Rebellion of the Moplah Muslim peasantry from the Malabar region of Kerala against the British and the local landlords.

Rebellion of the Moplah Muslim peasantry from the Malabar region of Kerala against the British and the local landlords.

In the aftermath of World War I, the British Empire was hit by two different crises on opposite sides of the world--the Jallianwala Bagh, or Amritsar, Massacre in the Punjab and the Croke Park Massacre, the first 'Bloody Sunday', in Ireland. This book provides a study at the cutting edge of British imperial historiography, concentrating on British imperial violence and the concept of collective punishment. This was the 'crisis of empire' following the political and ideological watershed of World War I. The British Empire had reached its greatest geographical extent, appeared powerful, liberal, humane and broadly sympathetic to gradual progress to responsible self-government. Yet the empire was faced with existential threats to its survival with demands for decolonisation, especially in India and Ireland, growing anti-imperialism at home, virtual bankruptcy and domestic social and economic unrest. Providing an original and closely-researched analysis of imperial violence in the aftermath of World War I, this book will be essential reading for historians of empire, South Asia and Ireland.

Explores how refugees were used as agents of nation-building in India, leading to gendered and caste-ridden policies of rehabilitation.

The late 1910s were characterized by Gandhiji’s advent to the Indian political scenario. His contributions towards vindicating the rights of fellow Indians in South Africa had given a larger-than-life aura to him even before he set foot in the subcontinent. His experiences in South Africa had instilled certain notions in him about what was required to achieve swaraj. However, the efficacy of at least a few of his decisions would be strongly challenged by the underlying religiopolitical climate of the Indian subcontinent. Malabar in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a land rife with conflicts and frequent revolts. The reversal of fortunes brought about by the retreat of Tipu Sultan and the hostile policies of the British against the Moplahs had driven a wedge between the Hindu population and the Moplahs, with the latter getting more hostile by the day. It is in this setting that the Khilafat movement was introduced in Malabar at the initiative of the Indian National Congress. The Moplahs who had been politically distant till then now had a religious aspiration to organize themselves. What ensued was the bloodbath that we know as the Malabar Rebellion.

Originally published in 1999, this book offers a comprehensive historical framework for understanding the regional diversity of agrarian South Asia.

Inspired by Antonio Gramsci’s writings on the history of subaltern classes, the authors in Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial sought to contest the elite histories of Indian nationalists by adopting the paradigm of ‘history from below’. Later on, the project shifted from its social history origins by drawing upon an eclectic group of thinkers that included Edward Said, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida. This book provides a comprehensive balance sheet of the project and its developments, including Ranajit Guha’s original subaltern studies manifesto, Partha Chatterjee, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Gayatri Spivak.