Chakrabarti, Upal (2012) Interconnections of the political: British political economy, agrarian ...

266 Pages·2012·1.55 MB·English

Chakrabarti, Upal (2012) Interconnections of the political: British political
economy, agrarian governance, and early nineteenth-century Cuttack
(1803-1860). PhD Thesis. SOAS, University of London
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Interconnections of the political: British political
economy, agrarian governance, and early
nineteenth-century Cuttack (1803-1850)

Upal Chakrabarti

Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD in History

2012

Department of History
School of Oriental and African Studies
University of London

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Declaration for PhD thesis

I have read and understood regulation 17.9 of the Regulations for students
of the School of Oriental and African Studies concerning plagiarism. I
undertake that all the material presented for examination is my own work
and has not been written for me, in whole or in part, by any other person.
I also undertake that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or
unpublished work of another person has been duly acknowledged in the
work which I present for examination.

Signed: Date:

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Abstract

This dissertation brings together, as an integrated analytical field, political-economy
in Britain and practices of agrarian governance in various parts of British India,
focusing on the Cuttack division of Bengal Presidency in the first half of the
nineteenth century. Following a trail of methodological debates through thinkers like
David Ricardo, Richard Jones, James Mill, William Whewell, John Stuart Mill, and
others, it argues that there was a major transformation in the epistemological field of
political economy, which established the categories of production and distribution as
contingent on globally varying assemblages of property and political power. During
the same period, in British India, I further contend, the object of agrarian governance
was shaped as a complex of property and political power—which I call the
“political”—distributed between a range of landholders and landholding bodies, such
as the state, big landlords, village headmen, cultivators, and the village itself. As I
trace the governance of the “political” in Cuttack over the first half of the nineteenth
century, through chapters on rent, property and village, I highlight its interconnections
with other regions of British India, like the North Western Provinces or the Madras
Presidency. These interconnections, I argue, emerged out of a spatio-temporal
classificatory logic which assigned particular forms of the “political” for different
localities, as varying instances of an original form prevailing in a putative ancient
Hindu India. Finally, I turn towards quotidian disputes over appropriate locations in
the “political” between a variety of landholders in Cuttack, which help in
understanding the specific nature of agrarian power in Cuttack, by pointing out the
limits of, and further reorientations in, the framework of governance. This dissertation
is informed by a critique of several conceptual separations in the relevant
historiography—between “metropolitan” and “local”, “theory” and “practice”, and
“liberal theory” and “indigenous reality”.

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Contents

Abbreviations 5

Acknowledgments 6

Chapter One: Beyond the inside-outside of agrarian pasts:
political economy as local power in early nineteenth
century British India 9

Chapter Two: The “political” in political economy: inaugurating
an analytic 40

Chapter Three: The regulator of agrarian power: rent 75

Chapter Four: Locating localities: political economy,
agrarian governance, “Cuttack” and “India” 108

Chapter Five: Grounding the “political”: A visit to the “village” 163

Chapter Six: Debating directness: subjects and disputes in Cuttack 198

Chapter Seven: Rewriting production 245

Bibliography 256

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Abbreviations

BDR Balasore District Records
BJC Bengal Judicial Consultations
BRC Bengal Revenue Consultations
BRP Board of Revenue Proceedings
CDR Cuttack District Records
IOR India Office Records
OSA Orissa State Archives
PP Parliamentary Papers
SBOR Sadar Board of Revenue
SBORP Sadar Board of Revenue Proceedings
WBSA West Bengal State Archives

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Acknowledgments

I could have never imagined what land means to a people without reading
Akhtarujjman Ilias’s Khwabnama. After writing this dissertation, I know that my
blunt imagination will perhaps never allow me to understand, in the way Illias did, the
life-world of an agrarian community. But the wish remains. I thank Santanu, whose
sensitivity never stopped surprising me, for asking me to read this book.
In engaging with Peter Robb, I felt the joys of the labor of thinking. Peter’s
knowledge of the agrarian archives of British India knows no limit, and his
interrogations, to say the least, are penetrating. His constant demand for debates has
made me argue carefully. His critical comments on the details have made me rethink
time and again. Every bit of this dissertation is the outcome of a continuous,
conflictual, and enriching conversation with him.
In conversing with Neeladri Bhattacharya, I have learnt to think through
agrarian categories. I have learnt about modes of critique, about different analytical
approaches to the same problem, about pedagogy, about conceptualization. I have
learnt, endlessly. I feel lucky to have spent such good times with him.
I was introduced to the fundamentals of reading, thinking, writing, and arguing
by Presidency College and Jawaharlal Nehru University. I remain especially thankful
to Dalia Chakrabarti, Dipankar Gupta, Prasanta Ray, Radhika Singha, Susan
Visvanathan, Tanika Sarkar, and V. Sujatha for this unforgettable experience.
Avijit Pathak’s way of being has always evoked respect. In the form of
encouragement, affection, and blessings, he has been an inexhaustible source of
inspiration.
Over the last four years, a number of people have read, discussed, and
commented on portions of the dissertation. Their insights have thrown up novel and
unanticipated intellectual challenges. I sincerely thank Agnibho Gangopadhyay,
Anandaroop Sen, Anil Persaud, Anirban Das, Anish Vanaik, Aryama, Atig Ghosh,
Bodhisattva Kar, Chris Bayly, David Washbrook, Daud Ali, Eleanor Newbegin,
Niladri Chatterjee, Norbert Peabody, Prathama Banerjee, Raghav Kishore, Robert
Travers, Rohan Deb Roy, Sayam Ghosh, Shabnum Tejani, Shinjini Das, Shrimoy
Roychoudhury, Sibaji Bandopadhyay, and Sukanya Sarbadhikary for their immensely
valuable contributions to this dissertation.
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Andrew Sartori and Rahul Govind have engaged extensively with the
questions that I try to ask in this dissertation. Their critical suggestions have helped
me achieve more clarity in articulation.
Without Simon Schaffer’s assurances, my forays into the history of British
political economy would have remained hesitant and uncertain. In my brief interaction
with him, I have greatly benefitted from his breadth of knowledge and analytically
incisive observations.
I am grateful to Ravi Ahuja for commenting critically on the earliest plan of
this dissertation.
This thesis would have been inconceivable without the numerous documents
studied at different libraries and archives in India and the United Kingdom. I thank
the staff of British Library, London, National Archives of India, New Delhi, National
Library, Kolkata, Orissa State Archives, Bhubaneswar, West Bengal State Archives,
Kolkata, and Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge for their unstinting
assistance.
My study at SOAS was made possible by the financial assistance of the Felix
Trust. I thank them for having faith in me.
Without the generosity of Prof. Jatin Nayak, Supriya and Ashish, I would not
have survived in Bhubaneswar. I thank them for making my trips productive.
It is impossible to even think of recounting those countless moments, spent
with friends, which nurtured my emotional and intellectual existence in the years of
growing up with politics, academics, and life. I can only stay mired in those
memories.
The earliest journey began with Atig. Curiously, it continues, as before, even
today. I am still enthralled by his capacity to love. I remain a deep admirer of his
exceptional pedagogical skills.
Anandaroop, with his lyrical analytic, musical pastimes, and quiet friendship,
has become an integral part of my everydayness. It is also my duty to thank him for
being such a patient listener to my incessant ramblings.
Aryama has a style of analysing, people and issues, which is inimitable. His
way of being with nature is revealing. I remain buried in the memories of all those
forests in which we walked together.
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Over ceaseless arguments, Leo kept reminding me of the necessity to carefully
think about the interrelatedness of theory and practice. I have much to learn from his
political convictions.
I have found a new friend in Sayam. It is hard to find someone so intensely
critical about, and perpetually engaged with, our ways of living.
Eleanor’s kindness and unhesitating encouragement has been a powerful
reminder of the humane in relationships. Thanking her will violate its essence.
Rohan has embodied friendship in every sense of the term. We have laughed,
learnt and loved together. He has taught me the importance of both nearness and
distance. Without him I would not have known that intellect cannot mature without
intimate and complex human relationships.
I cannot possibly thank my in-laws, Debasish and Reshma, who have
showered me with boundless love, care, and blessings. I can only thank the conditions
which brought me close to such wonderful people.
I do not know where to put Ashis and Bhaswati in this list. They have been
parents, friends, and teachers at every point of time in my life. In their own very
different ways, they have taught me how to live life.
It has been a decade now that I have known Sukanya. I still feel I have not
been able to understand even a fraction of her towering intelligence, her almost
naturally philosophical way of thinking, and her acute sensitivity of the social. Living
with her has exposed me to the most nourishing experience of life. It has made me
believe that there is a way of being which embodies difference, and is not directed
towards the self. It can only be named as love.

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Chapter One

Beyond the inside-outside of agrarian pasts: political economy as local power in
early nineteenth century British India

This dissertation grew out of an unease with the analytical commonsense of South
Asian agrarian history. Almost all of these works seemed to suggest that the past, and
the present, of agrarian societies in South Asia was inescapably defined by what went
on at the level of the small, the particular, the proximate, or the local. Quite
expectedly, this isolation of the spatial level was also an analytical one. The
simultaneous identification of the small as a distinct geographical site and a powerful
explanatory tool rested on a series of hierarchized categorial binaries. These
binaries—between abstract and concrete, universal and particular, theory and practice,
imperial and local, western theory and indigenous reality—were the epistemological
conditions of possibility of the analytical isolation of the local. The local was
fashioned out of a seamless interweaving of geographical and epistemological
metaphors. It stood for any form of social reality which, by being located at a
geographical distance from the centre, seemed to be necessarily capable of lying in a
space epistemologically distant and different from the universal. Its geographically
bounded nature seemed to be its mark of difference from the boundless expanse of the
universal. The local was distance as difference. Framed in this manner, it fast became
an explanatory orthodoxy for the agrarian histories of South Asia.1
Immensely rich and insightful works emerged under the banner of the local.
There was a proliferation in the studies of localities in British India which finely
nuanced understandings of agrarian life in South Asia from the time of the beginnings
of the East India Company’s government to the present. It was clear that there was
much to be gained by taking a deep, close, intense look at the lanes and by-lanes of
multitudes of villages. The seduction of the small was irresistible. This dissertation
could not avoid it. Despite the unease, it got fatally attracted to the agrarian conditions
of one such locality in British India. I attempted to take a peek at the agrarian affairs

1A detailed analysis of these works, in relation to the argument of the dissertation, will be made in the
final section of this chapter.
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