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L’endettement dans les sociétés colonisées d’Asie du Sud a fait l’objet d’approches contradictoires. La plupart des administrateurs et économistes y ont vu un mal à combattre, tandis qu’un certain nombre d’anthropologues l’ont analysé comme un phénomène d’échange à double sens. L’évolution des systèmes de crédit dans les régions kandyennes de Sri Lanka suggère quelques observations à ce sujet. À l’époque précoloniale prédominait une forme de crédit paysan interne à la société villageoise ; le crédit marchand demeurait marginal. La colonisation a assuré l’avènement du crédit marchand « externe », qui a capturé, sans l’éliminer, les circuits internes du crédit paysan. Dans le milieu fermé des plantations, les banquiers Nattucottai Chettiar d’origine sud-indienne jouèrent un rôle décisif. Mais les effets de la dépression des années 1930 combinés à ceux de l’essor du nationalisme brisèrent leur prépondérance, et l’Etat prit à l’Indépendance leur place de dispensateur du crédit. Entre autres hypothèses, cette évolution semble avoir conduit à un étagement fonctionnel progressivement mis en place des deux formes de crédit, le crédit interne étant alimenté par des sources externes tout en continuant à fonctionner en vertu de sa logique propre. Debt in South Asian colonial societies has been analysed in contradictory terms. Most of the administrators and economists saw in it an evil to be eradicated, while many social anthropologists have interpreted it as a reciprocal exchange system. The case of the Kandyan régions of Sri Lanka may suggest some observations. During the precolonial period, an “inner” peasant crédit system was prévalent ; merchant credit remained marginal. Colonial rule fostered the entrance of “outside” credit which took over, but by no means eliminated, the “inner” peasant credit. Meanwhile in the secluded society of the plantations, the South Indian Chettiar bankers played a key role. But the impact of the 193o’s dépréssion and the rise of the Ceylonese nationalism undermined their position, and after Independance, the State had to substitute itself as the main credit provider. In sum, inner “peasant ’’ credit far from being replaced by merchant credit, came to be alimented by external sources of finance while continuing to operate according to its own logic.

A non-brahmanical, but popular and dravidian origin has often been attributed to the non-vegetarian deities settled in the pēy-kōvil ("shrines of evil-spirits or demons") in South India. My findings contrast sharply with this view. In the village which I studied, every deity of the Hindu pantheon – and every demon as well – is directly or indirectly connected with the main Śiva temple. Each pēy-kōvil is owned by a kinship group (patrilineage) of non-Brahmins or sometimes more widely, by the local members of a subcaste.In this paper I examine the beliefs of the villagers concerning the pēy-kōvil deities. I provide examples of local stories which relate the way in which a relationship called aṭimai ("being at the feet of ") was established between a particular deity and the ancestor of the group which has owned the pēy-kōvil from the time onward. The deity, which is the evil itself before being worshipped, always comes from outside the village. The aṭimai relationship is obtained through a process which I have called ‘sacrifice partaking’.It is primarily to the pēy-kōvil deities that the villagers turn in matters of life and death. These deities are thought of as being an aspect, the terrible one, of Śiva himself. As such, in opposition to the inner space of the village, they are closely related to the outside space, the "forest" world of the classical literature. If the "forest" is associated with renunciation, it is also the place beyond the pure/ impure dichotomy, from where come evils but also prosperity and fertility. The demons are included as an intrinsic part of the Hindu conception of the universe.

The economy of Ceylon was badly hit by the world depression of the 1930’s. The slump in rubber and coconut prices from 1926 onwards coincided with a serious crisis in the local credit system, the keystone of whith was the Nattukottai Chettiars banking business. The consequences for Ceylon included growing urban unemployment, intensified population pressure in the rural areas, and a large outflow of Indian immigrant labour from the plantation sector.In this paper, we emphazise the early date of the depression (well before the Wall Street crash of october 1929), and the large degree of the integration of the different sectors of the economy. For Ceylon at least, we argue that "dualism" is a misguiding concept. We also discuss the connections between the depression and the 1935 malaria epidemic, and between the depression and the agrarian structure, with particular regard to compulsory sales of mortgaged lands.

This study on Premchand’s Godān is an attempt to bring to light the system of values underlying an important novel in the time of Gandhi. A system of values, in other words a perception of the world, which puts forward, with the collective awareness of an era, a remarkable structural homology.If one looks at Godān as a whole, and not as most critics are wont to do, that is by considering the village sequence as being the only worthwhile part of the novel, one realizes that the web of the narrative, at first sight somewhat nebulous, weaves itself around the fundamental conflict between the village and the town. This conflict is the modern transposition of the traditional scheme : village/forest. In Godān, the village is, as it is traditionally, the place of life-in-the-world, sacrifice and dharma – in a nutshell, the place of Brahmanical order (symbolized by the cow, the mediator of the narrative in this part of the novel). The town, like the forest, emerges as the domain of disorder and violence but, at the same time, as the place in which are cultivated the supreme values of renunciation.However, in this case the renunciation is of a new form : it becomes renunciation-in-the-world, an unselfish commitment to the service of others. The town turns into a hermitage, into a village in the forest, a utopia where these contradictions are reconciled : life-in-the-world and renunciation, and where new values are born, of which Sevā is the vector. New values, since -both with Premchand and with Gandhi – Sevā is no longer the dedication of the devotee to the divinity ; she has become the prop of a political movement. We attribute the emergence of this new system of values on the substructure of the traditional ideological set-up to the intermediary of the West. India lends to these terms new senses which end up by having meanings quite the contrary to the originals. This conversion of ancient ideological data emerges as a basic characteristic of Gandhi’s era, when one makes an analysis through a collective subconsciousness which is expressed most freely through the medium of the imaginary world of the novel.

In Peravali village (Andhra Pradesh), four castes (Brahmans, Kappu-reddis, Kammas and Komatis) profited from their possession of social and economic power to make the most of the "green revolution". The main elements of recent agricultural improvement in Peravali are a substantial increase in paddy production accompanied by the use of chemical fertilizers and improved varieties of seeds, the introduction of new high-yielding commercial crops such as oranges and onions, and the extension of irrigation. Wholesale dealers and families with farms of adequate size, having at their disposal wells, agricultural implements and funds for the purchase of fertilizers have been the main beneficiaries of the new techniques. By contrast, small farmers, craftsmen, labourers and small shopkeepers have profited little.

Without denying the necessity of studying the vedic yajña as a symbolic system, we find it interesting to look at it from another point of view: we try to analyse it as a set of gestures, as a tiring work. "Sacrifice indeed is work", as the Śatapatha-Brāhmaṇa itself says.What kind of work? Walking, digging, piling, cutting, straining, pouring, killing. But mainly: cooking.In post-vedic hinduism, it is safe to have the cooking done by a brahmin: one is sure, doing so, that nobody among the guests would feel polluted. We try to connect that fact with this other dictum of the Śatapatha-Brāhmaṇa: the duty of the brahmins is to cook the world. Cooking meals is but a part of cooking the world.This task is performed in the sacrifice. Every yajña consists in preparing and offering cooked food. It is true not only of the paśu, the various vegetables, the bricks of the fire altar, but of the milk as well, since milk is already cooked within the udder. Cremation is to be analysed as a sacrifice in which the corpse is cooked and presented to the gods. The only exception may be soma: but the soma sacrifice is not basically an offering of soma; it is rather an offering to King Soma, welcomed as an honoured guest.The offering is not the only cooked item in the yajña: the yajamāna is cooked too, during the dīkṣā.One cannot cook and be cooked at the same time: one does not cook during the dīkṣā. The saṃnyāsin’s life is an everlasting dīkṣā: therefore one does not cook (nor does he sacrifice either!). That is the reason why he cannot be cooked, when dead, on the funeral pyre: he has been cooked and burnt up beforehand during his life.

Narasiṃha, being only one particular manifestation of Viṣṇu, is half way between Viṣṇu as the supreme god, and the minor gods and goddesses who are committed to the protection of villages. His myth makes him quite fit for his function of royal god who protects the dharma over a given territory, since he can kill enemies. At the same time, a "terrible" god is not so suitable for ordinary worship and dispensation of boons. The devotees will fear his anger. Moreover, his connection with bloodshed gives him an impure aspect, which would make the pure castes loath to worship him, though, as a guardian of the dharma, he should be worshipped by the higher castes.In fast, his shrines are all in the hands of Śrīvaiṣṇava priests and pure. The present study shows by which devices the murderous god is turned into an auspicious one, fit for pure worship. Narasiṃha is only a case in point of a general process. Other gods, with the same function, offer similar or different solutions of the same problem: as a matter of fact, it is possible to establish a typology of these royal gods of Hinduism.

This article is based on data which were collected in a locality of Central Nepal and are interpreted against the wider background of the Central Himalaya and, more generally, Northern India. It aims to bring to light new facts and to offer new interpretations in the field of service relationships which are loosely termed jajmānī in the literature.Each such relationship has two poles: at one pole stands the patron who usually acts as the head of his own household but may at times represent a larger group of people: lineage, village, etc.; at the other pole is the specialist, drawn from one or another of the castes whose traditional occupation is to render one or several services to patrons. The various relationships are here enumerated, described and analysed; the author investigates not only the nature of the services and the mode of payment, but also the terms under which the relationships are established, renewed or ended, as well as the relative status of the patron and the specialist.These relationships fall into three distinct classes:1 – Those which have a religious content, either positive or negative, on which the relative status of the patron and of the specialist is founded; the former acts here as a sacrificer, jajmān; he is served, on a personal basis, by .the Brahman priest, on the one hand, who is for him a source of purity and who introduces him in the realm of the sacred; and, on the other hand, by members of the lower castes, in the present case all intouchable, such as the cobblers and the musicians, who help him get rid of impurity; in these relationships, which alone are properly called jajmānī, status is always relevant.2 – Relationships which involve purely artisanal services, without any religious implications, and in which status is not relevant; they are either personal, on the basis of an annual contract with a fixed payment in grains and food, as in the case of the blacksmith or of the tailor whose services are often needed; or impersonal, as in the case of the goldsmith, carpenter, potter, etc. whose services are less frequently required.3 – Finally, relationships founded on beggary, in which compulsion is always present, should be considered as making up a distinct class; they involve, on the one hand, a householder and, on the other hand, respectable ascetics or untouchable begging and wandering musicians. One of the lessons drawn from this analysis is put forward as a contribution to the general debate on the so-called, jajmānī system. It is here argued that only the relationships of the first class, which involve purity and impurity and which imply a hierarchical complementarity between the patrons and the service castes, should properly be termed jajmānī. The two other criteria which have been proposed in the literature: fixed payment in kind, and heredity, are not essential.Certain other conclusions refer specifically to the region under study. In the Central Himalaya (Nepal, Kumaon, Garhwal), the range of services available to patrons, particularly with respect to the first class, is much narrower than in the Plains of Northern India; and specialized castes usually cumulate several roles which fall into the first and the second class. We find thus, among the Indo-Nepalese of the Central Himalaya, a very limited number of specialized castes; but in Central and Eastern Nepal, additional services are provided by Tribals and Newars.Finally three, or rather four, distinct religions are represented in the area under study: Hinduism; Buddhism associated with tribal religion and Islam. The presence of these four competing traditions enables us to define more precisely the many integrated roles of the Hindu priest, the Brahmin, as opposed to those of the Buddhist Lāmā, of the Tribal shaman and of the Muslim Qāẓī and Fakir. Moreover – and this general conclusion has a bearing on the sociology of India the three classes of relationships function harmoniously only when the patron is a Hindu. When he is a Buddhist, an adept of a tribal religion or a Muslim, he does not deal with the Brahmin as a priest and his own priests are by no means comparable to Brahmins; but he behaves with the other specialists of lower status in the same way as his Hindu counterpart. The hierarchy is thus truncated: the highest, the Brahmin disappears, but the unclean and the untouchables remain such in the eyes of the non-Hindus.

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the relevance of the term ’jajmānī’ which is widely used in anthropological literature to define traditional socio-economical relationships in rural India. Does the term ’jajmānī serve only to express the religious connotations of these relations? Or, may this word be used as a scientific concept which provides the organizing principle of these relationships taken as a system? Throughout the discussions we have kept in mind the pertinent distinctions made by D. F. Pocock in a paper published in 1962 in C. I. S. No VI.A description of the division of rice on the threshing-floor in a present-day Tamilnadu village places jajmānī in the larger setting of the traditional land tenures and the redistribution of the crop at harvest-time among the different parties entitled to a share.The ritual functions of the different non-brahmin service castes of the village are examined. They may be distinguished in two groups which correspond respectively to two different Brahmin roles: that of the brahmin purohit (household priest who acts to preserve the status of the person) and that of the brahmin pujari (temple priest who acts to maintain the order of the universe.) In the first group may be placed, for example, the barber and the laundryman; in the second, the artisans such as the carpenters and blacksmiths and the village watchmen, all of whom are necessary for the yearly agricultural rounds. In each case the hereditary technical know-how of the members of the service castes implies an ability to fulfill their ritual functions.In short, agricultural production was (and remains to a certain degree) organized on the model of a ritual or sacrificial activity both needing a patron-yajamāna together with a body of specialists. Their relationship is asymetrical. The specialist who performs each task is qualified to assume the dangerous, if not debasing, consequences inevitably involved in any act. The brahmin represents an ideal of non-action by contrast with the service castes which are completely involved in action. The members of the dominant castes are the jajmans par excellence. On one hand they collaborate with the brahmins to maintain the universal order which is in practice indistinguishable from the local order and from their own interest. On the other hand they employ the services of the inferior castes for productive purposes. In effect the jajmānī system resumes the traditional divisions of Hindu society.

Princess Ambā was won in a svayaṃvara by Bhīṣma, the patriarch of the Kuru dynasty, then allowed to go to her lover Śālva, only to be sent away by him. Filled with hatred against Bhīṣma, she obtains from Śiva the boon of being reborn as a male (= Śikhaṇḍin) and contributes to the death of Bhīṣma in the great battle of the Mahābhārata.I first summarize the two versions of the myth (I). An analysis of the more significant features (the rejection of Ambā ; her appeal to king Drupada and brahmarṣi Paraśurāma ; her suicide interpreted as a sacrifice to Śiva) leads to the conclusion that the two narratives, in spite of their rather different scenarios, contain similar patterns of mythical thought (II). The story of Ambā may further be compared with those of Śrī and NāỊāyanī (two of the stories told to account for the polyandrous marriage of Draupadī). Draupadī and Amba stand for two parallel but contrasting representations of the Goddess (III).This paper is part of a study of the context, the purpose and the modalities of Śiva’s intervention in the Mahābhārata.

Partant d’une analyse des faits contemporains de la servitude dans une région de l’Inde épargnée par les transitions coloniales, cet article se propose d’étudier la notion de dette dont la présence matérielle s’établit d’abord en termes de subordination et de contraintes réglées par les puissants. Les institutions concernées, le vocabulaire utilisé dénotent moins l’inégalité économique que la dépendance politique, et impliquent plus la hiérarchie des statuts fondée sur la naissance que la stratification des rangs imposée par le pouvoir.Le parcours initial des dettes constitutives et des obligations transactionnelles se retrouve, « dramatisé », dans la célébration d’un culte où les créanciers siègent avec les puissants, du côté des justiciers et des dieux, alors que les débiteurs siègent, eux, du côté des démons et des morts. Répondant ainsi à des propriétés générales de classement qui l’apparentent aux valeurs de l’hindouisme classique, la dette, en véritable opérateur logique, ordonne les relations entre hommes. Elle les situe à mi-chemin d’un au-delà et d’un en-deçà du social et de l’humain. Using contemporary facts of servitude in a region of India spared by colonial transitions as a starting point, the present study will concentrate on the notion of debt. Subordination and constraints by dominant groups are its primary manifestations. Extending through institutions and into a vocabulary which denote less economic inequality than political dependance, it implies hierarchy of status founded on birth rather than stratification of ranks imposed by secular power.The analysis of a cult illustrates the initial statement on constitutive debts and transactional obligations where creditors sit with political leaders on the side of judges and gods, contrasting with debtors, standing on the side of demons and death. As a logical operator, debt orders a set of relations between men and meets general properties of classification related to classical Hindu concepts. A society composed of debtors and creditors is thus situated between an “above” and a “below” where social and human dimensions are themselves indebted to transcendantal values.

This is a study of the settlement of the two dominant castes in a village of Madhya Pradesh (Shivpuri District) where the clearing of the land over the forest and the cultivation started in the XVIth century. Thus having an agrarian history relatively short, it has been possible to trace with some precision the story of that settlement from existing records kept by professional genealogists as well as from memorized records from the informants.The case of the village studied is revealing in a way because it is exceptional: there are two dominant castes, the Kirars and the Brahmans, instead of the usual one dominant caste, the Kirars, found in most of the villages in the region around.The Kirars settled first in the early XVIth century, in succession to Rajputs who did not cultivate and were exterminated in a feud with other Rajputs. At the time of these Rajputs, a little land was cultivated around the village by Kachis (market-gardeners) who were dependents and could not pretend for that reason to become dominant caste by obtaining the rights on the land from the king of Narwar. The Kirars, being already dominant caste in the surrounding region, were granted these rights after their arrival in the village.The Brahmans, migrating southwards from Delhi after giving up their profession of priests, reached the village in 1575 and were granted by the Kirars half of their rights on the land by sharing a bread in two parts during a meal in common the implications of which are discussed in detail.The main conclusion emphasizes the fundamental importance of the granting by the king of the rights on the land. On the other hand, the status preconditions necessary to be granted these rights appear clearly from the case studied.

This communication deals with a particular class of spirits, bāyu, who are the souls of people who suffered an abnormal death and wander in this world. The author deliberately adopted the view-points of the bāyu themselves, quoting their statements as heard from the mouths of the mediums (ḍāgre) through whom they manifest themselves: their careers are thus unfolded from the moment of death till the time they are fixed in a lineage shrine and, possibly, released to join the ancestors in another world. The paper also includes a description of the choice and training of the mediums and analysis of the kinship structure in which the cult of the bāyu is developed.The material on which this paper is based was collected among both Hindus and Muslims in villages of central Nepal. But indoubtedly the cult originated among Hindus for it fits into their beliefs concerning the fate of the soul after death. It has been adopted not only by Muslims, but also by buddhist tribals; thus people belonging to various castes and professing various religions worship the bāyu, and may use the services of the same medium; the fact that this cult oversteps socially recognized barriers raises many problems which are discussed in passing.

À la fin du xviiie siècle, le Pays Limbu est conquis par les rois Gurkha qui fondent alors l’État népalais. Les Limbu conservent toutefois une large autonomie. Il faut attendre la seconde moitié du xxe siècle pour qu’ils perdent leurs « privilèges » et deviennent des citoyens népalais comme les autres. Au cours de ce long processus d’intégration, l’endettement semble avoir joué un rôle important et complexe. L’analyse d’un terroir, appuyée sur d’autres enquêtes, permet peut-être d’éclairer les faits. C’est l’extension progressive du réseau d’endettement qui donne sa forme à la colonisation du territoire limbu. L’hindouisation n’est pas seulement l’acceptation d’un modèle prestigieux. Elle va de pair avec la dépendance économique des tribaux, et mène à leur intégration politique. At the end of the Eighteenth century Limbuland was conquered by the Gurkha kings who founded the State of Nepal. Nevertheless, the Limbus retained a large autonomy. Not until the second half of the Twentieth century did they lose their “privileges” and become Nepalese citizens like the others. In the course of this long process of integration, indebtedness appears to have played an important and complex role. Land analysis suported by other surveys perhaps allows to shed some light on the facts. The progressive extension of the indebtedness network shapes the colonization of the Limbu territory. Hinduisation is not only the acceptance of a prestigious model, it goes hand in hand with the economic dependency of the tribes and leads to their political integration.

The discovery in the India Office Library in 1971 of a manuscrit entitled Mœurs et Coutumes des Indiens with a dedication signed Desvaulx to the Minister of the Navy and the Colonies under Louis XVI raised a doubt as to the originality of the famous work by the Abbé Dubois.Careful comparison shows a remarkable number of similarities between the Desvaulx manuscript and the first version of the Mœurs by the Abbé Dubois; the concordance of titles, numbers and order of chapters is such as to rule out any purely chance resemblance.It has been possible to identify Nicolas Jacques Desvaulx (ou des Vaulx), Baron d’Oinville, né à Chandernagor en 1745 et officier d’artillerie. His signature on letters in the colonial file "Sieur Desvaulx", which has been preserved in the Archives Nationales, appears identical with that on the dedication of the India Office Library manuscript. In addition, chronological references in these letters suggest that the text was prepared in 1776 at which time the Abbé Dubois was still a schoolboy.

The Ahmedabad riots represented a decisive moment in the evolution of relations between Hindus and Muslims in India. It is worthwhile, despite the attention these riots have already received in the literature, to return to the subject because of the exemplary character of the Ahmedabad flare-up.As has typically been the case with communal disturbances in India, a multitude of causative elements were involved. Social and economic factors connected with the industrial character of Ahmedabad and its recent development as a state capital had undoubtedly contributed to the development of a difficult situation. But it was above all a concatenation of political events which served to set off the troubles at a given moment. On the international scene the fire in the El-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem was to be followed by an Islamic Conference in Rabat. Within India the heightened competition between political tendancies which led to the split in the Congress was accompanied by the growing importance of the Hindu extremist Jan Sangh party.A brief historical treatment of the background in Ahmedabad and in Gujarat introduces a fairly detailed account of the successive phase of the riots. On the basis of the Report of the official Enquiry Commission and of interviews with leading citizens of Ahmedabad, the author attempts to bring out the degree of responsability of the different individuals and groups. The nature and extent of the various short-term and long-term measures which were proposed for reducing the tensions between Hindus and Muslims are also examined.It is worth noting that the calm has been subsequently maintained except for a minor incident in 1973. Whether because the least-privileged elements of the population were satisfied with the promises made to them or with actual improvements in their position, or because of a determination by the leaders of all groups to avoid the risks of a repetition, the waves of agitation which have traversed Gujarat from 1974 to the present have been completely free from any communalist overtones.

This paper is based on two periods of field work in Poona, in 1970 and in 1975.Poona has experienced a great deal of industrial growth since the 1950’s, and offers an opportunity for a study of the formation of entrepreneurial and working classes in an Indian city.The different firms are classified according to their size-and origin: big firms, – national, international, local or regional; small firms – founded by technicians, traders, or semi-proletarian workers. The history of each type of firm is studied, and the reasons for their location in Poona are examined.The Poona working class has three main components: people of rural origin, mainly employed in unskilled jobs, whose numerical importance seems to be usually overstated; second-generation urban dwellers, often coming from educated service classes; and members of low status castes, found in certain activities, such as construction or bidi making.It seems on the whole that neither lack of entrepreneurial spirit nor difficulties of adjustment to industrial work have served as important limiting factors upon industrial growth. The location of firms in Poona is mainly due to the proximity of Bombay, but the existence of an old city with many educational institutions has also been an important factor.

This is a study of one of Viṣṇu’s classical avatāra’s that has been selected mainly because it allows a comparison between the well-known myth of that incarnation of Viṣṇu and the present-day cult, which is widespread especially in Andhra Pradesh.A structural study of the myth is attempted on two distinct versions, that of Viṣṇu-purāṇa I 17-20 and that of Bhāgavata-purāṇa VII 3-8, which have complementary aspects, in order to clarify the idea of avatāra in its relationship to dharma, or socio-cosmic order, on the one hand, and to bhakti, or the religion of individual salvation, on the other.The king of the asura’s opposed to Narasiṃha is pictured as a follower of Brahmā, who rejects Viṣṇu’s supremacy and uses Brahmā’s boon to upset the dharma, by driving away the gods from Heaven and substituting his own sway for that of Indra. Narasiṃha kills him in order to save his bhakta Prahlāda and, at the same time, restore the dharmic order of the world. He is thus the god of bhakti and yoga and the avatāra. He kills for the good of his disciple and of the whole world. The murder of Hiraṇyakaśipu is equated to a sacrifice: this is the pure doctrine of the Bhagavad-gītā, which reconciles the values of yoga and sannyāsa with those of karman in wordly life. Every act must be made into a disinterested sacrifice.

The functions of the Congress Party are analyzed in terms of three different levels or fields within which it operates. The field of social relations englobes the struggle among the various elements of the society (classes, sub-classes, etc.) for material or symbolic advantages. The political field concerns the competition among a specialized category of persons, principally the political parties, for public office and power. The field of political organization refers to the structure and internal rules of the Congress party.It is argued that the consensus which characterized the Congress rested upon a basic unity of interest among the dominant classes and groups in Indian society. Given the consensus, the Congress served as the main arena within which political tendancies struggled for hegemony. A review of the conflicts inside the Congress Party from 1947 onward emphasizes the importance of two poles, one linked with big business and finance, the other representing primarily the urban and rural middle classes. Opposition parties played primarily a peripheral role, providing support from the outside to those groups within the Congress to which they were ideologically close.The system showed strain in the 1960’s; the crisis of 1969 leading to a split in the party showed that the flexibility of the earlier years had been lost, and paved the way, through the increasingly authoritarian style of direction, to the declaration in 1975 of the Emergency.

There are relatively few studies of marriage among Śūdra peasants and it seems that the greater part of the theorization of Indian marriage in general has been done on material drawn from the higher castes and more specially the Brahmans (Dumont for North India, Khare). It can be all the more misleading that the marriage in these high castes has often aspects which can be considered as exceptional. It is therefore important to substantiate our knowledge of marriage among the Śūdras who represent the majority of the population. The Kirars of Madhya Pradesh are representative for this purpose.Their marriage system, although unexpectedly original in some of its aspects, fits well, at the same time, in some already known concepts of North Indian marriage and might help to explain them (for instance the joking relationship between the sister-in-law and the younger brother of the husband). Including its apparent originality, the Kirar marriage has been found to be very similar to the marriage of other Sudras in the region of the study, as for instance the Gujars, Dhimars, Kachis, Gaukidars, Nais, Dhobis and, with some variants, the Camars.The conclusion of this paper is that the kinship and marriage system of the Kirars, 1) through the conception and the working of the brother-sister extended relationship, 2) through the rules regulating the giving and taking of women between the lineages and the families (a very clear picture of which can be given with the help of modern mathematics), tends to prevent the formation of a marriage "alliance" of the kind described by Louis Dumont in South India. There appears to be, in the case proposed here, a very well defined specificity of the North Indian marriage, in opposition to the views stressing the fundamental unity of Indian marriage by annexing the North to the South.

This article attemps to assess very generally the main factors which influenced the political behaviour of the Indian capitalist class during the interwar period. It starts with a description of the Indian business community, traced back to its historical origins in the middle of the 19th century. The fundamental heterogeneity of the class is underlined by the detailed study of the various groups which compose it, but a growing trend toward unification, apparent throughout the 1920s and 1930s, receives due consideration.Attention is then drawn to the rapid development of the class after the First World War and to the resulting change in the balance between British and Indian interests. The part played in this process by the policy of the colonial state is one of the most original features of the Indian situation as compared with that of other colonial countries. But the British rulers could favour the development of an indigenous bourgeoisie only to a certain point; on the eve of the Second World War, British capital still held a dominant position in the Indian economy.The ensuing frustration no doubt played a part in the support given by many Indian capitalists to the nationalist movement. But we argue that it is impossible to explain the political behaviour of the Indian capitalist class by treating it solely as a consequence of opposition to British economic domination. Social and cultural factors also had their part in bringing together the indigenous business class and the nationalist movement.

L’objet de cet article est d’évaluer, à partir d’une analyse critique des sources disponibles, l’importance de l’endettement paysan au Bihar entre 1850 et 1950, d’en faire apparaître les structures, et d’en dégager les incidences sur le mouvement d’ensemble de l’économie rurale. On s’est particulièrement attaché à critiquer les explications conventionnelles des causes de l’endettement, à montrer comment l’essor de celui-ci est lié à la situation coloniale, et à mettre en évidence son rôle perturbateur dans la difficile transition de l’économie paysanne traditionnelle vers l’économie de marché. Peasant indebtedness in India, though a dominant concern of Government authorities for more than a century, remains an unclear matter, owing to the paucity of reliable data. Starting with a critical analysis of the available evidence, an attempt has been made here to estimate the volume and social distribution of the peasant debt in Bihar between 1850 and 1950, to bring out the main determinants and structural features of the demand and supply of credit in the countryside, and to draw some conclusions as to the relationship between peasant indebtedness and the pattern of rural growth in colonial Bihar. An effort has been made to criticise the most widespread clichés about the causes which lead peasants to borrow, to show how the growth of peasant indebtedness is related to the colonial situation as a whole, and to bring out the part it plays in the lopsided transition from subsistence to market economy.

Après une étude linguistique des termes ṛṇa et kusīcla, nous montrons que la notion de dette, en sanscrit, est autonome, et qu’elle est présente dans les textes les plus anciens. Elle n’est pas une spécialisation de la notion de devoir. Elle n’a pas de généalogie, pas plus que les mots qui la nomment n’ont d’étymologie. Nous examinons en détail la théorie brâhmanique des trois (ou quatre) dettes constitutives de l’homme et nous nous interrogeons sur la manière dont ces dettes multiples s’articulent sur la dette unique à Yama. Enfin, nous donnons quelques exemples des procédés utilisés par les doctrines du mokṣa pour s’accommoder de la définition brâhmanique de l’homme comme dette. After a linguistic study of the terms ṛṇa and kusīda, we try to show that the notion of debt in sanskrit is autonomous and can be found in the earliest texts. It is not a specialisation of the notion of duty. It has no genealogy, just as the words that name it have no etymology. We examine in detail the brahmanic theory of the three (or four) debts that make man what he is and we discuss the way in which these multiple debts are linked to the single debt to Yama. Finally we give some examples of the ways used by the doctrines of mokṣa to adapt themselves to the brahmanic definition of man as debt.

Conventional writing on the history of Indian nationalism often implicitly explains the mobilization of mass participation in the freedom movement as a process of "politicization from the top", the peasantry being stirred up to action by nationalist leaders recruited in the urban intelligentsia. Closer analysis seems to show that the mass movements of the nationalist period, such as the Champaran satyāgraha of 1917, are first of all traditional, non-political peasant movements, the main leaders of which are well-off peasants, money-lenders and rural traders (all of whom generally have their own axes to grind), and a certain number of "half-educated" mukhtars and teachers. Gandhi and his intellectuel associates only controlled part of the Champaran movement, and had to rely on the mediation of those local leaders to secure the participation of the peasant mass. The specific role of the nationalist intellectuals was to change the traditional resistance of the indigo raiyats, which consisted mainly of sporadic flare-ups of hostility against individual planters or factories, into a "modern", global contestation of the Champaran indigo system. Gandhi’s "charismatic" leadership added considerable weight to the efficiency of the local leaders. It tended in the long run to strengthen the hold of the rural oligarchy on the lower strata of the peasantry.

Des 24 volumes de contes des différentes régions de l’Inde, édités par P.C. Roy Chaudhury, 14 contes ont été retenus parce qu’ils privilégient une relation d’endettement entre les personnages. Entre la nécessité de rendre, qui constitue l’un des aspects, valable pour tous, du contrat social, et les pactes individuels qui sont arrêtés, selon l’appartenance de caste, les situations et les enjeux particuliers, une interrogation s’impose, liée au statut de l’objet de la transaction, à la place accordée au désir et aux moyens de contenir ou de provoquer ses débordements. De cette interrogation en naît une autre, plus spécifique de la civilisation indienne, et portant sur l’intégration, au sein de l’univers narratif, des différences statutaires et matérielles des personnages et de l’idéologie du contrat, social et théologique, qui motive leurs actions et leurs paroles. Out of the 24 volumes of folk-tales from the various parts of India edited by P.C. Roy Chaudhury, a selection has been made of 14 tales the characters of which are bound together by a relation of indebtedness. Between the general necessity of giving back what has been borrowed (a mere clause of the social contract, applying to all), and the actual terms agreed upon by individuals, (which may vary according to caste-belonging, context, or what is at stake), questions arise as to the status of the objects involved in such relations, the scope left to desire and the means of containing or triggering its overflow. These questions lead in tum to new ones about the inclusion, within the narrative universe, of the material and statutory differences between the characters, and the ideology of a social and theological contract, which motivate their behaviour and speech.

This is the third and last in a series of three studies dealing with ritual trances among Hindus and Muslims of the Himalaya. The enquiry was begun in central. Nepal, continued in Western Nepal and extended to Kumaon which is most probably the point of origin of the institutions here described and the place where the ceremonies are performed in the most elaborate fashion.I begin with a detailed description of a particular ceremony observed, photographed and recorded in Almora. The two main roles were played by mediums on the one hand, and, on the other, by a bard who sang the stories of the gods and directed the trances. In analysing this ceremony I compared it with other ritual trances which I have recorded. Four divergent interpretations of the trances, representing irreconciliable points of view, emerge from the material collected.There are two theological interpretations. The ritual trance is understood by the faithful as the descent of incarnations (avatār) of gods into the bodies of the mediums. The bard is assimilated to a meditating tantric guru who compells the gods to come down into the mediums. In both cases, differenciated by the text sung by the bard, the ritual trances are linked to the sacrifice offered on the following day. The vocabulary employed and the ideas expressed show the relationship existing between popular religion and more refined types of Hindu and Buddhist mysticism.In the two other interpretations, trances are conceived from a human point of view. The physical and emotional manifestations are seen as a temporary madness. This leads to questions as to the personnality of the medium, who is considered as an abnormal in his own society. In fact, not only the medium but three other personnages : the renouncer, the passionate lover and... the anthropologist are also perceived as madmen. This is important for the sociological interpretation of Hindu society. Up to now, only one borderline case, the one with the greatest prestige, that of the renouncer has been fully investigated. If we could now focus on two other less exalted cases, those of the medium and his alter ego the anthropologist, we could perhaps place the interpretation of Hindu society in a more human and reasonable perspective.

Les Indiens en général et les habitants du Kérala en particulier parle souvent de la pauvreté de cet Etat. Est-ce que le Kérala présente vraiment un visage de misère ? Une série d’enquêtes par échantillonnage menées depuis les années 50 (dont le plus important est le National Sample Survey) permet des comparaisons du niveau de consommation des ménages dans les différents Etats de l’Inde. Effectivement le Kérala obtient de très mauvaises places dans les rangs pendant presque toute la période pour ses citadins ainsi que pour ses villageois.Mais il semble, d’après une récente étude critique entreprise par le Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum, que le National Sample Survey a systématiquement sous-estime les quantités de calories consommées par personne et par jour au Kérala, ce qui peut fausser toutes les comparaisons avec d’autres Etats. Nous savons également que la croissance de la production agricole au Kérala est une des plus rapides du pays. En ce qui concerne la concentration des revenus et de la richesse, c’est-à-dire le degré de l’inégalité, la position relative du Kérala ne ressort pas sans ambiguïté des calculs disponibles. Pour le cas de la couche sociale la plus défavorisée de l’Inde rurale, il faut noter que les salaires des journaliers agricoles sont plus élevées au Kérala que dans la plupart des autres Etats.Quand nous regardons les indicateurs sociaux, nous trouvons le Kérala à la tête du peloton indien pour l’alphabétisation, la scolarisation, la baisse des taux de mortalité générale et de mortalité infantile, et, tout récemment, une chute du taux de naissance. La conjonction de facteurs géographique et historique a favorisé le développement dans une région étroite mais fertile d’une population très dense, bien encadrée par une large gamme de services gouvernementaux et sociaux, mais menacée par l’insuffisance des emplois.

La catégorie de sapiṇḍa fait figure de notion importante chez les Indiens de culture brahmanique. Elle est étroitement liée au culte des ancêtres. On l’étudie à partir de là, dans les trois contextes du deuil, de l’héritage et du mariage. Chemin faisant, on trouve qu’une interprétation à laquelle une tendance récente en anthropologie a fait confiance apparaît comme une rationalisation des juristes. En fin de compte on aperçoit une vraisemblable évolution historique de la catégorie d’un état dominé par la religion, à un autre où le droit tend à l’autonomie, et d’un contenu patrilinéaire à une consanguinité à peine différenciée. The category of sapiṇḍa looms large in the brahmanical representations relating to kinship. The notion is closely bound to the cult of ancestors. This is the starting point of the study, which follows the category in its three main contexts, namely mourning, inheritance and marriage. An interprétation that has recently gained currency in anthropological writings appears as a rationalization of jurists, and in the end an historical evolution gains some likelihood, an evolution that would have led from religion as all-pervading to law as emancipated from it, and from a patrilineal content to one of almost undifferentiated consanguinity.

La tenue de processions hindoues a toujours constitué un contexte propice à l’éclatement d’émeutes intercommunautaires. Ce phénomène s’explique sans doute en partie par la capacité de cette institution religieuse, en tant que communitas, à résorber les différenciations propres à la société hindoue par rapport à la mobilisation de ce « nous » contre un « eux » d’abord représenté par les musulmans. Dans la plupart des cas connus, ces caractéristiques de la procession-communitas semblent cependant n’avoir été à l’origine d’émeutes qu’en raison de leur manipulation par des militants hindous. Ce modèle de l’émeute qui se constitue au XIXe siècle a connu plusieurs variantes et évolutions. L’usage agressif des processions que firent Tilak, la Hindu Mahasabha ou le rss à ses débuts visait à renforcer la communauté hindoue contre les musulmans, tandis que les processions suivies d’émeutes qu’organisèrent les Malaviya à Allahabad devaient surtout hausser leur prestige dans le cadre de la compétition politique locale.Après l’indépendance, la procession servant de véhicule à l’émeute, tend à se dispenser de tout objet religieux – celui-ci étant parfois remplacé par un symbole idéologique – et se transforme en une démonstration de force. Celle-ci a alors vocation à provoquer les musulmans pour déclencher des émeutes qui, selon les cas, doivent souder les castes hautes et basses contre un Autre ou diviser l’électorat selon une ligne de clivage religieux à l’approche de scrutins locaux ou nationaux. The holding of Hindu processions has always provided a convenient context for the outbreak of inter-communal riots. This phenomenon can perhaps be explained partly by the fact that this particular religious institution, through its function as a “communitas”, has shown its ability to absorb the differences which are characteristic of Hindu society; this homogenisation process has in turn created an “us” and “them” syndrome, mobilizing Hindus against Muslims. In most known cases, however, these “communitas”-processions seem to have been the cause of riots only in places where they happened to be exploited by militant Hindus. The nineteenth-century model has undergone several changes and variations. Tilak, the Hindu Mahasabha and the rss used such processions in an aggressive way in order to reinforce the Hindu-Muslim conflict. The processions (and subsequent riots) organised by the Malaviyas in Allahabad, on the other hand, served primarily as a means whereby the family’s prestige within the framework of local political competition could be heightened.In the wake of Independance, processions giving rise to riots have largely done away with the use of religious objects (on occasion, these have been replaced with an ideological symbol) and have become instead a show of strength, which aims to provoke the Muslims and thus trigger off riots which will either unite high and low castes against a third party, or alternatively, as local or national elections approach, divide the electorate by means of a definite religious split.

L’usage occidental actuel du concept de « non-violence » a des liens directs avec l’action de Gandhi dans la lutte pour l’indépendance de l’Inde.Le présent article veut montrer que les sources brahmaniques anciennes, essentiellement les Lois de Manu et le Mahābhārata, deux manières de résoudre le problème posé par la « violence » faite aux créatures, donnent au concept indien de « non-violence »– ahiṃsā – une signification tout autre que celle qu’on lui prête maintenant, où se mêlent des influences occidentales chrétiennes.L’exposé fait usage de textes didactiques, mais aussi d’un mythe épique qui ne laisse aucun doute sur cette confusion. The Western use of the “non-violence” concept has strong links with the Gandhian use of the term ahiṃsā during the Independence movement.This article tends to show, from ancient brahmanical sources, the Laws of Manu and the Mahābhārata, two different Indian ways of solving the problem of “violence” towards creatures. These texts give the concept of ahiṃsā a meaning utterly different from the one we commonly make use of nowadays in the West (and in India). Naturally enough the modern use of the term implies Western Christian influences.I make use of didactic texts as well as of an epic myth that does not leave any doubt about the misunderstanding thus created between the original meaning of ahiṃsā and its modern interpretation.

Comment comprendre que des ascètes aient développé en Inde une tradition martiale extrêmement élaborée, tout en ayant fait des vœux stricts de « non-violence » ? Et comment se fait-il que des leaders syndicalistes à poigne puissent se réclamer avec conviction des mêmes idéaux que Gandhi, ou encore que des brahmanes hésitent aussi peu à manier le bâton tout en affichant haut et fort leur foi dans la non-violence ? De telles façons d’agir, souvent paradoxales à nos yeux, sont susceptibles cependant de renouveler notre compréhension des notions de violence et de non-violence dans la société indienne, contredisant en particulier l'idée que l’on s’en fait habituellement depuis le gandhisme. Douze études, portant sur des périodes, des lieux, des protagonistes fort divers, montrent que, bien souvent, la non-violence est ce au nom de quoi la violence se légitime, ce qui lui confère du sens. Mais la valorisation de « la » non-violence repose sur des interprétations en réalité très variées de cette expression, et sur des rapports de force qui relativisent et hiérarchisent des points de vue distincts, tout en permettant leur maintien.

Dans un village de l’Inde centrale, une jeune femme appartenant à la caste des barbiers (de statut inférieur) se jette dans le puits des brâhmanes. Afin de comprendre les causes de ce suicide, l’ethnologue qui étudie ce village depuis 1957 nous fait remonter dans l’histoire de ce village quatre cents ans en arrière au moment de l’arrivée dans la localité des ancêtres de ces brâhmanes. En s’appuyant sur les notions classiques, réinterprétées à leur manière, d’āpad dharma (dharma de détresse) et de dhārmik hiṃsā (violence légitime), ces brahmanes ont acquis et ont défendu leur statut de caste dominante dans le village. Dans les années 1930, lorsque les familles de barbiers, à la suite d’une décision de leur conseil régional de caste destinée à améliorer leur statut rituel, ont refusé que leurs femmes continuent à exercer leur métier d’accoucheuse, les brâhmanes les ont exilées du village pendant douze ans. Plus récemment, des « leçons » administrées sous forme de punitions corporelles à un jardinier qui voulait aller vendre ses légumes au marché de la ville au lieu de produire exclusivement pour ses « patrons » locaux, ainsi qu’à l’ethnologue, dans la crainte que certaines données de son futur « livre » sur le village ne puissent être utilisées légalement contre les dominants, illustrent la propension chez ces brâhmanes dominants à recourir à la violence pour défendre leurs droits et leur statut. Après la destruction en décembre 1992 de la mosquée d’Ayodhyâ et les massacres qui l’ont suivie dans plusieurs villes, on pouvait craindre que le BJP n’ait recours à d’autres violences pour s’affirmer politiquement, mais il n’en a rien été. On ne peut que se réjouir du déroulement et du résultat des élections qui ont eu lieu en novembre 1993, où l’échec du BJP semble avoir montré, a contrario, un affaiblissement de l’extrémisme religieux comme arme politique. In a village of Central India, a young wife belonging to the low-ranking caste of barbers throws herself into the well of the Brahmins. In order to shed light on this suicide, the ethnologist who has been studying the village since 1957 takes us back four hundred years ago, to the arrival in the locality of the ancestors of these Brahmins. Relying on the classical notions, reinterpreted in their own way, of āpad dharma (distress ethics) and dhārmik hiṃsā (legitimate violence), the Brahmins managed to acquire and defend dominant status in the village. In the 1930s when barber families, following a decision of their régional caste council aimed at improving their ritual status, and refused to let their women serve as midwives, the Brahmins exiled them from the village for a dozen years. More recently, beatings administered to a gardener who tried to sell his vegetables in the town market instead of producing exclusively for the local clientele, and to the ethnologist himself, whose forthcoming “book” was feared to constitute a legal danger for the dominants, illustrate the propensity of these Brahmins to resort to violent methods so as to preserve their rights and status. In view of the destruction in december 1992 of the Ayodhya mosque and subséquent killings in several towns, it could be feared that the BJP would assert itself politically through new violences, but it has not been the case. And it is a matter of rejoicing that the proceeding and the results of the elections held in November, with the defeat of the BJP, seemed to show, on the contrary, a weakening of religious extremism as political weapon.

Selon un récit viṣṇuite du début du XVIIIe siècle, la déesse est devenue végétarienne à la suite de sa conversion par un saint homme. Elle n’en renonce pas pour autant à toute violence, mais place désormais celle-ci au service de la propagation du viṣṇuisme. La lecture de ce texte, apparemment ambigu, conduit à s’interroger sur les parts respectives de la « non-violence » et de la violence dans l’idéologie viṣṇuite, et sur le statut de la seconde dans une religion qui encourage les valeurs de compassion, etc. J’en conclus que toute violence n’est pas perçue comme hiṃsā par les viṣṇuites, qu’il y a selon eux une part de violence légitime en référence au dharma, et qu’il ne faut donc pas confondre leur ahiṃsā et notre « non-violence ». Le recours à la violence contre des adversaires religieux est ainsi parfaitement conciliable avec leur idéologie d’ahiṃsā. According to an early 18th-century vishnuit story, the Goddess was converted by a saint. In spite of her becoming a vegetarian, she does not renounce all forms of violence but rather uses it for the propagation of vishnuism. Through the analysis of this apparently ambiguous story, an attempt is made to assess the respective parts of “non-violence” and violence in the vishnuit ideology as well as the status of violence in a religion which promotes values of compassion, etc. It draws to the conclusion that all forms of violence are not perceived as hiṃsā by the vishnuits, there is a legitimate part of violence from the point of view of their dharma, and one should not confuse their notion of ahiṃsā and our “non-violence”. To resort to violence against religious adversaries is thus perfectly conciliable with their ideology of ahiṃsā.

Le sous-continent indien Comment comprendre que des ascètes aient développé en Inde une tradition martiale extrêmement élaborée, tout en ayant fait des vœux stricts de non-violence ? D’autant que cette tradition est mise aujourd’hui par certains d’entre eux au service des formes les plus exacerbées du militantisme hindou. Et comment se fait-il que des leaders syndicalistes à poigne puissent se réclamer avec conviction des mêmes idéaux que Gandhi, ou encore que des brahmanes hésitent aussi pe...

This paper describes two opposite forms of violence, viz. martyrdom and feud as modes of defining community in contemporary Punjab. It argues that the appropriation of the past and the construction of memory in the case of martyrdom seek to create a shared narration of the past while in the case of feud, it creates a jagged line to divide the caste biradari in accordance with shifting forms of alliance. Finally, it is shown that neither of the two discourses can be treated as examples of traditional forms of violence for both are incorporated into the textual and institutional discourse of modernity in contemporary Punjab. Cet article montre comment deux formes pourtant opposées de violence, l’une associée au martyre, l’autre à la vendetta, peuvent jouer également un rôle dans le façonnement des communautés au Punjab, aujourd’hui. Tandis que dans le cas du martyre, l’appropriation du passé et la construction de la mémoire se trouvent mobilisées pour définir un passé commun dans les termes d’un récit partagé, la vendetta, au contraire, trace des lignes de fractures toujours imprévisibles selon des alliances précaires au sein même des phratries. Il apparait aussi qu’aucune de ces deux formes de violence ne peut être considérée comme traditionnelle car toutes deux participent également de modes de discours narratif et institutionnel caractéristiques de la modernité dans le Punjab contemporain.

Dans la seconde partie du XIXe siècle, les administrateurs britanniques de l’Inde coloniale ont mis en place un appareil législatif dans le souci de mener une politique plus interventionniste qu’au siècle précédent à la fois dans le domaine des mœurs, de l’éducation et de la justice. Le Criminal Tribes Act de 1871, instigateur de la catégorie « tribu criminelle », en est une des pierres angulaires. Soumises à un verdict de culpabilité collective, à l’aune d’une mésinterprétation du système des castes, des populations entières comme les Kuravar ou les Kallar ont été maintenues captives de cette mesure d’exception jusqu’à son entière abolition en 1952. La juxtaposition, la substitution ou la collusion des instances traditionnelles avec celles britanniques ont généré des formes de violence inédites en regard de celles que les Anglais avaient l’habitude d’observer à l’intérieur de la société indienne elle-même.Ainsi, le gardiennage corollaire du vol, qui caractérisait nombre de populations dénommées « tribus criminelles », offre un exemple de neutralisation de la violence en contrepartie d’une taxe de protection sans laquelle la sauvegarde des personnes et des biens n’aurait su fonctionner, d’où les écueils des innovations du régime colonial à cet égard et l’occasion pour l’observateur de pénétrer un système de légitimation et d’évitement de la violence efficace et original.D’« ex-tribus criminelles » demeurent encore aujourd’hui encloses dans un emprisonnement moral, marquées d’une estampille dépréciatrice impalpable mais réelle dans les esprits et dans les pratiques de violence exercées à leur encontre. Seule, une reconnaissance officielle, un recouvrement de leur histoire authentique peut les délivrer de cet état de stagnation préjudiciable à leur avenir et les aider à accéder à une dignité sans ombre. In the second part of the 19th century, British administrators of Colonial India set a legal apparatus in order to intervene further into Indian customs, education and justice. The 1871 Criminal Tribes Act which the “criminal tribe” stereotype stems from, is the cornerstone of the new policy. Under a verdict of collective guilt based on a misinterpretation of the castes system, entire tribes such as the Kuravar or Kallar, were held prisoners until its abolition in 1952. The juxtaposition or collusion of traditional authorities with the British ones entailed new forms of violence as compared to those observed previously by the British within Indian society.Thus, the position of watchmen corollary to robbers, which characterized many of those belonging to the so-called “Criminal Tribes”, is a good example of the neutralisation of violence through a counterpart of protective taxation without which the safeguard of people and goods could not be ensured. This explains many of the drawbacks of the colonial regime’s innovations in this respect and provides the observer with an opportunity to study a rather efficient and original system through which violence can be both legitimated and avoided.Today, “ex-criminal tribes” remain moral prisoners as they bear a depreciatory label, intangible though real in the minds of many and after the violences exerted on them. Only official recognition and recovery of their genuine history might unfetter them from this status of stagnation prejudicial to their future and help them to reach an unambiguous dignity.

L’évolution de l’idéal de non-violence hindoue se présente comme une transition graduelle de la violence conditionnée par l’attitude religieuse du sacerdoce védique de la haute époque (évincement des non-sacrifiants) à une violence mesurée dans le sacrifice brahmanique, qui cherche à atténuer et même à annuler toute trace de violence. Le recours aux tropes verbaux et stylistiques est le moyen de la mise en place des principes des pratiques nouvelles conçues, cependant, à partir des significations propres aux pratiques jusqu’alors usuelles. The evolution of the Hindu ideal of non-violence is understood as a gradual transition from Vedic violence of the early period conditioned by the religious attitude of the priests (non-sacrificers’ exclusion) to the Brahmanic sacrificial practice with its endeavor to attenuate, if not to annihilate, any touch of violence. Verbal and stylistic tropes are then used as a strategy devised to generate new practices and to modify the stock of significations current in the old transactions within sacrifice.

Les croyances en la magie et la sorcellerie demeurent au Kérala toujours prégnantes, et leur présentation s’effectue d’abord selon trois approches : comme mode d’explication de malheurs ; comme expression de ressentiments personnels ; comme théorie de pouvoirs spirituels.Ces aspects sont ensuite envisagés au niveau de la caste, où ils tendent, pour une majeure partie de la population, à définir deux stéréotypes : les magiciens brahmanes de haut statut sont réputés être omniscients, tout-puissants, purs et non-violents, alors que les magiciens de bas statut sont dits être d’ignorants escrocs, impurs et criminels. Cette rhétorique, directement issue des vues des castes supérieures, recouvre deux faits : (1) la soi-disant non-violence des brahmanes se construit à travers un ordre social qui opprime directement les castes de bas statut (et les accusations de sorcellerie ont été par le passé utilisées pour légitimer les violences à leur encontre) ; (2) les magiciens de haut statut ont fréquemment recours aux divinités des basses castes, reconnaissant par là même une force à ces divinités, mais les assujettissant au sein d’un ordre qui, ainsi réaffirmé, les transforme en puissances protectrices. Sorcery and witchcraft, still widely spread in Kerala, are brought to light here along three lines: as an explanation of illness and misfortune; as an expression of personal grudges; as a theory of spiritual power.Such approaches are then applied at the caste level, as they tend to define two stereotypes: high status brahmin specialists are reputed to be all-knowing, powerful, pure and non-violent magicians, whereas low status specialists are deemed to be ignorant cheats, impure and criminal magicians. That rhetoric, emanating from the upper castes’ outlook, should not obliterate two facts: (1) the so-called non-violence of the brahmin is made possible through a social order directly oppressive of low status castes – against whom violence was in the past legitimated in some cases by accusations of witchcraft; (2) high-caste magicians frequently turn to low castes’ gods, thereby recognizing some power to these deities, but submitting them within an encompassing order, whose reassertion transforms them into protective gods.

Sur les quinze livres dont est formé l’Arthaśāstra, le grand traité indien sur l’art de gouverner, huit (de VII à XIV) sont consacrés à la politique étrangère. Celle-ci consiste à appliquer, selon les circonstances, l’une ou l’autre des « six mesures » (śāḍguṇya) que voici : la paix, la guerre, l’abstention, la marche, la recherche d’une protection, la politique double (VII 1, 2). La paix et la guerre, on le voit, ne sont pas ici des termes simplement antithétiques ; bien plutôt ce sont deux ...

Le vœu d’ahiṃsā, de non-violence, fait partie de la procédure d’entrée en renoncement. Pourtant, la violence meurtrière est abondamment attestée dans les milieux ascétiques au point même qu’à partir du XVIe siècle, les sectes créent en leur sein des sections d’ascètes combattants : ce sont les Nāgā Sannyāsī ou Bairāgī selon qu’ils sont shivaites ou vishnuites.S’interrogeant sur ce paradoxe, l’auteur présente diverses occurrences de cette implication belliqueuse des ascètes dans l’histoire de l’Inde et montre dans quels contextes elles se sont produites : défense d’un hindouisme menacé par l’Islam mais aussi expéditions commerciales et même mercenariat au sein des armées mogholes.Cette situation connaît des prolongements dans l’Inde contemporaine où l’idéologie Nāgā et l’activisme des sadhus imprègnent certains mouvements fondamentalistes, ce qui incite à reconsidérer la notion même d’ahiṃsā. Taking the vow of ahimsa, non-violence, is part of the process of becoming a renouncer. Nevertheless, deadly violence is frequently attested from among ascetic groups; even since the 16th century, the sects have developed branchs of fighting ascetics, called Naga Sannyasi or Naga Bairagi according to their Saiva or Vaishnav obedience.Questioning this paradox, the author presents some examples of the part played by warrior ascetics in the Indian past and studies the various contexts of their action: defence of anHinduism threatened by Islam but also commercial expeditions and even mercenary enlistment in Moghol armies.This situation can be considered in contemporary India where Naga ideology and sadhus’ activism are present in some fundamentalist movement - a statement which leads us to reconsider the very notion of ahimsa.

Le bassin minier de Dhanbad (au Bihar) est connu en Inde comme un haut lieu de violences liées au travail, à l’exploitation et à la désagrégation sociale. Dès que l’on prend ses distances vis-à-vis des images stéréotypées, l’importance des pratiques et des références liées à la non-violence y paraît cependant essentielle. L’exemple des syndicats du bassin minier le montre, au travers de diverses pratiques et configurations idéologiques. Le milieu industriel habituellement présenté comme « moderne », et les zones rurales avoisinantes, que la seconde partie des stéréotypes dualistes dominants voient forcément comme reliés à « la tradition », se renvoient à ce niveau des images et des attitudes d’une extrême ambiguïté. Il y a bien une utilisation, plus ou moins croisée, de plusieurs notions de non-violence pour s’inventer des substances opposées, en relation au champ hystérisant et déshumanisant imposé par les forces proclamées de modernisation. À côté, la non-violence sert un peu à tout, parce qu’il existe des champs idéologiques et des complexes d’attitudes qui rendent son invocation utile ou nécessaire. La variabilité, qui n’est pas infinie, des incarnations du concept de non-violence n’a d’égale que la complexité des jeux concrets, en opposition à une certaine tendance simplificatrice des discours sur la violence et la non-violence. The Dhanbad coalfields (Bihar) are reputed for their ubiquitous violence, connected with work, exploitation and évolution towards a State of anomy. These real features do not prevent the local social forces from abundantly referring, in theory and practice, to various kinds of non-violence. This prévalent trend is properly illustrated by the case of local trade unions. At that level, the industrial (so-called modem) région and its rural hinterland (too often presented as ‘traditionalist’), make use of extremely ambiguous images and attitudes. On the one hand, several notions of non-violence are effectively referred to by the protagonists in order to figure out, for their more or less fragmented selves, crossed and opposed identities in that framework of a dehumanising development. On the other hand, non-violence is used in numerous, and more or less pragmatic ways related to ideological fields that endow it with credibility or necessity. Although restricted, the variety of incarnations of the concept of non-violence are equated by their complexity when speeches about violence and non-violence seem to assume a simplifiying character.

L ’ Inde : états et territoires de L ’ Union CNRS – SIS – UMR 8564Centra de compétence thématique ’Modélisation, Analyse spatiale, SIG’Réalisation M. LEGRAND – F. PIROT – Mars 2002 Source : recensement 2001 – INDIA administrative divisions 2001 PROBLÉMATIQUE ET APPROCHE Parfois héritière des vestiges de cités parmi les plus anciennes de la planète, la ville en Asie du Sud s’inscrit dans une des régions les moins urbanisées du monde ; elle relève toujours d’une société urbaine minoritaire dan...

Cet article porte sur les politiques d’éradication des taudis et des bidonvilles (slums) à Delhi, en les reliant aux objectifs de « nettoyage » et d’embellissement de la capitale. L’analyse suit une présentation chronologique, en commençant par examiner, dans une première période allant de l’indépendance de l’Inde en 1947 à la fin des années 1980, le legs de la colonisation britannique face au traitement des slums, puis certains épisodes cruciaux pour la restructuration sociospatiale de la ville, comme l’état d’urgence (1975- 1977) et les Jeux Asiatiques (1982). La seconde période étudiée débute dans les années 1990 avec l’ouverture du pays à la mondialisation économique, et met en évidence l’intervention croissante du judiciaire dans la gouvernance urbaine, à travers l’examen de quelques cas décisifs pour le traitement des slums. La perception des slums au cours de ce demi-siècle d’histoire est tristement répétitive : perpétuation de la stigmatisation des taudis et des bidonvilles et des préjugés à l’encontre de leurs habitants, mobilisation des mêmes images péjoratives et accusatoires. Or les perceptions et les images ont servi à légitimer les actions des planificateurs et les décisions exécutoires des cours de justice. Il se perpétue par ailleurs un décalage considérable entre les discours bien intentionnés des politiques et des planificateurs d’un côté et, de l’autre, la mise en œuvre des plans d’urbanisme et des programmes d’éradication des bidonvilles – un grand écart entre les préceptes et les pratiques. Depuis les années 1990, de nouvelles contradictions se développent entre les recommandations des politiques et les décisions des cours de justice dont le pouvoir s’impose ; or les jugements concernant les bidonvilles ont souvent fait preuve d’un parti-pris anti-pauvres flagrant. Exclus de la ville légale du fait des insuffisances des politiques de planification et du logement envers les populations les plus défavorisées, puis de la ville centrale à travers les opérations de délocalisation dans des périphéries de plus en plus distantes, les habitants des bidonvilles de Delhi voient à présent leur accès à la ville menacé en conséquence des opérations intensifiées de démolition de leur habitat et de la remise en cause par le judiciaire de l’obligation de réinstallation des familles affectées. DEALING WITH SLUMS IN DELHI: CLEARANCE AND BEAUTIFICATION POLICIES This article examines the slum policies implemented in Delhi, in relation with the objectives of cleaning and beautifying the capital. Our analysis follows a chronological présentation, starting with a first period from the Independence of 1947 till the end of the 1980s, in which we examine what is inherited from the British colonisation in the treatment of slums, and some crucial épisodes for the socio-spatial restructuring of the city, such as the State of emergency (1975-77) and the Asian Games (1982). The second period under study starts in the 1990s with the opening of the country to économie globalisation; it évidences the increasing intervention of the judiciary in urban govemance, through the analysis of some décisive cases dealing with the squatter settlements. The perception of slums over this half-century of history is sadly répétitive: perpétuation of the stigmatisation of slums and préjudices against their inhabitants, mobilisation of the same demeaning and accusatory images. These perceptions and images were used to legitimize the actions of the planners and the decisions of the courts. Besides, there is a perpétuation of a considérable gap between the well-intentioned discourses of the planners and policy makers on the one hand, and, on the other, the implémentation of the Master Plan and programmes of slum clearance, a large variance between precepts and practices. Since the 1990s, new contradictions hâve emerged between the recommendations in executive policies and the decisions of the courts, whose power is overriding. Court judgments relating to slums hâve often displayed an anti-poor bias. Excluded from the legal town as a conséquence of the failures of planning and housing policies vis-à-vis the weaker sections of the population, then excluded from the central city by relocation programmes in more and more distant périphéries, the Delhi slum dwellers are now under threat of losing their right to access the city as a conséquence of the intensified démolitions of their dwellings and the judicial dicta casting off the duty of resettling the families concemed.

La ville en Asie du Sud, héritière de cités parmi les plus anciennes de la planète, s ’inscrit dans une région à prédominance rurale pourtant génératrice de mégapoles. Ces très grandes villes à l’avant-garde de l’ouverture économique du sous-continent indien vivent des transformations rapides sous l’effet de la mondialisation. Dans l’univers urbain, le poids de la strate coloniale se révèle beaucoup plus riche en hybrides et en créations originales que ce que la logique de la dépossession et de la domination aurait pu laisser supposer. C’est là l’une des spécificités du cas indien, légataire d’un héritage historique unique sur lequel s’est greffée l’empreinte de la modernité, sans que les repères traditionnels perdent tout leur contenu car ils en sont, parfois, fécondés. Trois grandes thématiques traitent ici de l’évolution de ces phénomènes urbains : structure de la ville et recompositions sociospatiales ; tensions sociales et tensions urbaines ; restructuration des espaces économiques. Ce volume collectif mobilise divers champs disciplinaires des sciences sociales et propose une approche comparatiste visant à mettre en perspective l’expérience urbaine indienne avec des situations et des évolutions observées ailleurs en Asie et dans d’autres continents.

Dans la ville de Mumbai se trouvent des quartiers appelés vada qui évoquent, par leur unité physique et picturale, des villages : ce sont les villages de pêcheurs et les « villages urbains » recomposés par les communautés de migrants. S’il ne s’agit pas de village au sens géographique stricto sensu, un certain nombre d’éléments de leur organisation sociale et politique permettent de rapprocher ces vada des villages ruraux. Soit le village originel est « conservé » et adapté comme dans le cas des villages de pêcheurs, soit il est « recomposé » par les migrants ; soit enfin il est « réinventé » et rêvé par le nouveau citadin. Ce sont le rôle et l’importance de ces attaches villageoises à la fois réelles et symboliques, et qui permettent circulation et migration entre villes et campagnes et intégration dans le monde urbain, qui sont ainsi soulignés. VILLAGE IN TOWN, OR IN IMAGINATION ? THE MIGRANT COMMUNITIES IN MUMBAI Some parts of the city of Mumbai, designated as vadas, look like villages, in their unity and pictorial aspect : these are the fishermen neighbourhoods and the ‘urban villages’ settled by the communities of migrants. They are not villages in the geographical sense, properly speaking, but in some respects, sociological and political organization in these vadas is similar to that of rural villages. Either the original village was preserved and adapted as in the case of fishermen villages, or it was resettled by the migrants, or it is finally an imaginary village fancied by the townsman to dream about. This paper sets forth the precedence of rural links, whether real or symbolical, which favour circuits and migrations between the urban and the rural world, and settlement in town.

La grande métropole de Mumbai (ex-Bombay) est à la fois une illustration et une exception en matière de violences et de tensions urbaines en Inde. La ville est née de la forme particulière de méconnaissance de l’Autre que porte en elle la dépossession coloniale. Elle a aussi été bâtie sur l’univers très spécifique de l’économie de comptoir, puis comme tête d’un capitalisme enclavé imposant ses lois « libre-échangistes » à un immense arrière-pays qui n’en profitait que marginalement et par périodes. Elle a inventé le « coolie » (homme de main corvéable), pratiqué avant toutes les autres villes la chasse aux mendiants et aux vendeurs de rue, connu très tôt les affrontements de rue communautaristes et les regroupements de quartiers selon la religion et la région d’origine. Les grandes passions et répressions du mouvement national, les grèves générales, les opérations ville-morte, le mouvement pour la création du Maharashtra, la violente et spectaculaire Shiv Sena enfin, ont maintenu une tradition de tension dont il faut remarquer la multiplicité et la complexité. Ce qui est simple c’est la forme de la ville, longue et étroite, qui facilite les blocus ; ce qui l’est moins, c’est l’organisation communautariste, qui demeure un agent structurel essentiel des tensions et de leur régulation. Depuis le début des années 1950, la ville a presque décuplé en population et en violence : au quotidien, celle du bidonville, celle des quartiers décrépits, est devenue encore plus visible. Elle a été aggravée par les politiques d’éradication promues depuis 1976 par tous les acteurs politiques et sociaux, accrues par le démantèlement de l’industrie textile entre 1985 et aujourd’hui. Toutes les campagnes de modernisation et d’urbanisme se sont faites contre les milieux populaires. Les institutions, l’État, sont toujours au centre des violences. La ville a une mémoire sélective et proliférante de la violence. Une partie de la ville, généralement aisée, tend cependant à ignorer le caractère « violentogène » de la grande cité, ce qui accroît souvent les perspectives déshumanisantes. VIOLENCE IN THE TOWN: THE CASE OF MUMBAI IN THE LAST TWO DECADES OF THE 20TH CENTURY Mumbai metropolis sums up the common trends regarding violences and social tension in urban India, and it is exceptional as well. The city was bom from this peculiar expression of the négation of the Other as it emanated from colonial domination. It was built as a trading point, related to practices of monopolies. Later, it took the lead of a free market capitalism, an islet of industry in an océan of agricultural economy irregularly associated to its development and crisis. The city created the socio-colonial figure of the coolie, the submissive worker; very early, it started harrassing Street vendors and mendicants, and it became a focus of communal struggles for space and status, a type of violence closely connected to the socio-spatial organisation of régional, linguistic and religious communities. The great movements and repressions of the national movement, the general strikes, the city blockades (band), the movement for a united Maharashtra, the violent and spectacular Shiv Sena, ail of these factors nourished the tradition of violence, a tradition the complexity and variations of which must be set forth. What is simple is the shape of the metropolis: long and narrow, it is liable to blockades and some expressions of violence. The community structure, deeply associated to tensions and their résorption, is far more complicated. Since the beginning of the fifties, the population of the city nearly decupled, and daily violence in slums and poorly kept old chawls increased. The process was aggravated by urban cleansing operations, almost uninterrupted since 1976. The agony of textile industry and the rise of mass unemployment have also been factors of violence. Every attempt at modernising and urban planning damaged the popular classes and the poor. The main institutions such as the municipal corporation and the State are agents and often causes of violence. The city has a rich and sélective memory of violences of all sorts. A part of its inhabitants, the rich and cosmopolitan ones, is inclined to ignore violence in the city, a trend which weighs in the processes of dehumanization.

L’article met en perspective le lien entre images et formes urbaines en Inde du Sud à travers les manuscrits vernaculaires de l’époque précoloniale et les archives coloniales. Les images de la ville, élaborées au cours de l’histoire, sont variées. Dans les mythes de fondation, la ville apparaît surtout comme un espace sacré habité par les dieux, où les hommes peuvent vivre en sécurité. Mais dans les manuscrits tamouls ou télougous qui racontent l’histoire des royaumes hindous entre le XIVe et le XVIIIe siècle, les villes capitales, dominées par la double figure du roi et de la déesse tutélaire de la localité, sont clairement des espaces politiques. Ce sont les microcosmes de royaumes jalonnés de forts bâtis par des chefs locaux dépendants. Les formes urbaines héritées de la période précoloniale que l’on peut étudier grâce aux sources coloniales montrent une diversité qui correspond à celle des images. Les villes-temples des riches plaines irriguées étaient des espaces sacrés ouverts tandis que les grandes capitales, entièrement fortifiées, étaient dominées par la dualité temple/palais royal. Dans les villes-forts des plateaux intérieurs et les ports, une citadelle, jadis érigée par un chef local et conçue pour le protéger, se trouvait à quelque distance d’une pettah, centre résidentiel et centre artisanal et commercial. Au cours du XIXe siècle, la disparition des pouvoirs indigènes et la destruction des fortifications ont progressivement modifié les images et les formes urbaines. L’organisation et les fonctions des grandes capitales furent particulièrement bouleversées. Les éléments qui faisaient de ces villes des espaces sacrés déployés autour des riches temples hindous se trouvèrent renforcés tandis que les nouveaux processus de légitimation politique s’en éloignaient. URBAN FORMS AND IMAGES: THE PRE-COLONIAL LEGACY IN TAMIL NADU The paper focuses on urban forms and images through colonial archives and Tamil or Telugu manuscripts dealing with the South Indian pre-colonial Kingdoms history. In foundation myths, the city appears as a sacred place where gods are living and where human beings can be secure. In Vijayanagar and its successor States, the main Capital was dominated by the double figures of King and Goddess. It appears as a political space, seen as the microcosm of a kingdom marked out by fort towns built by local dépendent chiefs. At the beginning of the 19th century, image diversity and form diversity often corresponded. The temple cities located in rich irrigated plains were open sacred spaces very different from big capital cities dominated by the temple/royal palace duality and entirely fortified. The fort cities of the interior and the port cities on the coast showed an opposition between a fortress built by a local chief and open ‘pettahs’ where artisanal and trade activities could develop. During the 19th century, the collapse of indigenous powers and the destruction of urban fortifications progressively changed urban images and forms. The image of the city as a sacred place organised around the temples was reinforced, and capital cities were deprived of their rôle in the processes of political légitimation.