This volume is based on papers initially presented at a seminar, held in Calcutta in 1994, jointly organised by the Department of History, University of Calcutta and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. The theme was 'Identity, Society and Politics in India This we considered relevant because the validity of nationalism as a descriptive category to conceptualise modem Indian State and society is increasingly being contested and, at times, even the fragments are being legitimised in their regional, religious and casteist settings. The question at issue, as we understand it, is neither to discount the potency of nationalism as a unifying ideology, nor to validate the fragments as crucial determinants of social change. We only seek to trace the growth of multiple identities and their mediation through caste, community. ethnicity and other parameters that underline civil society in modern India.
The common focus of all the contributors, whether from London or Calcutta, is the nature of community and national identity in India. In their different ways, they seek to explore the hidden recesses of shared imaginations that shaped competing identities at various historical points in different regions. Identity, however, is a tricky notion. It is perceived differently even by the same individual according to context, and there may be considerable overlap in the process. Its articulation likewise is conditioned by individual, regional religious, linguistic, and other specificities. We think it is the task of social scientists to try to disentangle the webs rather than to artificially homogenise a complex social situation. The scholars here are much less concerned about the epistemology, the structure and implications of identity in its abstract. Instead there is a shared concern to identify different levels of collective identity that passage to modernity in India has inevitably entailed. To understand and to isolate what is meant by 'identity' has indeed assumed exceptional importance today, as has the now crucial issue of whether any 'overreaching' identity/identities-Indian or otherwise-can be discovered over time.
A number of questions has been posed by scholars in this context and they are dealt with under various heads in this volume. Can identity be purely associated with the self-consciousness of groups, sub-groups. associations and confederations? Or, can the broader political and economic parameters within which these groups or bodies function be said to constitute a social and cultural centre of gravity? Can the identity of various groups itself be a political construct? Is it the product of -organisation and socialisation, which direct such groups, often fracturing and reconstituting them? Is there any room in our study of nationalism or of community awareness for a concern with the politics of associations and institutions in order to comprehend broad or specified trends in economic development? What is the role of literature in building and nurturing a particular form of identity? How, if at all, did gender guide the formation of identity over time? Such issues have attracted the attention of scholars involved in this volume.
Professor Peter Robb's essay may be described as a curtain-raiser in this regard. Using the colonial State as an entry point, he seeks to examine how collective identity was shaped by its intervention. In his view, there is no analytical contradiction between long-term civilisational continuities and emerging forms of 'constructed' identity. Not that indigenous cultural and religious inheritances did not play a powerful part in creating an Indianness, but colonialism certainly provided a stimulus. The importance of the colonial State and its many actions and interventions must be taken into account in situating the problematic. One such major determinant was the expansion of the State both in terms of its physical enlargement and the swelling of sovereign power. The latter simultaneously ushered in what the colonial rulers arrogantly dubbed as state 'responsibility". The response of the Indians in the form of crystallising their identity has been scrutinised by Professor Robb, by using the Naga example to illustrate a general process. How did the colonial process of border reorganisation in Assam impinge upon the Nagas? What was the impact of introducing innovations, such as designing a political hierarchy in the form of a headman, in the obvious interest of colonial administrative standardisation? Did the Nagas desire the 'civilising' influence of the West, as the bhadroloks in early nineteenth century Bengal did? The general disarmament of the Nagas and forced employment of labour, no less than the strategy of providing 'benefits' alienated the people, and created solidarity among them. The Naga experiment was but an illustration of what was happening in India as a whole.
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