Public Women in British India

by Rimli Bhattacharya
Public Women in British India
Author: Rimli Bhattacharya
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2018-05-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0429016557
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This book foregrounds the subjectivity of ‘acting women’ amidst violent debates on femininity and education, livelihood and labour, sexuality and marriage. It looks at the emergence of the stage actress as an artist and an ideological construct at critical phases of performance practice in British India. The focus here is on Calcutta, considered the ‘second city of the Empire’ and a nodal point in global trade circuits. Each chapter offers new ways of conceptualising the actress as a professional, a colonial subject, simultaneously the other and the model of the ‘new woman’. An underlying motif is the playing out of the idea of spiritual salvation, redemption and modernity. Analysing the dynamics behind stagecraft and spectacle, the study highlights the politics of demarcation and exclusion of social roles. It presents rich archival work from diverse sources, many translated for the first time. This book makes a distinctive contribution in intertwining performance studies with literary history and art practices within a cross-cultural framework. Interdisciplinary and innovative, it will appeal to scholars and researchers in South Asian theatre and performance studies, history and gender studies.

The British in India

by David Gilmour
The British in India
Author: David Gilmour
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 641
Release: 2018-11-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0374713243
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An immersive portrait of the lives of the British in India, from the seventeenth century to Independence Who of the British went to India, and why? We know about Kipling and Forster, Orwell and Scott, but what of the youthful forestry official, the enterprising boxwallah, the fervid missionary? What motivated them to travel halfway around the globe, what lives did they lead when they got there, and what did they think about it all? Full of spirited, illuminating anecdotes drawn from long-forgotten memoirs, correspondence, and government documents, The British in India weaves a rich tapestry of the everyday experiences of the Britons who found themselves in “the jewel in the crown” of the British Empire. David Gilmour captures the substance and texture of their work, home, and social lives, and illustrates how these transformed across the several centuries of British presence and rule in the subcontinent, from the East India Company’s first trading station in 1615 to the twilight of the Raj and Partition and Independence in 1947. He takes us through remote hill stations, bustling coastal ports, opulent palaces, regimented cantonments, and dense jungles, revealing the country as seen through British eyes, and wittily reveling in all the particular concerns and contradictions that were a consequence of that limited perspective. The British in India is a breathtaking accomplishment, a vivid and balanced history written with brio, elegance, and erudition.

Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India

by Jessica Hinchy
Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India
Author: Jessica Hinchy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2019-04-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 110849255X
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Examines the colonial and postcolonial governance of gender and sexuality through the history of transgender Hijras in north India.

Inglorious Empire

by Shashi Tharoor
Inglorious Empire
Author: Shashi Tharoor
Publisher: Penguin Group
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780141987149
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Inglorious Empire' tells the real story of the British in India from the arrival of the East India Company to the end of the Raj, revealing how Britain's rise was built upon its plunder of India. In the eighteenth century, India's share of the world economy was as large as Europe's. By 1947, after two centuries of British rule, it had decreased six-fold. Beyond conquest and deception, the Empire blew rebels from cannon, massacred unarmed protesters, entrenched institutionalised racism, and caused millions to die from starvation. British imperialism justified itself as enlightened despotism for the benefit of the governed, but Shashi Tharoor takes on and demolishes this position, demonstrating how every supposed imperial "gift" - from the railways to the rule of law -was designed in Britain's interests alone. He goes on to show how Britain's Industrial Revolution was founded on India's deindustrialisation, and the destruction of its textile industry.

Tawaifnama

by Saba Dewan
Tawaifnama
Author: Saba Dewan
Publisher: Context
Total Pages: 804
Release:
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9395073594
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About the Book A NUANCED AND POWERFUL MICROHISTORY SET AGAINST THE SWEEP OF INDIAN HISTORY. Dharmman Bibi rode into battle during the revolt of 1857 shoulder to shoulder with her patron lover Babu Kunwar Singh. Sadabahar entranced even snakes and spirits with her music, but eventually gave her voice to Baba Court Shaheed. Her foster mothers Bullan and Kallan fought their malevolent brother and an unjust colonial law all the way to the Privy Council—and lost everything. Their great-granddaughter Teema paid for the family’s ruination with her childhood and her body. Bindo, Asghari, Phoolmani, Pyaari … there are so many stories in this family. And you—one of the best-known tawaifs of your times—remember the stories of your foremothers and your own. This is a history, a multi-generational chronicle of one family of well-known tawaifs with roots in Banaras and Bhabua. Through their stories and self-histories, Saba Dewan explores the nuances that conventional narratives have erased, papered over or wilfully rewritten. In a not-so-distant past, tawaifs played a crucial role in the social and cultural life of northern India. They were skilled singers and dancers, and also companions and lovers to men from the local elite. It is from the art practice of tawaifs that kathak evolved and the purab ang thumri singing of Banaras was born. At a time when women were denied access to the letters, tawaifs had a grounding in literature and politics, and their kothas were centres of cultural refinement. Yet, as affluent and powerful as they were, tawaifs were marked by the stigma of being women in the public gaze, accessible to all. In the colonial and nationalist discourse of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this stigma deepened into criminalisation and the violent dismantling of a community. Tawaifnama is the story of that process of change, a nuanced and powerful microhistory set against the sweep of Indian history.

Public Health in British India

by Mark Harrison
Public Health in British India
Author: Mark Harrison
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 1994-02-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521466882
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After years of neglect the last decade has witnessed a surge of interest in the medical history of India under colonial rule. This is the first major study of public health in British India. It covers many previously unresearched areas such as European attitudes towards India and its inhabitants, and the way in which these were reflected in medical literature and medical policy; the fate of public health at local level under Indian control; and the effects of quarantine on colonial trade and the pilgrimage to Mecca. The book places medicine within the context of debates about the government of India, and relations between rulers and ruled. In emphasising the active role of the indigenous population, and in its range of material, it differs significantly from most other work conducted in this subject area.

Women of the Raj

by Margaret MacMillan
Women of the Raj
Author: Margaret MacMillan
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2007-10-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812976398
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In the nineteenth century, at the height of colonialism, the British ruled India under a government known as the Raj. British men and women left their homes and traveled to this mysterious, beautiful country–where they attempted to replicate their own society. In this fascinating portrait, Margaret MacMillan examines the hidden lives of the women who supported their husbands’ conquests–and in turn supported the Raj, often behind the scenes and out of the history books. Enduring heartbreaking separations from their families, these women had no choice but to adapt to their strange new home, where they were treated with incredible deference by the natives but found little that was familiar. The women of the Raj learned to cope with the harsh Indian climate and ward off endemic diseases; they were forced to make their own entertainment–through games, balls, and theatrics–and quickly learned to abide by the deeply ingrained Anglo-Indian love of hierarchy. Weaving interviews, letters, and memoirs with a stunning selection of illustrations, MacMillan presents a vivid cultural and social history of the daughters, sisters, mothers, and wives of the men at the center of a daring imperialist experiment–and reveals India in all its richness and vitality. “A marvellous book . . . [Women of the Raj] successfully [re-creates] a vanished world that continues to hold a fascination long after the sun has set on the British empire.” –The Globe and Mail “MacMillan has that essential quality of the historian, a narrative gift.” –The Daily Telegraph “MacMillan is a superb writer who can bring history to life.” –The Philadelphia Inquirer “Well researched and thoroughly enjoyable.” –Evening Standard

The British Imperial Century, 1815–1914

by Timothy H. Parsons
The British Imperial Century, 1815–1914
Author: Timothy H. Parsons
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 199
Release: 2019-01-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1442250933
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The British Imperial Century provides a concise but comprehensive overview of the formation and administration of the empire from its origins in the early nineteenth century, to its climax at mid-century and ultimate denouement on the eve of the First World War.Considering the impact of British imperial rule and influence on subject peoples, Timothy H. Parsons explores the themes of cross-cultural social and environmental interaction from a world history perspective. He traces the transition from informal to formal empire, which broadened and intensified Britain's relations with Asia, Africa, and the western hemisphere. The establishment of extensive colonies and protectorates in Africa, the occupation of Egypt, the declaration of the Raj in India, and increased economic and political intervention in Latin America and in the Chinese and Ottoman empires brought ever-larger numbers of non-European peoples and cultures under either the influence or direct authority of the British Crown. By considering British imperialism through the lens of world history, Parsons moves beyond questions of Britain's motives in acquiring more territory to ask how it was able to acquire such an empire. As a global network of exchanges, the British Empire linked disparate regions in a series of distinct but overlapping exchanges. By co-opting and adapting the values and customs of their subjects imperial rulers strengthened their authority and legitimacy, but in doing so produced a hybrid culture that was largely British in style but not entirely British in substance. An ambitious and thoughtful contribution, The British Imperial Century will be invaluable for courses on world history and European history and as a supplement for courses on African, Asian, British, and Middle Eastern history.

Reproductive Restraints

by Sanjam Ahluwalia
Reproductive Restraints
Author: Sanjam Ahluwalia
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2010-10-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0252090381
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Reproductive Restraints traces the history of contraception use and population management in colonial India, while illuminating its connection to contemporary debates in India and birth control movements in Great Britain and the United States. Sanjam Ahluwalia draws attention to the interactive and relational history of Indian birth control by including western activists such as Margaret Sanger and Marie Stopes alongside important Indian campaigners. In revealing the elitist politics of middle-class feminists, Indian nationalists, western activists, colonial authorities and the medical establishment, Ahluwalia finds that they all sought to rationalize procreation and regulate women while invoking competing notions of freedom, femininity, and family. Ahluwalia’s remarkable interviews with practicing midwives in rural northern India fills a gaping void in the documentary history of birth control and shows that the movement has had little appeal to non-elite groups in India. Finding that Jaunpuri women’s reproductive decisions are bound to their emotional, cultural, and economic reliance on family and community, Ahluwalia presents the limitations of universal liberal feminist categories, which often do not consider differences among localized subjects. She argues that elitist birth control efforts failed to account for Indian women’s values and needs and have worked to restrict reproductive rights rather than liberate subaltern Indian women since colonial times.