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Purpose: By the mid-19th century the British colonial state introduced liberal education to India. Amongst various disciplines, political economy illustrates the concerns of the colonial state with the education of Indians, and its anxiety with quelling political discontentment. The emerging Indian nationalist intelligentsia also utilized ideas from classical political economy, first taught in educational institutions, to critique colonial policy and proposed the development of "Indian Economics", suited to national economic interests. This paper explores the development of political economy as a specific knowledge form in Calcutta University and Bombay University, and its connection with colonial educational policy. Design/methodology/approach: This study relies primarily on university records and the proceedings of the Education Department to bring out the politically sensitive nature of the teaching of economics in colonial India. Findings: The study finds that political economy grew from being a minor part of the overall university syllabi to becoming part of the first university departments created in early-20th-century India. The government and nationalist forces both found the discipline to be relevant to their respective agendas. The circulation of knowledge theoretical framework is found to be relevant here. Originality/value: The history of political economy in Indian universities, especially during the 19th century, has not been dealt with in any detail. This study tries to fill this gap. The close connection between politics and the teaching of economics has also not been studied closely, which this paper does. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims at bringing out the cultural, economic, and political importance that Khadi has for India from pre-colonial times, during the colonial rule and after independence till the present times. The paper brings out Khadi's potential in rural development by solving the pressing concerns of unemployment and working conditions in developing countries like India. In spite of this, Khadi's potential at rural development is subsided by the contemporary threats the industry faces due to the different agents of neoliberalism, discussed in the paper. The questionnaire report on workers collected at the Cheriyakonni production unit and information collected at the District Project Office Trivandrum; brings out that rural women are the largest workforce victims of these threats, as the industry is slowly showing signs of degradation. Methodology: The research paper is based on both quantitative and qualitative data analysis. Data is collected from Kerala Khadi and Village Industries Board (KVIB) Project Office Thiruvananthapuram through interviews. Questionnaire is conducted on workers of Cheriyakonni Production Unit, Thiruvananthapuram that operates under the board. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The paper discusses the work of early Indian professional economists in the field of labour. They undertook wide-ranging studies of labour in factories, mines, and plantations as well as of the condition of rural and agricultural labour and of urban labour outside of industry. Between 1918 and 1930, a major body of work had emerged on Indian labour, with contributions by both Indian and foreign scholars. This work was mostly based on government data, but, in addition, and with telling effect, some scholars also conducted field investigations and came up with disquieting findings. The latter part of the paper examines the contributions of a British statistician-economist, George Findlay-Shirras, and of an Indian labour economist, Rajani Kanta Das. The former, despite some excellent work, was probably responsible for giving a misleading picture of rising agricultural wages, perhaps to suit the views of the colonial government. R.K. Das, through his extensive work on labour economics, before and during his service with the International Labour Organization (ILO), contributed much to the work of the Royal Commission on Labour (1931), but this went unacknowledged. Also, his work on plantation labour in India earned the ire of a British official in the department of industries and labour probably, for highlighting the negative role played by foreign (British) capital. Given his numerous substantive contributions to Indian labour economics, the paper concludes that R.K. Das should be given due recognition for his pioneering role in the development of labour economics in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the introduction of trained female nurses for the British army men in colonial India between 1888 and 1920. It discusses the genesis of the Indian Nursing Service (INS), including the background and negotiations leading up to its formation, terms of employment, duties and working conditions of the nursing sisters. The memoir of Catharine Grace Loch, who served as the first Chief Lady Superintendent of the service is used extensively to trace the early experiences and challenges of the nursing sisters. The paper primarily argues that the INS being a new service, the colonial government maintained tight control over its functioning, and extreme conservatism in spending, thus retarding the growth of professional army nursing in India. Secondly, in examining the relations between the sisters and the (male) nursing orderlies, sub-medical and medical officers, the paper argues that the inadequate delineation of the nursing sisters' position in the military medical hierarchy was an important reason for the undermining of their expertise and status. Thirdly, the paper contends that as an all-women service, nursing constituted an important avenue of female agency within the patriarchal colonial establishment, which subjected the sisters to scrutiny both professionally and socially. The paper analyses the resultant conditions and regulations imposed on the sisters – most of them determined by gender and class notions. Finally, the paper discusses the gradual establishment and recognition of the service as an important cornerstone for the health of the army, while highlighting the shortcomings that yet persisted up until 1920. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reconstructs the history of the trigonometrical surveying of Kashmir from 1855 to 1865. It highlights the strategies through which surveyors had to justify the employment of high-precision instruments and methods in Himalayan terrain. Only by tediously manipulating their institutional environment in India and Britain did the staff of the Kashmir survey manage to complete its operations in light of constant financial and physical hardship. To sustain their measurements, surveyors aligned themselves with various political projects, entertaining and shifting allegiances with local rulers, scientific societies, and colonial institutions. After suffering severe cuts to instruments and assistance staff, the party was entirely stripped of funds by the East India Company in 1857 and relied on the material support of Maharaja Gulab Singh. Subsequently, surveyors adopted an expansionist rhetoric to gather the support of the Royal Geographical Society. In doing so, they framed precision as an essential contribution to imperial expansion, effective colonial rule, and intervention in 'backward' Kashmiri society and infrastructure. The Kashmir survey illustrates that rendering precision valuable requires an ongoing performative effort of justification to align epistemic with political and institutional interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research article examines the contest between indigenous forest-dwelling communities and settler colonial policy in post-Partition central India. According to official estimates, from 1961–71 the population of indigenous communities declined by nearly 50% in Dandakaranya within central India even as overall the population grew by a large margin during the same period. Despite perceptions of India as a post-colony committed to decolonization, this article examines how this state project, one of the earliest acts of governmentality, was deeply implicated in a settler colonial logic of elimination. Following the mass migration of Partition refugees in 1947 across newly demarcated borders, the Indian government earmarked Dandakaranya Forest as the site of a refugee resettlement project for lower-caste Partition refugees from East Bengal (now Bangladesh). Drawing on Lorenzo Veracini's notion of 'probationary settlers' as exogenous others without prior claims to land, refugees are understood within this argument as probationary settlers reliant on the state for their survival. Rather than narrating the biography of the state through its various experts and institutions, this paper foregrounds the perspective of the marginalized on their environment: displaced forest-dwelling indigenous communities and lower-caste (Dalit) refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thus wrote a retired officer about his opposition to the British elitist policies. This was no anomaly. Hume, like most of the Scottish officers in India, defended Indian interests before the colonial administration since his arrival in 1849. In 1854, as a young officer of Etawah district in North India, Hume countered the Orientalist idea that the people of Etawah were uncivilised. He established schools and interacted with Indians very closely. Unable to tolerate his reformist endeavours, he was transferred out of the district, and his schools were destroyed. His father, Joseph Hume, too had defended Indians on more than one occasion in the House of Commons and attempted to empower them by giving direct representation. This paper looks at the Scottish radicalism carried forward by the father and son duo, which dispels the conventional historical narratives that place all colonial officials as instruments of imperialist oppression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In late colonial India, the bourgeoning middle class was getting increasingly invested in gendered notions of respectable behaviour and morality which ostensibly framed not only the national community but its culture as well. In this discourse, it was women singers and actresses—euphemistically, 'public women'—who became the embodiment of obscenity and moral corruption. Concurrently, the middle class also became the biggest consumers of new cultural technologies, such as the gramophone, which prominently featured these 'public women'. This paper seeks to explore how the 'publicness' of these singers and the connotations attached to the same were tied up in the early growth of this form of popular culture. The ambiguities of eroticism and desire mapped onto the disembodied voice of the 'public woman' went a long way in shaping the tastes, habits and conventions that structured the early relations of consumption of these technologies. I argue that these new conditions opened up a cultural space that female singers negotiated by cultivating distinct public personas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decade, financial inclusion has emerged as a leading international development paradigm to tackle poverty. It seeks to integrate all unbanked (adults) into the global financial system through credit and other financial services. From a political economy perspective, the rhetoric of financial inclusion has been criticised, among other things, for masking the financialisation of social reproduction in which (a) the unbanked become a new market segment for international capital and (b) households with low and insecure incomes must increasingly organise their precarious living conditions through debt. This paper builds on the critique of neoliberal development policy and supplements it with a materialist-postcolonial lens that examines the historical interconnectedness of the indebtedness of subaltern classes, colonial rule, and capitalist development in the context of India. It shows that financial inclusion/exclusion from the 19th century onwards was the response to a structural subsistence crisis that was decisively shaped by both British colonial rule and capitalist (class) relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can the postcolonial thought bring to light the development of International Political Thinking in India? In this article we argue that the development of the Indian thinking about foreign affairs was limited not only by the British colonial administration but also by the sense of nationhood created by the liberation movement – especially under Nehru. Most of the literature addressing Indian international thought focuses on how Nehru centred the thinking of postcolonial Indian foreign affairs. Using Bhabha's ideas, we explore this essential part of India's nation-building, mapping out the origins of Indian IR through a postcolonial. The paper contributes to knowledge on post-Western IR and postcolonial literature, while reconceptualising ideas of nationhood as they have been applied to the development of Indian international thought. Beyond the thinking about the international, our contribution has broad relevance for understanding how colonialism has affected the political, economic and intellectual development of former colonial states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community Radio in India has received scant attention in academic scholarship even after 10 years of continued operation. With more than 200 community radio stations spread across the country, there is rich scope for a wide range of research. This paper suggests broad frameworks within which community radio can be researched with a critical outlook. The phenomenon of community radio as a distinct tier of broadcasting has been historically traced to the mid-1990s following a well-known Supreme Court judgment on freeing up airwaves. However, the reality is that the beginnings of community radio are more complex and multi-faceted, and can be situated within a broader discursive formation – both relating to older histories of colonial administration and neoliberalization of the economy in the 1990s. The policy and practice of community radio is closely linked to participatory development paradigm. Who is expected to participate in radio broadcasting and towards achieving what specific objectives? This is largely unclear apart from broad generalisations about 'empowerment' of an equally generalised 'community'. These concepts are further explored in this paper in an attempt to arrive at critical research priorities for community radio in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lt. Col. Owen Berkeley-Hill was a psychiatrist in India during the colonial era. He was known for his sharp wit and criticism of the Colonial Government and Indian society. Berkeley-Hill was interested in psychoanalysis and played a role in establishing the Indian branch of the Royal Medico-Psychological Association. He was married to Karimbil Kunhimanny, and his household included people from various regions and religions. Berkeley-Hill suggested breaking social barriers by organizing communal feasts to address the Hindu-Muslim conflict. Despite his brilliance, he clashed with authorities and was unable to carry out necessary reforms. Berkeley-Hill's life and career demonstrate the cosmopolitan and inclusive nature of psychiatry in mid-20th-century India. [Extracted from the article]

What is the role of colonial institutions in creating the conditions for nativist sons of the soil (SoS) insurgency? The literature on sons of the soil conflicts has not explored the historical legacies of colonial institutions, nor has it sufficiently analyzed how land tenure institutions create sons of the soil conflict. I address these gaps, by proposing a theory of how British colonial indirect rule and land tenure institutions in India caused exploitation of land resources of indigenous tribes by ethnic outsiders, which caused SoS grievances that persisted through path dependence and were later mobilized by Maoist rebels in the former princely state of Bastar in Central India. I show generalizability of this mechanism to other cases of leftist insurgency in Colombia, Mexico and Philippines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Epidemic Diseases Act (EDA) was enacted in February 1897 by the Government of India to prevent and control the spread of the plague. Since then, the Act has become a key legal tool for the control of epidemics/pandemics in India. We attempted to understand the international and domestic pressures that led to the adoption of the EDA in three ways. First, we analyse the legislative structure (Bombay Municipal Act of 1888, Indian Railways Act of 1890, and Act I of 1870) that dealt with infectious or contagious diseases in colonial India before the EDA came into force. Second, we focus on the linkages between international and domestic pressures that necessitated the adoption of the EDA. Third, we analyse the discussions of the Council of the Governor General of India on the bill titled 'A Bill to Provide for the better prevention of the spread of Dangerous Epidemic Diseases', which later became the Epidemic Diseases Act No. III of 1897. We situate the EDA in an international context of International Sanitary Conferences, quarantine, trade concerns, and pilgrimage to Mecca in order to understand the pressures that impacted British epidemic policy formation in colonial India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fairtrade certification of plantations seeks to productively intervene in the continuity of exploitative labor conditions that tea plantation workers in South Asia have experienced since the plantations' inception under colonial rule. Based on a mixed methods study conducted in 2016 in India and Sri Lanka, this article engages with the puzzling reinterpretation of certification as a reward for workers' commitment rather than for management's compliance. By taking labor process theory on a journey to transnational labor governance in Indian and Sri Lankan tea plantations, the article argues that Fairtrade certification provides plantation companies with tools to 'harvest workers' consent' to management's pursuit of profit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parsi legal culture produced clear benefits for Zoroastrians in the late colonial era. It also played an underacknowledged role in the constitutional life of modern India, helping nationalists pivot from extra-legal resistance to the business of running a state. Independent India could re-activate constitutionalism and the rule of law as ideals because these values were well established among nationalists, albeit in a tradition that had been relegated to the back burner in the run-up to independence. This tradition, exemplified by early Congress figures like Dadabhai Naoroji, Pherozeshah Mehta, and Dinsha Wacha, was heavily influenced by Parsi legal culture. This article also suggests that rule-oflaw values were not inescapably colonial. As an ideal, the rule of law caused division within the colonial state, powered anti-colonial critique, and reinforced constitutionalism. Because the rule-of-law agenda was distinct from colonialism, there was no inherent contradiction between Parsi legal culture and the rejection of colonial rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do victim states not ask for redress from perpetrator states? Focusing on former extractive colonies, the vast majority of which, despite having suffered brutal colonial rule, have not asked for redress—apologies, reparations or restitution—from their former colonizers, this article argues that the content of historical narratives in the victim state matters for interstate redress. When meta and sub-narratives in victim states do not conform with each other, framing and consensus mobilization on interstate redress is stymied. To show this, I code interstate redress in the Correlates of War data set of colony/colonizer states, and then use primary sources—interviews and school textbooks—to examine two victim states: Namibia, a 'less likely' case which has sought interstate redress, and India, a 'more likely' case which has not. Academic and policy conversations on interstate redress have thus far largely focused on perpetrator states. This not only denies victim states, most of which are developing countries, agency but skews our understanding of the phenomenon of seeking justice across international borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will examine state intervention in the lives of tigers and people living in and around Panna Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh, Central India. It explores how, over a decade after a reintroduction project rebuilt the tiger population from extinction and the central government launched a new compensation scheme to relocate villagers away from the national park, relocated tigers and not-yet relocated villagers resist and challenge conservation interventions to eradicate human life in Panna Tiger Reserve and (re)construct it as a wild tiger landscape. It will show how discourses of conservation and development that motivate state intervention seek to depoliticize and obfuscate programmes of control over human and tiger lives through their separation and purported 'care', contiguous with colonial policies and discursive practices that have intertwined the fate of wild animals and forest-dependent villagers in this part of India. In their feral subversions against these interventions, relocated tigers and not-yet relocated villagers expose the problematic contradictions and tensions that plague animal management, wildlife conservation, and rural development in India today. Based on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork, the article draws on case studies and accounts from communities living around Panna Tiger Reserve to present alternatives to colonial and post-colonial discursive legitimizations of state intervention and control, revealing alternate understandings of the entanglement of humans and animals and the categories of 'wild' and 'tame'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grierson's Linguistic Survey of India (1903–1928) is one of the most complete sources on South Asian languages. It has influenced all subsequent studies of the language situation in India. However, there are indications in the Survey's volumes, in its unpublished files, and in Grierson's correspondence, that extra-linguistic considerations affected his approach to some Indian languages. Drawing on these sources, this essay focuses on Panjabi, Siraiki, Assamese, and Hindi-Urdu. It shows how factors stemming from Grierson's views on religious difference and on language as a basis for nationality, as well as colonial politics of governance, may have influenced his characterisations of these languages. However, this does not invalidate the Survey, which is not straightforwardly 'colonial'. Moreover, each of these languages is also described using linguistic argumentation, as reflected in the LSI's skeletal grammars and its focus on dialectal variation. As such, we have to work with this tension in the LSI, without trying to resolve it either by rejecting the Survey in toto because of the instances of politics affecting its analyses, or by accepting it wholesale while ignoring the extra-linguistic considerations which influenced how it characterised some Indian languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Stuart Mill's justification for British rule in India is well known. Less well known and discussed are Mill's extensive writings on the practice of British rule in India. A close engagement with Mill's writings on this issue shows Mill was a much more uncertain and anxious imperialist than he is often presented to be. Mill was acutely aware of the difficulties presented by the imperial context in India, he identified a number of very demanding conditions that would have to be met if Britain's imperial mission was to be successful, and he was very troubled by the dangers posed to this mission from politics in Britain. Toward the end of his life, Mill become much more pessimistic about the progressive possibilities of British colonialism, in part because of what he thought had happened after the transfer of British rule from the East India Company to the British state. A focus on Mill's arguments about the practice of British rule in India goes some way to providing a more nuanced account of what Mill thought about colonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The birth of museums in India has its origins in colonial rule. While the country today counts over 800 museums, proper collections management and its treatment as a pivotal museum function have not taken hold widely. Several challenges remain, including a lack of space, the scarcity and misallocation of funds, and, critically, an absence of national standards and guidelines for collections storage and management. While the Indian government created a digital repository in 2014 through an initiative called JATAN, the sector still trails behind in the fundamentals of collection storage and documentation, and in digitising collections. This article, drawing on responses from anonymous respondents to a specially designed questionnaire, examines inadequate storage practices in India, while also assessing the attitudes of Indian museum professionals towards collection storage over the last decade. Further, it sheds important light on the sharp divide between those who manage collections and those who curate in the subcontinent. The article additionally offers a template for the development of a national policy for collection storage and usage: one that covers multiple concerns, from weather conditions and disasters to objects of sacred relevance (especially in palaces that exemplify living heritage). Taken together, these suggestions can serve to standardise practices across museums in India. This article also highlights a requirement for documentation guidelines and accessibility of collections for myriad uses—research, teaching and curation—across India and the world. Lastly, it explores the need for greater capacity building, given insufficient educational frameworks and a lack of formally taught museology courses. For this purpose, it discusses crucial national and international reports published over a decade and qualitative data gathered through primary interactions with professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1907, Lt.-Col. Andrew Buchanan, IMS, began to argue for the keeping of cats as the most effective form of public health to combat the annual outbreaks of plague. From then until about 1913 he vigorously promoted the scheme. He soon won some powerful international supporters such as Robert Koch and Shibasaburo Kitasato. Through their support, between 1908 and 1918, a number of countries both within and outside the British Empire adopted cats as tools of public health. Many within the Empire, however, remained opposed to the use of cats. Buchanan’s cats, I argue, were a special form of ‘animal technology’. Use of animals as technologies has been almost entirely neglected in the historiography on public health. Furthermore Buchanan’s scheme, I contend, constituted a rare, alternative vision of public health that challenged dominant forms of imperial public health by proposing a form of ‘public health from below’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the British expanded their dominions in India, political and administrative needs made it imperative for them to acquire more information about their subjects. Hence, systematic and meticulous surveys began to be commissioned by the East India Company as it assumed charge of educating the natives. These surveys were an integral part of what Bernard Cohn has called the “documentation project” whose ultimate object was to control and subjugate the colonial subjects. Therefore, a key purpose of instituting educational surveys was to dismiss indigenous education and justify its supersession by colonial education. In the process, much of the information acquired by the colonial state was simplified and digested into a monolithic narrative. This article shows that regardless of the imperatives that influenced it, the colonial survey sometimes revealed fascinating details about the nature of indigenous institutions that were often overlooked by the British Governors General. As a case study, this article examines a set of enquiries instituted by the governments of Madras, Bombay, and Bengal in 1822, 1824, and 1835 respectively. By re-examining the reports submitted by district collectors in response to these government enquiries, this article seeks to challenge colonial notions about indigenous education. One of the principal aims of this article is to refute the charge that indigenous schools did not impart any moral or useful instruction. In doing so, the article also aims to highlight the instruction that was imparted in indigenous schools. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article examines the evolution of corporate law in post-colonial India. Topics discussed include comparative corporate law, colonial linkages of legal transplants, social, political, and economic factors that influence corporate laws in India; and ways in which influence of colonial laws continued even after decolonization in 1947 in India.

The article discusses how socio-cultural factors impeding legal reform concerning decriminalizing same sex relations in Asia, as of May 2016. Topics discussed include persistent criminalization of same sex relations in Asia; need of equal civil rights and broad social acceptance for LGBT persons; and reasons why former British colonies in Asia have resisted calls to decriminalize same sex relations.