Research on opium in colonial India has so far mainly focused on the competing Malwa and Bengal opium currents under the control of the Sindia and Holkar families and of the British East India Company, respectively. The historical trajectory has tended to emphasize the implementation of a draconian and all-encompassing British monopoly. This study joins the emerging efforts to search the regional histories on the margins of the strongest players’ actions on the global scene. It aims at nuancing the narratives by focusing on a region away from such centres. The study investigates the local cultivation and usage of opium in Rangpore district—a region in north Bengal that had recently been badly affected by a severe flood. Here, the drug was extensively used and the lucrative trade with neighbouring states gave small-scale cultivators an income also under hard environmental conditions. The fact that production and trade were small-scale, fragmented, and made use of markets in Cooch Bihar, Assam, and Bhutan impeded British attempts at getting in control of production and trade.

This article provides qualitative case studies and applies citizenship theory to reveal the way in which being in receipt of a cash transfer can help local poor and excluded Dalits to understand what it means to be a citizen of Nepal's state. Cash transfers can contribute to an individual's subjective sense of inclusion and citizenship. Although Dalits encounter disparities and rights abuses when dealing with local government over their cash transfer entitlements, their responses reveal a sense of agency in the positive way in which they interpret their entitlements. Although they may be mistreated at the local level, they feel valued because the central ‘state’ recognizes their plight and identity. Cash transfers are understood by Dalits through the lens of social exclusion, patronage, and the hierarchical society in which they live. They are an effective way of reaching large numbers of formerly excluded citizens and indicate that the state now includes them. As such, they can contribute towards building an inclusive state.

British Malaya's toddy industry features in history as a problem that plagued the plantation economy, when the city toddy shop was no less important in contributing to a racialized discourse of modernity in Singapore. Although colonial policy served to engender the racialization of toddy drinking as a peculiarly Tamil vice, toddy's social life in Singapore demonstrates that it became the poor man's beer regardless of race. The alcoholic drink gave rise to new adaptations, enterprises, and innovations in colonial Singapore, thus carving out a unique place for itself in the city's cultural landscape. Yet, Singapore's toddy industry dominated the public spotlight for less palatable reasons, which rendered it the subject of numerous demands for increased government regulation. The colonial government responded with a slew of measures that often differed from the federation's toddy policy. Singapore's toddy industry yielded divergent imaginaries of modernity, particularly in the aftermath of the Second World War. Some reformers sought its abolition or relocation away from city spaces, whilst others demanded its modernization on the grounds that this meagre establishment was the labourer's sole source of recreation. In light of recent developments that have prompted the government's intervention in limiting migrant labourers’ access to alcohol, this article will examine the considerations that informed the colonial establishment's urban toddy policy and its corresponding impact on Singapore society as it sped towards decolonization. Through an exploration of toddy's treatment in the English-language press, oral histories, and colonial office records, this article seeks to contribute perspectives on an aspect of Singapore's social history that remains largely unexplored.

In the first decade after Indian independence in 1947, the secular Indian state projected a vision of itself as being guided by universal ethics rooted in the nation's ancient Buddhist past. From the circulation of Buddhist relics in distant lands to the reinvention and incorporation of Buddhist symbols in contemporary state regalia, the government sponsored a wide variety of programmes in the name of world peace, Pan-Asian unity, and enlightened democratic values that promoted Buddhism both within India and across Asia. This more than decades-long effort was entirely the outcome of the political and social visions of India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and key members of his cabinet. In its most concise formulation, this Nehruvian-style Buddhism consisted of a two-pronged approach, one concerning the uses of Buddhism in the domestic sphere—that is, for domestic consumption by citizens of the new nation—and one concerning the uses of Buddhism as an instrument of foreign policy. At the heart of these projects was the dual effort to integrate a diverse South Asian populace into a wider national consciousness and yield influence among the post-colonial order in Asia. This article details the strategies and ideologies that Nehru and his cabinet employed vis-à-vis Buddhism from the mid-1940s to late 1950s when their Buddhist statecraft began to unravel due to geopolitical crises and the mass conversions of Ambedkarite Dalits. After tracing these developments, the article briefly considers the continued relevance of the Nehruvian engagement with Buddhism as it relates to twenty-first century Indian affairs.

This article analyses the dress practices of East African Indians from the late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, which have failed to attract much scholarly attention. It begins by examining the ways in which very material interactions with items of clothing, while separated from the body, were productive of identities and communities among Indian tailors, shoemakers, Dhobis, and others in East Africa. It then turns away from a specific focus on questions of identity to consider the ways in which dress was incorporated into the diasporic strategies of East African Indians as they sought to negotiate the Indian Ocean world. Finally, it explores how, where, and when Indians adopted particular dress practices in East Africa itself, to illuminate the role of dress in orderings of space, colonial society, and gender. The analytic value of dress, this article contends, lies in its universality, which allows for the recovery of the everyday lives and efforts of ordinary East African Indians, as well as a new perspective on elite diasporic lives.

The ability to handwrite Chinese characters in East Asia appears to be in sharp decline, most likely due to an increasing reliance upon digital technology and phonetic input systems. This so-called ‘character amnesia’ has provoked a heated debate, leading some to argue that Chinese characters—and even the Chinese and Japanese languages and cultures themselves—are facing a serious crisis. This article aims to examine the scope of this (predominantly alarmist) discourse and assess the coherence and validity of its arguments. In addition, it seeks to make sense of the possible forces and motives behind this upsurge in ‘verbal hygiene’ by answering such questions as: what led to the formation of such a discourse in the first place? What social functions might it serve, and what kinds of deep-rooted beliefs and anxieties does such a discourse reveal?

Most studies of Vietnam under the Diệm regime conceive it as a stepping stone of American nation-building efforts, citing Diệm's political approach as being influenced by modern, Western, and specifically American democratic concepts and by his associations with American advisers. Such studies assumed that the regime existed within this bubble, isolated from the past and from the society that it aimed to rule and shape. By contrast, this study contends that the regime was more deeply rooted in the enduring Vietnamese pre- and colonial history and in the post-1954 socio-political milieus, the defining components of which were intrinsically woven into the fabric of the Ngô nation. In its early years, the Republic of Vietnam (1955–63), led by the Ngô family and supporters, attempted to define itself as a nation incontestably heir to its pre-colonial past, while being increasingly conditioned by anti-communist and pro-Catholic patrimonialism. The 1956 commemoration of its 26 October National Day, the focus of the present analysis, provides insights into the values that essentially defined the Ngô’s nation—an entity far different from what its American godfathers had envisioned.