Review

Author(s): Ian J. Kerr

Review by: Ian J. Kerr
Source: Pacific Affairs, Vol. 70, No. 4 (Winter, 1997-1998), pp. 616-617
Published by: Pacific Affairs, University of British Columbia
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2761347
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 PacificAffairs

displacementoutsideagriculture.In addition,a usefulglossaryis included,

as well as the originalHindi text,thoughit is not clearjust whatpurpose is
servedbythelatter.Altogether, thisis a helpfuladditionto theliteratureon
Bihar's rural economy,showinghow so manyof the state'scurrentprob-
lems linkdirectlyback to the realitiesof the pre-Independenceera.
BucknellUniversity,
Lewisburg,
Pennsylvania,
U.S.A. HARRYBLAIR

RETURN TO EMPIRE: Punjab Under the Sikhs and British in the Mid-
Nineteenth Century. By Andrew J. Major. New Delhi: Sterling
Publishers Private. (Distributed in North America by Asian Studies
Association ofAustralia, Bundoora, Australia.) 1996. xiv, 247pp. (Index.)
A$30. 00, cloth.ISBN 81-207-1806-2.
ANDREW MAJOR provides a solid, clearlywrittenstudyof the political and
administrative history of the Punjab from the latter decades of the eigh-
teenth century to the early 1870s. Avowedly revisionist, the book explores
the Punjab's transition from an independent Sikh sovereign region (in the
aftermath of the Mughal breakup) to a province of the British Indian
Empire: a transition the author calls the Punjab's "return to empire" after
an extended period of autonomy. This eventful period in Punjab history
encompassed the initial rise of Sikh power in the Punjab under their misls
(war bands) out of whose subsequent internecine struggles emerged a con-
solidated kingdom under Maharaja Ranjit Singh (ruled 1799-1839); the
internal struggles that followed Ranjit Singh's death and the involvement of
the British those struggles precipitated; the two Anglo-Sikh Wars (1845-46
and 1848-49) with the intervening Regency period and the subsequent
(March 1849) annexation of the Punjab to British India; the consolidation
of Britishrule and the threat to its survival in 1857-58 when many in North
India - but not, for the main part, in the Punjab - rose in rebellion; and,
finally,to the 1860s and early 1870s when the chastened British modified
their policies in the Punjab in order to foster the collaboration of Punjabi
elites in the processes of colonial rule.
The book makes a number of contributions. First, it provides a clear
presentation of an intricate storynot usually told in one, continuous expo-
sition. A consequence of this is a second contribution: a novel
periodization. Moreover, by beginning his study deep in the Sikh period
and ending it aftersome twentyyears of British rule, Major is better able to
identifycontinuities. In particular, he is able to view the annexation of the
Punjab by the British as one transition,however momentous, in a series of
transitions rather than as a disjunctive break. Indeed, Major shows us how
the chieftains and lesser intermediaries of the Sikh period - whose factious
disputes Ranjit Singh used to help maintain himself in power and whose
presence subsequently contributed to the British takeover - were, to a

616

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 BookReviews

more limited extent, patronized and utilized by the colonial administra-

tors after the shock of the 1857-58 Rebellions. What Major describes as a
militarypatronage state under Ranjit Singh became, under the British, an
imperial province with patronage after the leveling, pro-peasant propri-
etor policies pursued in the immediate, post-annexation years were
modified. Third, then, Major improves our understanding of certain impor-
tant continuities in Punjab history,continuities, he hints,that persisted after
the 1870s and contributed to the dominance of the Unionist party in
Punjab politics from the early 1920s to the mid 1940s.
The book's clear exposition should appeal to many: to historians of
empire and/or India and to Punjab specialists. However, the book is not as
revisionist as Major claims. He brings much together and adds informa-
tion based on his detailed research, research most heavily focussed on
official, English-language sources from the 1840s, 1850s and 1860s.
However, he does not change in any critical way the main outlines of
Punjab's political history in the nineteenth century. His guiding frame-
work is the familiar idea of collaborating or mediating elites. Punjab
specialists will welcome Major's clarityand his research findingsbut theywill
find the book covers known ground. Indeed, for the Punjabist there are
some surprising omissions from Major's bibliography, notably Dolores
Domin, India in 185 7-59: A StudyoftheRole oftheSikhsin thePeople's Uprising
(Akademie Verlag, 1977) andJ. Royal Roseberry III, ImperialRule in Punjab
1818-1881 (Riverdale, 1987) among others.
University
ofManitoba, Winnipeg,Canada IANJ. KERR

SHADOW OVER SHANGRI-LA: A Woman's Quest for Freedom. ByDurga

Pokhrel,withAnthonyWillet.McLean (Virginia): Brasseys.1996. x, 342 pp.
(Photos.) US$24. 95, cloth.ISBN 1-57488-061-6.
FOR ALL those who have signed an Amnesty International petition and
wondered whom they are supporting and what happened to them later,
here is the story,told simply and in her own words, of Durga Pokhrel, an
upper class and upper caste Brahmin, arrested in the early 1980s as the mas-
termind of a plot to kidnap the crown prince of Nepal. This is not a story
of special political treatment, of collective mutual upper class support or
symbolic imprisonment. Pokhrel is a freedom fighterwhose storybelongs in
the ranks of the memoirs of democracy activistseverywhere.
The book has been writtenin three parts: Pokhrells earlyyears of politi-
cization as a member of the Nepal Congress party,the horrific tale of her
incarceration in several Nepali jails, and the story,engrossing in itself,of
Nepal's passage from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional one. This
last storyspans the book, a document showing the attitudes and day-to-day
decisions of life in one of the last absolute monarchies on earth. The

617

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