REVIEWS
extraordinary blend of classical Hindustani
music beetween Muslim performers and the
most Hindi of lyrics is realized in a tradition
whose conditions for performance have been so
radically altered by twentieth century political,
economic, and technological changes. Few
other papers make much attempt to bridge the
communal divide, though Khalid Masud's
study of adab al-mufil through the centuries
ends by briefly touching on the surely suggestive
analogy between the special place of adab in
South Asian Islam and dharma. J. F. Richards's
long study of norms of comportment among
officers of the Mughal empire might certainly be
expected to suggest more cross-cultural paral-
lels, but then he takes much of his material from
Bhimsen, and Kayasths are a famous special
case. The other paper in the collection firmly
based on pre-nineteenth century evidence, a
superb study by Simon Digby of Yusuf Gada's
fourteenth century Tuhfa-i Nasdih, shows not
only how traditional scholarship and the most
formidable bibliographical expertise can make a
silk purse out of the most unpromising material,
but how much of the pre-modern adab literature
can only be interpreted sensibly by reference to
Islamic norms rather than South Asian circum-
stances.
The general emphasis today in the study of
South Asian Islam upon the post-Mughal
period is naturally reflected in the greater num-
ber of papers which relate to the radical shift in
its character under British rule. Francis Robin-
son, the other British resident among the con-
tributors, is predictably most interesting on the
adab of the FarangI Mahall 'ulamd—the anec-
dote of Maulana 'Abd al-Barl on the adab of
who should sit in the back seat of a motor car
(p. 179) is particularly worth treasuring—and
the editor herself contributes a solid piece on
lessons to be learnt from the Bihishtt Zevar.
C. M. Nairn, admittedly working from sources
that are much more fun to start with, has a
splendid piece on the Urdu products of the
Lieutenant-Governor of the N. W. P.'s prize
for ' useful works in the vernacular' that bril-
liantly pinpoints the appeal of Nazlr Ahmad to
both prize-givers and contemporary readers.
Insofar as the collection has a regional
emphasis beyond the natural one on U.P., it is
on the Panjab. Besides Katherine Ewing's brief
final paper on malangs, which just about fits
into the theme of the volume, both Richard
Eaton and David Gilmartin extend their
previously published studies of local Sufi
shrines, especially the premier dargah of Pak-
pattan, in ways which cast as much light on the
important issue of just how the western Panjab
was largely converted to Islam both in the
medieval and post-medieval periods as they are
tactful in not drawing too much attention to the
possible emergence of a distinctively Panjabi
Muslim adab which the prejudiced might think
a contradiction in terms. Richard Kurin also
contributes an interesting essay on popular con-
ceptions of Islam in Pakistan, based upon
evidence gathered from both Karachi and
Panjab villages, although the neatness of his
contrast between ' hot and hard life' and ' cool
and soft paradise' is perhaps not quite as neat
as he would make out. It is quite true that ruh is
always feminine in Urdu (p. 198n.), but the
assignment of gender is less certain in Panjabi,
161
as shown by the verse attributed to the founder
of Pakpattan himself, gahild ruhu na jdnai
(S1F 26). I am not sure if this small slip can be
used to tell us more about the distinctive charac-
teristics of Panjabi, as opposed to pan-South
Asian, Islam than it serves to support Digby's
magisterial point (p. 95) ' that in almost every
aspect of older Indo-Muslim history it is unwise
to accept the descriptions or received opinions
of earlier scholars as a safe basis for the erection
of more ambitious theoretical structures '.
This is, of course, a warning which we all
disregard at our peril. But let us be grateful that
on this occasion the initiative and the money
has been found to produce a most handsome
volume whose contributions collectively
represent a very solid set of bricks for those who
wish to go on building towards the understand-
ing of what the diaspora has now made one of
the world's major cultural traditions.
C. SHACKLE
S. AMBIRAJAN: Political economy and
monetary management: India 1766-
1914. viii, 203 pp. + errata.
Madras, etc.: Affiliated East-West
Press Pvt. Ltd., 1984. Rs. 75.
ADITEE NAG CHOWDHURY-ZILLY: The
vagrant peasant: agrarian distress
and desertion in Bengal, 1700 to
1830. (Beitrage zur Siidasienfor-
schung [Heidelberg], Bd. 71.) xv,
196 pp. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner
Verlag, 1982. DM 36.
DHARMA KUMAR and MEGHNAD DESAI
(ed.): The Cambridge economic
history of India. Vol. 2: c. 1757-
c. 1970. xviii, 1073 pp. Cambridge,
etc.: Cambridge University Press,
1983. £60.
ASOK SEN, PARTHA CHATTERJEE and
SAUGATA MUKHERJI: Perspectives in
social sciences, 2. Three studies on
the agrarian structure in Bengal
1850-1947. ix, 319 pp. Calcutta,
etc.: Oxford University Press for the
Centre for Studies in Social
Sciences, Calcutta, 1982 [pub.
1983]. £9.50.
The books under review give both an encour-
aging and a disturbing view of the current state
of South Asian economic history. They are
encouraging in that they represent a growing
body of valuable new interpretations. Each has
something of interest to say. They are disturb-
ing in that they are divided ideologically. Vol. 2
of The Cambridge economic history in particular
has aroused intemperate criticism for being doc-
trinally unsound. There are now newly optimis-
tic interpretations of the performance of the
Indian economy under British rule. Effective
replies to that optimism assert that the benefits
discerned were not widely shared and that a lack
of structural change left the subcontinent ill-
162 REVIEWS
equipped to provide for growth, international
competitiveness and public well-being. The
Economic history seems, to this reader, to take a
judicious path, on the whole, through these
controversies. Why then has it been attacked?
Irfan Habib says it is for ' Studying a colonial
economy—without perceiving colonialism' (the
title of his article in Modern Asian Studies, 19, 3,
1985). He makes some legitimate points. It is
not legitimate, however, to contend that a
modern economic history of India must con-
centrate on indicting imperialism, nor to assume
that India is ' the classic case of the colonial
remoulding of a pre-modern economy'. Doc-
trines of this kind are implicit in The vagrant
peasant and Perspectives in social sciences, and
limit them. By these criteria Ambirajan's book
would not have been written, or at least
published. Habib's demand is really for a
straightjacket of orthodoxy, when what is
needed is fresh thinking. As new work appears,
indeed, it seems increasingly that the Economic
history could have gone further both in
establishing continuities from pre-British times
and in finding new explanations for the state's
role in economic change; that is, it might have
been more radical in questioning all kinds of
rhetoric and categorizations, rather than more
loyal to a particular brand.
At root then, the attack is not on the method
but on the message. Yet, if the Economic history
proves anything, it is that there are no truths
about India which are simple and significant,
but also that much can be understood by objec-
tive and cautious assessment. It is thus the chief
virtue and not a failing that the work largely sets
its face against certain interpretations which in
other quarters have become icons. They were
inherited from earlier times and from ideolo-
gies, they have been expounded only briefly in
influential articles, or they have been debated at
length in works of theory; but apparently they
are not now to be subject to any thorough-going
empirical criticism. The catch words are
' drain', ' feudalism', ' de-industrialization',
' de-urbanization', ' de-peasantization', and so
on. By contrast, general chapters in the
Economic history, such as those by Morris
D. Morris on industry, by A. Heston on
national income, and J. Krishnamurty on
occupational distribution, invite the reader to
ask what is meant by de-industrialization if the
manufacturing sector grows each year. What is
' pauperization ' when infant mortality and life
expectancy improve? Where is ' proletarianiza-
tion ' with apparent continuities in the labour
force? Arguments over these interpretations will
run and run; but the real debate should be about
challenging and redefining the labels. Morris
causes offence because he diverts attention away
from sweeping generalizations about colonialist
crimes (based on counter-factual claims about
the differences between India's performance and
that of England or Japan), and towards the
impact on each industry of economic forces—
demand, productivity, the return on capital,
technological and ecological problems, and so
on. He is right to do so, even if he may not
always be right. His view of early nineteenth-
century weaving, for example, may be over-
sanguine, as Habib suggests; it is not wrong
simply because British officials would have
enjoyed reading it. Habib's fault is the one
which used to be attributed to scientists: believ-
ing that there is a single, knowable truth, to be
reached by discarding errors. On the contrary,
there is a multiplicity of perceptions, each of
which may progressively refine and expand our
understanding.
Nor is it the case that the Economic history
neglects to reveal shortcomings in British rule.
A failure to build sufficient railway locomotives
to prime a heavy industrial sector is discussed
by both Morris and John M. Hurd. A failure to
invest in primary education is described in
Dharma Kumar's chapter on the fiscal system
and implied in Morris's emphasis on the lack of
investment in human skills. The rigidity of
public policy is attributed by Kumar to the
inelasticity of government revenues, and the
leak of capital abroad partly to low taxation.
The anomalies of industrial investment are
detailed by Morris and are related to what
Michele McAlpin tells of the net improvement
in the agricultural terms of trade. One could go
on. What one cannot find is a blanket indict-
ment of the British. Nor is there an assumption
that an indigenous government would necess-
arily have always been wiser or more effective.
The errors of the British are a complex issue,
about which one needs to be precise; they did
not all occur because the government was
foreign; nor is this issue the only one.
Ambirajan's contention is that they were also
not the result of a conspiracy of British officials.
In unravelling the mysteries of currency and
exchange rates, with a lucidity for which all
readers will be grateful, he argues that official
policies were derived from economic ideas. To
this reader those policies seem not to apply
closely-argued theories but to deploy them to
support decisions made under the influence of
loosely conceived prejudice (not a situation
peculiar to colonial regimes). Ambirajan's con-
tribution is to advance the understanding of
policy. He does not seek to prove whether or
not Britain was enriched at India's expense.
K. N. Chaudhuri takes up this larger issue in
the Economic history. His essay on foreign trade
effectively demolishes the classical ' drain'
theory, and shows that highly favourable condi-
tions existed for Indian exports in the later
nineteenth century. He blames the British for
failing to harness the advantages by systematic
plans for modernization and growth. As
Ambirajan shows, however, ideas helped create
the opportunities; they would also have
influenced the actions of a nationalist govern-
ment, without, however, guaranteeing its suc-
cess.
The Indian countryside and its informal,
semi-monetized linkages make up the greater
part of Indian economic activity. The historians
have been investing heavily in this territory, so
that the Economic history at times marks only a
transitional stage. Elizabeth Whitcombe, for
example, fails to attend fully to the impact of
canals, whereas Hurd provides a useful if not
complete assessment of the role of the railways.
For the rural world the Economic history pro-
vides overviews, region by region. H. Fukasawa
on Western India and Dharma Kumar on the
South are the most succinct; the latter's account
of landholding, agriculture and trading is
admirably free of rhetoric, and, on the revenue
system, is remarkably almost Munro-free as
 REVIEWS
well. Eric Stokes on Northern and Central India
is the most interesting and intellectually
vigorous, underlining (if it were necessary) how
much the subject has lost by his death. The
accounts on Eastern India are useful if
sometimes long-winded. They also, on the
regional economy, underline the division of
subjects (here between S. Bhattacharya and
B. Chaudhuri) which restricts overall assess-
ment of theories and assumptions; these are
legion for this area.
Undue deference to theory, generally avoided
in the Economic history, is in evidence in The
vagrant peasant and Perspectives, though again,
each has much to offer. The authors have at
times been less rigorous about sources and less
curious about trends than they should have
been, shown a poor sense of historical ' dis-
tance ' and particularity, and even had insuffi-
cient urgency about historical proof. Thus Asok
Sen puts a finger on the key failure of the Bengal
Tenancy Act of 1885—the attempt to create a
' yeomanry' rather than to benefit the ' actual
cultivators'—but then in spite of a section
called ' Law and reality', he loses sight of the
need to demonstrate precisely how this had an
impact on rural society. He accepts statistics at
face value, without questioning the manner of
their collection or the extent to which changes
may be in the record more than in reality. He is
happy to treat as authoritative the well-known
Zemindary settlement, without considering its
provenance as an amateurish polemic published
in support of the pro-raiyat party in 1879. He
inadvertently misrepresents W. W. Hunter, mis-
quoting a passage from his ' Dissertation on
landed property' of 1894 and claiming that it
clarifies the effects of sub-tenures on rent: the
passage referred to a temporary situation alleg-
edly remedied by ' new and shrewder' land-
holders, and its merits as an assessment are
debatable. Such failings in a generally worth-
while study suggest that the author has not felt
the need to ask how (indeed if) British rule
affected the villages, whether a process of
polarization occurred in society, and so on.
Partha Chatterjee too provides a very import-
ant account of rural Bengal in the 1920s and
1930s, but his detailed case rests on a soft
underbelly: broadly-conceived gene'ralizations
about British policy and the usual assertions of
' de-industrialization ' and ' de-peasantization'.
Even Chatterjee is not above statistical short-
cuts, as in a rather bad table comparing rents,
from settlement reports, at very different times,
and thus drawing conclusions about different
legal categories of holding, which would carry
conviction only if one believed in the validity of
the categories for social and economic analysis
and in the reality of the so-called pargana rate.
Moreover Chatterjee—and Sen too—do not
consider real rents; not even a simple price series
is brought to bear. Mukherji, it is true, is keenly
aware of the problems of sources and, while
telling at some length what he is not going to do
in his paper, succeeds in undermining the de-
peasantization thesis; he hurries back into the
fold by discovering a decline in the proportion
of owner-cultivators, the marginalization of
more and more families, the impact of the
colonial economy, and so on. Yet he too, in
writing of the fortunes of jute farmers in the
1930s, fails to face up to some of the difficult
163
questions. Was India one of the ' worst suf-
ferers ' in the inter-war depression, and how far
did ' terms of trade ' turn ' heavily against pri-
mary-producing countries'? Was the jute
manufacturers' monopoly effective in limiting
demand and prices for raw jute? (Morris gives a
different picture in the Economic history.) Why
exactly were agriculturists trapped into jute and
why did this force them to become labourers?
The Perspectives volume is probably quite often
right; but it is not always convincing.
Aditee Chowdhury-Zilly too adds less to con-
ventional wisdom than she might have, given
the importance of her subject and the local
information she presents. Focusing on the
Burdwan Division of Bengal, on the famine of
1769 and other disasters, on the decline of
manufactures and on peasant rebellions, she
manages chiefly to endorse the idea that oppres-
sion and impoverishment were mainly caused
by the East India Company. It is unfortunate
that this verdict is in contrast with a supposed
golden age for revenue and the peasantry in the
times of Murshid Quli and Alivardi Khan, and
that it runs counter to the main thrust of Zilly's
account of peasant migration under Company
rule, which is that it took several forms. She
draws attention, rightly, to the new rigidity in
revenue payment insisted upon in 1793, but
then forgets the district and local distinctions
she illustrates in the impact of the settlement. It
is unfortunate too that she seems to confuse
Hunter's ' Dissertation', already referred to,
with his Annals of rural Bengal, and thus to miss
his central points, that pre-existing forms of
landholding varied and that the cultivating right
was already modified by economic forces before
1793. Similarly, the work raises the importance
of population without exploring its implica-
tions, treats the complex issue of rent-rates on
the basis of one report from the 1830s, refers to
' haftam' and ' panjam' and zamindari powers
without questioning their practical impact, and
asserts a decline in some commodities without
measuring the impact of Company trade as a
whole.
Four general conclusions are suggested by
these studies. First, the sources need to be
treated sceptically. The Cambridge economic
history is mostly careful to set out what can and
what cannot be legitimately concluded. If this
results in uncertainty, even the confusion which
Heston's essay illustrates, then so be it. The
alternative approach receives its epitaph from
Morris: ' More heroic assumptions . . . than the
very frail data can bear.' Secondly, categoriza-
tions need to be constantly rethought. The
Perspectives essays are weakest when they
merely adopt British legal cateogories or
European typologies such as class. They are
more interesting when they distinguish, as Sen
does, between peasants according to status and
solvency. Chatterjee too attempts a categoriza-
tion related to size of landholding. On a larger
scale, it is a weakness in the Economic history—
though an understandable one—that its periods
and regions are defined by British rule, and its
emphases (for example, trade and industry ver-
sus subsistence and agriculture) are determined
in part by a Eurocentric historiography.
Thirdly, ' differential impact', as defined by
Stokes several years ago, still needs to be the
motto of South Asian studies. What makes
164 REVIEWS
Chatterjee's essay impressive is his insistence on
the differences between places, as in the frag-
mentation of rent-receiving interests or in social
differentiation in eastern and western Bengal.
Similar care about different times would have
clarified the extent to which the 1920s were a
watershed, for example in the extension of
share-cropping; this would replace the restrict-
ing acceptance of general constructs, such as
mode-of-production theory. The differences are
also the key—though one she fails to grasp
fully—in Zilly's work. Her evidence qualifies
orthodoxies which she refuses to abandon. In
the light of current academic fashion, it is
particularly regrettable that she did not chal-
lenge class-based interpretations, once she had
demonstrated that the Santal and Chuar rebel-
lions were not new-fangled ' subaltern' upris-
ings but old-fashioned resistance, led by a raja's
disbanded soldiery or dispossessed zamindars.
Finally, attention to terminology and distinc-
tions need not preclude generalization. For
example, this reviewer contends that there is a
similarity between the social structures and
economic changes brilliantly described by
Stokes in the Economic history and those
implied in other essays on rural India, a
similarity which is obscured by differences in
categories and nomenclature, and by the
tyranny of theory. It is attributable largely to a
more or less common experience, the expansion
of communications and trade. Involvement in
markets, though not new or evenly experienced,
generally became a more potent resource in
rural life, and direct control of cultivation and
surplus (that is, rather than formal rents) was
more considerably a fount of power and wealth.
The result was a widening of social difference.
Thus, what Perspectives describes meets what
Stokes explained, even if it can be shown that
there was after all no ' de-peasantization', that
is, no greater proportion of landless and semi-
landless labourers in 1940 than in 1870.
PETER ROBB
EDWARD INGRAM: In defence of British
India: Great Britain in the Middle
East, 1774-1842. xviii, 236 pp.
London: Frank Cass, 1984.
Professor Ingram's latest book is a collection
of essays nearly all of which have appeared
before and which are only slightly modified for
this edition. Their theme is that set out in the
title: they are concerned with the Middle East
and the defence of India from the Treaty of
Kiiciik Kaynarca to the end of the first Afghan
war, although there are glances at events
beyond this last date; and they relate to Egypt,
Iran, Afghanistan, to the general strategic prob-
lems of the Napoleonic wars and to the nature
of the Great Game. As they will be familiar to
many readers, however, it will be more interest-
ing in this review to concentrate on Ingram's
general views rather than to examine the
individual essays in detail.
Three main considerations are commonly
adduced to explain British policy in the Middle
East: trade, empire and the balance of power in
Europe. Rightly, Ingram does not regard trade
as an important consideration during the period
under examination and the choice lies between ;
empire and the balance of power. At one point :
Ingram asserts that it is unnecessary to choose
between these two and that they are comp-
lementary but through most of the book he
treats them as being in rivalry and argues that
empire predominated in British policy-making.
The key episode, he contends, was the British
expedition to Egypt in 1801, which marked the
recognition by the Cabinet of the need for the
defence of India to take precedence over the
European struggle against France. From this
moment onwards, although the balance of
power was by no means a negligible factor, the
defence of India and of the routes to India
became the major determinants of British policy
in the Middle East. But how was India to be
defended? British sea power was ineffective and
the British and Indian armies inadequate. The
answer was to find someone else to defend India
and the search for such an ally in the Middle
East was, according to Ingram, the Great
Game. However, all Britain's Middle Eastern
allies proved to be broken reeds and therefore
Britain failed to win the Great Game.
The failure to win the Game left Britain with
a number of choices: to ignore the Russian
threat to India, to fight Russia somewhere other
than in the Middle East, or to seek agreement
with Russia. Ingram believes the first choice was
impossible because of the danger of internal
unrest within India and he does not think much
of the second and third choices. He professes to
be mystified by Wolseley's reference to attack-
ing Russia all over the world, although it is
plain that Wolseley meant the Black Sea, the
Baltic and the Far East. One wishes that Ingram
had not been so dismissive of this option
because it provided a test of Britain's sense of
priorities and her unwillingness to adopt it
suggests that the defence of India may have
been less important to many British statesmen
than Ingram's arguments would lead us to sup-
pose. Nor does Ingram give much attention to
the question of agreement with Russia although
this was the favoured policy of the Indian
Government from 1840 onwards. An investiga-
tion of why the London Government did not
pursue this policy with conviction before 1907
would be revealing; the answer may be that the
Foreign Office was unwilling to suffer the loss of
freedom of manoeuvre in Europe which would
be the quid pro quo for Asian security.
It is unnecessary to repeat here comments
made elsewhere about Ingram's interpretation
of the significance of the Egyptian expedition of
1801; it will be enough to remark that the views
of Dundas were not those of the British
Cabinet. Ingram's emphasis upon the pre-
eminence of the imperial interest leads him into
some improbable observations, however,
including a suggestion that the First World War
was about the British effort to resist German
expansion in the Middle East and that the
Dardanelles expedition of 1807 was intended to
bar Napoleon's way to India. (Subsequently,
Ingram apparently withdraws this latter state-
ment and suggests only that the success of
Duckham's expedition would have had this
effect. The difference is very great.)
As in previous books, in his anxiety to make
his point emphatically and attractively Ingram
goes too far, omits the qualifications which are