Manohar Publishers and Distributors

21 August, 2012

Men Without Hats: Dialogues, Discipline and Discontent in the Madras Army, 1806-1807

By- James W. Hoover

The sepoy mutiny at Vellore in 1806 was the last major threat to British rule in south India, but it ended scarcely eight hours after it began. The consequences of the revolt, however, lasted much longer, Determined to find the cause of this ‘unexpected’ mutiny, officials of the East India Company launched a sweeping enquiry, the first of its kind to be made regarding the Indian Army. As this new bureaucratic process of information-gathering and procedure intruded upon the sepoys’ traditional world of unrecorded negotiation and personal bonds, panic spread, causing near-mutinies, riots, and political witch-hunts at garrison towns across the Madras Presidency.

The British asked ‘their’ sepoys many questions during the ensuing investigations of these incidents: why did they object to their new uniforms—especially to the new turban, which sepoys likened to a European topi, or hat? In what sorts of political activities were sepoys
engaged? British officials asked these questions, making assumptions regarding the identity, culture, and loyalty of Indian soldiers that were based primarily on colonial myth-making—assuming, for instance, that the sepoys could not have planned an uprising on their own, without the aid of external provocateurs attached to the exiled sons of Tipu Sultan. Indeed, the task of British investigators was made extremely difficult by the fact that the mutinous troops had been guarding the Mysorean princes and their families, held as state prisoners at Vellore, at the time of the rising. The real interior life and interests of the sepoy battalions, revealed by the Vellore Mutiny enquiries, opened up the origins, socio-political thoughts, and daily lives of the indigenous soldiers of the Raj for the first time, revealing an army very different from that normally imagined by its own British officers.

In Men Without Hats, all available primary documents concerning the Vellore Mutiny have been analysed for the first time, producing a comprehensive view of this significant event and a conclusion that challenges previous scholarly conceptions of the significance of the uprising.

James W. Hoover is Assistant Professor of South Asian and World History at Salem State
College in Salem, Massachusetts. He holds a B.A. in South Asian History from the University of California – Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in South Asian History from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

ISBN 81-7304-725-1 2007 314p. Rs.750/ pounds 50

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Authority and Kingship under the Sultans of Delhi : (Thirteenth-Fourteenth Centuries)

By- Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui

The Ghurian conquest of north India towards the close of the twelfth century led to the introduction of Sultanate polity which had evolved in Central Asia. This in turn led to important changes in the country’s cultural and administrative systems. The job opportunities created by the Sultanate attracted people of talent and learning who emigrated from the neighbouring countries and settled in different towns and cities. The mingling of people belonging to different countries and traditions galvanized the process of synthesis that
provided variety and richness to life. The close relationship between the royal court and the landed aristocracy resulted in the development of the culture of shared values which come to be known as India’s composite culture.

As no serious attention has so far been paid to the study of institutions, rituals and traditions associated with the Sultanate polity, an attempt has been made in this volume to study in detail the nature of the Sultanate polity and its impact on medieval Indian society. Using source material hitherto unknown the work analyses the patterns of political behaviour of successive Sultans. It also studies the socio-economic changes and the impact of urbanization of the life and culture of the period. A number of historiographic erros found in modern works have been corrected. The work reveals author’s familiarity with an impressive array of sources used and offers a paradigm shift from conventional historiography.

Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui retired as Professor of History, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh.

ISBN 81-7304-688-3 2006 320p. Rs.795/ pounds 50

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Assertive Religious Identities: India and Europe

By- Satish Saberwal and Mushirul Hasan (eds)

Arising out of a seminar at Jamia Millia Islamia in October 2003, this volume addresses an aspect of Indian society which has been a matter of widespread concern: the working, that is, of major institutions—some Hindu, some Muslim—whose ideologies and positions have been socially separative. These institutions—Arya Samaj, the seminary at Deoband, RSS, Tablighi Jamaat—have been active for several generations now. While their ostensible functions are ‘religious’ or ‘cultural’, which seem innocent enough, for their (implicitly or explicitly separative) agendas, these have worked out low cost forms of organization and activity—which have given them a rather formidable expansive dynamic, which, has significant transnational, dimensions in each case. Their activities and campaigns have often been aggressive, sometimes prone to violence; and these have served, may be unintentionally, to provoke each other, thereby giving the other side justification for its own contentious activities, as if in collective self-defense. The mutual provocations have, over the decades, confirmed for both sides, a sense of their own victimhood.

These social mechanisms have had significant social and political consequences—yet have remained largely off the radars of public attention. It is a complex theme; and this volume presents many facets from different angles. Several contributors employ a long-term historical perspective; and also a comparative one, reaching out to Europe, another major region where the mutual relations between major religious traditions have also been problematical for a very long time.

Satish Saberwal was Professor of Sociology at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Mushirul Hasan is Vice-Chancellor, Jamia Millia Islamia.

ISBN 81-7304-673-5 2006 480p. Rs.995/ pounds 65

Arya Dharm: Hindu Consciousness in 19th-Century Punjab

By- Kenneth Jones

The major focus of this book is on modernizing movements—social, religious and cultural—among Punjabi Hindus from the 1860s through World War I. The Arya Samaj, one such movement, dominates the volume, as it dominated a half-century of change in the Punjab.

Prof. Jones begins with an account of the earliest individual attempts of reformers to adapt their cultural traditions to the new world of the British Empire. He examines the development of new ideologies, the creation of group consciousness based on them, and the resultant expression of an overt Hindu politics. He demonstrates that the process underlying cultural interaction between the British and Punjabi Hindus, beginning in a particularistic manner, found expression by the twentieth century in the demands of a politicized Hindu elite. He also delineates the pattern of communal conflict among Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs and the dynamics of the British Raj that contributed to this conflict.

Existing historiography on modern South Asia generally deals with either British imperial history or nationalist political history. Prof. Jones is concerned instead with religious, cultural, political and social developments within the world of South Asians. To illuminate them he draws on a wide range of sources: tracts, pamphlets, institutional records, unpublished manuscripts, government documents, periodicals, memoirs and autobiographies in Hindi, Urdu, and English as well as materials in Sanskrit and Punjabi.

Kenneth W. Jones was Professor of History at Kansas State University, Manhattan, U.S.A.

ISBN 81-85054-91-6 2006 360p. Rs.750/ pounds 55

A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary: Including the Arabic Words and Phrases to be Met with in Persian Literature

A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary: Including the Arabic Words and Phrases to be Met with in Persian Literature

By- F. Steingass

The lines originally laid down for this Dictionary were, to prepare a revised edition of Johnson’s enlargement of Wilkins-Richardson’s Persian, Arabic, and English Dictionary, by reducing the Arabic element and increasing the Persian, so as to produce a volume specially adapted to the wants of the English students. However, it was found that the mere reduction of the Arabic portion would not suffice to answer the purpose intended. At the same time it was soon felt that the fresh matter to be introduced in the Persian part exceeded the limits contemplated, and necessitated in this respect a considerable extension of the primary plan.

It is hoped that this Dictionary will justify its claim to comprehensiveness. The author’s only ambition was to advance the work close to the point at which the practical adoption of the motto Viribus Unitis, with regrad to Persian, becomes a necessity, and should be seriously contemplated by oriental societies and congresses.

Francis Joseph Steingass (1825-1903) was born in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany. He moved to England in the 1870s becoming Professor of Modern Languages at the Oriental Institute, Woking. The author of a number of Arabic and Perisan dictionaries, he was cataloguing material in the India Office Library at the time of his death.

ISBN 81-7304-669-7 2006 1540p. Rs.900/ Pounds 95

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Medals and Decorations of Independent India

By- Edward S. Haynes and Rana T.S. Chhina

With India’s independence in 1947 and emergence as a fully self-governing republic in 1950, new awards were created to reward Indian citizens for bravery and national service. While these new national awards grew out of the historical heritage of the period of British rule, they also represented the unique values of the new republic.

This book presents a systematic overview of the official military, police, and civilian awards of the Republic of India from 1947 though to the present day. In addition to presenting a detailed catalogue of official awards, this work also surveys the development of policy on such awards, considers their changing legal status, and provides a critique of the policies that
governed their creation and bestowal. While focusing on official national awards, the book also provides information on Indian provincial awards, on foreign awards given to Indians, and on awards of the pre-1947 Provisional Government of Free India. While much space is necessarily devoted to military awards, attention is also given to civilian awards, to the awards of the police and fire services and to the other official awards of the Indian Republic.

This is the first book to focus on this important topic and should be of special interest to
those in the defence and other uniformed services, to national policy makers, to students and collectors of decorations and medals, and to those with an interest in the social and political history of India. Members of the general public with an interest in how such national honours are awarded or with a curiosity over the meaning of all those bits of coloured silk that are worn on uniforms, will find this a useful and handy work of reference.

Edward S. Haynes is a graudate of Duke University and Jawaharlal Nehru Univesity and a specialist in modern South Asian history. His current research deals with the development of the honours system in India from the 1780s to the 1980s. He is a member of the history department faculty at Winthrop University (USA). He is a member of the Orders and Medals Research Society and of the Orders and Medals Society of America.

Rana T.S. Chhina served in the Indian Air Force as a helicopter pilot. A qualified flying instructor, he saw active service in operations on the Siachen Glacier, with the IPKF in Sri Lanka, and in counter-insurgency operations in Mizoram and Nagaland. A recipient of the Macgregor Medal for best military reconnaissance in 1986, he is currently secretary and editor of the USI Centre for Armed Forces Historical Research, New Delhi, and vice-president of the Indian Military Historical Society.

ISBN 978-81-7304-719-0 2008 2720p. Rs.2750/ pounds 95

Marga: Ways of Liberation, Empowerment, and Social Change in Maharashtra

By- M. Naito, I. Shima and H. Kotani (eds.)

This volume which provides a comprehensive overview to Maharashtrian culture and society is divided into four sections.

Section I includes articles dealing with sant tradition of Maharashtra, life and thinking of Jnanesvara (Dnyaneshwar) and Eknath in particular, and in a figurative sense, that of B.R. Ambedkar as an admirer of the sant tradition, especially of Tukaram.

Three articles in Section II discuss the cultural problems involving languages, specifically the relationships between the high (elite) languages, such as Sanskrit, Persian and English, and a popular language like Marathi. How the elite languages and the culture based on them were related to the way of life of ordinary people is the focal point. Other articles in Section II
deal with ideologies and movements for social reform in modern Maharashtra including the problem of women’s emancipation.

Section III contains articles dealing with politico-social and politico-cultural movements in modern and contemporary Maharashtra, a symbolic concept of which is satyagraha, though the implications of the term are multifarious.

Articles in Section IV explore the religious practices of Maharashtrians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as all-India level pilgrimage like tristhaliyatra (pilgrimage to Varanasi, Gaya and Prayaga) as well as local-level ones like those to Pandharpur and more minor sacred places in Maharashtra.

The volume will be indispensable for scholars working on South Asian religion and culture.

Masao Naito is Professor in the Department of History, Senshu University, Tokyo. He has specialized in modern thoughts and political movements based on them in Maharashtra, including those of the Dalits.

Iwao Shima was Professor, Faculty of Humanities, Kanazawa University, specializing in Hindu philosophy with main focus on Sankara and Jnanesvara. He died all of a sudden on 21 May 2007.

Hiroyuki Kotani is Member of the Science Council of Japan and Professor Emeritus of
Tokyo Metropolitan University.

ISBN 81-7304-762-6 2008 4740p. Rs.1175/ pounds 65