How Feudal Was Indian Feudalism?

Sharma, R.S.

doi:10.2307/3517092

Cited by 6 publications

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“…Patronage, from this point of view, is control/domination disguised by the rhetoric of egalitarianism, humanism, feminism and so forth. The perceived conceptual dyad of patron-client, 13 which signifies power gaps embedded in formalised social structures, is widely discussed in the literature (Boissevain 1966;Chaudhary 1999;Gellner 1977;Gilsenan 1996;Keating 2001;Shapira 2008;Sharma 1985). I consider the Israeli absorption agencies as a system of patronage, in which the immigrants from Ethiopia have been designated as dependent, needy clients.…”

Section: Some Theoretical Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 98%

The Role of Diseases in Constructing Bureaucratic Patronage over Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel

Hertzog¹

2010

Anthropology of the Middle East

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This article elaborates on the connection between hygiene/cleanliness and the bureaucratic control of Ethiopian immigrants in Israel. It discusses the role of stigmatisation in constructing immigrants' perceived backwardness and weakness, which necessitate guidance. The analysis also demonstrates the patronisation of immigrant women through inspection of their tidiness as mothers and housewives. The case of the Ethiopian immigrants, who began arriving in Israel at the beginning of the 1980s and still immigrate, will be used to suggest that the bureaucratic regulation of immigrants, rather than racism or cultural differentials, is behind the integration process. Moreover, the similarities between the absorption practices applied towards immigrants from Ethiopia and those from Muslim countries in the 1950s will be discussed in terms of the bureaucratic patronage over immigrants in Israel.

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Section: Some Theoretical Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 98%

The Role of Diseases in Constructing Bureaucratic Patronage over Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel

Hertzog¹

2010

Anthropology of the Middle East

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“…R.S. Sharma’s () definition of “Indian feudalism” refers to a similar agrarian system whereby the peasantry is subjugated to overlords who use extra‐economic power to maintain control over land and appropriate surplus, either as tax, rent or labour tribute. A third characteristic of feudalism which is often overlooked is the use of surplus for consumption rather than productive reinvestment.…”

Section: Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This "double servility" to both the state and local landlords in the appropriation of surplus, was an important feature of the pre‐colonial Indian feudalism conceptualised by R.S. Sharma (:21). There was continuity in social relations when the region fell into British hands in 1765, as the colonialists preserved the administrative power of landed intermediaries to maximise revenue generation and solidify political control.…”

Section: Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Landlords in Dhanusha reportedly kept elephants as status symbols and for transport. While Regmi () coined the term “state landlordism” to describe the Rana era mode of production, it has most of the same hallmarks of “Indian” feudalism described by Sharma () above. Local‐level landlords would still corner a significant share of the surplus, yet unlike on the Indian side of the border where tax was now paid to the colonial state, a share of surplus went to a centralised feudal nobility, like in the Mughal Empire.…”

Section: Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Labour Migration, Capitalist Accumulation, and Feudal Reproduction: A Historical Analysis from the Eastern Gangetic Plains

Sugden

2019

Antipode

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This paper engages with the long-running debate on the transition from farm-based livelihoods to capitalism in the context of labour migration. Tracing the historic evolution of modes of production in the peripheral Mithilanchal region of the Eastern Gangetic Plains, it notes how the economic processes which are today driving the peasantry into the labour force through migration are not directly connected to the process of capitalist accumulation in the diverse locales where labour is employed, as is somtimes implied in the research on classic situations of "accumulation by dispossession". The entry of the peasantry into the surplus labour pool is instead linked firstly, with a complex convergence of internal changes within a non-capitalist feudal mode of production on an economic, cultural and political level, and secondly, with the stresses brought about in the wake of expanding capitalist markets. The paper notes however that migrant labour still generates substantial profits for capitalism with a sharing of surplus between the latter, and landlord-money lenders. It argues that the relationship between modes of production in this context, is neither functional nor coincidental, and is linked instead with largerat times opportunisticclass alliances which have evolved to fit the current political-economic conjuncture.

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“…In ancient India the king symbolised state authority, while the social elites and the state apparatus were backed by the surplus produced by the peasants and further supplied by the artisans. 23 The conflicts between the peasants and the state seem quite old as mentioned in several of the ancient Indian texts. The Mahabharata, for example, cautions that 'If the king disregards agriculturists, they become lost to him, and abandoning his dominions betake themselves to the woods' .…”

Section: The History Of Peasant Rebellionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Colonial legacies, armed revolts and state violence: the Maoist movement in India

Parashar

2019

Third World Quarterly

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This article examines the connected histories of armed tribal and peasant revolts in colonial and postcolonial India with reference to the ongoing Maoist conflict in rural and tribal areas of central and eastern India. The article makes two interrelated arguments about the violent continuities that endure from colonial to postcolonial contexts: (1) the nation-state system, in its efforts to establish control and influence, creates a hierarchy of citizenship engaging in the hostile policing of marginalised subjects, thereby engendering armed revolts and political violence; (2) the postcolonial state's response to these armed revolts by marginalised subjects who challenge its sovereignty and monopoly over violence, is equally violent and repressive. Most significantly, the state's response is legitimised in the same colonial idioms and justifications that mark epistemic and physical violence against the third world. When Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore wrote this poem in Bengali (translated into English as The Sunset of the Century) on 31 December 1899, India was headed towards the dawn of a new century when the colonial government would be replaced by sovereign rule with the establishment of the independent nation-state of India. For Tagore, nationalism was a social and ideational project not the culmination of a political and territorial ambition. His poem, thus, could be read as a response to the growing allurement with the idea of the modern nation-state among Indian nationalists who argued that the absence of a politically unifying nation-state was responsible for India's plight under colonial rule. Tagore warns of the 'self-love' of the nation-state that would engender its cannibalisation; a political existence that would destroy its soul.

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How Feudal Was Indian Feudalism?

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

The Role of Diseases in Constructing Bureaucratic Patronage over Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel

The Role of Diseases in Constructing Bureaucratic Patronage over Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel

Labour Migration, Capitalist Accumulation, and Feudal Reproduction: A Historical Analysis from the Eastern Gangetic Plains

Colonial legacies, armed revolts and state violence: the Maoist movement in India

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