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