Community and public culture: the Marwaris in Calcutta, 1897-1997

Hardgrove, Anne

Anne Hardgrove

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"This book explores the historical and cultural processes by which people under colonial and postcolonial rule come to regard themselves as part of a "community," sharing a particular local and panregional ethnic community identity. The focus of this ethnohistorical case study of community formation is a wealthy and controversial migrant business community in Calcutta, the Marwaris."--Preface.

Cover
Title Page
Copyright and Permissions
List of Illustrations
Maps
Acknowledgments
Preface
- [Intro]
- Appointment Anthropology
- Putting Away My Notebook
- Friends and Informants
- Proximate but Distant Neighbors: Bengalis of Calcutta
- Archival and Historical Sources
Introduction
- [Intro]
- Traders and Industrialists
- Colonial Knowledge
- Moments of Rupture: The Deccan Riots
- The Drain of Bengal
- Money and Modernity: Managing wealth and charity
1 Community and Public Culture
- [Intro]
- Performing Community and Public Culture
- Revisiting the "Invention of Tradition" and "Imagined Community"
- Toward a Familial Cosmopolitanism
- Summing Up: Community and Public Culture
- A note on my terms of analysis for India & the conceits of ethnosociology
2 Mapping Community in Rajasthan and Calcutta
- [Intro]
- Locating Marwari, Marwar, and Rajasthan
- Maps of Language, Maps of Region: Colonial Ethnography and Rajasthan
- Colonial Knowledge about Migration
- Financing the Hindi Movement
- Locating Marwar in the 1990s
- Mapping Community in Calcutta: Marwaris of the Burabazar
- Burabazar Architecture and the Revival of Vernacular Design
- Leaving Burabazar: Marwaris at Large
- Built Interiors and the Performance of Marwari Domesticity
- Philanthropy and Mapping the Kul: Industrialists and Temple Building
  - [Intro]
  - Merchant temple-building in historical context
- Three Birla Temples
- Efficacy of Marwari Temple-Building-Sri Sri Siddheswari Limited
- Popular Responses to Marwari Temple-Building
- Conclusions
3 Merchant Houses as Spectacles of Modernity
- [Intro]
- Visual Spectacles and Indian Capitalism
- Painted Themes of the Marwari haveli of Shekhawati, Rajasthan
- The Lifeworlds of Tamil Chettiar Mansions
- Chettiar Wealth and Display
- Being at home in Chettinadu: Design of the Chettiar House
- "Discoveries" of the Hybrid Houses in Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan c.1980-2000
- Conclusions
4 Marwaris and Moral Economies: From Rain to Ghee
- [Intro]
- Gambling Laws as a Question of Class in European Contexts
- Gambling in the British Colonies
- The Politics of Antigambling Legislation in British India
- Rain Gambling in Bombay
- Debates over the Morality of Rain Gambling in Calcutta
- Community as a Political Actor: Uniting to Defend Rain Gambling
- One Law for Europeans and Another Law for Indians?
- The Trouble with Satta: From Rain gambling to Commodity Figure Gambling
- The Politics of Cloth and Cloth Speculation in Colonial India
- The Politics of Ghee Adulteration and its Public Resolutions in Calcutta
- The Adulteration of Ghee
- Marwari adulteration of Ghee in 1917
- Legislation and Its Role in Making Adulteration Visible
- Conclusions
5 Social Reform and the Women's Question in Marwari Public Life
- [Intro]
- Caste and Civil Society in Colonial India
- Scholarly Approaches to Bengali Social Reform under Colonial Capitalism
- Early Calcutta Institutions of Marwari Public Life
- Representative Voluntary Associations
- Indentured Emigration & Beginnings of Marwari Political Action
- Gandhi's Shadows: Marwari Reformists and the Nationalist Movement
- Subcaste Organizations: Marwari Agarwals and Marwari Maheshwaris
- Disjunction and Discord: Discursive Production of Caste Communities
- Chand Magazine's Marwari Number
- Synchronicity: The Akhil Bharatvarshiya Marwari Sammelon
- Housewives and Citizens: Educating Marwari Women
- Women's Clubs and Organizations
- The Spectacle of Neelam Jain's Death
- Making Hindu Marriage Public: Marwari Community Marriages in Bengal
- Rituals of Mass Marriage
- Literature and the work of sentiments
6 Sati Worship and Marwari Public Identity in India
- [Intro]
- Locating Sati in Colonial and Post-Colonial Contexts
- Marwari Migration, Domesticity, and the Sati Goddess
- Rani Sati in Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan
- Rani Sati in Calcutta
- Marwari Women Debate the Valorization of Sati
Abbreviations
Notes
- Preface
- Introduction
- Community and Public Culture
- 2 Mapping Community in Rajasthan and Calcutta
- 3 Merchant Houses as Spectacles of Modernity
- 4 Marwaris and Moral Economies: From Rain to Ghee
- 5 Social Reform and the Women's Question in Marwari Public Life
- 6 Sati Worship and Marwari Public Identity in India
Glossary of Words in Bengali and Hindi
Bibliography
- Manuscripts
  - National Archives of India
  - West Bengal State Archives
  - High Court, Jaipur Bench, Jaipur
  - Secretariat Library
  - India Office Library, London
  - British Museum
  - Nehru Memorial Museum and Library
  - Library of Congress
  - Official Publications
  - Institutional Collections
- Newspapers
  - English
  - Hindi
  - Bengali
- Journals
  - English
  - Hindi
- Books in Bengali
- Books and Articles in Hindi
- Books and Articles in English
About the Author

Reviews
Journal Abbreviation	Label	URL
AHR	108.5 (Dec. 2003)	http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/108.5/br_22.html
HAS	Feb. 2003	http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-asia&month=0302&week=b&msg=eVgyKrpMYipsTZmgPgdkcA&user=&pw=

Related Titles
HEB Id	Title	Authors	Publication Information
heb06472.0001.001	Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization.	Appadurai, Arjun.	Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.

Resources

The video camera makes mass marriage into an individual event.

The Birla family is one of India's wealthiest business houses.

Replica of Birla living room.

[12/4/96 procession, Burabazar]

Dancing and taunting the police. [12/4/96 procession, Burabazar]

The Birla temple in Jaipur is the first air-conditioned temple in Asia.

Automobiles were popular subjects of haveli paintings.

Marwari women take leadership roles in the organization.

Birla temple.

Credit: Asit Poddar

A trader rests in his gaddi in between sales. Marwari traders have often slept in their gaddis when they are new arrivals from Rajasthan. Credit: Asit Poddar