William Gould | University of Leeds (original) (raw)
Papers by William Gould
The American Historical Review, 2008
Studies in History, 2020
This introduction outlines some of the key historiographical debates concerning caste, ‘tribe’ an... more This introduction outlines some of the key historiographical debates concerning caste, ‘tribe’ and criminality, and their relationship to the modern state, in South Asia. Although these social categories have long, complex and often inter-related histories rooted in indigenous and precolonial ideas and institutions, they emerged most forcefully as categories of governance in the legal-political system of the colonial and postcolonial states. These categories remained highly unstable, however. There was a clear disjuncture between forms of ‘colonial’ knowledge which structured legal categorization and everyday negotiations and contestations of the same. Using the example of India’s so-called ‘criminal tribes’ - the 200 or so communities declared as criminals ‘by birth’ under the Criminal Tribes Act (1871) during the colonial regime - we consider broader debates over the governing of ‘colonial’ categories, and subaltern agency and resistance in their making, as a way of interrogating ...
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies
Contemporary South Asia
In moving away from older linear narratives around the costs and benefits of 'corruption' to deve... more In moving away from older linear narratives around the costs and benefits of 'corruption' to development and democratic processes, social scientists have tended to down play temporality in their work on the phenomenon in the global South. Historical research however offers a different kind of nuance around moments in which corruption becomes important in political and administrative discourse. Examining archives on corruption in detail and comparatively, poses different questions about the operation of the everyday state. It also provides alternative means for exploring the nature of citizenship, national belonging in India and how the disempowered are often unevenly affected by corrupt acts. Using two case studies in the Public Works Department during state transition in the late 1940s and early 1950s, in India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, this article examines how archives convey multiple and contingent meanings to early postcolonial discourses of 'corruption'. Such archives present the phenomenon as a vehicle or symbolic resource for larger political processes over the period. This potentially challenges our perspective on some of the larger questions surrounding the early postcolonial state, the nature of civil/political society in that period for India, ideas of national belonging and the relationship between India and Pakistan. Introduction: Corruption, history and the archive Speaking about his postings in the 1950s and 1960s over a cup of tea in his lounge in Dehra Dun, Uttar Pradesh, J.N. Chaturvedi (Indian Police Service-IPS, retired), described the peculiar cases he had had with people coming to his office for apparently unimportant discussions and timepass. i They would come to you, make some informal discussion about the weather and then they would say they had seen the officer… and have made some money in the process… it has been my experience that generally 50% of the jobs just get done, even if nobody has approached you… But these people create an impression… Now it is a regular business. ii Chaturvedi was describing the quite familiar character of 'tout' or 'middleman', otherwise known as 'fixer' who sometimes made contact with an officer to arrange a contract for someone, or to get some other kind of favour, either large or small. The key point about this person's role was its intangibility on the one hand and its subversion of anticipated human interaction on the other. The tout's power lay in this uncertainty of action, in an expectation that documents had iii been produced and deals struck. They may not have been, but either way he would collect. The role of the tout epitomises, arguably, one of the key problems faced by social scientists studying the phenomenon of corruption (Khanna Johnston, 2007; Oldenburg, 1987; Reddy and Haragopal, 1985). Unlike other functions of governance or public administration, corruption often defies metric analysis because of its inherently uncertain boundaries. The simple example above, suggests that its effects are non-linear, largely unpredictable, mobile and sometimes contradictory. This article explores how these corruption complexes of the kind described by Chaturvedi, can be read in a way that moves us beyond existing analyses of 'corruption' as a problem of governance, by examining a range of (comparable)
Beyond Belief, chapter 1, argues that the state was the essential unifier, via a range of institu... more Beyond Belief, chapter 1, argues that the state was the essential unifier, via a range of institutions of this vision.
Ethnic and Racial Studies
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies
This introduction frames a selection of papers that encourage a richer spatial understanding of t... more This introduction frames a selection of papers that encourage a richer spatial understanding of the years before the Partition of India. The papers respond to two types of questions. One type is spatial (at what scale do we approach Partition? Through which spaces should we attempt to understand both micro and macro processes? Movements across what distances constituted Partition?). The second type is temporal (what timescales do we invoke when approaching Partition? Of what was it the endpoint? What sort of memories were invoked and made during India's multiple partitions?). This introduction establishes the main trends in Partition historiography, tracked through the last two decennial anniversaries. It sketches out spatial analyses of Partition to date, regarding territory and displacement especially, but shows that much of this geographical interpretation has been implicit rather than explicit, and that most have begun with Partition. Whilst framing many of their arguments in twentieth-century colonial practice, and occasionally straying into the post-colonial, the papers in this special issue mostly focus on the 1930s-1940s at a range of scales (from the international, through the nation-state, to cities, mohallas and courtrooms). Collectively they make the argument that if Partition has a history, then it also has an historical geography. We hope these papers will help people read these histories and geographies with a finer spatial eye.
Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India, 2000
South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, Jan 25, 2010
Religion and Conflict in Modern South Asia, 2011
Religion and Conflict in Modern South Asia, 2011
Religion and Conflict in Modern South Asia, 2011
Religion and Conflict in Modern South Asia, 2011
Modern Asian Studies, 2005
In a letter to Sir Samuel Hoare in September 1932, on the eve of his ‘fast unto the death’ agains... more In a letter to Sir Samuel Hoare in September 1932, on the eve of his ‘fast unto the death’ against the principle of separate electorates for untouchables, Gandhi wrote:For me religion is one in essence, but it has many branches and if I, the Hindu branch, fail in my duty to the parent trunk, I am an unworthy follower of that one indivisible, visible religion…. My nationalism and my religion are not exclusive, but inclusive and they must be so consistently with the welfare of all life.
Modern Asian Studies, 2011
Modern Asian Studies, 2011
This special issue ofModern Asian Studiesexplores the shift from colonial rule to independence in... more This special issue ofModern Asian Studiesexplores the shift from colonial rule to independence in India and Pakistan, with the aim of unravelling the explicit meanings and relevance of ‘independence’ for the new citizens of India and Pakistan during the two decades after 1947. While the study of postcolonial South Asia has blossomed in recent years, this volume addresses a number of imbalances in this dynamic and highly popular field. Firstly, the histories of India and Pakistan after 1947 have come to be conceived separately, with many scholars assuming that the two states developed along divergent paths after independence. Thus, the dominant historical paradigm has been to examine either India or Pakistan in relative isolation from one another. While a handful of very recent books on the partition of the subcontinent have begun to study the two states simultaneously, very few of these new histories reach beyond the immediate concerns of partition. Of course, both countries develop...
Modern Asian Studies, 2002
... 14 See Anand Yang's book with that title (Berkeley, 1989), and Sarah Ansari, Sufi Sa... more ... 14 See Anand Yang's book with that title (Berkeley, 1989), and Sarah Ansari, Sufi Saints and State Power (Cambridge, 1992). 15 Burton Stein, Thomas Munro. The Origins of the Colonial State and His Vision of Empire (Delhi, 1989), ch. 7; RE Frykenberg, Guntur District 1788 ...
Journal of Historical Sociology, 2007
... For example, an Ahir, or Gwala, had passed himself off as a Gual – a caste “belonging to the ... more ... For example, an Ahir, or Gwala, had passed himself off as a Gual – a caste “belonging to the Nat group”. In another case, a Rajput artisan of the hills was able to claim that he was Shilpkar – his occupational name was the same as one of the caste names for SCs. ...
The American Historical Review, 2008
Studies in History, 2020
This introduction outlines some of the key historiographical debates concerning caste, ‘tribe’ an... more This introduction outlines some of the key historiographical debates concerning caste, ‘tribe’ and criminality, and their relationship to the modern state, in South Asia. Although these social categories have long, complex and often inter-related histories rooted in indigenous and precolonial ideas and institutions, they emerged most forcefully as categories of governance in the legal-political system of the colonial and postcolonial states. These categories remained highly unstable, however. There was a clear disjuncture between forms of ‘colonial’ knowledge which structured legal categorization and everyday negotiations and contestations of the same. Using the example of India’s so-called ‘criminal tribes’ - the 200 or so communities declared as criminals ‘by birth’ under the Criminal Tribes Act (1871) during the colonial regime - we consider broader debates over the governing of ‘colonial’ categories, and subaltern agency and resistance in their making, as a way of interrogating ...
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies
Contemporary South Asia
In moving away from older linear narratives around the costs and benefits of 'corruption' to deve... more In moving away from older linear narratives around the costs and benefits of 'corruption' to development and democratic processes, social scientists have tended to down play temporality in their work on the phenomenon in the global South. Historical research however offers a different kind of nuance around moments in which corruption becomes important in political and administrative discourse. Examining archives on corruption in detail and comparatively, poses different questions about the operation of the everyday state. It also provides alternative means for exploring the nature of citizenship, national belonging in India and how the disempowered are often unevenly affected by corrupt acts. Using two case studies in the Public Works Department during state transition in the late 1940s and early 1950s, in India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, this article examines how archives convey multiple and contingent meanings to early postcolonial discourses of 'corruption'. Such archives present the phenomenon as a vehicle or symbolic resource for larger political processes over the period. This potentially challenges our perspective on some of the larger questions surrounding the early postcolonial state, the nature of civil/political society in that period for India, ideas of national belonging and the relationship between India and Pakistan. Introduction: Corruption, history and the archive Speaking about his postings in the 1950s and 1960s over a cup of tea in his lounge in Dehra Dun, Uttar Pradesh, J.N. Chaturvedi (Indian Police Service-IPS, retired), described the peculiar cases he had had with people coming to his office for apparently unimportant discussions and timepass. i They would come to you, make some informal discussion about the weather and then they would say they had seen the officer… and have made some money in the process… it has been my experience that generally 50% of the jobs just get done, even if nobody has approached you… But these people create an impression… Now it is a regular business. ii Chaturvedi was describing the quite familiar character of 'tout' or 'middleman', otherwise known as 'fixer' who sometimes made contact with an officer to arrange a contract for someone, or to get some other kind of favour, either large or small. The key point about this person's role was its intangibility on the one hand and its subversion of anticipated human interaction on the other. The tout's power lay in this uncertainty of action, in an expectation that documents had iii been produced and deals struck. They may not have been, but either way he would collect. The role of the tout epitomises, arguably, one of the key problems faced by social scientists studying the phenomenon of corruption (Khanna Johnston, 2007; Oldenburg, 1987; Reddy and Haragopal, 1985). Unlike other functions of governance or public administration, corruption often defies metric analysis because of its inherently uncertain boundaries. The simple example above, suggests that its effects are non-linear, largely unpredictable, mobile and sometimes contradictory. This article explores how these corruption complexes of the kind described by Chaturvedi, can be read in a way that moves us beyond existing analyses of 'corruption' as a problem of governance, by examining a range of (comparable)
Beyond Belief, chapter 1, argues that the state was the essential unifier, via a range of institu... more Beyond Belief, chapter 1, argues that the state was the essential unifier, via a range of institutions of this vision.
Ethnic and Racial Studies
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies
This introduction frames a selection of papers that encourage a richer spatial understanding of t... more This introduction frames a selection of papers that encourage a richer spatial understanding of the years before the Partition of India. The papers respond to two types of questions. One type is spatial (at what scale do we approach Partition? Through which spaces should we attempt to understand both micro and macro processes? Movements across what distances constituted Partition?). The second type is temporal (what timescales do we invoke when approaching Partition? Of what was it the endpoint? What sort of memories were invoked and made during India's multiple partitions?). This introduction establishes the main trends in Partition historiography, tracked through the last two decennial anniversaries. It sketches out spatial analyses of Partition to date, regarding territory and displacement especially, but shows that much of this geographical interpretation has been implicit rather than explicit, and that most have begun with Partition. Whilst framing many of their arguments in twentieth-century colonial practice, and occasionally straying into the post-colonial, the papers in this special issue mostly focus on the 1930s-1940s at a range of scales (from the international, through the nation-state, to cities, mohallas and courtrooms). Collectively they make the argument that if Partition has a history, then it also has an historical geography. We hope these papers will help people read these histories and geographies with a finer spatial eye.
Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India, 2000
South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, Jan 25, 2010
Religion and Conflict in Modern South Asia, 2011
Religion and Conflict in Modern South Asia, 2011
Religion and Conflict in Modern South Asia, 2011
Religion and Conflict in Modern South Asia, 2011
Modern Asian Studies, 2005
In a letter to Sir Samuel Hoare in September 1932, on the eve of his ‘fast unto the death’ agains... more In a letter to Sir Samuel Hoare in September 1932, on the eve of his ‘fast unto the death’ against the principle of separate electorates for untouchables, Gandhi wrote:For me religion is one in essence, but it has many branches and if I, the Hindu branch, fail in my duty to the parent trunk, I am an unworthy follower of that one indivisible, visible religion…. My nationalism and my religion are not exclusive, but inclusive and they must be so consistently with the welfare of all life.
Modern Asian Studies, 2011
Modern Asian Studies, 2011
This special issue ofModern Asian Studiesexplores the shift from colonial rule to independence in... more This special issue ofModern Asian Studiesexplores the shift from colonial rule to independence in India and Pakistan, with the aim of unravelling the explicit meanings and relevance of ‘independence’ for the new citizens of India and Pakistan during the two decades after 1947. While the study of postcolonial South Asia has blossomed in recent years, this volume addresses a number of imbalances in this dynamic and highly popular field. Firstly, the histories of India and Pakistan after 1947 have come to be conceived separately, with many scholars assuming that the two states developed along divergent paths after independence. Thus, the dominant historical paradigm has been to examine either India or Pakistan in relative isolation from one another. While a handful of very recent books on the partition of the subcontinent have begun to study the two states simultaneously, very few of these new histories reach beyond the immediate concerns of partition. Of course, both countries develop...
Modern Asian Studies, 2002
... 14 See Anand Yang's book with that title (Berkeley, 1989), and Sarah Ansari, Sufi Sa... more ... 14 See Anand Yang's book with that title (Berkeley, 1989), and Sarah Ansari, Sufi Saints and State Power (Cambridge, 1992). 15 Burton Stein, Thomas Munro. The Origins of the Colonial State and His Vision of Empire (Delhi, 1989), ch. 7; RE Frykenberg, Guntur District 1788 ...
Journal of Historical Sociology, 2007
... For example, an Ahir, or Gwala, had passed himself off as a Gual – a caste “belonging to the ... more ... For example, an Ahir, or Gwala, had passed himself off as a Gual – a caste “belonging to the Nat group”. In another case, a Rajput artisan of the hills was able to claim that he was Shilpkar – his occupational name was the same as one of the caste names for SCs. ...