Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-b95js Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-10T23:41:21.391Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Secret in the Oxford Sense: Thieves and the Rhetoric of Mystification in Western India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2011

Anastasia Piliavsky
Anastasia Piliavsky*
Affiliation:
King's College, Cambridge
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Common sense commodifies the secret, alienating the value of its content from its social context. But a secret perfectly kept dies in its circle of initiates. Few secrets, however, are dead on arrival, since their seduction lies precisely in their revelation. Most things said to be hidden are in fact nurtured through the processes of calculated concealment, allusion, and revelation, the secrets propagating themselves through circles of conspiracy, rumor, and gossip. As Tim Jenkins observed, “What is concealed, and the reasons for its concealment, serve to distract attention from the dynamic of the secret: what at first sight appears to be static and indeed dead, possessed by and known to only a few, kept in some dark place, in fact has a life and movement of its own; the secret propagates itself through a structure of secret and betrayal” (1999: 225–26).

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 53 , Issue 2 , April 2011 , pp. 290 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abrams, P. 1988. Some Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State. Journal of Historical Sociology 1, 1: 58–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aklujkar, A. 1996. Dharma-Caurya-Rasāyana as a Text and as a Work of Brahmin Fantasy. Amṛtamandākinī. Dr. G. B. Palsule Felicitation Volume. Palsule, G. et al. , eds. Pune: Dr. Palsule Satkar Samiti, 239–60.Google Scholar
Arnold, D. 1986. Police Power and Colonial Rule: Madras, 1859–1947. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Babb, L. A. 1975. The Divine Hierarchy: Popular Hinduism in Central India. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Bayly, C. A. 1996. Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Beeman, W. O. 1986. Language, Status, and Power in Iran. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Bhargava, B. S. 1949. The Criminal Tribes: A Socio-Economic Study of the Principal Criminal Tribes and Castes in Northern India. Lucknow: Universal Publishers.Google Scholar
Bhāsa. 1970. Avimāraka, Love's Enchanted World. Masson, J. L. and Kosambi, D. D., eds. and trans. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas.Google Scholar
Bhāsa. 1930–1931. Thirteen Trivandrum Plays by Bhāsa. 2 vols. Woolner, S. C. and Sarup, L., eds. and trans. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bhattacharya, C. A. 1990. The Concept of Theft in Classical Hindu Law: An Analysis and the Idea of Punishment. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal.Google Scholar
Bloomfield, M. 1913. The Character and Adventures of Muladeva. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 25, 212: 616–50.Google Scholar
Bloomfield, M. 1923a. The Art of Stealing in Hindu Fiction. American Journal of Philology 44, 2: 97–133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloomfield, M. 1923b. The Art of Stealing in Hindu Fiction, Part II. American Journal of Philology 44, 3: 193–229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloomfield, M. 1926. On Organized Brigandage in Hindu Fiction. American Journal of Philology 47, 3: 205–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broughton, T. D. 1892. Letters Written in a Mahratta Camp during the Year 1809. London: Archibald Constable and Co.Google Scholar
Canetti, E. 1962. Crowds and Power. Stewart, Carol, trans. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
Carstairs, G. M. 1957. The Twice-Born. London: The Hogarth Press.Google Scholar
Census of India Report. 2001. Indian Census Commission.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, S. 2007. Disruptions Have Become a Disease. Times of India, 10 Sept: 4.Google Scholar
Chatterji, B. 1981. The Darogah and the Countryside: The Imposition of Police Control in Bengal and Its Impact (1793–1837). The Indian Economic and Social History Review 18, 1: 19–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohn, B. S. 1996. Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Compendium concerning Kanjar gangs resident in “Gopalpur” District [Jīlā “Gopalpur” Meiñ Rahane Wāle Kanjar Gaing Sambandhī Kampendiyam]. n.d. Record Office of the “Gopalpur” District Superintendent of Police.Google Scholar
Daṇḍin. 1966. Daśakumāracarita of Daṇḍin. Kale, M. R., ed. and trans. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas.Google Scholar
Dresch, P. 2000. “Wilderness of Mirrors”: Truth and Vulnerability in Middle Eastern Fieldwork. In Dresch, P., James, W., and Parkin, D., eds., Anthropologists in a Wider World: Essays on Field Research. Oxford: Berghahn Press, 109–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
D'Souza, D. 2001. Branded by Law: Looking at India's Denotified Tribes. New Delhi: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
De Wilde, R. 2009. Opium Poppy Husk Traders in Rajasthan: The Lives and Work of Businessmen in the Contemporary Indian Opium Industry. PhD thesis, London School of Economic and Political Science.Google Scholar
Elliott, H. M. 1859. Memoirs on the History, Folk-Lore, and Distribution of the Races of the North Western Provinces of India. London: Trübner.Google Scholar
Freed, R. S. and Freed, S. A.. 1964. Spirit Possession as Illness in a North Indian Village. Ethnology 3, 2: 152–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freitag, S. 1998. Sansiahs and the State: The Changing Nature of “Crime” and “Justice” in Nineteenth-Century British India. In Anderson, M. and Guha, S., eds., Changing Concepts of Rights and Justice in South Asia. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 82–113.Google Scholar
Fuller, C. J. 1992. The Camphor Flame: Popular Hinduism and Society in India. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Fuller, C. J. and Harriss, J.. 2001. For an Anthropology of the Modern Indian State. In Fuller, C. J. and Bénéï, V., eds., The Everyday State and Society in Modern India. London: Hurst, 1–30.Google Scholar
Gandhi, M. 2008. Denotified Tribes: Dimensions of Change. New Delhi: Kanishka Publishers Distributors.Google Scholar
Garg, R. P. 1965. Dacoit Problem in Chambal Valley: A Sociological Study. Varanasi: Gandhian Institute of Studies.Google Scholar
Glucklich, A. 1994. The Sense of Adharma. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goffman, E. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Gordon, S. N. 1969. Scarf and Sword: Thugs, Marauders, and State-Formation in 18th Century Malwa. The Indian Economic and Social History Review 6, 4: 416–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, S. N. 1985. Bhils and the Idea of a Criminal Tribe in Nineteenth-Century India. In Young, A. A., ed., Crime and Criminality in British India. Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press, 128–39.Google Scholar
Griffiths, P. J. 1971. To Guard My People: The History of the Indian Police. London: Benn.Google Scholar
Guha, S. 1999. Environment and Ethnicity in India, 1200–1991. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gupta, D. 1997. Rivalry and Brotherhood: Politics in the Life of Farmers in Northern India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hemavijaya. 1920. Katharatnakara. Das Märchenmeer: Eine Sammlung Indischer Erzählungen von Hemavijaya. Hertel, J., ed. and trans. München: Georg Müller.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, M. 1987. Anthropology through the Looking Glass: Critical Ethnography in the Margins of Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, M. 2005. Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jātaka Stories, or Stories of the Buddha's Former Births. 1895. 6 vols. Cowell, E. B., ed. and trans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jenkins, T. 1999. Religion in English Everyday Life: An Ethnographic Approach. Oxford: Berghahn Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, H. M. 1920. Rāuhineya's Adventures, the Rāuhineyacarita. In Studies in Honor of Maurice Bloomfield (edited by his pupils). New Haven: Yale University Press, 159–96.Google Scholar
Johnson, P. C. 2002. Secrets, Gossip, and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian Condomblé. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kasturi, M. 2002. Embattled Identities: Rajput Lineages and the Colonial State in Nineteenth-Century North India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kolff, D.H.A. 1990. Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450–1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lakshmipura VCNB. 1973–present. Record office of the “Fararpur” police station.Google Scholar
Major, A. J. 1999. State and Criminal Tribes in Colonial Punjab: Surveillance, Control and Reclamation of the “Dangerous Classes.” Modern Asian Studies 33, 3: 657–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mandelbaum, D. G. 1970. Society in India. 2 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Manu. 1886. The Laws of Manu: Translated, with Extracts from Seven Commentaries. Bühler, G., trans. and ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Mayaram, S. 1991. Criminality or Community? Alternative Constructions of the Mev Narrative of Darya Khan. Contributions to Indian Sociology (n.s.) 25, 1: 57–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayaram, S. 2003. Against History, Against State: Counterperspectives from the Margins. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Mehrotra, R. R. 1977. Sociology of Secret Languages. Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study.Google Scholar
Mitchell, T. 1991. The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and Their Critics. American Political Science Review 85, 1: 77–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nigam, S. 1990a. Disciplining and Policing the “Criminals by Birth,” Part 1: The Making of a Colonial Stereotype—The Criminal Tribes and Castes of North India. The Indian Economic and Social History Review 27, 2: 131–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nigam, S. 1990b. Disciplining and Policing the “Criminals by Birth,” Part 2: The Development of a Disciplinary System, 1871–1900. The Indian Economic and Social History Review 27, 3: 257–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Malley, L.S.S. 1925. History of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa under British Rule. Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot.Google Scholar
Osella, C. and Osella, F.. 1998. Friendship and Flirting: Micro-Politics in Kerala, South India. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (n.s.) 4, 2: 189–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Pariśiṣtas of the Atharvaveda. 1909. Bolling, G. M. and von Negelein, J., eds. and trans. Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
Parker, H. 1910–1914. Village Folk-Tales of Ceylon. 3 vols. Dehiwala: Tisara Prakasayako.Google Scholar
Passi, A. 2001. Dharmacauryarasāyana (L'elisir del Furton Secondo il Dharma). Milano: Edizioni Ariele.Google Scholar
Passi, A. 2005. Perverted Dharma? Ethics of Thievery in the Dharmacauryarasāyana. Journal of Indian Philosophy 33, 4: 513–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piliavsky, A. n.d. Borders without Borderlands: On the Social Reproduction of State Demarcation in Western India. In D. Gellner, ed., Borderlands in Northern South Asia (forthcoming from Duke University Press).Google Scholar
Pinhey, Samuel G. 1925. Letter (No. 35), 28 May. West Bengal State Archives. Foreign (Internal-A), May 1925, proceedings 118–22.Google Scholar
Platts, J. T. 1884. A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi, and English. London: W. H. Allen and Co.Google Scholar
Pocock, D. F. 1957. “Difference” in East Africa: A Study of Caste and Religion in Modern Indian Society. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 13, 4: 289–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radhakrishna, M. 1992. Surveillance and Settlement under the Criminal Tribes Act in Madras. The Indian Economic and Social History Review 29, 2:171–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radhakrishna, M. 2001. Dishonoured by History: “Criminal Tribes” and British Colonial Policy. Hyderabad: Orient Longman.Google Scholar
The Rajasthan Police Act 2007. 2008. Jodhpur: Kanoon Prakashak Agency.Google Scholar
Rubinoff, A. G. 1998. The Decline of India's Parliament. Journal of Legislative Studies 4, 4: 13–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ṣaṇmukhakalpa: Ein Lehrbuch der Zauberei und Diebeskunst aus dem Indischen Mittelalter. 1991. G. Dieter, ed. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.Google Scholar
Schiefner, A. Von and Ralston, W. S., eds. and trans. 1906. Tibetan Tales, Derived from Indian Sources. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner.Google Scholar
Shah, A. M. and Shroff, R. G.. 1958. The Vahīvancā Bāroṭs of Gujarat: A Caste of Genealogists and Mythographers. Journal of American Folklore 71, 281: 246–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shah, P. G. 1967. Vimuktu Jatis: Denotified Communities in Western India. Bombay: Gujarat Research Society.Google Scholar
Shāh, V. 1966 [1766]. The Adventures of Hir and Ranjha. Hasan, M., ed., and Usborne, C. F., trans. Karachi: Lion Art Press.Google Scholar
Shryock, A. 2004. Other Conscious/Self Aware: First Thoughts on Cultural Intimacy and Mass Mediation. In Shryock, A., ed., Off Stage/On Display: Intimacy and Ethnography in the Age of Public Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 3–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simmel, G. 1906. The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies. The American Journal of Sociology 11, 4: 441–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singha, R. 1993. “Providential Circumstances”: The Thuggee Campaign of the 1830s and Legal Innovation. Modern Asian Studies 27, 1: 83–146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singha, R. 1998. A Despotism of Law: Crime and Justice in Early Colonial India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Skaria, A. 1998. Being Jangli: The Politics of Wilderness. Studies in History (n.s.) 14, 2: 193–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skaria, A. 1999. Hybrid Histories: Forests, Frontiers and Wildness in Western India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sleeman, W. H. 1836. Ramaseeana, or a Vocabulary of the Particular Language Used by the Thugs. Calcutta: G. H. Gutman, Military Orphan Press.Google Scholar
Sleeman, W. H. 1839. History of the Thugs or Phansigars of India. Philadelphia: Carey and Hart.Google Scholar
Sleeman, W. H. 1844. Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official. 2 vols. London: J. Hatchard and Son.Google Scholar
Sleeman, W. H. 1849. Report on Budhuk Alias Bagree Decoits. Calcutta: J. C. Sherriff, Bengal Military Orphan Press.Google Scholar
Smith, J. D. 1975. An Introduction to the Language of the Historical Documents from Rājasthān. Modern Asian Studies 9, 4: 433–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Somadeva. 1923. The Ocean of Story: Being C. H. Tawney's Translation of Somadeva's Kathāsaritsāgara (Or, Ocean of Streams of Story). Tawney, C. H., trans. and ed. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas.Google Scholar
Spary, C. 2010. Disrupting Rituals of Debate in the Indian Parliament. Journal of Legislative Studies 16, 3: 338–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Srivastava, Piyush. 2005. Forget Tigers, Peacocks Are Going Extinct Too. Indian Express (Lucknow), 17 Aug: n.p.Google Scholar
Śūdraka. 1905. The Little Clay Cart (Mṛcchakaṭika). A Hindu Drama Attributed to King Shūdraka. Lanman, C. R., ed., and Ryder, A. W., trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sunday Telegraph. 1977. A Secret in the Oxford Sense. 30 Jan.: n.p.Google Scholar
Taussig, M. 1999. Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative. Stanford: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Telegraph (Calcutta). 1998. Gang of Pardhis Busted. 31 July: n.p.Google Scholar
Tod, J. 1920 [1829–1832]. Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan of the Central and Western Rajput States. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tolen, R. J. 1991. Colonizing and Transforming the Criminal Tribesman: The Salvation Army in British India. American Ethnologist 18, 1: 106–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vidal, D. 1997. Violence and Truth: A Rajasthani Kingdom Confronts Colonial Authority. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wagner, K. A. 2007. Thuggee: Banditry and the British in Early Nineteenth-Century India. Basingstoke: Pallgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wagner, K. A. 2010. Confessions of a Skull: Phrenology and Colonial Knowledge in Early Nineteenth-Century India. History Workshop Journal 69: 27–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Washbrook, D. 1991. “To Each a Language of His Own”: Language, Culture, and Society in Colonial India. In Corfield, P. J., ed., Language, History and Class. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 179–203.Google Scholar
Ziegler, N. P. 1976. Marvari Historical Chronicles: Sources for the Social and Cultural History of Rajasthan. The Indian Economic and Social History Review 13: 219–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar