1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910824566003321

Autore

Chaturvedi Vinayak

Titolo

Peasant pasts : history and memory in western India / / Vinayak Chaturvedi

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, : University of California Press, 2007

ISBN

0-520-94059-8

1-282-77216-3

9786612772160

1-4337-0857-4

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (331 p.)

Disciplina

305.5/6309547

Soggetti

Dharalas - History - 19th century - Historiography

Dharalas - History - 20th century - Historiography

Dharalas - Political activity

Dharalas - Social conditions - 19th century

Dharalas - Social conditions - 20th century

Nationalism - India - Gujarat - Historiography

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- CONTENTS -- ILLUSTRATIONS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION -- PART ONE -- PART TWO -- PART THREE -- CONCLUSION -- ABBREVIATIONS -- NOTES -- GLOSSARY -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX

Sommario/riassunto

Peasant Pasts is an innovative, interdisciplinary approach to writing histories of peasant politics, nationalism, and colonialism. Vinayak Chaturvedi's analysis provides an important intervention in the social and cultural history of India by examining the nature of peasant discourses and practices during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Through rigorous archival study and fieldwork, Chaturvedi shows that peasants in Gujarat were active in the production and circulation of political ideas, establishing critiques of the state and society while promoting complex understandings of political community. By turning to the heartland of M.K. Gandhi's support, Chaturvedi shows that the



vast majority of peasants were opposed to nationalism in the early decades of the twentieth century. He argues that nationalists in Gujarat established power through the use of coercion and violence, as they imagined a nation in which they could dominate social relations. Chaturvedi suggests that this little told story is necessary to understand not only anticolonial nationalism but the direction of postcolonial nationalism as well.