Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-zzh7m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T08:20:44.677Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Urban Politics in the Local Kingdoms of India: A View from the Princely Capitals of Saurashtra under British Rule

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Howard Spodek
Howard Spodek
Affiliation:
Temple University, Philadelphia
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

A Substantial body of literature argues persuasively that Indian towns were often founded by local political-military rulers to serve as fortress-headquarters. In order to enhance their personal prestige, improve the efficiency of their administration, and provide market facilities for their small kingdoms, the rulers later invited merchants, artisans, administrators, and professionals to the fortress capitals. These invited, non-landed groups then formed courts, markets, and temple establishments which were dependent on the ruler for protection in an often violent atmosphere. The headquarters towns have been seen as the geographical locus and political nexus, or hinge, at which village levels of polity were linked with regional or state levels of government in a predominantly agrarian society. The most explicit and sophisticated presentation of this ‘hinge’ view is in Richard Fox's ‘Rajput “Clans” and Rurban Settlements in Northern India.'

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , March 1973 , pp. 253 - 275
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 This general pattern of urban development and morphology has been traced for several regions of India at various time periods. Cf. Cohn, Bernard S., ‘Political Systems in Eighteenth-century India: The Banaras Region,’ Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. LXXXII, No. 3, pp. 312–20;Google ScholarFox, Richard G., From Zamindar to Ballot Box (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969), especially pp. 270–1;Google ScholarFox, , ‘Rajput “Clans” and Rurban Settlements in Northern India,’ in Fox, (ed.), Urban India: Society, Space, and Image (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Program in Comparative Studies on Southern Asia, 1970), pp. 167–85;Google ScholarStein, Burton, ‘Integration of the Agrarian Systems of South India,’ in Frykenberg, Robert Eric (ed.), Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), pp. 175–216;Google ScholarSingh, K. N., ‘The Territorial Basis of Medieval Town and Village in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, India,’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. LVIII (1968), pp. 203–20;CrossRefGoogle ScholarShah, A. M., ‘Political System in Eighteenth-century Gujarat,’ Enquiry Vol. I, No. 1 (Spring 1964), p. 88.Google Scholar

2 Cf. Berry, Brian J. L., Geography of Market Centers and Retail Distribution (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1967).Google Scholar

3 Cf. Rodwin, Lloyd, Nations and Cities (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1970).Google Scholar

4 Berry, Brian J. L., ‘Policy Implications of an Urban Location Model for the Kanpur Region,’ in Desai, P. B., Grossack, I. M., and Sharma, K. N. (eds), Regional Prespective of Industrial and Urban Growth: The Case of Kanpur (Bombay: Macmillan, 1969), pp. 203–19;Google ScholarJohnson, E. A. J., Market Towns and Spatial Development in India (New Delhi: National Council of Applied Economic Research, 1965).Google Scholar

5 Cf. Weber, Max, The Religions of India (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press of Glencoe, 1958), pp. 86–92, 127–9;Google Scholar also Weber, , The City (New York: The Free Press, 1958), pp. 81, 84.Google ScholarPubMed

6 Stein, op. cit., p. 194.Google Scholar

7 Tod, James, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, Vol. I (London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd, 1914), p. 394.Google Scholar

8 Why did not peaceful accommodation result? Weber argues the the dharma or ethic of the Kshatriya warrior-rulers was to fight and they observed their dharma. Weber, The Religion of India. Fox writes that competition for land led to warfare, but kinship and marriage prescriptions promoted harmony. The result, implicitly, was alternating peace and war. Fox, , Kin, Clan, Raja, and Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971).Google Scholar

9 ‘Owing to the number of separate jurisdictions into which the peninsula is split up, the head of each exercising the right of imposing customs and other imposts adlibidum, there is very little internal trade in Kathiawad and consequently there are no exhange operations carried on between Rajkot and Wadhwan and the other commercial towns worth noting.’ National Archives of India. Western India States Agency File. 1864, Vol. 5, No. 57 ‘Banks.’Google Scholar

10 Cf. Amarji, Ranchodji, Tarikh-i-Sorath (Bombay: Education Society's Press, 1882).Google Scholar

11 Bhavnagar in particular fostered trade. See Watson, J. W., Statistical Account of Bhavnagar (Bombay: Education Society's Press, 1884).Google Scholar

12 A ready example appears in the opening two paragraphs of Gandhi's, Autobiography (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957).Google Scholar Both Gandhi's father and grandfather served as prime ministers in Kathiawad States, and both moved at least once from one state to another, sometimes being forced out, sometimes choosing to move. The evident fact that Gandhi's grandfather did develop a sense of loyalty to the first state he served, even though he was forced out, is presented as an unusual phenomenon.

13 The Walker Settlement is presented in detail in Bombay Presidency. Selections from the Records of the Bombay Presidency, Vol. XXXIX (NS), Pt I (Bombay, 1856).Google Scholar

14 Cf. Forbes, Alexander KinlochRas Mala, Vol. I (London: Humphrey Milford, 1924), pp. 436–8 on the founding of Bhavnagar.Google Scholar

15 Nawanagar State and Its Critics (Bombay: Times of India Press, 1929).Google Scholar

16 Wilberforce-Bell, H., The History of Kathiawad (London: William Heinemann, 1916.Google Scholar

17 See Watson, op. cit., and Annual Administration Reports for Jamnagar and Junagadh.Google Scholar

18 The karbharis, or State representatives who met in annual sessions discussed the reluctance of rulers to part with any element of sovereignty. See, particularly, the discussions on the trunk-road system, Karbharis' Meeting. A Manual of Karbharis' Meetings of Kathiawar States (1870 to 1940)(Rajkot: under orders of Karbharis' Meeting, 1940), p. 439.Google Scholar

19 Officially, inter-state customs were outlawed by the British. Persistent reports show that the British policy was not successfully implemented. At the time of Independence, inter-state duties collected by all States combined were valued at Rs 45 lakhs. Government of Saurashtra, Memorandum Presented by Government of Saurashtra to the Part B States (Special Assistance) Enquiry Committee, June 1953, p. 21.Google Scholar

20 The record of the dissolution of the BGJP railway syndicate unfolds in National Archives of India. Western India States Agency File for 1911, RY/2 and RY/3. ‘The Breakup of the BGJP Railway.’

21 Vakil, C. N., Lakdawala, D. T., and Desai, M. B., Economic Survey of Saurashtra (Bombay: School of Economics and Sociology, University of Bombay, 1953), p. 323.Google Scholar

22 Subsequent events suggest that the ruler's fears were justified. After Independence and merger in 1947–1948, the population of Kotda Sangani town dropped from 4,219 in 1951 to 4,194 in 1961 while the population of the district was rising about 30 per cent. The town was declassified as urban in the Census of 1961 and reclassified as rural.

23 Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand, The Indian States' Problem (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1941).Google Scholar

24 Gandhi, M. K., Satyagraha in South Africa (Madras: S. Ganesan, 1928), p. 67.Google Scholar

25 Census of India 1931, Vol. X, Western India States Agency, Pt I, p. 21.Google Scholar

26 Wood, John R., ‘The Political Integration of British and Princely Gujarat: The Historical-Political Variable in Indian State Politics’ (New York City: unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, Faculty of Political Science, 1971), p. IV.:47.Google Scholar Wood is correct in seeing the martial and depressed castes as largely rural in composition, but their leaders were the urban-based Rajput rulers. Both martial Rajputs and ‘non-violent’ Brahmins and Banias had occupational and kin ties connecting urban and rural members of their groups.

27 Ibid., p. IV:60 n. 74.

28 The theory of the town as hinge implies that people below the headquarters-town level were brought into the political process. In fact, however, their major form of participation was only the payment of revenue. This was especially true under Rajput rulers who considered themselves somewhat foreign to the area they controlled.

29 The Limbdi Satyagraha as well as the overall progress of the anti-princely nationalist movement in Saurashtra is reported in Gandhi, M. K., Indian States' Problem.Google Scholar

30 Spodek, Howard, ‘Urban–Rural Balance in Regional Development: A Case Study of Saurashtra, India, 1800–1960’ (Chicago: unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1972).Google Scholar

31 See Cohn, op. cit.; Fox, Kin, Clan, Raja, and Rule; and Fox, ‘Rajput “Clans” and Rurban Settlements in Northern India.’Google Scholar

32 Dimock, Edward C. Jr. and Inden, Ronald B., ‘The City in Pre-British Bengal According to the mangala-Kavyas,’ in Park, Richard L. (ed.), Urban Bengal (East Lansing: Asian Studies Center, Michigan State University, 1969), pp. 3–18.Google Scholar

33 Stein, op. cit., pp. 175–216.Google Scholar

34 Dimock and Inden, op. cit., p. 14.Google Scholar

35 Stein, op. cit., p. 194.Google Scholar

36 Burton Stein, ‘The Segmentary State in Indian History.’ Paper delivered at the American Historical Association Annual Meeting, New York City, December 1971.

37 Stein, in Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History, p. 207.Google Scholar

38 Ibid.

39 Seal, Anil, The Emergence of Indian Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 Bayly, C. A., ‘Local Control in Indian Towns—the Case of Allahabad, 1880–1920,’ Modern Asian Studies Vol. V, No. 4 (10 1971), pp. 289–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 Cohn recognizes the necessity for the attempt to analyze economic integration but lacks the data. Cohn, op. cit.Google Scholar

42 Pirenne, Henri, Medieval Cities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952).Google Scholar

43 Warner, W. Lloyd et al. , Yankee City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963).Google Scholar See also Stein, Maurice, The Eclipse of Community (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960);Google Scholar and Vidich, Arthur and Bensman, J., Small Town in Mass Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968).Google Scholar