The Idea of Nation and Its Future in India by Shibani Kinkar Chaube

Author:Shibani Kinkar Chaube [Chaube, Shibani Kinkar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History & Theory, Civics & Citizenship, India & South Asia, Political Science, Asia, History, Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, General
ISBN: 9781315414317
Google: OHBjDQAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 32816825
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-10-26T00:00:00+00:00

Patterns of Integration

Bernard Cohn makes a distinction in integrative patterns between supra-local rural ‘networks’ of social relationships in general and those denser nexus of relationships which he called ‘centres’ (Cohn, 1987). Networks are widely spread diffuse patterns of relationships. Among Indian rural networks which serve importantly to integrate regions are networks of trade, networks of marriage, political networks and networks of contacts formed by many kinds of religious travellers. Cohn saw India’s civilizational centres as formed and functioning in relationship to such networks, against the background of extreme social and cultural diversity. There is no neat hierarchy among civilizational centres.

Cohn disputes the concept of ‘self-sufficient’ Indian villages. ‘Trading networks beyond the village have been well developed in India at least since Muslim times.’ Cash was in use for taxation and for transactions in agricultural produce. Trade routes were extensive and protected over large areas. Itinerant traders and in some areas rotating markets took a larger share at all business. Networks of marriage ties are extensive, especially in northern India, where as many as 100,000 persons spread over hundreds of square miles may be linked directly and indirectly. Social networks consist principally of the ties of clan and kinship among the dominant landlord groups of the countryside. What is known of indigenous army units suggests that these extremely various organizations were often principally composed of men of one caste. Religious networks include occasional individual and mass pilgrimages, which are almost universally practised, as well as the constant movements of religious instructors, preceptors, holy men and beggars. ‘While such networks are probably found in every civilization and among some primitive peoples also, their high development seems indispensable to the loose and varied integration of Indian civilization’, says Cohn.

According to Cohn, political centres generally differ from the market centres, and both are different from regional shrine centres. Even if a single city comprises markets, shrines and a seat of government, the chances are that the area served by each will differ widely. India’s civilizational centres may be of several kinds, according to their political or administrative, or commercial, or religious or educational functions. They were formed by several networks against the background of extreme social and cultural diversity. Centralization in European sense is absent. Instead, there are conflicting jurisdictions, both as among centres of the same type and as among centres of different types or function. India’s regions evolved out of the popular economy and culture rather than the ruins of an empire (as in Europe). They formed communities rather than nationalities.

Lord Lytton saw British India as a part of Britain’s ‘Indian Empire’ stretching from Aden to Ceylon (Sri Lanka). The British set up and reshaped presidencies and provinces without regard to cultural specificities. When they decided to rationalize the provincial boundaries first in 1905, they partitioned Bengal, then comprising today’s Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal, Bihar and Orissa on the religious line. This divided the Bengali-speaking people into two provinces sparking a great agitation. In 1912, the two Bengali-speaking

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