Situating Indian History: For Sarvepalli Gopal.

by Sabyasachi Bhattacharya; Romila Thapar

Review by: Nicholas B. Dirks
The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 47, No. 4 (Nov., 1988), pp. 910-911
Published by: Association for Asian Studies
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910 THE JOURNAL OF ASIAN STUDIES

elaboratedin tradition. Thus the BrahmaKumaris, who emerged in Sind in the 1930s,
give special emphasis to their teachings about cyclical time-which is compacted from
its usual staggering Indian dimensions into finite 5,000-year rounds to produce a
millenarian urgency rarely found in Hinduism. Just as exceptional, hierarchicalau-
thority in the movement has fallen largely to women, who were among the most
important disciples of the founding guru, now deceased. In the more routinized cir-
cumstances of the present, imbibing the preceptor'sgaze becomes not so much a matter
of the inward contemplation of a divine being, as among the Radhasoamis, as one of
communal ritual practice in the presence of a qualified teacher.
With the last group studied by Babb, the devotees of the contemporarywonder-
worker Sai Baba, the recognition of the living guru again becomes paramount. But
this guru is recognized less by his appearancein regular spiritual practice than by his
intervention at a distance in the everydayaffairsof life. He cures illnesses and causes
mysterious materializations of objects; but he offers no consistent, rational doctrine.
Instead, a simple belief in Sai Baba and his miracles allows his largely urban, English-
speaking followers to know a magical world that parallels their Westernized, scien-
tifically oriented realities.
Presenting these three movements with rich ethnographic integrity, Babb never-
theless producesa coherentvolume. He integrateshis treatmentsby the common imagi-
native modes he identifies, and he makes enlightening comparisons along the way.
Moreover,Babb makes two insightful theoretical contributions to religious studies in
general. First, his perspective as a humanistic social scientist sheds new light on the
role of interpersonalencountersfor the recognition of religious identity-not only that
of the guru but also the devotees'own. Perhapsmore important, his pluralistic approach
to the Hindu religious imagination-at once flexible and comprehensive-seems read-
ily adaptable to the characterizationof other great religiocultural traditions.
DANIEL GOLD
CornellUniversity

SituatingIndianHistory:ForSarvepalliGopal. Edited by SABYASACHIBHAT-

TACHARYAand ROMILATHAPAR. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986.
viii, 463 pp. $22.50.

SituatingIndianHistoryis a collection of thirteen chaptersby membersof the Centre

for Historical Studies at JawaharlalNehru University (JNU), New Delhi, in tribute
to a great Indian historian. The studies for the most part either contain a historio-
graphical emphasis or announce a general intellectual position on various historical
themes. Nonetheless, the absence of either internal organizing principles or a general
statement means that the volume will be used as much as an annotated list of the
interests and positions of the historians at JNU as a general text on history and his-
toriography.
The first two chapters, by B. D. Chattopadhyayaand R. Champakalaskshmi,are
on urban centers and urbanization in medieval India. Neeladri Bhattacharya'sstudy
moves quickly to the colonial period, opening with a useful appraisalof the literature
on the colonial state and agrariansociety. Beginning with the now-acceptedview that
British policy "cannot be understood merely in terms of the influences of intellectual
ideas and doctrines which developed in Europe"(p. 113), Bhattacharyaevaluatesrecent
debates between historians who have stressed change during the early colonial period
and those who have stressed continuity. He then argues that colonial change has been
 BOOK REVIEWS-SOUTH ASIA 911

too often misconstrued or underemphasizedbecause the transformationsthat occurred

were rarely those anticipated or directly intended by British policy.
Having been persuadedof the importanceof a social history for colonial India that
brings the state back in, we then double back to the eighteenth century to consider
with MuzaffarAlam the question of agrarianuprisings in northernIndia. Using Persian
sources, Alam provides important evidence about the nature, sources, constituency,
and political as well as social significance of zamindari rebellions. He argues that, far
from contributing to economic decline and chaos, zamindari rebellion usually was
predicated on economic buoyancy.Furthermore,rebellion was neither a symptom nor
a source of political decay, since rebellion was simultaneously enabled and constrained
by the political structure of the late Mughal empire.
The next four contributions return to the colonial state, particularly to the na-
tionalist opposition. Indeed, the subtext of much of the subsequent discussion is the
status of nationalism, especially the status and class position of the Congress. Sabyasa-
chi Bhattacharya'sstudy is specifically concerned with the relation between capital
and labor, but one of the general themes of the volume comes through in his analysis
of Congress. He argues that Congress was seen as a "supra-classentity, an arbitrator
or mediator, a consensus-making body."Thus, in spite of chummy relations between
Congress and capital, "Congress could lead a struggle of the people as a whole and
prepare itself to take over the successor state in the post-colonial period" (p. 192).
This view is echoed in the subsequentthree chapters. Bipan Chandrais particularly
concerned to defend and recuperate nationalism and nationalist historiography. Al-
though he chides nationalist historiansforhaving been unable "to grasp the class aspects
of Indian society," he asserts that they were not wrong in "underlining the unity of
all Indians in their struggle against imperialism"(p. 235). Aditya Mukherjeeindirectly
confirms S. Bhattacharya'sview in arguing that the Indian capitalist class did not
"create,lead, or even cruciallydetermine and influencethe courseof the Indian national
movement" (p. 284). Finally, in evaluating the communist movement in India between
1920 and 1947, Bhagwan Josh ruminates about the bourgeois characterof Congress
and the relationship between national and class struggle. He explains that the failure
of the communist movement is rooted in its wrong assessment of this relationship
(except in Kerala): in a colonial situation the development of national consciousness,
despite the hegemonic position of the bourgeoisie, is a necessaryprecondition for the
development of class consciousness. In historiographicalterms the absent presence in
these four chapters is the Subaltern school.
After K. Meenakshi'stechnical study of the shift from old to middle Indo-Aryan,
three extraordinarily rich chapters close the volume. Romila Thapar considers the
history of historical consciousness and historical writing in early India, in particular
the Itihasa-Puranatradition. Thaparwrites about the relativeembeddednessof different
historical texts and proposes a direct correspondencebetween genres of historical writ-
ing and stages of state formation. Kunal Chakrabartifollows with an intriguing con-
siderationof psychoanalyticapproachesto the study of ancient Indian myths. The finale
is Satish Saberwal'sprovocativereconsiderationof some of the grand themes in Weber's
comparative sociology.
The vitality of historical scholarshipand debate at JNU is thus well in evidence.
But the volume would have made a more important contribution had it sought to
situate not only Indian history but also its own place within Indian history and his-
toriography.
NICHOLAS B. DIRKS
Universityof Michigazn