads of his time, he
developed an early commitment to English education and did very well
in it, first in Sanskrit College and then at Hindu College, where he met
Michael. He took up educational jobs for a while, including a stint at the
Calcutta Madrasa, and even ran his own school in Chinsura before
being appointed headmaster of Hooghly College. He was a great success
there and, before long, went up the ladder of different grades of
inspectorship in the education department. Eventually he became a
member of the Bengal Legislative Council and earned the grand sum of
Rs 1,500, a far cry from the Rs 50 with which he had started his
government career. Two more facets complete the picture of his
worthiness. He lost his wife fairly early and brought up his children
alone. And, aer he retired, he launched a trust in his father's name to
promote Bangla and Sanskrit, and donated Rs 1,50,000 to it.4
e greyness of his reputation has been preserved within English-
language scholarship by generally confining his work to indexes and
footnotes. Admittedly, things have changed in the recent past: Bhudeb
now has some excellent articles devoted to him. Yet these have perhaps
been far too partial to his self-image to reveal anything startling. is
problem is most apparent in Ashin Dasgupta's short essay on Bhudeb in
Bangla. It begins by stating that, contrary to Bankim, Rabindranath,
and Gandhi-all ofwhom had to 'search' for their tradition-Bhudeb
inherited his.5 Bhudeb was all of a piece, solidly traditionalist. Tapan
Raychaudhuri's detailed summary of Bhudeb's ideas and career does
emphasize his contradictions, but sees them as byproducts of what he
really was-an intelligent and conservative Brahmin.6 e contradictions
too predictably flow from the duality of Bhudeb's location in the
colonial administration and intimacy with European thought and
literature on the one hand, and his Brahmanism on the other. Sudipta
Kaviraj makes a sophisticated claim, with some rich insights, to regard
Bhudeb as an original social theorist who develops a critical location
from where he can logically critique the assumptions ofWestern social
thought and produce criteria for conceptualizing his own society.7
However, Kaviraj's attempt to extract a consistent theory from Bhudeb's
writings comes at a cost. It surrenders a recognition of the
inconsistencies and complications that attend such an enterprise.
Kaviraj does not problematize Bhudeb's conservatism.
In short, the many-sidedness of Bhudeb's life, work, and reading all
conspire to retain a sense of the settled worthiness that attaches to his
name. A list of the positions he adopted towards public issues shows
what may be expected of a good Brahmin conservative: he was against
state interference in sati, against widow remarriage, a firm believer in
the truth ohe shastras and opposed to egalitarian ideals. Indeed, were
it not for Swapnalabdha Bharatbarsher Itihas (1895; hereaer SBI), the
ordinarily exhaustive, magisterial, and serene conservatism ofmost of
his writings would appear in precisely the terms that they present
themselves. But SBI is a strange composition. It does not seem to fit
with the rest of Bhudeb's oeuvre. Its exceptionality demands a greater
elaboration of the multiplicity of Bhudeb's conceptions, and makes us
question whether these conceptions extend into his other work. Speci-
fically, the originality of SBI demands understanding of its subject-
namely, the time of history.

II
We are at Panipat in 1761 when the Maratha army charges the forces of
Ahmad Shah Abdali, the great warrior of Afghanistan who had
repeatedly invaded India. e history books may have said that the
Marathas were smashed to pieces, but Bhudeb's story shows the
Marathas triumphant and, with their supposedly customary tolerance,
giving Abdali safe passage to leave India. e scene then shis to Delhi,
where the badshah, Shah Alam (the aged Mughal emperor), decides to
renounce the throne in favour of the young prince Ramchandra of
Shivaji's lineage. We then visit Delhi's Jama Masjid, where Muslims and
Hindus exchange compliments with each other over their religions.
ree fundamental sets of laws of the new state are announced. ey
establish the new monarchy, the army, and the constitution of towns
and villages, together with specifications on the institutions and
procedures ofgovernance. Now we move to Sikandra, where
Ramchandra pays homage to Akbar, the first ruler of India to bring
together Hindus and Muslims. e new monarch then pays attention to
improving his kingdom, the source ois ideas being the British, who
had established a colony in Alinagar in the east. Although initially
greedy for territory, the peshwa had disciplined the ambitions of the
British; now they simply provided the source of new technologies. e
peshwa even sanctions a plan to send some young scholars to England
to learn ship-building. e narrative then goes on to show us scenes at
Lahore, where a conference of representatives of various nations debates
how to establish principles of international co-operation; and Varanasi,
where scholarship flourishes. We are told about the trade carried on
with state support, and colonization policies, and, in the last directly
descriptive section, about the festivals celebrated by both Hindus and
Muslims. SBI concludes with extracts from numerous travellers who
write glowingly—interspersed with some criticisms—of the new
nation.8
Bhudeb tells us in his Preface that he was helping a relative to write a
history of lndia when he fell asleep and was visited by this dream. e
'relative' was possibly his friend Ramgati Nyayaratna, who wrote
Bharatbarsher Itihas, which inspired Bhudeb to write SBI.9 However,
the unnamed shadow that falls across SBI is that of John Clarke
Marshman and his history of India.10 Marshman was a leading
missionary of Serampore whose histories were standard textbooks at
schools and colleges.11 ese were widely read: Bankim had perused
his works critically.12 Indeed, Vidyasagar's history of Bengal, which was
part of a series in which Bhudeb also contributed a text, was a
translation of Marshman's history. Marshman's writings were based on
imperialist assumptions about India's past. Bhudeb, whose interest in
education was as profound as that of the missionaries, was clearly in no
position to alter the status of such histories. But what he could do-and
in this he was a pioneer-was rewrite imperial histories. He had already
done this with J.H. Caunter's Romance of History, from which he had
culled the story of Anguriya Binimay. In that instance, he had made a
few significant alterations, especially one concerning Shivaji. Instead of
a cunning fighter, which is how he is shown in Caunter, Shivaji is
projected by Bhudeb as a Hindu ideal.13In SBI Bhudeb does something
more daring. He begins with a counterfactual history that proceeds by
changing some elements of the battle of Pani- pat, a known public
event, and thereaer rapidly makes his work acquire the wish-fulfilling
fantasy of a romance.
SBI is a plausible counterfactual, though. It is based on the strongest
probability that Marshman's historical records offered for the outcome
that SBI envisioned. In Chapter X, Marshman's narrative tears itself
away from Bengal, where the English were establishing themselves, to
Delhi, the affairs of which, he suggests, were no longer of any
consequence to 'Hindostan'. He then relates in great detail the twists
and turns of alliances between the Marathas, the Mughals, and other
Hindu and Muslim powers that seemed to connect their fates
inextricably. Yet Marshman's narrative also goes on to show that the
conflicts get clarified around Hindu versus Muslim lines. Before this,
however, the Marathas reach a critical point when Raghoba, their great
general, at the behest of the Mughal emperor who had been deposed by
Abdali, takes over Delhi and then routs the Abdali power from Punjab.
Marshman declares-in a sentence that was bound to tantalize all Hindu
nationalist hearts-that 'e vast resources of the Mahratta community
were guided by one head and directed to one object-the
aggrandisement of the nation, and they now talked proudly of
establishing Hindoo sovereignty over the whole of Hindostan.'14 At the
threshold of the battle of Panipat, the alliance between the Marathas
and the Mughals is broken. Instead, we have a grandly arrayed Maratha
army, whose pomp ironically rivals that of Aurangzeb's troops at the
start of his Deccan campaign. e Marathas are supported by the
Rajputs, the Jats, and even the Pindaris; the Jats, however, soon move
away, irked by Maratha arrogance. Confronting them all are Ahmad
Shah Abdali's forces, ranged together with the Mughals and the nawab
ofAwadh's armies. Hindu against Muslim: this was the second decisive
point in Indian history. But the Maratha defeat was awesome. And with
it disappeared the last hope of a Hindu empire.
Modern counterfactual history proceeds by taking up a known
historical narrative and then changing some ofits co-ordinates in order
to conceive an alternative scenario of events. is exercise not only
helps to increase precision about the hierarchy of causes in a historical
narration, it can also be used for predictive work.15 To elaborate a point
I have made, Bhudeb's counterfactual begins as a plausible one by
changing as few elements of the original event as possible. But then it
proceeds to alter nearly all the co-ordinates. It is really a
counterhistorical romance, a wish-fulfilling counterfactual history. But
it is, I suggest, a 'serious' counterhistory in the sense that it shows a
practical possibility. ere are many obvious alterations in the narrative
that Bhudeb makes, but surely the decisive one is that of Hindu—
Muslim unity as an outcome of the battle. It is this that provides
peaceful legitimation to the Maratha monarch. is projected unity is
crucial, for it allows the logic of a counterfactual, which is based on the
almost immediate consolidation of the new regime, to flow plausibly.
Actually, the narrative function of Hindu—Muslim unity opens out a
new conception of Indian history. SBI was written at a time when the
historical understanding of early Orientalists like Colebrook, were
being extended in different ways by Rajendralal Mitra and Akshay
Kumar Dutt. Shyamali Sur argues that both historians—with varying
degrees of intensity, sophistication, and qualification—held ancient
India to be the normative point of the history of Hindus, the time when
it had reached its highest stage of development.16 While Mitra and Dutt
were developing history as a specialized discipline, there also flourished
a popular tradition of historical imagining embodied in various genres
of expressive literature, such as plays, poems, and novels. ese
histories privileged scenes from medieval India, featuring Rajputs,
Marathas, and Bengalis normally locked in mortal and tragic combat
with Muslims. Bhudeb departs from both traditions. SBI starts with the
beginning of British rule and then proceeds to rewrite the subsequent
history—that is, of course, the history of colonial modernity.
In effect, what Bhudeb does is envision an alternative modern. It is
precisely this feature that makes Hindu-Muslim unity so significant. By
itself, the vision of Hindu-Muslim unity as the basis for legitimacy is
one of the most striking and original moves made in the nineteenth-
century political imaginary-one that departs from the imaginary of the
Hindu exclusivist nation that afflicted both elite and popular literatures
oistory. rough Hindu-Muslim unity, SBI inaugurates a new idea of
the nation that is modern because it operates on the basis of a new
legitimacy. Immediately aer assumption of power and the declaration
of the constitution, Ramchandra makes a trip to Sikandra to pay
homage to Akbar, who is interred there. In this, he follows his father's
advice: the latter had revered Akbar because he saw him as the first
ruler to have produced a nation based on the consent of both Hindus
and Muslims. In effect, this visit is made as homage to the political
paternity of the new nation. By giving Akbar this status, the genealogy
of the new nation is also stretched across the accepted Orientalist
beginnings of the modern, which starts with British rule. Equally, it
breaks the equivalence of historical periods with religions. In his
condensed adaptation of his history of India for schoolchildren,
Marshman had simplified Indian history into Hindu, Muslim, and
Christian periods.17 ese clearly corresponded with ancient, medieval,
and modern. SBI cuts across the division between Muslim-Medieval
and Christian-Modern (and indeed Hindu-Ancient, for Ramchandra is
a Hindu king whose rule is also shaped by Hindu ideas). SBI conjures
up the political grounds of a new modernity while also reworking the
history of the nation. In this it is exceptional for the nineteenth century,
both as conception and as narrative. Above all, what makes it stand out
as well as break the presumed stability of Bhudeb's conser-vatism is its
premise of a time that is ruptured: a time that suddenly produces an
alternative history.

III
By arguing that SBI is a serious, contestatory counterhistory, we
provoke a new problem. How can one explain its genre, or, more
appropriately, the peculiarity of its narrative representation? In the case
of conventional historical romances, the procedure was simple. eir
plots isolated certain events, as these existed in the historical record
with their irreversible temporality (which normally meant Hindu
defeats and sacrifice at the hands of Muslims) in order to define the
power ofan ideal passion, the object ofwhich was normally the Hindu
nation. is framework, for instance, shapes the literary orientation of
Rangalal Bandopadhyay, author of the heroic nationalist poem Padmini
Upakhyan and a pioneer of the historical turn to expressive narratives.
But SBI follows a more, apparently self-defeating, route. It uses the
formal realist elements of 'scientific' historiography to write a fiction. In
other words, it elides two different orders of narrative truth. e truth
value attached to historical romance, for instance, the heroic passion for
the nation, cannot be extended to SBI, for it cancels the credibility of
heroic passion by confining its narrative to public events that unfold in
clearly demarcated time and space, and because it formally includes
such mundane matters as political programmes and reports. In short,
the location of what is conceptually a romance in the language of 'real'
history seems tantamount to self-cancellation.
is may not be as unbelievable as it appears: aer all, Bhudeb was a
respected British administrator. He simply could not afford to write
about the things that he did in SBI with the profession of serious intent.
In fact, Bhudeb had already got into a bit of official bother earlier,
although for no real fault ois.18 Also, SBI was published serially in the
Education Gazette, of which Bhudeb was editor. is was not a post he
had obtained with ease. Initially, it was Bhudeb who had suggested that
such a journal, within which the government could publicize its policies
and reply to criticisms, be started. But despite his inspiration he had not
been given editorship when the Gazette appeared in 1856. It was only
when his immediate predecessor displeased the British by publishing an
unofficial version of the casualty figures pertaining to a train accident
that Bhudeb was asked to take over. Although Bhudeb had bargained
with the authorities to give the journal a semi-autonomous financial
status, he had to provide them assurance that he would not publish any
exaggerated reports.19 Surely, aer these testaments of close official
monitoring, Bhudeb could not afford to publish an openly subversive
romance in the Gazette. In these circumstances therefore, for Bhudeb,
'self-cancellation' may have been an appropriate representational
strategy to evade official ministrations.
SBI appeared at the onset of the Durga Puja in Education Gazette,
being serialized from October to December 1875. It was introduced
suggestively (without being named) by the editorial as a manuscript
containing a mix of genres and truths that had mysteriously come to the
editor. It was both fantasy and yet did not seem to amount to
nonsense.20 Bhudeb actually poses the text as a teaser to the reader.
True, some of his contemporaries could not miss the obvious: they read
SBI as a testament of wish fulfilment when it appeared as a book-which
was significantly aer Bhudeb's death, nearly twenty years aer its
serialization.21 But then, it may be argued, the 'reality effect' of a wish is
dependent on both probability and the intensity with which it is felt;
wishes could be 'horses' aer all, especially ihey could only be located
retrospectively. is both explains and preserves the intriguing
invitation of the editorial introduction. But it also invites attention to
the structure of Bhudeb's intrigue.
Maybe one could begin with the obvious: the dream. Less than a
decade aer SBI was published as a book, Begum Rokeya Hossein
released Sultana's Dream (1905), a short tale in English ofa world where
women take the position of men, and vice versa. 22e ironic pleasure
of this text lies in the distance that it establishes between itself and the
real; this allows the gratification of recognizing the codes that can bring
the two together. But for Bhudeb the oneiric was part of the everyday.
He notes a number of dreams in his diary. He was oen visited in his
sleep by those he loved: sometimes, he would carry out whole
conversations with his departed wife.23 He would also be visited by
dreams ofliving people, and sometimes goddesses.24 What is interesting
about these is that he notes them down in his diary as if they were just
jottings in a file. For Bhudeb, dreams were an everyday occurrence and
were mixed up, as he says, with life's fabric of joys and sorrows.25
Yet, while this reveals something about Bhudeb's understanding of
dreams, it still does not begin to explain the non-personalized sweep of
Indian polity that SBI embodies. Bhudeb does say something else about
dreams in his Preface: he says the shastras enjoin that dreams are like
advice, implying they must be taken seriously. is clue raises an
uncanny and suggestive relationship that SBI may have with a passage
from the Mahabharata.26Bhishma, the great warrior-sage, is lying on
his bed of arrows and providing a long discourse to Yudhishthira on the
nature and value of dreams. He begins conventionally enough by
making a distinction between states of ignorance and knowledge, and
says that to practise faultless brahmacharya one must be completely
awake with knowledge and not be visited by dreams that provoke
desire. But then he transits to make an interesting observation more
germane to SBI. Answering the question he poses about the truth of a
dream, Bhishma says that a man who has firm sankalpa (resolution,
with an overtone of desire) is visited by its dream, for even when he is
tired his mind does not rest. Just as sankalpa stems from involvement in
work in the real world, the dream condition, too, is similarly shaped by
sankalpa. Further, the very vagueness of the senses in sleep make us
experience the dream as real; this does not happen when we are awake
because the senses are alert to recognize what is untrue.27
I will return to the importance of work later, but, at this point, I want
to underline the idea of dream as a mental resolution made in the world
of the real. For Bhudeb, resolution was foundational to human beings
since it distinguished them from animals.28 Clearly, this is something
stronger than just advice and supplies a meaning that seems more
appropriate to SBI. Read against the suggestive connections provided by
Bhishma, SBI can be seen as an attempt to imbricate the reader, through
the narrative form, within the resolution-in-dream that Bhudeb
possesses. And this is not an abstract or symbolic exhortation. It
proceeds through presenting a 'real' blueprint of a possible world to the
reader.
e details ohis blueprint need some attention, for their
mundaneness conceals a fair amount of Bhudeb's originality. As against
the obsession with the symbolic, characterological, and moral as ways
of invoking the nation—either inherent in the land and/or realized in
the past—that marked conceptions of the nation of his time, Bhudeb's
India is one that is addressed in relation to its condition aer it attains
independence—while, of course, speaking from the past. SBTs dream
has a remarkably programmatic character to it. It lays out what the new
basis of the nation will be, its constitution (with its hierarchy of
fundamental and regulative principles), the nature of its education,
commerce, international policy, and so on. e nation is dreamt in its
details.
Interestingly, Bhudeb is also unambiguous about his understanding
of the nation as an all-India phenomenon (although the South does not
feature). is 'all-India' vision may be explained both by his
involvement with an administration that thought 'nationally', together
with his extra-regional self-definition as a pure Brahmin. In Bengal, this
meant locating one's family origins in Kanauj in North India.29
Whatever the reason, the interesting thing about SBI is that it begins
with the question of what must legitimize the new state. While Bhudeb's
idea of Hindu-Muslim unity is rooted in his commitment to a
regulative ideal of Hindu tolerance, I should add that this ideal is based
on the necessity of forgetting the burden of past conflicts and correcting
'historical wrongs'. True, it assumes a political asymmetry via the
concept of the Muslim as the adopted child of the biological mother of
the Hindus. But this is sought to be offset in part by appointing Akbar
as the spiritual father of the nation.30 More significantly, the narrative
steps out of the political realm to feature cultural exchanges enacted
between Hindus and Muslims. In the scenes of celebration that take
place at Delhi's Jama Masjid, following Ramchandra's installation as
monarch, Hindus and Muslims point out the complementarity of their
religions. Stress is placed on the equal status of godheads and their
interchangeability, as well as mutual respect and devotion for one
another's objects of worship. It is this new mode of sociability that
provides the setting for the proclamation of the constitution.31
Partha Chatterjee's observation, in his short survey of SBI, draws
attention to SBI's constitution and its shaping by the model of the
German Reich.32 e German constitution was passed a few years
before SBI. eir logics are comparable in that both visualize a
monarchy based on a system of balances. But there are notable
differences in detail: SBI does not envisage a chancellor, nor a
Bundesraat, and of course no Reichstag based on universal adult male
franchise.33 Instead, it conceives a triangulated structure of power. On
the one hand it pro-claims a hereditary monarchy that is a product of
popular acclamation and not of a transcendental claim (although it
helps that he is regarded as an avatar of Shiva).34 e monarch is
appointed by the constitution, and this because of his capacity to defend
national borders as well as the gratitude that this provision of security
earns him from the people. But the king has the authority to appoint a
ministry and also command military allegiance from the various chiefs
and subordinate rajas. e federal element is clearly minimal. What is
interesting, however, is that while the monarch wields supreme military
and political authority, social governance is vested in village
communities. Drawing on a longstanding colonial discourse of
independent village communities,35 SBI grants villages autonomy in
regulating their internal affairs, in maintaining peace and preserving
dharma (which would include customs, religious observance, social
order, and so on). Landlords and provincial authorities are given
powers of guardianship, although these are unspecified. Interestingly,
the legitimacy of the village republics is seen to emanate from the
eternal system of India drawing on the shastras as well as on reason.
Cities too are shown as governed by the same principles.
While the split between the monarch and the village community is
derivative, what is interesting is the addition of a middle tier of power.
SBI proposes an eighteen-member council consisting of men versed in
the shastras who will form a Mahasabha, which extends the model of
the Viceroy's Council into an autonomous authority.36 is
Brahmanical body, together with the ministers, will adjudicate the
necessity and relevance of the laws of the land; nor can any new law be
introduced and implemented without its approval. e authority of the
Mahasabha is ambivalent. While it is governed by that part of the
constitution that consists of mutable laws—as opposed to the
immutable laws that govern the monarchy and the semi-mutable laws
which only the monarch has the power to alter—the Mahasabha seems
to be given authority over all spheres outside of the military and of the
sovereign powers of the monarch. We are not told if the villages are
subject to the Mahasabha. But it presumably oversees the social laws
that include a four-fold varna structure conceived as a form of dividing
labour. Caste is divorced from purity-pollution rituals, although it is not
detached from karma. Also, caste rules allow slow transformation:
through exercises of self-control, an assimilated tribal can achieve in the
space of a single rebirth the status of a Brahmin. Gender rules too are
liberalized. e disappearance of Muslim antagonism means that Hindu
women need no longer be confined; indeed, some were already coming
out in public. In general, SBI appears to be making a clear separation of
powers between the military-political spheres controlled by the king
and the self-governing spheres of society and community mediated by
the Mahasabha.
Two other features of the constitution that probably fall under the
authority of the Mahasabha require some comment. ese concern the
state's policy of active intervention in both economic and cultural
spheres. In the part that describes the flourishing trade of the kingdom,
SBI notes that the new state decides to impose custom duties on foreign
goods till such time that Indian goods became competitive. It may be
recalled that critiques of colonial economic policies in India were
already being formulated from the early 1870s.37 Clearly, this
suggestion of SBI plays an important role in pushing forward the
nascent critique to its logical alternative in protectionism. Undoubtedly,
the protectionist policies being followed by 'latecomer' capitalist states
like the United States, France, and Germany provided the precedent for
advocating this policy.38Colonial expansion is also envisaged, but one
that eschews military conquest. e other element in SBI's constitution
is provided by educational institutions that conduct research into the
universal principles of religion on the one hand, and the sciences and
languages on the other. Cultural life seems to be regulated by these
institutions.
e resolution that is the dream acquires a comprehensive and stable
form in an actual constitution. Indeed, the flourishing and slow
transformations of the various aspects of the new nation state—its
gender rules, trade, and pedagogic fruits, for instance—can be seen as
the unfolding of the constitution itself. In this sense, because the
narrative of the new state is a working out of its body of written laws,
SBI provides an almost immobile picture of fulfilment. Indeed, the time
of SBI is one of immense slowness. e form itself produces a sense of
control over time. Aer the initial rupture of the hand-over of power,
the movement of the plot is no longer supplied by temporal
transformations, but by shis in location. Each location unfolds
different aspects of the new state: the Jama Masjid, the site of Hindu-
Muslim cultural exchanges and fraternity, enables the new state to
establish its legitimacy; Varanasi reveals the mix of traditional and
modern learning; Lahore the international aspect of the policies of the
new state; and so on. It is almost as if the plot were mimicking a
bureaucratic blueprint of a future project. Time is slowed down:
transformations are illustrated in space. Indeed, change is explicitly
controlled by the new regime. Its relationship with the British—justly
regarded in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as the most
influential agent of change in India—is one of controlled appropriation
of what is most valuable for the needs of the new polity. Indeed, this is
not change but a fantasy of willed transformation. Time is slowed to the
point where it is completely obedient to the pace of planning.
SBI tries to seduce the reader into suspending knowledge of its many
ruptures. Its fundamental historical rupture is not announced. e
battle of Panipat may provide a new ideal world, but this is not with any
dramatic or remotely apocalyptic motifs that are generally associated
with the onset of a qualitatively new era, such as the end of Kali Yuga in
the Hindu tradition, or the Second Coming of the Christian tradition-
with which Bhudeb may have been quite familiar since he had almost
converted to Christianity in his youth. e break in SBI functions to
efface itself as a rupture. e battle with Abdali is not even described,
while the hand-over of power by the Mughal monarch is presented as a
natural movement of recognition of Hindu leadership. It is as if the
natural logic of history is asserting itself. And yet, of course, at every
point the suspension of the rupture actually functions to draw attention
to itself for its alterity to be demonstrated.
is is not the suspenseful and personalized time of literary fiction. It
is, as I have suggested, more like the acutely slow, evenly unwinding
time ofan impersonal bureaucratic report. is temporality announces
its integrity through its distance from fiction, as a fiction that is not a
fiction but an alternative version of the historically real. is may not
offer heroic drama but provides a habitation for the everyday life of the
nation. Further, if we recall that Bhudeb conceived of dreams as part of
the everyday, then another possibility suggests itself. is concerns the
possibility of an existence that lives out its life in a parallel time. at is,
the rupture in the narrative of history in SBI may proceed from a
rupture of time into separate levels. It is this possibility of split time that
I wish to probe further in Bhudeb's work.

IV
Time is very important to Bhudeb. He sees it as foundational for moral
dispensations. In Samajik Prabandha (hereaer SP), he draws a
distinction between Eastern and Western civilizations in terms of their
relationship with time. He sees the moral virtues of Indian civilization
as rooted in its reverence for the past. e West, however, seems to
privilege the future, and hence does not recognize the importance of
obeying the restraints enjoined by the past.39 While a commitment to
the past is clearly evident in Bhudeb's writings, the implications of SBI's
narrative urges us to look at these again to define more closely what
Bhudeb meant by the past and the ways in which he privileges it.
Bhudeb was part of a neo-orthodox circle composed of people like
Chandranath Basu and Sasadhar Tarkachuramani. ey were leading
public intellectuals of the 1870s and 1880s. All three thought through
historical time while being fundamentally committed to shastric
traditions. Working with the mix of the historical and the traditional
meant that all three combined these elements differently and hence
possessed separate notions oistorical time. Bhudeb took possibly the
most challenging path. For one, his idea of the past was very different
from Tarkachuramani's. e latter saw ancient India, the time of
shastric governance, as the period that had literally anticipated modern
times, including its technological achievements. Tarkachuramani's
notion ohe past as a literal prefigurement was much less sophisticated
than that of Chandranath's 'past'. e former's idea can be located
within a strong tradition of Hindu historiography that stressed the
importance of history as a source of grasping conceptions and values
ohe past rather than an accurate record ohe past. In the debate with
Colebrook, who objected to the lack of factual accuracy in Indian
records of the past, Pandit Jagannath Tarkapanchanan upheld the
distinctive importance of puranic pasts, saying that these allowed access
to the basic conceptions of societies of that time.40Chandranath Basu
extends this in a normative direction. Devoted to history like many
other intellectuals of the nineteenth century, Chandranath stressed the
importance of non-realist history for India. As opposed to the
antiquarian research of his contemporary Rajendralal Mitra,
Chandranath stressed the importance of literary sources for the study of
history. His writings on biography provide a clue to his defence of non-
realist history. He says that while puranic stories were based on details,
over time these were distilled out in order to produce generalized
stories of the nation that embodied moral values.
For Bhudeb, the logic of the shastras or of customs, such as the
practice of child sacrifice, could be invoked to validate the rationale of
Hindu customs and point out its distinctiveness.41 However, not all
customs were necessarily regarded as testaments to the high develop-
ments of the ancients, even if Bhudeb was generally committed to the
moral superiority of 'Hindu' traditions over Western ones (a commit-
ment embodied in the structure of SP, which is based on a running
comparison of East and West). In general, Bhudeb conceives of
tradition as a body of regulative principles that produce distinct
societies and cultures. Hence, the East is characterized by its reverence
for the past, producing peacefulness, a privileging of difference through
hierarchy as the basis of social organization, and so on. I should add
here that, in keeping with these commitments, Bhudeb claims that, in
contrast to the Christian conception of the past, Hindu traditions do
not reveal everything.42 Hence, one cannot know the precise reason for
being born in a particular caste. is notion of a partially revealed time
is interesting. It brings him in line with Chandranath's assumption in
that it ratifies tradition as self-grounded. At the same time it does not
really complement Bhudeb's own practice of looking at the historical
past. Indeed, Bhudeb's deployment of history sets him apart from
Chandranath: it departs from a conception of the past as a body of
normative traditions.
In contrast to both Tarkachuramani and Chandranath, Bhudeb wrote
a number of good, straightforward histories, such as Inglander Itihas,
and Banglar Itihas that obeyed the protocols of history textbooks.43 In
the Preface to Inglander Itihas, Bhudeb asserts that a nation can be
understood only through its history.44 Banglar Itihas is a sophisticated
social history of the nineteenth century. Carefully footnoted, it deals
quite painstakingly with different aspects of the social and cultural life
of the Bengali bhadralok in relationship with changes in British
policy.45 Even in SP, where Bhudeb deals with general moral and
civilizational principles, the past is differentiated into separate
thematics through which the Indian is compared with the Western.
e importance ofdetailed histories become understandable through
Bhudeb's conception of time itself. He makes a striking observation on
time in the Education Gazette while reflecting on the details of a year
that has passed. Challenging a Sanskrit sloka that says time is like a
serpent, Bhudeb says that time is liberal. It is a river made up of events
and situations, flowing in bends and curves rather than in a straight
line, and it is we, adri on this river like a boat, who engage in actions
that determine how to take advantage of its beneficial aspects and
minimize its harmfulness when faced with the onslaughts of time.46
e combination of flow and intervention, of being in time and yet
occupying a position of autonomy in it, is striking. Time is not seen as a
rational calculus or a providential pattern, but as something
unpredictable. Yet the effect of this observation on time's contingencies
is to really focus on engagement with it, and intervention in it. Bhudeb
needs to understand time in its flow and uncertainty. He also tells us
that time consists of events and situations. is makes a grasp of
historical details necessary to understand time. e twists and turns of
time, its contingencies of events, can only be mapped out and
understood through details. Clearly, we have here a very different
conception from that of Chandranath's conception of a time that distills
out historical details to erect certain stable moral conceptions that then
stabilize and regulate time.
Further, Bhudeb's emphasis on human intervention does not find a
corresponding prominence in Chandranath. True, Bhudeb emphasizes
the need for ethical norms to guide human intervention in time. is is
exemplified in the textual practice of SP. e work is structured by the
need to adjudicate between the ethical relevance of English/Western
culture in relation to the overall superiority of Indian moral ideals, and
to prepare the future through those judgements. At the same time,
Bhudeb's notion of human intervention in an unpredictable flow of
time is more flexible than Chandranath's moral view of history—
flexible because it allows for a lively engagement with new historical
developments that may not actually have clear precedents in the past.
For instance, in Banglar Itihas Bhudeb adopts a dual understanding of
the Brahmo Samaj, to whom the neo-orthodoxy was opposed. He
predictably criticizes their reliance on the colonial state to push forward
their reforms, but he also argues that the Tattvabodhini Sabha made a
massive historical contribution to Hinduism by making a distinction
between dharma and social customs. is distinction allows the social
sphere to be reformed, an initiative necessary to fight off the challenge
of conversion.47 In SP he says that it does not matter what the source of
a particular excellence may be—Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, and so on—
as long as it harmonizes with past knowledge.48 In short, what we have
here is a magisterial conception of historical time, in which the agent
seeks to carefully adjudicate between tendencies of a given time in
order to isolate, select, and develop particular ones that would
harmonize with Hindu ethical norms. is is the assumption that
grounds the governance of time in SBI. For not only does SBI introduce
the idea of the legitimacy of Hindu-Muslim unity, it also governs the
way in which the new nation manages transformation through its
selective and gradual appropriation of British technologies.
Possibly the most elaborate statement that Bhudeb makes about
human intervention is in Banglar Itihas, where he prefaces his
understanding of Dalhousie's rule as governor general with a
disquisition on how human agency relates to time. For Bhudeb, human
intervention is about how great individuals relate to time. ey do so in
three ways. One kind of person tries to rectify time if he sees it going
the wrong way; the other gets committed to the tempo of time,
furthering its logic without bothering about its moral direction; a third
simply flows with it.49 If we treat 'Dalhousie' as a convenient trope to
index Bhudeb's conception of intervention, then we also encounter the
problem of power. Dalhousie has the choice (which he does not actually
exert) to shape the whole world of colonial Bengal. He is the main agent
oime and knows it in its entirety. On the other hand, it was obvious
that Bhudeb and other colonial subjects could not control the world
that their colonial masters commanded. It may be observed in passing
that Bhudeb could not even know what for him was a critical element of
Bengal's history, that is, the appointment of great men/governor
generals made in the remote corridors of faraway British offices. In
short, the subject of human intervention actually underlines the fact
that the empire produces the time which shapes the world of the
Bengali.
e conception of historical time as an object of knowledge and
intervention in the colonial world also generates a split within Bhudeb.
is is between a position of magistracy exercised within colonial rule,
and one that aspires to command the temporal habitation ohe fellow
colonized. Bhudeb gets around this problem with a very consequential
move. He makes a split between the political and the social.50 He argues
that the political has never been consequential for India since it was
shaped by its social principles. By extension, it does not matter too
much that India is under colonial rule, since it is the social that is the
real sphere of autonomy. Bhudeb relegates the political to the margins
and tries to show that it does not have a major consequence on the
social. e split shows-and develops-the influence of Comtean thought
in general, and on Bhudeb in particular. For it was Comte who
theorized the critical importance of the social and provided a self-
grounded status to it. Bhudeb proclaims the social to be coextensive
with the divine. It is eternal and hence shares in the same essence as the
divine. At a less transcendental register, the social is what provides the
autonomy essential to acts of discrimination and choice in time. But
also, the split articulates a new object of historiographical concern in
the nineteenth century, evident in Bankim's unbounded praise for
Rajkrishna Mukherjee's history of Bengal entitled Pratham Siksha
Banglar Itihas that appeared in 1874.51 Bankim approved of it precisely
because it did not deal with kings and wars but with the life of the
people.52
We can see this distinction working in its most productive manner in
Banglar Itihas. While the book deals with British policies and is
periodized by the rule of different viceroys, its main contribution lies in
conceptualizing how the Bengali bhadralok acquires a national self-
consciousness through interaction with both British policies as well as
self-willed actions. Nevertheless, the distinction between the social and
political does not provide Bhudeb with an invulnerable stability. Time
remains haunted by the normative order defined in the Education
Gazette and occupied by persons like Dalhousie-the time of direct
connection between time and the agent that allows the latter to
intervene in the totality of time itself.
Before transiting to the second part of SP, Bhudeb says that writing
about the future is always difficult since one's desires and expectations
are involved with it.53 Clearly, the implication is that one's relationship
with the past should be based on restraint and judicious choice: this is
what allows Bhudeb to maintain a certain magisterial autonomy. At the
same time, the future is uncannily analogous to the condition of sleep
described by Bhishma, one in which the restraints and senses become
weak to allow one's inner resolution to surface in the mind. With the
future, we clearly begin to enter into the realms of utopic time, the time
of rupture.
As SP nears its conclusion, Bhudeb suddenly lurches into a new
discursive structure. Instead ofa studied equidistance between
contraries as a prelude to choosing one and amalgamating parts of the
other- which had provided the structure of SP's analysis-SP now
proposes a state of decline with the onset of a sudden renewal. It
concludes with the serious expectation of a mahapurush, a Great Man
who will magically renew Indian civilization.54 e idea ohe Great
Man is one that reminds us of the 'Dalhousie' trope. But it also exceeds
the figure of Dalhousie who was, aer all, a person who simply
continued an existing dispensation. e hope of the Great Man here is
for an individual who can renew the entirety of time.
e invocation of the Great Man is significant in the light of Bhudeb's
deep anxieties about British rule—the motivating force behind SP and
its exercise of choosing between what the British had to offer. For
Bhudeb observes at the beginning that the British were different from
other foreign rulers in that they sought to change Indian society itself.
e leap to the Great Man suggests that Bhudeb was less than sanguine
about the possibility of safeguarding the autonomy of the social through
exercising magistracy within colonial time. But this also confesses a
certain lack in the commitment to the social. If the British represent the
possibility of a political power that can colonize the social, then clearly
the social can only be rescued through the intervention of a Great Man.
Political intervention becomes an imperative.
SP returns us back to SBI. For it is Prince Ramchandra who effects a
rupture within the time of the nation and produces a new time, in
which the nation no longer has to react to a master, but can instead
produce its own pace oransformation. is too represents a
magisterial time in that the nation requires to select elements to
appropriate and hence choose the directions in which it wishes to
transform itself. But this is a magistracy over time. It is what the Great
Man of SP is possibly expected to do. But SP, for the most part, also
provides another idea of magistracy that is conducted within the flow of
time itself—where, like the boatman ohe Education Gazette, the agent
can only select the currents that favour the direction in which he wishes
to move. is is the magistracy of the colonial subject, the magistracy in
time. In short, we have analogous notions oime and intervention
which nevertheless belong to very different conditions of life. For one
requires a rupture by which time can be commanded, while the other is
simply concerned with the bare survival of autonomy. Both are
conservative. But in the first instance, continuity is produced through
rupture and discontinuity; in the second, the continuity is simply the
tenuous effect of selection.
 is allows us to specify the nature of Bhudeb's temporality that we
had observed at the conclusion of the last section. It is the product of
parallel times that closely resemble each other, that seem to leak into
one another and are yet separated by fundamental distinctions ofexist-
ence and produce separate spheres of intervention. To understand this
brittle doubleness of Bhudeb's time, it would be instructive to look
briefly at his life experiences.

V
I have, thus far, considered Bhudeb's textual practices to look at the
ways in which he produces a split time. Needless to reiterate, this split
becomes evident in SBI. It is the particularity ohis development that
raises another question, one that can only be briefly touched upon here.
at is: how does Bhudeb's textualization of time relate to the forms of
subjectivity that his life allows us to glean? What could be the mode of
living within its unfolding in time that corresponds to this split-if at all?
Obviously, this exercise can only be based on some fragments of his life.
ese are mainly offered by his biography, which contains large
selections from his diary.
Although there is a fair bit on his role as a caring, 'mothering' father
(his wife died fairly early, leaving him to bring up the children), what
interests me here is the subject ohe bulk ois diary, that is, his career
and his public and social life. Let me start with the year 1875, for it
allows me to restate the puzzle more forcefully: 1875 is, of course, the
year when SBI is serialized. It is also the year when Bhudeb is promoted
to Inspector of Education for the Rajshahi Division. Two years later, he
is promoted again and takes charge of the Bihar Circle. e success
track continues till it reaches its apex about six years later, in 1882,
when he is appointed a member ohe Bengal Legislative Council.
Bhudeb lives out an upwardly mobile life that confirms the steady time
of progress promised to Indians by the British. How does then one
account for the publication of SBI with its assumption of a ruptured
time? I should add here that the shape of his career and work
contradicts the reading of early elite nationalism as the consequence of
job dissatisfaction, a process that has been described with innovative
faithfulness by Rajat Ray.55 I do not wish to dismiss this argument
outright, but Bhudeb's case insists that we pose it with greater care.
To begin with, I would like to elaborate a little on the meaning and
practices of what an administrative career meant for Bhudeb. Possibly
the best insight we get into this is from his views on promotion. He
regarded himself in a representative capacity as a precedent, reaching
posts that had never been occupied by any other Indian in order to pave
the way for them to follow.56 He advised his son, when he got an
administrative job, to visit the mofussil very frequently and noted that
Indian officers had to outdo their British colleagues in their work.57
is self-definition as a representative Indian was one he proudly
proclaimed through the practices of self-presentation and sociability.
Many interesting stories have already been told about this. For instance,
when he first went to Bihar as an inspector, his dress and demeanour
was so Indian that local people could not recognise him as an official of
the British administration.58 He strictly observed commensality rules
and even refused to dine with Lt Governor Beadon when invited to the
latter's residence.59 But these rules, I should add, were not inflexible.
When his senior and good friend Medlicott was struck with an illness
that made him lose his senses, Bhudeb went to his house, pitching his
tent, as was his practice, in the compound outside the house. At the
same time, however, he took care of Medlicott emotionally and
physically like a child for forty days or so.60
Flexible or not, these disciplines ohe selfwere meant to demonstrate
that his personal identity was not commensurate with that given by his
official standing. Bhudeb produced a self that was not hybrid but based
on an internally controlled distancing ofits constituent elements.
Clearly, this sense ofseparation, especially through ritual, was
something that self-consciously proclaimed his Brahmin status: indeed,
even his appearance announced itself to an English colleague and friend
as a Brahmin: he was a Brahmin Indian in the British administration.
is controlled separation of spheres was not, I hasten to add,
analogous to the inner-outer split of colonial subjectivity. Bhudeb's split
is continuously rehearsed in the same sphere, that of public work and
sociability. It is a mode of subjectivity that comes closest to an
exemplary style of self-presentation. It constantly dramatizes its split.
What is equally significant for our purposes is that the implications of
his self-presentation were extended into practices of nation-making. He
saw his work as a way of improving and developing his nation. Queried
once about his loyalty to the government, Bhudeb replied that he saw
himself as engaged in a collaborative enterprise.61 is enterprise was
ofimprovement, specifically the development ohe pathshala system in
rural Bengal. His success in this regard was apparent from the start,
when, occupying a temporary position as additional inspector in 1862,
he wrote up an effective report on the problems ohe existing system of
selecting gurus bureaucratically and then despatching them to study at
'normal' schools.62 A general sense of Bhudeb's nationalism can be
found in his attitude to pathshalas; he said they had degenerated under
foreign rule and the task of the 'enlightened' British was to help popular
education recover its vibrant autonomy.63 His prodigious commitment
to work must have been partly fired by this intense belief.64 e most
impressive feature of his strategies of improvement was his attention to
detail. For instance, he got detailed maps installed in pathshalas of their
villages and surrounding areas so that schoolchildren would not only
know the main markers of their village, but also because these maps-by
marking out different kinds of water bodies and so on-would allow
sanitary inspectors to identify disease- generating areas.65 His
Education Gazette, a journal meant for the illumination of mofussil
schoolteachers, routinely carried news of developmental work being
carried out in the hinterland.
is self-definition as a co-developer was one that produced a
location of autonomy for him. Clearly, this position of apartness was
one he would enjoy naturally among his fellow countrymen. What is
surprising is the admiration he earned for his distinctiveness from his
British superiors. He became a sign of the authentic Indian, whom they
already respected for his work, but who could also easily socialize with
them. Descriptions ofBhudeb admiringly emphasize his difference from
the British.66 At the very beginning of his career, his value was spotted
by the director of public instruction, who recommended a promotion
for Bhudeb on the grounds that 'great advantage' could be derived from
Bhudeb's 'special knowledge' and 'extensive influence among his
countrymen'.67 In fact, Bhudeb turned this recognition into a moral
advantage from which he could actually judge British administrators.68
e 1860s-the decade when the empire was establishing itself and a
political honeymoon was assured by the loy declarations of 1858 that
guaranteed equality of treatment for all subjects of the queen69-was a
serendipitous period for Bhudeb. e beneficent temporality of progress
in his career was effectively conjoined to the effectiveness ohe other
time ofprogress, that is, ohe nation, through wise collaboration with
the British. And there were no real challenges to this route of national
development till later in the decade, when the Hindu Mela was
instituted. Bhudeb personally acquired an independent public profile
aer his editorship ohe Education Gazette. e 1870s, however, was a
time of growing ruptures. In 1872 Bhudeb received his first shock when
he was charged—very unfairly—with dereliction of duty. And although
he cleared his reputation with alacrity, it set the tone for a deepening
disenchantment with the nature of the empire. Campbell set the tone by
mounting spectacles at all the places he visited, instead of mixing with
local officers and the people. Bhudeb felt the empire was distancing
itself from its Indian subjects. Indians were no longer being encouraged
to advance within the service. e state secretary's declaration that the
British would never leave India was also a big shock.70 While his own
career surged ahead, it began to lose the larger representative
significance that it had once held.
At the same time, the meaningfulness and reach of his claims to
national development began to get attenuated among Indians. New
forms of public, institutionalized, and sometimes agitational national-
isms began to develop in the 1870s. Bhudeb may have been sympathetic
in principle with those who protested against the Brahmo Marriage Bill
of 1873, for he too believed that the state must not interfere in the
sphere of social practices. But he may not have sympathized with the
overt anti-British declarations that went with the Hindu revivalism of
this period. On the other hand he was explicitly opposed to the 'liberal'
middle-class nationalism of the Indian League formed in 1875, which
began the process of formation of the National Congress. In SP he
attributes this strand of nationalist agitation as controlled by the non-
official British and sententiously advises that 'we' must not get caught in
the in-fighting between Englishmen. Affiliations he felt had to be
maintained with British officials, for whatever improvement there was
to be had would come from them and not from their rivals.71
Bhudeb's world may not have been collapsing in the 1870s, but its
strands were separating and thinning out. We can see the effects of this
on Bhudeb's narrow obsessiveness. e larger personal-national
compass in which he located his career was now transformed into an
attenuated obsession with work. In a far from happy tone, he wrote to
his friend Ramgati Nyayaratna in 1879, to say that only in work lay
satisfaction and meaning in life.72 Characteristically, the other
condition of life- which he mentioned to Mukunda, his son-was
struggle.73 In this state, Bhudeb's autonomy was really the
independence granted by his growing isolation. Nevertheless, it was
splendid isolation. For, even as public national life became very
different from what he had understood by nationness, his upward
trajectory in the administration remained inexorable and may have
quickened in its pace.
e alienation from the 'nation', and testaments to the power of
individual motivation to work for the nation via the colonial
dispensation, appear to have come together in an intensified belief in
the expectation of the Great Man that he formulates late in his life in SP.
Of course, the possibilities of the Great Man had already been defined
in Prince Ramchandra of SBI. But if Ramchandra had inhabited the
past, the Great Man of SP poses a more desperate promise of the future.
A measure of this desperation is Bhudeb's belief that the Great Man can
spring up in one's everyday world. He exhorts his readers to keep their
eyes open, for any child could become the next Great Man.74 It is
interesting to note in this connection that he once dreamt of his
grandson as a divine messenger, and mentioned it to his son.75 He
dreamed these lives—and recorded it as nonchalantly as he did his
other activities—even as he lived out his life and retirement as a
colonial functionary trying to select what to take from his masters.

VI
Even this brief description of Bhudeb's career indicates the importance
of self-division in producing the habitation of the colonial subject. But
Bhudeb's case also reveals a certain movement in the trajectory ofsplits.
e willed split between the successful colonial career and its attendant
life choices, on the one hand, and the traditionalist 'national' ethic of
self-fashioning, on the other, is one in which these two constituent
elements of the split act in complementary ways. But changes in the
conditions that allow this complementary structure to reproduce itself
with assurance lead to the displacement of this distinction into
something new and more 'radical'. is is a split in time itself. In turn,
this split is refashioned by a move away from a location in the past to
that in the future. If SPs Great Man is a future possibility, SBI features a
past that is designed to shadow the real present. SBI suggests the
possibility of a coexistence of parallel lives. By the time SP is written,
this possibility appears to disappear in the desperate hope of the Great
Man's advent. What remains a shared feature between the two projects
is the constant pressure on the present to yield alternative narratives of
governance. If SBI can make its full effect felt only by the already
established idea that the past produces the present,76 SP reveals the
perpetual possibility of the Great Man inhabiting the present world of
the real itself.
It should be recalled that all these variations are made possible by the
world of historical time. In general, historical time has been invoked as
a principle of colonial legitimation. Bhudeb's instance sug-gests that for
the colonial subject historical time raises different possi-bilities. It yields
a time that allows for the possibility of refashioning time itself. In turn,
this allows for a play with time, a play that can yield alternative
habitations in time. It is this more general phenomenon of parallel
temporalities that the split between the social and political in Bhudeb
indicates. Equally interesting is the fact that historical time also brings
with it a fundamental uncertainty about time. Bhudeb's instance
suggests an inability to live out an internally differentiated life that
could with ease and stability be divided into separate compartments,
such as, for instance, the fictive and the real. e social and the political
are conjoined intimately in terms of both magisterial structure as well
as the scope of the political (that always threatens to include the social)
itself. e parallel times allow too many bridges between themselves to
permit stability.
Bhudeb's distinction between the social and political is a very
consequential one. While its orientalist lineages in the notion of
Oriental Despotism are not hard to trace, what is important is Bhudeb's
reinvention of it as a way ofdistinguishing between proper spheres and
modes of human intervention. In practice, as I have tried to show in my
reading of SBI above, Bhudeb's distinction works in a transactional
manner: the commitment to the political shadows the pronouncements
of the social as the proper sphere of national activity. e broad lines of
the political-social division were to be replayed in Rabindranath
Tagore's Rashtra-Samaj distinction and can also be seen at work in
Gandhi's thought. In particular, Rabindranath's thought developed this
distinction in an absolute direction. By the second decade of the
twentieth century, prompted by his critique of Swadeshi nationalism
and the World War, it supplies in Rabindranath's Nationalism lectures
the grounds for a critique ofall modern forms of centrally located ways
of governing peoples.
In conjecturing a new and differentiated condition of time, SBI points
to an important element in the relationship between colonial rule and
its subjects. is is the fact that the colonial condition did not
necessarily limit the scope of its critique and/or the alternatives posed
to it. SBI shows that while colonial rule was obviously decisive in
framing the conditions in which ways of thinking and living were
conducted, these modes also led to conceptualizing and imaginatively
practising new forms of existence. e splitting up of temporality is a
form of thinking and working about time itself, and not just about
colonial rule in its administrative and cognitive aspects. e act of
temporal splitting involves key questions of transformation: its proper
sphere, its criteria, its pace, and the problematic but possible registers in
which the relationship between time and intervention was conducted.
e time of colonialism is also a time in which it is exceeded.

Notes
* I am grateful to the criticisms and suggestions at a conference hosted by the
Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata, where I had first thrown up some of
the ideas contained here. I am deeply indebted to the suggestions and help given
by Tanika Sarkar, Gautam Bhadra, Manaswita Sanyal, Sunanda Das, Partha
Chatterjee, and Sibaji Bandyopadhyay.
1.Bhudeb Charit, Prothom Bhag, published by Srikumar Bandopadhyay (Chinsura:
1324/1916, hereaer BC1).
2.He was the first Indian to draw a salary of Rs 750 in the education department.
When told that this was an indication of British liberality, Bhudeb retorted that he
would have been a prime minister in any Indian ruled state. Ibid., p. 159.
3.Mukunda Mukhopadhyay, Bhudeb Charit, Dwitia Bhag (Calcutta, 1330/ 1923,
hereaer BC2), pp. 199-200.
4.Brojendranth Bandopadhyay, Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, Sahitya Sadhak
Charitmala (1351/1944; rpnt. Calcutta, 1381/1974), p. 45.
5.'Bismrita Brahman', Prabandha Samagra (Kolkata: 2001), p.151.

6.'Bhudev Mukhopadhyay (1827-1894)', in Tapan Raychaudhuri, Europe

Reconsidered: Perceptions ohe West in Nineteenth Century Bengal (Delhi: 1988).
7.Sudipta Kaviraj, 'e Reversal of Orientalism: Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay and the
Project of Indigenist Social eory', in Vasudha Dalmia and Hein- rich von
Stietencron, eds, Representing Hinduism: e Construction ofReli- gious Traditions
and National Identity (Delhi: 1995).
8.References to this text are taken from Bhudeb Rachanasambhar, ed. Promo-
thonath Bisi (Calcutta: 1364/1957).
9.BC2, p. 58.

10.John Clarke Marshman, e History ofIndia, from the Earliest Period to the
Close of Lord Dalhousie's Administration (London: 1867), vol. i, pp. 264—92.
11.Marshman's histories were used as school texts. See list of textbooks for Anglo-
Vernacular School at Burdwan, Education Dept (no. 294, 7 April 1860, West
Bengal State Archives, hereaer WBSA, General Dept: Lt Governor, Bengal
Progs).
12.Shyamali Sur, Itihaschintar Suchana O Jatiyabader Unmesh Bangla, 1870- 1912
(Calcutta: 2002), p. 54.
13.BC1, p. 34.

14.Marshman, History ofIndia, vol. i, p. 287.

15.See Richard Ned Lebow, 'What's So Different about a Counterfactual?', World

Politics, 52, 4 (2000).
16.Sur, Itihaschintar Suchana O Jatiyabader Unmesh Bangla, pp. 19, 22-3, 33.

17.Marshman, History of India.

18.In 1870, the Education Gazette published Hemchandra's 'Bharat Bilap'. e

government reporter translated ''jaban' as foreigner and thought that the Gazette
was being subversive. Bhudeb allayed British apprehensions by explaining that it
had referred to Ionians but now indicated Muslims. BC1, p. 397.
19.BC1, pp. 338-40.

20.It was neither a novel, nor a truthful tale, nor a yarn, and yet combined
everything: it was a new rasa. Education Gazette O Saptahik Bartabaha, 22
October 1875.
21.BC2, pp. 61-2.
22.In this context of proto-feminist utopian fictions, it is interesting to find
something similar generated in Maharashtra by Kashibai Kanitkar: See Meera
Kosambi, Crossing resholds: Feminist Essays in Social History (Delhi: 2007),
chapter 6.
23.Ibid., p. 157.

24.Ibid., p. 179.

25.Ibid., p. 157.

26.I am indebted to Sibaji Bandyopadhyay for leading me to this reference.

27.Shantiparva, 35 Mahabharatam, ed. Neelakantha (Calcutta: be 1345).

28.BC1, p. 296.

29.Once Bhudeb confronted the raja of Burdwan, who took pride in being
descended from Punjab, and told him that although he was descended from
Kanauj, Bengal had given a home to his family and it was demeaning to run it
down. BC1, pp. 223-4. Of course, Bhudeb was proud of his Kanauj origins and
once visited it with Rajnarain Basu. BC1, p. 348.
30.I should add here that Akbar was a favourite political figure with Bhudeb. His
lecture on history, given to school students as part of an examination ois skills
for a teaching job, was based on Akbar, whose non-discriminatory policies he said
produced stability in the country. BC1, pp. 171-3. Bhudeb was personally
associated with Muslims since he taught at the Calcutta Madrasa: they would
oen visit his house. BC1, p. 143.
31.SBI, pp. 339-40.

32.Partha Chatterjee, e Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial

Histories (Princeton: 1993), p. 111.
33.I have drawn on H.W. Koch, A Constitutional History of Germany in the
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London and New York: 1984), for the
discussion regarding the German constitution.
34.Interestingly, Wilhelm I wished himself to be called 'Emperor of Germany', but
was finally given the title 'German Emperor' on Bismarck's insistence. e latter
was seen to be more in tune with the federal character of the state. Koch, A
Constitutional History of Germany, p. 121. Clearly the German constitution too
qualified the powers of the monarch.
35.See Louis Dumont, 'e "Village Community" from Munro to Maine',
Contributions to Indian Sociology, 9 (December 1966). Interestingly, Bhu- deb
avoids questions of internal village governance, which, as Dumont points out, was
clearly an unresolved issue; to which must be added Bhu- deb's own first hand
experience of villages, which probably resisted easy definition.
36.Councils with nominated members were provided for both secretary of state
and viceroy by the Government of India Act, 1858 (as well as the Indian Councils
Act, 1861). D.D. Basu, Introduction to the Constitution of India (New Delhi:
revised edn, 1978), pp. 3-4.
37.See Bipan Chandra, e Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism in India
(New Delhi: 1958), pp. 3-4.
38.See Manu Goswami, Producing India: From Colonial Space to National Space
(New Delhi: 2004), p. 66.
39.SP, pp. 33-6. References to this text are taken from Bhudeb Rachanasambhar.

40.Karunamoy Mazumdar, Chandranath Basu: Jibon O Sahitya (Calcutta: 1984),

pp. 136-7.
41.SP, pp. 48-50.

42.Ibid., pp. 19-20.

43.It is true that Bhudeb experiments with puranic history in Pushpanjali. But this
improvised puran produces what is really a historical allegory-but narratively
structured by the marvellous.
44.Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, Inglander Itihas (rpnt. Hooghly: 1295/1888), Preface.
45.References to this text are taken from Banglar Itihas, Tritiya Bhag, Pratham
Adhyay.
46.Education Gazette, 16 April 1875.

47.Banglar Itihas, Tritiya Bhag, pp. 40-1.

48.SP, pp. 75-7.

49.Banglar Itihas, Tritiya Bhag, pp. 54-6.

50.SP, pp. 30-1.

51.By 1896 it had entered its fiieth print run. Sur, Itihaschintar Suchana O
Jatiyabader Unmesh Bangla, p. 59.
52.Bankim's comments were featured in the Education Gazette, 16 April 1875.

53.SP, p. 146.

54.Ibid., pp. 218-20.

55. Rajat Kanta Ray, Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal, 1875-1927
(Delhi: 1984), esp. pp. 33-5.
56.BC1, p. 60.

57.BC2, p. 25. During the time of report writing, his juniors would stay at their
house; Bhudeb was convivial with them and even played chess, for which a
complaint was registered against him! BC1, pp. 258-9.
58.BC1, p. 67.

59.Ibid., p. 47. Bhudeb took his Brahmin cook with him everywhere. Ibid., pp.
260-1.
60.Ibid., p. 269.

61.He told a critic that he was 'pro-swadeshi' and not anti-British. e two were
not incompatible since their interests were the same. BC1, pp. 3034.
62.Report from J.G. Medlicott, 29 August 1862, Education Progs, 50-4A, January
1863.
63.BC1, pp. 376-7.

64.He was frank about his capacities. Once, unfairly taken to task for neg-lecting
his official duties, Bhudeb wrote that he not only had to look aer the 'minutest'
details of his office which his 'brother officers' did not have to do, his inspection
work was also 'considerably above' theirs. Education Progs, 72-4, WBSA.
65.BC1, p. 337.

66.Hodgson Pratt, a superior, recalled his 'first Indian friend' as 'that tall and
dignified figure, in his pure white robes and those handsome features of fair
complexion. He spoke . . . with that thoughtfulness and gravity that mark the
Hindoo of high caste . . . He seemed incapable of. . . resorting to flattery or
obseqiousness . . .' However, he added (implicitly) that Bhudeb was also aware of
opportunities if these presented themselves. BC1, pp. 162-4.
67.W.S. Atkinson to S.C. Bayley, Junior Secy, Government of Bengal.

68.In his farewell speech to William Herschell, Bhudeb said that the true criterion
for judging public officials was, 'Does he deal impartially between men of his own
and of a darker colour?' Herschell passed. BC1, pp. 328-9.
69.Significantly, he cites the entire text of the declaration in Banglar Itihas, pp.
103-6.
70.BC2, p. 119.

71.SP, p. 216.

72.BC2, p. 189.

73.Ibid., p. 187.

74.SP, p. 219.

75.BC2, p. 287.
76.See its formulation in Rev. K.M. Banerjea, 'Discourse on the Nature and
Importance of Historical Studies', Awakening in Bengal in Early Nineteenth
Century (Selected Documents), ed. Goutam Chattopadhyay (Calcutta: 1963), vol. I.