Mapping Bihar

Mapping Bihar
Author: Surendra Gopal
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2017-12-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351034162

Written Indian history begins in sixth century bc with the history of Magadh (present day states of Jharkhand and Bihar). For almost a millennium Magadh dominated Indian history. The situation changed when Islamicized Turks entered India. The Mughals who followed the Turks ensured Bihar's economic prosperity; Patna became the most important centre of Himalayan trade. European Companies visited Patna to obtain a variety of goods, local as well as Himalayan. In the mid-eighteenth century Bihar and Bengal fell into the hands of Englishmen. A new chapter began. At the turn of the nineteenth century, Industrial Revolution began in Britain. The East India Company stopped trading in textiles. Instead, they promoted cotton cultivation in order that cotton was available to British textile factories. They promoted cultivation of indigo, needed by the textile manufacturing factories coming up. Land revenue source of the government's prime income, was collected even when agricultural output suffered massively. The government took deep interest in opium production but paid the cultivators less than the market price. British interference in agricultural matters caused wide spread agrarian distress. Indian society encountered many socio-religious reform movements. Raja Rammohun Roy and Swami Dayanand were major proponents of the new order. Stress was laid on gender equality, women empowerment and the modern system of education. Institutions for training doctors, engineers and scientists were opened. As time progressed, by and large, Biharis accepted the changes. Eventually social reform movements turned into the freedom movement in which Biharis played a leading role. This comprehensive volume is indispensable for scholars working on Bihar and modern and medieval South Asia. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

The Routledge Handbook of Tribe and Religions in India

The Routledge Handbook of Tribe and Religions in India
Author: Maguni Charan Behera
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 471
Release: 2024-09-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1040114334

This handbook explores the diversity of religious practice in tribal cultures in India. It looks at the interactive spaces where the religious practices of tribes and other communities have changed and adapted through the years in contemporary India. Tribe as a social category emerged in India during the colonial period; this handbook departs from the conventional approaches to studying ‘tribal religion’ and analyses the intersections of spirituality, rituals, gender and identities within tribal religion through a crosscultural and pan-Indian perspective. Tribes in India follow various religious denominations including Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, and traditional indigenous faiths. The chapters in this volume provide insights into the cross-cultural religiosity of tribes via ethnographic accounts and the study of animism, life cycle rituals, ancestor worship, shrines and religious institutions, revivalism, religious identities, religious conversion, transcendental religious spaces and the space for gender, identity and politics within religious traditions. It also discusses conflicts, contestations, anxieties within and the politics of religious traditions and identities in India and how tribal communities and the state negotiate with these issues. This and its companion handbook, The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Readings on Tribe and Religions in India: Emerging Negotiations, provide a comprehensive look into the religious life and practices of a very diverse group of tribes in India. This book will be of interest to academics and researchers working in the fields of religion, anthropology, indigenous and tribal studies, social and cultural anthropology, sociology of culture, sociology of religion, development studies, history, political science, folkloristic, and colonialism.

The Struggle for India's Independence in Bihar 1912-22

The Struggle for India's Independence in Bihar 1912-22
Author: Shaukat A. Khan
Publisher: Blue Rose Publishers
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2023-12-27
Genre: History
ISBN:

This work looks back at the role Bihar played in the struggle for India's independence in the first decade after its separation from Bengal as a province in 1912, particularly through the archival material contained in the contemporary confidential government files preserved in the Bihar State Archives, Patna. It uncovers some significant facts and dimensions like rumor-mongering adopted as a mode of struggle by the revolutionaries against British rule during World War I and the establishment of parallel administration at different levels during the Non-Cooperation Movement by its local leaders in Bihar. While it scrutinizes the sorrowful tales of sufferings of the Indian people under British colonial rule, it also raises questions about how the hate politics and hate crimes under BJP's rule, particularly against Minorities and Dalits can be justified as less brutal than the brutalities committed under the tyrannical British rule? Or how the targetted use of draconian laws or law enforcing agencies against those who question its unconstitutional and repressive policies and communal or rather hate politics can be justified as just in independent India under democratic government, and the use of similar laws or law enforcing agencies as repressive and unjust under despotic British rule?