[PDF] Caste And Capitalism In Colonial India eBook

Author : David West Rudner
Publisher :
Page : 341 pages
File Size : 23,1 MB
Release : 1995-01-01
Category : Caste
ISBN : 9788121506816

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Illustrations: 22 B/w Illustrations & 4 Maps Description: Caste and Capitalism in Colonial India presents an anthropological and historical challenge to the traditional assumptions about kinship, caste, and commercial organizations in South Asia. Focusing on the Nattukotai Chettiars, a merchant-banking caste that played a central role in South Indian banking and trade in the period from 1870 to 1930, Rudner explores the nature of non-capitalist economic formations and the impact of colonial rule on indigenous commercial systems, as well as variety and change among India's caste and ethnic groups. Regardless of theoretical perspectives adopted by anthropologists and historians studying social organization in South Asia, certain assumptions have remained unchallenged: that all castes are organized either by marriage alliance or status hierarchy and that caste structures are incompatible with the rational conduct of business. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and archival research, Rudner argues against such monolithic characterizations. He demonstrates that in the case of the Nattukotai Chettiars, caste and commerce are inextricably linked through formal and informal alliance, institutions, and practices crucial to the formation and distribution of capital. Rudner traces the growth of these structures over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, exploring the ways in which Indian merchant-bankers used indigenous social structures to profit from colonial rule. Caste and Capitalism in Colonial India is the first comprehensive analysis of the interdependence among Indian business practice, social organization, and religion. Rudner's findings have significant implications for scholars of Asian history and anthropology.

Author : David West Rudner
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 390 pages
File Size : 29,68 MB
Release : 2023-11-10
Category : History
ISBN : 0520376536

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David Rudner's richly detailed ethnographic and historical analysis of a South Indian merchant-banking caste provides the first comprehensive analysis of the interdependence among Indian business practice, social organization, and religion. Exploring noncapitalist economic formations and the impact of colonial rule on indigenous commercial systems, Rudner argues that caste and commerce are inextricably linked through formal and informal institutions. The practices crucial to the formation and distribution of capital are also a part of this linkage. Rudner challenges the widely held assumptions that all castes are organized either by marriage alliance or status hierarchy and that caste structures are incompatible with the "rational" conduct of business. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.

Author : Nicholas B. Dirks
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 386 pages
File Size : 32,57 MB
Release : 2011-10-09
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1400840945

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When thinking of India, it is hard not to think of caste. In academic and common parlance alike, caste has become a central symbol for India, marking it as fundamentally different from other places while expressing its essence. Nicholas Dirks argues that caste is, in fact, neither an unchanged survival of ancient India nor a single system that reflects a core cultural value. Rather than a basic expression of Indian tradition, caste is a modern phenomenon--the product of a concrete historical encounter between India and British colonial rule. Dirks does not contend that caste was invented by the British. But under British domination caste did become a single term capable of naming and above all subsuming India's diverse forms of social identity and organization. Dirks traces the career of caste from the medieval kingdoms of southern India to the textual traces of early colonial archives; from the commentaries of an eighteenth-century Jesuit to the enumerative obsessions of the late-nineteenth-century census; from the ethnographic writings of colonial administrators to those of twentieth-century Indian scholars seeking to rescue ethnography from its colonial legacy. The book also surveys the rise of caste politics in the twentieth century, focusing in particular on the emergence of caste-based movements that have threatened nationalist consensus. Castes of Mind is an ambitious book, written by an accomplished scholar with a rare mastery of centuries of Indian history and anthropology. It uses the idea of caste as the basis for a magisterial history of modern India. And in making a powerful case that the colonial past continues to haunt the Indian present, it makes an important contribution to current postcolonial theory and scholarship on contemporary Indian politics.

Author : Tirthankar Roy
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 314 pages
File Size : 42,39 MB
Release : 2018-04-05
Category : History
ISBN : 1316953262

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In recent decades, private investment has led to an economic resurgence in India. But this is not the first time the region has witnessed impressive business growth. There have been many similar stories over the past 300 years. India's economic history shows that capital was relatively expensive. How, then, did capitalism flourish in the region? How did companies and entrepreneurs deal with the shortage of key resources? Has there been a common pattern in responses to these issues over the centuries? Through detailed case studies of firms, entrepreneurs, and business commodities, Tirthankar Roy answers these questions. Roy bridges the approaches of business and economic history, illustrating the development of a distinctive regional capitalism. On each occasion of growth, connections with the global economy helped firms and entrepreneurs better manage risks. Making these deep connections between India's economic past and present shows why history matters in its remaking of capitalism today.

Author : Jan Breman
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 301 pages
File Size : 30,18 MB
Release : 2019-08-15
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1108482414

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Jan Breman analyses labour bondage in India's changing political economy from 1962 to 2017. Focusing on what has happened since Independence, he argues that colonial rule changed the country's agrarian economy. Capitalism has led to progressive inequality, lack of welfare and the exclusion of the dispossessed from mainstream society.

Author : Isabel Wilkerson
Publisher : Random House Trade Paperbacks
Page : 545 pages
File Size : 42,3 MB
Release : 2023-02-14
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0593230272

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • “An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions—now with a new Afterword by the author. #1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, O: The Oprah Magazine, NPR, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, New York Post, The New York Public Library, Fortune, Smithsonian Magazine, Marie Claire, Slate, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews Winner of the Carl Sandberg Literary Award • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • National Book Award Longlist • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist • PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist • PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Longlist • Kirkus Prize Finalist “As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.” In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched, and beautifully written narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their outcasting of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity. Original and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.

Author : Rajnarayan Chandavarkar
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 496 pages
File Size : 45,68 MB
Release : 1994
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780521525954

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The first major study of the relationship between labour and capital in India's economic development in the early twentieth-century. The author considers the spread of capitalism and the growth of the cotton textile industry.

Author : Harish Damodaran
Publisher : Hachette India
Page : 464 pages
File Size : 24,64 MB
Release : 2018-11-25
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9351952800

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It?s no secret that certain social groups have predominated India?s business and trading history, with business traditionally being the preserve of particular `Bania? communities. However, the past four or so decades have seen a widening of the social base of Indian capital, such that the social profile of Indian business has expanded beyond recognition, and entrepreneurship and commerce in India are no longer the exclusive bastion of the old mercantile castes. In this meticulously researched book ? acclaimed for being the first social history to document and understand India?s new entrepreneurial groups ? Harish Damodaran looks to answer who the new `wealth creators? are, as he traces the transitional entry of India?s middle and lower peasant castes into the business world. Combining analytical rigour with journalistic flair, India?s New Capitalists is an essential read for anyone seeking to understand the culture and evolution of business in contemporary South Asia.

Author : Dilip Chavan
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 285 pages
File Size : 16,77 MB
Release : 2014-08-11
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 1443865826

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This book attempts to capture the reconfiguration of the pre-modern power structure within colonialism, in the specific context of education and linguistic policies implemented by the colonial administration in Western India. The interrelationship existing between caste power, dominance, colonialism and their cultural implications has been a rather ignored subject in postcolonial theory; analysis of the interplay between primordial power structures like caste and colonial modernity has only recently been reflected in some post-colonial writings. Against this backdrop, the book offers a nuanced understanding of the collusive role that the indigenous elites played in working out new ways to preserve their privileges and dominance, which also strengthened the hold of the colonial regime without fully altering and disturbing the existing modes of dominance. The book attempts to dispel the theory that a thorough eradication of pre-capitalist relationships is a pre-requisite to the growth and advancement of modern capitalism. The Indian case points to the contrary. The colonial state could engender its capitalist motives without substantially altering the existing feudal, hierarchical socio-economic and political arrangements. Drawing upon the theoretical framework of Marx, Gramsci, Althussar and Jotirao Phule, the volume attempts to delineate the relationship between language and power in colonial Western India.