The great agrarian conquest : the colonial reshaping of a rural world

"This book examines how, over colonial times, the diverse practices and customs of an existing rural universe--with its many forms of livelihood--were reshaped to create a new agrarian world of settled farming. While focusing on Punjab, this path breaking analysis offers a broad argument about the workings of colonial power: the fantasy of imperialism, it says, is to make the universe afresh. Such radical change, Bhattacharya shows, is as much conceptual as material. Agrarian colonization was a process of creating spaces that conformed to the demands of colonial rule. It entailed establishing a regime of categories--tenancies, tenures, properties, habitations--and a framework of laws that made the change possible. Agrarian colonization was in this sense a deep conquest. Colonialism, the book suggests, has the power to revisualize and reorder social relations and bonds of community. It alters the world radically, even when it seeks to preserve elements of the old. The changes it brings about are simultaneously cultural, discursive, legal, linguistic, spatial, social, and economic. Moving from intent to action, concepts to practices, legal enactments to court battles, official discourses to folklore, this book explores the conflicted and dialogic nature of a transformative process. By analyzing this great conquest, and the often-silent ways in which it unfolds, the book asks every historian to rethink the practice of writing agrarian history and reflect on the larger issues of doing history"-- Read more... Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Abbreviations -- Introduction: The Great Agrarian Conquest -- I. Governing the Rural -- 1 Masculine Paternalism and Colonial Governance -- Colonial Riders -- Styles of Governance -- The Fear of Ambiguity -- The New Paternalism -- Reason and the Imagination -- The Return of the Despot -- Paternal Violence -- II. The Agrarian Imaginary -- 2 How Villages Were Found -- How Estate becomes Village -- Recording the Interior -- The Cartographic Truth -- Bounding Sovereignty -- Agrarian Spaces, Village Structures -- Respatialising the Rural -- 3 In Search of Tenures -- Mapping Tenures -- The Logic of Classification -- Temporalising Space and Spatialising Time -- The Prison-house of Categories -- Landscaping Village Communities -- The Limits of Classification -- Empowering the Village Brotherhood -- 4 The Power of Categories -- Ethnographic Truth and the Question of Rights -- Translating Categories -- Rights vs Practice -- Fixity, Security, and Legal Order -- The Production of Categories -- 5 Codifying Custom -- From Text to Practice -- Of Informants and Sovereigns -- The Enquiry -- The Impossible Task of Preservation -- Tradition, Reason, and Time -- Custom and Power -- The Discourse on Custom -- III. From Code to Practice -- 6 Remembered Pasts -- Dabwali Dhab -- The Remembered Past -- The Time of Reciprocity -- Through the Native Voice -- 7 Beyond the Code -- The Myth of Patrilineal Descent -- The Politics of Adoption -- Against Gifts -- The Will of the Dead -- The Rights of Chastity -- The Community and the Individual -- Who was the Outsider? -- The Commodity Economy and the Language of Rights -- 8 Fear of the Fragment -- Fear of the Fragment -- Times that Bind -- Two Histories of Partition -- Modernity and the Culture of Joint Holdings -- The Market and the Ambiguities of Law -- When Negotiations Fail "This book examines how, over colonial times, the diverse practices and customs of an existing rural universe--with its many forms of livelihood--were reshaped to create a new agrarian world of settled farming. While focusing on Punjab, this path breaking analysis offers a broad argument about the workings of colonial power: the fantasy of imperialism, it says, is to make the universe afresh. Such radical change, Bhattacharya shows, is as much conceptual as material. Agrarian colonization was a process of creating spaces that conformed to the demands of colonial rule. It entailed establishing a regime of categories--tenancies, tenures, properties, habitations--and a framework of laws that made the change possible. Agrarian colonization was in this sense a deep conquest. Colonialism, the book suggests, has the power to revisualize and reorder social relations and bonds of community. It alters the world radically, even when it seeks to preserve elements of the old. The changes it brings about are simultaneously cultural, discursive, legal, linguistic, spatial, social, and economic. Moving from intent to action, concepts to practices, legal enactments to court battles, official discourses to folklore, this book explores the conflicted and dialogic nature of a transformative process. By analyzing this great conquest, and the often-silent ways in which it unfolds, the book asks every historian to rethink the practice of writing agrarian history and reflect on the larger issues of doing history"-- Provided by publisher This book examines how, over colonial times, the diverse practices and customs of an existing rural universe—with its many forms of livelihood—were reshaped to create a new agrarian world of settled farming. While focusing on Punjab, India, this pathbreaking analysis offers a broad argument about the workings of colonial power: the fantasy of imperialism, it says, is to make the universe afresh. Such radical change, Neeladri Bhattacharya shows, is as much conceptual as material. Agrarian colonization was a process of creating spaces that conformed to the demands of colonial rule. It entailed establishing a regime of categories—tenancies, tenures, properties, habitations—and a framework of laws that made the change possible. Agrarian colonization was in this sense a deep conquest. Colonialism, the book suggests, has the power to revisualize and reorder social relations and bonds of community. It alters the world radically, even when it seeks to preserve elements of the old. The changes it brings about are simultaneously cultural, discursive, legal, linguistic, spatial, social, and economic. Moving from intent to action, concepts to practices, legal enactments to court battles, official discourses to folklore, this book explores the conflicted and dialogic nature of a transformative process. By analyzing this great conquest, and the often silent ways in which it unfolds, the book asks every historian to rethink the practice of writing agrarian history and reflect on the larger issues of doing history. This book examines how, over colonial times, the diverse practices and customs of an existing rural universe - with its many forms of lifelihood - were reshaped to create a new agrarian world of settled farming. While focusing on Punjab, this pathbreaking analysis offers a broad argument about the workings of colonial power: the fantasy of imperialism, it says, is to make the universe afresh. Such radical change, Bhattacharya shows, is as much conceptual as material. Agrarian colonisation was a process of creating spaces that conformed to the demands of colonial rule. It entailed establishing a regime of categories - tenancies, tenures, properties, habitations - and a framework of laws that made the change possible. Agrarian colonisation was in this sense a deep conquest. Colonialism, the book suggests, has the power to revisualise and reorder social relations and bonds of community. It changes the world radically, even when it seeks to preserve elements of the old. The changes it brings about are simultaneously cultural, discursive, legal, linguistic, spatial, social, and economic. Moving from intent to action, concepts to practices, legal enactments to court battles, official discourses to folklore, this book explores the conflicted and dialogic nature of a transformative process. By analysing this great conquest, and the often silent ways in which it unfolds, this book asks every historian to rethink the practice of writing agrarian history and reflect on the larger issues of doing history. Introduction: The great agrarian conquest -- Masculine paternalism and colonial governance -- How villages were found -- In search of tenures -- The power of categories -- Codifying custom -- Remembered pasts -- Beyond the code -- Fear of the fragment -- Colonising the commons -- The promise of modernity, antinomies of development -- Epilogue: The last ride.