The idea of Gujarat: History, ethnography and text
Abstracts
The Social Fabric: Textiles, Dress and Identity in Kachchh
Eiluned Edwards, Victoria and Albert Museum/London College of Fashion
This paper draws on several years’ fieldwork in Kachchh district, Gujarat. Much of
Kachchh is salt desert, or rann, which floods during the monsoon, effectively cutting
the district off from the rest of the state, a feature that led to it being known as ‘island
Kachchh’. This periodic separation from the rest of Gujarat, its previous remoteness
(admittedly now largely conquered by modern communications), and its status as a
former independent princedom, have contributed to a prevailing sense of a distinct
Kachchhi identity that is by implication superior to being Gujarati. This claim is
substantiated by the use of Kachchhi as a first language rather than Gujarati
reportedly by 866,000 people. Having said that, the primary form of identification for
most of the people with whom I have worked in Kachchh is caste, either to describe
themselves or to define another person or persons. The information that follows this
has varied: some have gone on to discuss clan membership; religious affiliation has
also been a particularly potent means of identification. In the space of these few lines,
the plurality of identity starts to emerge and also the ways an identity may be bounded
and described – by caste, geography, language and religion, for example. In this
respect, Benedict Anderson’s concept of ‘imagined communities’ (actually applied to
a study of nationalism) has been useful in understanding what unifies people into a
particular form of group identity.
My own research comes under the umbrella of material culture, and has focused a
good deal on craft, particularly the making, use and circulation of cloth. In the course
of this paper I propose to look at how caste identity is ‘imagined’ and will offer some
thoughts on how it is constructed through the medium of textiles and dress. I will also
explore how textiles and dress map out inter-caste relations, reveal individual and
community-wide responses to social and technological change, and manifest ongoing
negotiations of identity. I propose to focus on two particular communities: Rabaris
who are maldharis, herders of cattle, or sheep, goats and camels, and the Khatris who
in Kachchh are known as dyers and printers of textiles. A longstanding relationship
exists between these two communities that has been based chiefly on the local trade in
textiles.
Defining Gujarat and the Gujaratis
Riho Isaka, University of Tokyo
This paper examines various ways in which the Gujarati intelligentsia in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries defined Gujarat and the Gujaratis. It analyses
the writings of several leading intellectuals in this period, including Narmadashankar
Lalshankar, B.M. Malabari, G.M. Tripathi and K.M. Munshi. It shows how these
intellectuals articulated their ideas of Gujarat and the Gujaratis in their literary works
as well as in their descriptions of the language, history, geography, tradition, culture,
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society and political and economic situations of Gujarat. While stressing the variety
and fluidity of their notions of this region, the paper will also try to illustrate how
some of their ideas were selected, appropriated and developed by the state and by
different groups of people in the contemporary and later periods, to leave a significant
influence on the social and political development of this region. In this regard, I will
focus in particular on K.M. Munshi's writings on the history of Gujarat and on
'Gujaratni Asmita', and will examine the ways in which his words and concepts were
appropriated by some political groups in the post-colonial period in their own
attempts to redefine Gujarat and the Gujaratis.
Contemporary Gujarat from an Ethnographic Perspective:
Swaminarayan Bhakti and Some Considerations for Unpacking Assumptions about
Religion and Religious Subjectivity
Hanna Kim, New York University
For many scholars of South Asia, contemporary Gujarat is explicitly connected to the
unbearably tragic communal violence that has occurred on Gujarati soil in the recent
past.
Today’s Gujarat is in the challenging position of being seen as both economically
thriving and politically problematic, and its productive Hindu middle classes and
castes are under suspicion for their complicity in electing Hindutva leaders and
supporting, tacitly or otherwise, fundamentalist agendas. In this uncertain political
and social context, many organised Gujarati Hindu groups are facing pressure to
clarify their positionality, that is, their organisation’s basis for existence, its means of
sustaining its membership, and its relationship to fundamentalist projects. This paper
directs attention to a prominent Gujarati devotional movement, the Bochasanwasi
Shree Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (or BAPS), in an effort to unpack
some of the common assumptions about this community and to consider other ways
of conceptualising a non-liberal bhakti tradition. Rather than trying to understand
bhakti participation in sociological or reactive terms, this paper emphasises the need
to look at BAPS followers and their actions as creatively engaged responses to a
constantly changing environment. These responses point not only to the
contingencies of modern Gujarati life but to the ways in which Swaminarayan bhakti
tenets, themselves located in shifting historical and political contexts, make possible
certain kinds of actions . In other words, it is not the discourse of fundamentalism,
one that reinforces colonial tropes of passivity, insularity, and anti-intellectualism,
which will prove useful for trying to locate the Swaminarayan community and its
spheres of influence. For the analyst, this reframing of Swaminarayan bhakti raises
certain critical questions: what assumptions about Hindu movements must be revised
in order to move beyond the perceived alignment of devotional commitment with
fundamentalist sympathies? What conditions might allow for a more peaceful
coexistence of groups in Gujarat? What categories of being and action (including
ideas of the past and present) emerge from Swaminarayan followers that compel a reimagining of the Gujarati political and social landscape? This paper suggests that
understanding modern Gujarat requires a willingness to transcend certain liberal
assumptions about religiously motivated behaviour and to consider the possibility that
certain indigenous constructions might prove to be less divisive in the Gujarati
context.
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Moolk ain desh : Understanding spaces Sindhis of Gujarat inhabit
Rita Kothari, Mudra Institute of Communications Ahmedabad
My paper will examine two groups in their relation to “Gujarat” as a territory, a
language, a nation, and more importantly, an idea that now manifests in a politically
regionalized identity. I have worked on one of the groups in my earlier research – the
Sindhi Hindus in urban parts of Gujarat. This paper contrasts the experience of social
rejection and anxiety for assimilation among urban Sindhis with the rural Sindhis of
the region of Banni in Kutch. The paradigm of contrast throws up oppositions of
demography, class, and religion and runs into the risk of oversimplification. By way
of avoiding the binary oppositions, I shall also discuss the case of a writer from
Banni (who mediates the worlds of Sindhi Muslims, Sindhi Hindus and the
“Kutchis”) in order to understand how fluid processes are un/consciously arrested by
boundaries of languages and nations.
Khari mata, stri ane rani: Introducing Queen Victoria to “The Gujarati population
of India”
John McLeod, University of Louisville
What is the cradle of free India? Uttar Pradesh, where the rising at Meerut signaled
the start of the First War of Independence in 1857? Maharashtra, where the first
meeting of the Indian National Congress at Mumbai in 1885 marked the birth of the
movement that led India to freedom? New Delhi, where Jawaharlal Nehru
proclaimed the independence of India in 1947? If one state must be chosen, it is
probably Gujarat. Gujarat is the land of M.K. Gandhi, who was born at Porbandar,
educated at Rajkot, built his ashram on the banks of the Sabarmati, and led the Salt
March to Dandi. It is also the land of Dadabhai Naoroji, the Grand Old Man of India,
a Parsi from Navsari who inspired the first generation of Indian nationalists; of
Sayajirao Gaekwad, the maharaja of Baroda whom the British accused of sedition and
who may (or may not) have shown disrespect to King George V at the Delhi Durbar
of 1911; and of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who in the eyes of many was second only to
the Mahatma as a driving force in the independence movement.
Its role as the cradle of free India is unquestionably one of Gujarat’s identities, and
thus a component of “the idea of Gujarat.” But as I frequently remind my students,
for any conclusions one draws about India, there are always counter-examples that
can be used to support an opposite conclusion. This paper examines what on the
surface appears to be a counter-example of the idea of Gujarat as the cradle of free
India, a Gujarati translation of Queen Victoria’s Leaves from the Journal of Our Life
in the Highlands which was published in 1877 to introduce the “True Mother, Wife,
and Queen” (khari mata, stri, ane rani) to “the Gujarati population of India.” The
book would be completely forgotten today except for the fact that its translator was
Mancherjee Merwanjee Bhownaggree (1851-1933), who two decades later went on to
fame (or notoriety) as the second Indian member of the British Parliament. The paper
begins with an exploration of the circumstances under which the book was translated
and published, then considers its content, and finally examines its audience. It
concludes that the “idea of Gujarat” embodied in the translation is not as distant from
the notion of Gujarat as the cradle of free India as it seems at first glance.
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Overlapping imaginations: Maha Gujarat and Maharashtra in the battle for
Bombay
Shreeyash Palshikar, Universities of Oxford and Edinburgh
This paper explores the tensions between the overlapping ideas of Maha Gujarat and
Maharashtra and the essentialized notions of Gujarati-ness and Marathi-ness created
along with these ideas. It relates this imaginary overlap and these essentializations to
the violence that accompanied the breakup of Bombay State and to the formation of
the new states of Maharashtra and Gujarat in post-colonial India. The papers begins
with a brief historical overview of the idea of Maha Gujarat in modern India by
examining how ideas of the space of Maha Gujarat were symbolically, numerically,
and verbally articulated in the publications of the Gujarat Research Society. Along
with a spatial imagination, this paper argues that essentialized notions of Gujaratiness were created in the publications of the Gujarati Research Society. These ideas of
essential Gujarati-ness and Marathi-ness were assumed by local politicians and also
by influential politicians at the national level involved in the breakup of Bombay
State. These assumptions about the essential natures of these peoples underlay
political debates on the breakup of Bombay state from the local Bombay city level to
the highest levels of the Indian government. These contributed to the national-level
Congress leaders’ unwillingness to allow Bombay city to be included in any new
Maharashtra state. Given these assumptions, violence committed by Gujaratis to
promote the break-up of Bombay state and formation of Maha Gujarat surprised
reporters and politicians. This paper concludes that these essential imaginings
continue to be used by contemporary politicians.
Mata, mandir and Muslims: Sacred space and its guardians in Gujarat
Samira Sheikh, The Institute of Ismaili Studies
The temple of Bahuchara Mata in north Gujarat celebrates a female deity with
devotees from a range of sectarian, caste and even sexual affiliations (her attendants
included eunuchs and nominally Muslim transvestites). Formerly within territory
controlled by the sultans of Gujarat, the Mughals and the Marathas, the temple grew
from a small local shrine into the centre of a pilgrimage network that now extends
throughout Gujarat. In accounts of the temple’s history written from the sixteenth
century onwards, those who held stakes in the temple’s reputation and revenues
composed varying narratives of the temple and it’s past. One strand sought to retain
the plurality of ritual practice at the temple while another sought to ‘reform’ it to fit
normative Hindu standards. While the debate was phrased in ideological terms of
tradition and reform, the paper argues that the actual conflict is over the prestige
derived from the shrine and over its substantial pilgrim revenues. By exploring the
religious, literary and economic dimensions of these debates during the transition
from Mughal to Maratha to colonial rule, the paper suggests that the governance and
control of sacred space was, and continues to be, an important component of the ‘idea
of Gujarat’.
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Nats and jamats in Bombay Presidency in the early nineteenth century
Amrita Shodhan, Independent Scholar, London
This paper will examine nats and jamats (collectives – sub-castes) as law makers
and enforcers in the context of the introduction of colonial judiciary in Gujarat before
the days of Henry Maine and the universal establishment of the Bengal model for the
three presidencies. From 1818, Elphinstone and his mofussil administrators in
Gujarat worked out a different model based on caste and customary law. While this
was still reductive of the plurality found by them, it was a model that allowed for
local logics to operate as they dealt with socio-political groups as polities –
organisations with over-lapping and multi-centered sovereignties.
The paper examines the working of castes in law in the context of the Khojas and
Vaishnavas in Mumbai and Gujarat. Faith and religious behaviour became matters
for discussion and criticism in the emerging public domain of newspapers, public
assemblies and debating societies. An analysis of these ‘internal’ disputes and
reform as well as legal cases suggests that, resolving them did not require a reference
to singular, nationalised Hindu and Muslim identities but extended debates and
compromises between the various powerful groups within the castes and their
religious leaders. This study adds a different dimension to our understanding of caste
in colonial administration and provides some depth to our knowledge of socialreligious organisation in Gujarat.
Geographies of the past: The ethnographic history of Bhuj
Edward Simpson, SOAS
This iconic idea
of Gujarat, essentially an outline map of Kutch, Saurashtra, and ‘Gujarat’ held
together by the long straggling coastline, the artificially straight lines of the border
with Pakistan, and the more organic but no less contested boundaries with
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neighbouring states, is commonly used by politicians, industries, and conference
organisers as a shorthand, and, apparently timeless, way of saying something about
the identity of the state. In this paper, I examine the nature and substance of the
western boundaries of Gujarat, those formed by Partition and by the lapping waves of
the western Indian Ocean, in order to place the state within a different kind of
imaginative and empirical geography, tying it to the broader history of Islam, politics,
and trade with the lands and seas to the west, through the ethnography of today. I look
at the formation, determination, and politicisation of these boundaries in terms of
religion, commerce, and history, through the eyes of seafarers, merchants, and rajas.
The argument suggests the boundaries are porous and malleable, sometimes in ways
unique to Gujarat, and have been determined by a confluence of different intellectual
and cultural traditions. I tell this story through the history of Bhuj, as a way of arguing
with the jingoistic politicisation of the western border today, and the Indian
nationalism of some recent scholarly historiography of the Indian Ocean.
Equipping the laboratory for Hindutva: Religion and politics in Ahmedabad, 19002008
Howard Spodek, Temple University
This paper will explore Gandhi's use of religion in politics in Ahmedabad; the views
on religion and politics of the industrial elites; and the peculiar development of
Hindutva in the past few years, as Hindutva-oriented politicians have
quarreled bitterly among themselves in defining what they mean by Hindutva.
Narrowing possibilities of stateness: The case of land in Gujarat
Nikita Sud, QEH, University of Oxford
This paper investigates the transformation of the Indian state from a stance of
developmental interventionism towards increasing support for economic
liberalisation. The definitional dilemma of ‘the state’ is resolved by
constructing a conceptual map. This portrays the state as an idea, a system of
government and as embedded in politics. The map forms the template for
undertaking an empirical exploration. Ongoing changes in land policy in Gujarat
provide a case study. Ostensibly, the state’s position has shifted from the
active promotion of ‘land to the tiller’ to an ongoing disengagement from a
liberalising landscape. However, re-evaluating this scenario against a multilayered conceptual map leads to conclusions against the grain of existing
perceptions. State ideas of land serving the greater common good have continued
into the post-liberalisation era, as has the petty land administration’s
proprietariness, expressed in reluctance to fast track land transactions. At
the same time powerful, alternative sets of ideas and institutional actions
have come to the fore. These urge rapid land liberalisation to foster
industrialisation, and have been promoted by the highest bureaucratic and
political echelons. While the high state - big business alliance is neither new
nor the only feature of the state today, it is perhaps the one with the most
significant politico-economic consequences. This alliance represents not a
homogenised pro liberalisation or pro big business state but one in which other
possibilities of stateness have narrowed. The narrowing of the possibilities of
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action within the still interventionist and dynamic state mark the liberalising
landscape.
Keywords: the state, India, economic liberalisation, land, Gujarat
Between the sand and the sea: Reflections on the specificity of caste in Gujarat.
Harald Tambs-Lyche, Université de Picardie-Jules Verne, Amiens, and LISSTCentre d’Anthropologie, Toulouse, France
Gujarat is different, say the Gujaratis. So did my French colleagues when I stressed,
years ago, that Gujarat did not fit Dumont's idea of hierarchy. Reflections on the
specificity of caste in Gujarat are not new; Forbes (1878/1973), Thoothi (1935) and
K.M. Munshi (1954) all deal with the theme, while the work of Pocock (1972/1973)
and A.M. Shah (especially 1988) provides rich material on the particular form that
caste has taken in the region. What I shall do here is, on the additional basis of my
own work (1997, 2002, 2003, 2004), to attempt a synthesis of geographical, historical
and sociological factors which have influenced the specificity of caste in the region,
aiming less at originality - the elements I cite are all present in the literature - than at
integration of the various contributions.
The main thesis is based in geography: the location of the fertile plains of Central
Gujarat between the Arabian Seas and the dry zone of Rajasthan produce two lasting
influences in Gujarat history:
the importance of merchant communities, exceptional for India and unusual in a wider
context, and a strong center-periphery dimension, opposing the central plains and
coastal South Gujarat to the less fertile regions of Saurashtra, Kacch, North Gujarat
and the hilly Eastern boundary towards Rajasthan. The first factor greatly influences
the overall hierarchy, with the high status of the merchant castes in the Centre: due to
the other factor, however, Kshatriya dominance remained central to the understanding
of the periphery at least until 1947. In many ways, then, centre and periphery
constitute very different hierarchies, but regional dynamics imply that the two are
closely associated. I have argued elsewhere (2002, 2003) that this opposition is
central to the formation of the Rajput/Koli and Patidar/Kanbi blocks which compete
in political and cultural terms. I shall argue that this factor also conditions the
continuous, almost endless gradation of status that structures each block, as
documented by Shah and Pocock.
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