Shaping Of Modern Gujarat

Achyut Yagnik

Description

Looking at the 19th and 20th centuries, and drawing on scholarly sources, this book traces the history of Gujurat from the time of the Indus Valley civilization, where Gujarati society came to be a synthesis of diverse cultures, to the state's encounters with the Turks, Marathas and the Portuguese.

Sujets

• Histoire
• History of Asia
• India

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 24 août 2005
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788184751857
• Langue: English

Extrait

Achyut Yagnik And Suchitra Sheth
The Shaping of Modern Gujarat
Plurality, Hindutva and Beyond

PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Map
Preface
1 Synthesis and Continuity
2 Mercantile Ethos
3 Oppressive Encounters
4 Welcoming the British Raj
5 Industrialization and Swadeshi
6 The Call for Swaraj
7 Gujarat, Gujaratis and Gandhi
8 Hindu and Muslim
9 Social Landscape After Independence
10 Rise of Hindutva
11 Hindutva and Beyond
Picture Credits
Notes
References and Select Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Copyright
PENGUIN BOOKS THE SHAPING OF MODERN GUJARAT
Achyut Yagnik is the founder-secretary of Setu: Centre for Social Knowledge and Action, an Ahmedabad-based voluntary organization which has been working with marginalized communities since the early 1980s. He was a journalist and has also taught development communication as visiting faculty in Gujarat University. He is co-author of the book Creating a Nationality: Ramjanmabhoomi Movement and Fear of the Self.
Suchitra Sheth studied visual communication at the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad. She is associated with Setu and has been visiting faculty at NID and the National Institute of Fashion Technology, Gandhinagar.
This book is dedicated to
my granddaughter, Akshara - Achyut Yagnik
my children, Ayesha and Aniruddh - Suchitra
And all the children of Gujarat
Political map with cities mentioned in the book
Preface
The idea of Gujarat and pride in Gujarati identity is pre-modern. Probably the earliest reference to Gurjardesh occurs in the eighth-century Apabhransh work Kuvalayamala by the Jain monk Udyotansuri. A glimpse of Gujarati pride can be seen in the fourteenth-century Sanskrit poem Nabhinandan-jinoddhar Prabandh by another Jain monk, Kakkasuri. He glorified Gurjardesh in the poem, describing in detail the flora of the land, its prosperous ports and the wealth of those who conducted business there. Interestingly, he indicated the boundaries of Gurjardesh through a catalogue of the religious places that were situated within the region, which corresponds roughly to Gujarat of today. About a hundred years later, poet Padrnanabh used the word Gujarati to refer to Gujarat in his historical poem Kanhadde Prabandh . Half a century after him, poet Bhalan of Patan took pride in his Gujar bkakha or Gujarati language. By the late seventeenth century, Premanand Bhatt, one of the greatest poets of the Gujarati language, proclaimed in his work Nalakhyan, Garvo desk Gujaratji , Gujarat is majestic! One of the most moving expressions of identification with Gujarat is found in the poem Dar Firaaq-e-Gujarat , On Separation from Gujarat, by Wali Muhammad Wali, a junior contemporary of Premanand s:
Parting from Gujarat leaves thorns in my chest
My heart-on-fire pounds impatiently in my breast
What cure can heal the wound of living apart?
The scimitar of exile has cut deep into my heart
. . .
And thank God s mercy, O Wali! He let that passion remain
The heart s still anxious to catch a glimpse of my Gujarat again 1
In fact, Wali Muhammad Wali, who is considered a pioneer of Urdu language and literature, was referred to by his contemporaries as Wali Gujarati.
We are neither poets nor historians and we have not even attempted to express our perception in the style of Kakkasuri or Wali Gujarati. What we have tried to present is a concerned citizen s understanding of the shaping of modern Gujarat.
Many aspects of modern Gujarati society and polity appear puzzling. A society which has drawn diverse people to its bosom can also be exclusive and excluding; Gujaratis, who have travelled to the corners of the world, can be inexplicably insular and parochial. In this industrially prosperous state one-fifth of the population lives below the poverty line; it is a place where women feel safe to move about unescorted and yet the female sex ratio is one of the poorest in the country. And most intriguing of all is that two Gujaratis rose to eminence in the twentieth century, one as the father of India and the other as the father of Pakistan.
In our attempt to explore and explain these paradoxes we have drawn from academic studies but have relied more on our field experiences and observations as well as conversations with old and young people of Gujarat during the last few decades. The two of us have diverse backgrounds. The senior of the two of us is a son of the soil , born and brought up in rural and small-town Gujarat. He has been a key participant in the public life of the state and has spent a long time as a journalist in an Ahmedabad-based Gujarati newspaper. The other has trained in visual communication at a design school in Ahmedabad, spent her entire adult life in the city and is married to a Gujarati. We are both associated with Setu, a voluntary organization which has been working with marginalized communities of Gujarat for the last two decades. This brief biographical digression is only to underline that our presentation in these eleven chapters is essentially an insider view of the events and patterns in contemporary Gujarat.
Although studies on the history of Gujarat, in both Gujarati and English, have been published by other insiders , they focus on specific periods, areas and dimensions. For instance, M.S. Commissariat s History of Gujarat in three volumes, published in the mid twentieth century, covers the period from the fourteenth to mid eighteenth centuries and describes mainly political developments. The nine-volume Gujaratno Rajkiya Ane Sanskrutik Itihas , published by the B.J. Institute of Ahmedabad between 1972 and 1987, covers the period from the earliest times to the formation of Gujarat state. Each of these volumes devotes only a chapter or two to the social and economic situation . As a result, the social dynamics and economic forces and their impact get less attention and the period after the formation of Gujarat state in 1960 is not presented. Nonetheless, we have greatly benefited from these historical works, which have given us meaningful insights into the past. For the more recent period, studies by a number of social scientists have contributed immensely to our understanding of social transformation.
The challenge before us was to look back and around to discern and weave together patterns as they have manifested themselves in the modern period. While we have used academic and scholarly sources as a backdrop, contemporary accounts and perceptions in the form of autobiographical accounts, letters and biographical studies have enjoyed a privileged position in our treatment of the subject. To capture the ethos of the time and expressions of collectivity, we have also turned to the vision of poets and the perceptions of common people as revealed through folksongs and folk literature. Sometimes, as in the material pertaining to the nineteenth century, it was difficult to demarcate the boundaries between literature, education, social reform and industrial entrepreneurship as many of the opinion-makers of the time were embodiments of all these activities and areas. In such a situation we have tried to distil the interplay of ideas and institutions and the manner in which they prepared the ground for what came next.
We would like to mention here that we have used the term modern to mean the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in general. The first three chapters are in the nature of an introduction and provide an overview of Gujarat till the end of the eighteenth century. They do not take a strictly chronological view of the past but focus instead on specific events and themes which have a bearing on the present. The first of these chapters focuses on how Gujarati society came to be a synthesis of diverse peoples and cultures through waves of migration of people from Central Asia, its contact with West Asia and Africa through maritime trade and the resulting cultural synthesis in art, architecture, material culture, food and language. The second chapter looks at the development of the mercantile ethos and the way in which trading communities established their hegemony. They not only dominated the economy but also influenced and controlled politics, and their style and strategies infused the fabric of Gujarati society. The last of the introductory chapters chronicles Gujarat s encounters with the Turks (Muslims), Marathas and the Portuguese, which have had an indelible impact on the Gujarati collective memory. It explores the dimensions of these encounters to throw light on their implications for the present-day identity politics.
The next four chapters focus on the nineteenth century, culminating in Gandhi s return to Gujarat. The first of these looks at the impact of British rule. As a result of the combined plunder by the Mughal subas after Aurangzeb and the Maratha sardars during the eighteenth century, the British were welcomed in Gujarat as saviours and symbols of law and order. With the British came land settlement, modern legal framework, railways, modern technology and education. Barely 15 per cent of the area of the state was under direct British control, though a new order was also established in the more than 200 princely states in Gujarat, Saurashtra and Kutch. The next chapter explores how the introduction of modern technology set in motion the processes of industrialization, urbanization and the rise of an incipient middle class. A new working class came into existence, drawn mainly from Dalit, Muslim and other backward communities as well as migrants from within the state and outside. Parallel to this, from the 1870s, the idea of Swadeshi also evolved, setting the stage for confrontation with the British. The nationalist spirit took the form of active Congress politics dominated by Gujarati lawyers and economic nationalism dominated by Gujarati entrepreneurs and liberal princely states such as Baroda. Parallel to these two streams was militant nationalism i