Joya Chatterji - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Joya Chatterji

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Nov 15, 2007

Oxford University Press eBooks, 1999

Contributions to Indian Sociology, May 3, 2016

Modern Asian Studies, Jul 1, 2017

Routledge eBooks, Dec 6, 2017

The Historical Journal, Nov 15, 2012

 Vazira F. Zamindar, The long partition and the making of modern South Asia: refugees, boundarie... more  Vazira F. Zamindar, The long partition and the making of modern South Asia: refugees, boundaries, histories (New York, NY, ), p.  and passim.  Joel S. Migdal, State in society: studying how states and societies transform and constitute one another (Cambridge, ), p. .  Taylor C. Sherman, 'Migration, citizenship and belonging in Hyderabad (Deccan), -', Modern Asian Studies,  (), pp. -.  Migdal, State in society, p. .  Holsten, Insurgent citizenship, p. .

The partition of India in 1947 was a seminal event of the twentieth century. Much has been writte... more The partition of India in 1947 was a seminal event of the twentieth century. Much has been written about the Punjab and the creation of West Pakistan; by contrast, little is known about the partition of Bengal. This remarkable book by an acknowledged expert on the subject assesses partition's huge social, economic and political consequences. Using previously unexplored sources, the book shows how and why the borders were redrawn, as well as how the creation of new nation states led to unprecedented upheavals, massive shifts in population and wholly unexpected transformations of the political landscape in both Bengal and India. The book also reveals how the spoils of partition, which the Congress in Bengal had expected from the new boundaries, were squandered over the twenty years which followed. This is an original and challenging work with findings that change our understanding of partition and its consequences for the history of the sub-continent.

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D061540 / BLDSC - British Library... more SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D061540 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Modern Asian Studies, Mar 1, 2017

Scholars have tended to ignore the phenomenon of immobility. I stumbled upon it myself only while... more Scholars have tended to ignore the phenomenon of immobility. I stumbled upon it myself only while researching its obverse, migration, and then only by accident. Some years ago, I came across a police report on a 'fracas' at a Muslim graveyard in Calcutta, where, soon after partition, Hindu refugees had seized the land and put a stop to burials. Out of curiosity, I tried to find the graveyard, but this proved challenging. The people of the now-affluent Hindu neighbourhood that had sprung up in the area stared blankly at me when I asked them how to get there. A few protested that no such burial ground had ever existed. Finally, I found an elderly Muslim rickshaw puller who knew where it was, and he offered to take me there. There was no pucca road leading to it, just a sodden dirt track, barely wide enough for two persons to pass. When we reached the cemetery, it was like a place time had passed by. Only a dozen or so people still remained in what had been, just a few decades before, a bustling Muslim locality. They included the mutawwali, or custodian of the shrines, and a few members of his family, who lived in the most abject poverty I had ever seen. Their crumbling huts were dark and airless. They wore rags that barely hid their skeletal bodies. The women gazed at me in silence, too listless even to brush the flies off the faces of children who neither laughed nor played. 2 1 My thoughts on migration (and immobility) have been influenced by David Washbrook, and developed in the graduate seminars we ran together. Thanks are also due to Prasannan Parathsasarathi, Norbert Peabody and the anonymous referees at MAS for their encouraging feedback.

<p>There are compelling reasons for giving decolonization in South Asia special attention i... more <p>There are compelling reasons for giving decolonization in South Asia special attention in this volume. India was the first colony to achieve independence, albeit as two separate nation states, India and Pakistan. Britain's abrupt withdrawal from India after the Second World War—so swift that many have denounced it as a scuttle—raised questions that have helped frame the debate about decolonization, not just in India but elsewhere. Straddling the themes of colonial collapse and imperial legacies that inform the volume as a whole, this chapter focuses on the origins, impact, and aftermath of Indian partition. It considers South Asia's experience of decolonization from the perspective of the populations most directly affected, notably in the Punjab and Bengal.</p>

In this short rejoinder, we respond to some of the main critiques raised by the symposium contrib... more In this short rejoinder, we respond to some of the main critiques raised by the symposium contributors. We focus on 4 areas: a) the place of theory; b) the issue of scale; c) the role of 'the Muslim' and Islam; and d) the significance of 'mobility capital' to theories of diaspora and migration

Oxford University Press eBooks, 2005

The syncretistic ethos of traditions in South Asia has now become part of public discourse. Polit... more The syncretistic ethos of traditions in South Asia has now become part of public discourse. Political scientists, historians, and social activists have laid stress on syncretism as an important political value in present times. Mindful of these projections, the essays in this volume approach the issues of syncretism, synthesis, and pluralism in South Asia today to objectively reassess their importance in coping with a political and cultural future." "The introduction by Asim Roy and Mushirul Hasan outlines the relevance of the debate both within and outside the academe. It prepares the way for the relevant questions the essays pose even as they focus on various individuals, moments, and encounters in Indian history. How does one define syncretism? What is the difference between syncretism and pluralism? Is it possible to live together separately? The volume takes a fresh look at various historical events, personalities, and phenomena, and makes an effort to revisit many long-held, black-and-white, uni-dimensional views such as 'unity in diversity' and 'composite culture'." "Due to its engagement with a highly topical theme, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of medieval and modern Indian history, sociologists, political scientists as well as lay readers interested in the question of Indian pluralism as reflected in its history.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 1997

... Miti and Ramona Adhikari, and Joy and Zygmund Warwick helped me in innumerable ways during my... more ... Miti and Ramona Adhikari, and Joy and Zygmund Warwick helped me in innumerable ways during my years at ... Sakta salami samiti sampraday sanatan sangathan sangeet sangram sannyas sarbajanin sarki sarva satitva satyagraha shikshita/shikkhito shraddha shuddhi srijukta ...

The American Historical Review, 1997

Introduction 1. Bengal politics and the Communal Award 2. The emergence of the mofussil in Bengal... more Introduction 1. Bengal politics and the Communal Award 2. The emergence of the mofussil in Bengal politics 3. The reorientation of the Bengal Congress, 1937-45 4. The construction of Bhadralok communal 'identity': culture and communalism in Bengal 5. Hindu unity and Muslim tyranny: aspects of Hindu Bhadralok politics, 1936-47 6. The second partition of Bengal, 1945-47 Conclusion Appendix Bibliography.

Tolerance, Secularization and Democratic Politics in South Asia

This essay proposes an argumenton the face of it, both outlandish and paradoxicalthat the violent... more This essay proposes an argumenton the face of it, both outlandish and paradoxicalthat the violent upheavals of partition, which divided British India along religious lines, encouraged trends towards secularization in India and Pakistan. In the very months when the subcontinent was engulfed in religious conflict, both countries took significant steps to produce common institutionsindeed a common statecraft-to manage mass migration and lawlessness across the new borders that divided them. I suggest this process secularized both states simultaneously in specific, admittedly partial, but remarkably similar, ways. This is not to claim, as others have done, that partition 'solved' the communal problem, by creating conditions in which, (at least in India), it was easier for 'secularism' to flourish. I argue instead that the process of secularization occurred while communal attitudes remained pervasive, sometimes despite, and sometimes because of, extreme violence. I hope to show that in seeking to contain the threat that communal disorder posed to their ability to govern, elites at the helm in both countries took measures that secularized their approach to communalism, to religious communities and to the 'enemy' across the border. To make this case, I deploy a conception of 'secularization' that is supple, but not controversial. I use the term to mean a tendency towards differentiation-not only 1 I am grateful to Humeira Iqtidar for persuading me to engage with the history of secularization. Her candid feedback helped me tighten the argument. Tanika Sarkar, and the participants of the workshop on secularization held at King's College London in X, as well as the anonymous referees, have my gratitude for their helpful comments on an early draft. Simon Longstaff deserves warm thanks for his encouragement of these ideas at an embryonic stage. between the secular spheres-the state and the market-and the religious sphere, but also between state and society, society and the individual, and state and religious communities. This notion of secularization draws attention to the growing institutional autonomy of these 'spheres'. In addition, it notes that internal differentiation and stratification within these separate spheres is a feature of secularization. 'Secularization as differentiation' is a concept that many sociologists have used and continue to find helpful: indeed, as Jose Casenova has famously stated, this thesis remains 'the valid core of the theory of secularization'. 2 Periods of crisis and emergency, this essay proposes, can throw up conjunctures in which these separations are crystallised in one or more sphere 3 , encouraging forms of secular practice to emerge. It suggests that in both Indian and Pakistan, the post-partition crisis was one such moment in the history of secularization. That the relationship between India and Pakistan after 1947 became mired in intractable conflictas India pursued a policy of secularism, while Pakistan sought to build a state whose laws conformed to Islamic principles-has long been a cornerstone in South Asian studies. 4 Recently, however, this consensus, rock solid for decades, has begun to crumble. Scholars are coming to identify much 'mutuality and cooperation' 5 between the two states 2