One of the most innovative aspects of forest policy in colonial Burma was the employment of shifting cultivators in order to create teak plantations. As developed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this system of plantation forestry represented an far-sighted attempt to establish teak production on a long-term basis. Indeed, its adaptation of what many colonial officials viewed as a destructive and primitive form of agriculture to more ‘useful’ end, guaranteed its popularity in a broader imperial context. Even today, the use of shifting cultivators for commercial tree planting remains an acknowledged agroforestry technique, and is promoted as a cure for various social and ecological problems.

This paper offers a preliminary exploration of the multi-faceted ways in which the railways of South Asia have been represented in textual, aural and visual media. I do this despite my reservations about some representational-type studies presented via language and theories I find opaque. Nonetheless, I do want to signal that I am not a closed-minded trainspotter; I am not one of those railway historians a reviewer of Michael Freeman's Railways and the Victorian Imagination labelled ‘“trainspotters” to a man…combining the enthusiasms of the hobbyist and the econometrician in scholarly mimicry of that singular British type.’ The reviewer, of course, was referring to those railway devotees who haunt British railway stations desperately taking pictures of locomotives and recording their serial numbers and not to the alienated characters in a recent movie of similar name.

If Calcutta of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was a city of ‘banians,’ can Madras of the same period be called a city of ‘dubashes’? The parallels in the early history of these two port cities, and particularly in the emergence of similar groups of Indian collaborators, are not hard to find. Nor are they especially surprising in view of the common goals and needs of the English traders who founded them. The need for intermediaries and collaborators was built into the very economic and political structures of these towns. In turn, these groups inevitably had a tremendous influence on the development and environments of these colonial urban centers.

Maratha Brahman families migrated to Banaras in increasing numbers from the early sixteenth century. They dominated the intellectual life of the city and established an important presence at the Mughal and other north Indian courts. They retained close links with Brahmans back in the Maratha regions, where pressures of social change and competition for rural resources led to acrimonious disputes concerning ritual entitlement and precedence in the rural social order. Parties on either side appealed to Banaras for resolution of the disputes, raising serious questions about the nature of Brahman community and identity. Banaras pandit communities struggled to contain these disputes, even as the symbols of their own authority came under attack from the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. By the early eighteenth century, the emergence of the Maratha state created new models of Brahman authority and community, and new patterns for the resolution of such disputes.

It is not always remembered that under British rule some 150,000 Punjabis were notified under the Criminal Tribes Act as belonging to tribes and castes whose hereditary occupation was deemed to be crime. More than any other class these criminal tribes felt the harsh impact of the colonial state, which sought to control, punish and reform them. This paper traces the evolution of a Punjab criminal tribes policy and argues that the British—assisted by the indigenous elite—achieved only partial success in assimilating these people into the wider community by 1947.

In the post-colonial shifting of material, legal and ideological bases, some of the given patterns of relationships between individuals and caste groups have changed and weakened because of the introduction of new, parallel and alternative structures of relationships. This change has left the dominant caste groups feeling palpably insecure in relation to the dalits. While delineating this relationship, this article seeks to argue that the cases of dalit and dominant/upper caste members' elopement and marriage represent a high point in the ongoing conflictual relationship between them, as these are viewed as forms of dalit assertion. Although many caste groups and communities are involved in inter-caste marriages and associations that defy customary norms and caste practices and have no social acceptance, it is in relation to a dalit and non-dalit association or marriage that certain aspects, which impinge on wider issues, come to the surface more pronouncedly. For the dominant caste groups such associations remain the most viable and potent issues to garner a wider collective support, cutting across class/caste/community and age divides. These cases are selectively made a public spectacle by the dominant caste groups to settle wider issues at stake verging on contemporary political and economic interests.

This paper investigates the late colonial origins of Home Science in British India. It deals most intensively with the institutionalization of Home Science in Madras Presidency and attends to the roles played by both the colonial state and Indian women's organizations in its establishment. Though the focus is on Madras because the efforts of those based there influenced the later course of Home Science education, the activities of Madras educators, policy makers and reformers are also situated within a wider frame of transregional and imperial relations forged through reform projects, missionization, travel and education. Consideration of Home Science education in this wider context reveals the socio-political constraints an opportunities of, as well as the ideological interests at work in, its establishment. The paper finds that, at its inception, Home Science was the product of strategic alliances among colonial authorities, Indian social reformers, and Indian nationalists — all of whom, despite other differences, considered the home a site of and symbol for nationalist modernity. Home Science is shown to have relied on and helped shape a set of discourses that can be deemed ‘feminist nationalist’ in that they were engaged dialectically with anti-colonial nationalisms and with internationalist feminisms. Using Home Science as a lens, this paper provides a window on a set of late colonial debates that, informed by nationalist struggles and goals, sought to reshape the meaning and scope of both female agency and domesticity.

Sudden onset natural disasters such as earthquakes are absolute physical and psychological levellers which spare no one from the event itself or the aftermath. The resulting physical devastation of a city and the psychological weakening of a population, however, also present opportunities. The opportunity to reorder society is unparalleled by any other historical event except perhaps war and with increasing regularity throughout much of the twentieth century, nation states have used disasters as a pretext to secure long held political goals. In September 1923, the devastation of Tokyo as a result of the Great Kantô Earthquake presented a significant opportunity to reorder Japanese society both on a physical and psychological level. In the post-disaster reconstruction period, the government was quick to capitalise on this catastrophe.

From the mid-seventeenth to the late eighteenth centuries three agrarian states—Chinese, Mongolian, and Russian—struggled for power over the heartland of the Eurasian continent. Each had dynamic central leaders mobilizing agrarian surpluses based on drastically different ecologies, institutions, and military structures. When the dust cleared, by 1760, only two survived.

It is difficult to distinguish between art and life in South Asian society; they no longer imitate each other but appear to have merged. Political philosophies, social values, group behaviour, speech and dress in society are reflected in the cinema and, like a true mirror, reflect back in society. Furthermore, film stars cross over from their fantasy world into politics to emerge as powerful figures guiding the destiny of millions. It is thus possible to view the cinema as a legitimate metaphor for society; this perception helps us to understand society better.

The literature on the new international division of labour (NIDL) highlights the rapid growth of the electronics industry in East and Southeast Asia. By contrast, the Indian electronics industry has received less attention because of its traditional emphasis upon import substitution and relatively weak articulation with the prevailing global division of labour. Moreover, the application of the microchip technology in India is still in its early stages, though government interest and support for it suggest a promising future. Nevertheless, in computer software India is emerging as a competitive location for software development and exports.

From the late nineteenth century onwards, a new range of European and American technologies, powered by electricity and gas, and intended for use on the body and in the home—especially appliances for the domestic kitchen—began to appear in Manila. Electro-mechanical vibratory devices and steam-powered massagers for the body; hair waving and curling machines; and a multitude of technologies for the domestic kitchen, from stoves and water heaters to a gamut of electric and gas gadgetry that included percolators, boilers, electric waffle-irons, grills, and refrigerators (or ice-boxes, their precursor) were targeted largely at the affluent female consumer with promises to improve her physical appearance and health or make her daily life more comfortable. Their introduction and impact in the Philippines can tell a number of compelling stories—the desirability of European or American bourgeois culture, how the trappings of Western lifestyles were imagined, the extent to which the use and purchase of certain technologies aimed at replicating or emulating those lifestyles, or, as this paper explores, the gendered technological infrastructure of the ‘good life’. In this story, modern technologies designed for domestic settings and for use on women's bodies made manifest a myriad of desires and aspirations—prestige, status, cosmopolitanism, modernity, and urbanity. They also articulated a particular sensuousness and pleasure. Electro-vibratory devices, hair styling machines, and kitchen appliances could be experienced by all the senses and thus exerted a visceral appeal; their use proclaimed an enthusiasm for modern technology which, for the first time, emphasized the relevance of modern technology to women's everyday lives by the transformative effects they promised.

This paper offers a history of belonging in Dahagram, a sovereign Bangladeshi enclave situated within India but close to the India-Bangladesh border. I recount Dahagram's post-Partition history, focusing particularly on the long and localized struggles between 1974 and 1992 to open the Tin Bigha Corridor, a land bridge through Indian territory that links Dahagram to the Bangladeshi mainland. Drawing on the memories and experiences of residents, I examine Dahagram's past(s) as narratives of postcolonial belonging: to fragmented conceptions of state and nation, to surrounding areas, and to the enclave itself. I focus on the overlapping tensions between national and local struggles to ‘claim’ Dahagram as Bangladeshi or Indian territory, and uneven processes of political inclusion within and around the enclaves and within the Bangladeshi State. I use ‘belonging’ as a double-entendre, as these tensions are all intimately linked to possession of land/territory, goods, and access to markets. The notion of belonging(s) helps to illuminate Dahagram's historical and contemporary cultural politics and political-economy, as well as its articulations with broader events in postcolonial South Asia. Yet, belonging is also an analytic for understanding how history is remembered and articulated as a claim to territory, rights, and membership in unstable places.

Cows have been the subject of political petitioning in South Asia for over a hundred years. This article examines the changing relationship between communities and the state in India through the transformation of petitioning practices—from ‘monster’ petitions, to postcard campaigns and constitutional writs—by the proponents and opponents of the cow protection movement from the late nineteenth century through to the first decades of independence. The article shows that, instead of disciplining and formalizing popular politics, petitioning provides channels for mobilization and disruption. As Hindus and Muslims engaged in competitive petitioning to rally a public, persuade the executive, or litigate through the courts, the question of cow slaughter was recast from one of community representation to religious belief, to property rights, to federalism, and, finally, questions of national economic development. In the absence of representative government in colonial India, Hindus for cow protection generated massive petitions which argued that they represented popular democratic will. Despite the lack of a constitution, Muslim petitioners sought to establish a judicially enforceable framework to protect their right to cow slaughter. Independence, which brought both democracy and a written constitution, caused a fundamental break with older claims and forms of petitioning, and led to both Hindus and Muslims seeking to settle the debate through writ petitions before constitutional courts.

A figure in part a foreman, in part a headman, and in part a recruiting contractor, formed an indispensable part of labour organization in mills, mines, ports and plantations in nineteenth-century India, and in the tropical colonies where Indian emigrants went for work. Historians have explained the presence of such a figure by the needs of capital for intermediaries, or needs of labour for familiar relationships in an unfamiliar environment. The significance of the labour agent for economic history, however, seems to go beyond these needs. The universal presence of a worker who embodied a variable blend of roles prompts several larger questions. Was the labour agent an institutional response to an economic problem? Were modern forms of agency rooted in older modes of labour organization? The scholarship discussed the gains for employers. Were there costs too? This paper is a preliminary attempt at framing these larger issues. I suggest here that the agent had roots in the traditional economy, and represented an incorporation of putting out and the authority of the headman inside modern work sites, and that this incorporation of traditional authority in a modern setting gave rise to contradictions.

There is very little information or analysis on middle class youth in Vietnam. This paper begins to fill this gap in our knowledge by utilising data on urban, educated professional youth from the Survey Assessment of Vietnamese Youth (2003–04) and an ethnographic investigation in Hanoi between 1999 and 2002. It considers some of the conceptual and analytical issues in addressing the character and definition of the middle class in Southeast Asia more generally, and provides contextual information on the emergence of the middle class in Vietnam and the transformation of the class structure there. The information available suggests that the expanding young middle class in Vietnam exhibits many of the characteristics of the middle class everywhere—possession of cultural capital, a firm interest in and commitment to education, an orientation to consumption and to accessing news and information, and aspirations to improve and develop in personal and career terms. However, the continuing close relationship between members of the middle class and the Vietnamese state suggests that there is little evidence as yet of the middle class developing a political identity or of the emergence of civil society. The data demonstrate continuity in state-generated employment and education between the current generation and its predecessor, which arises from the continuing influence of the state on Vietnamese society in its role as provider of employment, career paths, education and scholarships, as well as from the continuing influence of the senior generation on their children.

India has seen a recent upsurge in spiritual practices promoted by an entrepreneurial breed of leaders and organizations. Their primary preoccupation is not to preach religious faith and belief or to promote ritual practice, but to provide guidance on psychological and physical well-being, happiness, and a healthy lifestyle. They offer strategies for healing and re-energizing, and advocate self-management and self-development as tools of both material advancement and mental contentment. Spiritual practices emphasize individual agency, personal empowerment, and reliance on one's own ‘inner’ resources, and valorize the autonomous, self-governed citizen as the protagonist of a modern and modernizing nation. While being reminiscent of the sacralization of everyday life and the rise of the ‘self-ethic’ in New Age spiritual movements in the West, Hindu versions of new spirituality in India draw upon religious traditions and construct a narrative of laicization of the esoteric and people-centric spirituality, consonant with the prevalent democratic zeitgeist. This article explores the implications of these developments for political subjectivity, religious identity, and notions of citizenship and democracy.

Anthropological studies of India's post-liberalization middle classes have tended to focus mainly on the role of consumption behaviour in the constitution of this class group. Building on these studies, and taking class as an object of ethnographic enquiry, I argue that, over the last 20 years, class dynamics in the country have been significantly altered by the unprecedentedly important and complex role that the English language has come to play in the production and reproduction of class. Based on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork—conducted at commercial spoken-English training centres, schools, and corporate organizations in Bangalore—I analyse the processes by which this change in class dynamics has occurred, and how it is experienced on the ground. I demonstrate how, apart from being a valuable type of class cultural capital in its own right, proficiency in English has come to play a key role in the acquisition and performance of other important forms of capital associated with middle-class identity. As a result, being able to demonstrate proficiency in English has come to be experienced as a critical element in claiming and maintaining a space in the middle class, regardless of the other types of class cultural capital a person possesses.

South Asian Muslims migrating throughout the world usually establish tight-knit communities in which most of their socioeconomic and religious activities occur. The social organization of South Asian Muslims in Hong Kong is unique in that their separation and isolation into a cohesive ethnic group is a relatively recent phenomenon. Communal orientations have undergone substantial change over time, often paralleling the kinds of changes occuring in Hong Kong as a result of its relationship to the British Empire. This paper seeks to understand the characteristics of the early South Asian Muslim community in Hong Kong and contrast these with social themes which are found in the contemporary community so as to discover the principles underlying social cohesion and cultural identification within this group.

In contemporary times, Hundi has collected countless labels; the international press has spurned innumerable villainous descriptions, the bulk of which have helped to perpetuate a dense fog of notoriety. The critical problem lies in definition. As there is an incomplete understanding of hundi's form and remit, there is also a rather limited understanding of why the system persists, set against the backdrop of modern banking. In many ways the problem of definition presented legal and financial authorities of the early and late twentieth century with core issues which remain unresolved and problematic for authorities in the twenty-first century. By drawing on archival and other historical material pertaining to the system's usage amongst Indian merchants, this paper attempts to tackle much of the confusion and many misconceptions surrounding hundi. The discussion explores the idea that hundi is more accurately described as an indigenous banking system endowed with a complex range of functions, but whose central purpose is trade.