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1 results

  • 7 - Identity: Professionals or Warlords?

  • Nandini Chatterjee, University of Exeter
  • Book:
    Negotiating Mughal Law
    Published online:
    27 March 2020
    Print publication:
    16 April 2020, pp 211-223
    • Chapter
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  • Summary

    As kayasths, the protagonists of this story were part of a community of archetypical professionals, who served various Indo-Islamic and even colonial regimes in India. This chapter examines the notion of professionalisation, reflecting on the conflicting aspirations of this landed martial family, for whom martial Rajputs offered the most immediate and attractive social and cultural model.This chapter examines a family history, re-written several times, in different scripts, through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; family trees in multiple scripts; and a petition presented to colonial authorities in the early twentieth century, all of which members of the family used in trying to explain and justify the origins of their wealth and status. The chapter also looks at other specialists, who enabled and structured such claims, such as Islamic judges (qazis), Muslim and non-Muslim scribes (munshis), and specialist traders, connecting what is known of the social location and professional orientation of each group with the functions they evidently performed in the story of this family.