Citizenship, Community and the State in Western India: the Moulding of a Marathi-Speaking Province, 1930S-1950S
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Citizenship, Community and the State in Western India: The Moulding of a Marathi-Speaking Province, 1930s-1950s Oliver James Godsmark Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of History July, 2013 ii The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of Oliver James Godsmark to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © 2013 The University of Leeds and Oliver James Godsmark iii Acknowledgements This thesis is the result of a period of research and writing conducted between 2010 and 2013, which has built upon the subject area of my MA thesis (2008- 2009), but has looked to push this material into altogether new directions. Throughout this period, the School of History at the University of Leeds has proved to be an intellectually stimulating and socially collegiate environment in which to both conduct research and explore the ideas and hypotheses that structure this thesis’s major arguments. In this regard, I am particularly grateful for the opportunities to present various incarnations of my work within the School, including at its South Asia Seminar Series, annual Postgraduate Colloquiums, and the one-off ‘Between Subaltern and Sahib’ International Conference held in July 2012. I have been fortunate in receiving support, inspiration and advice from both present and former postgraduate students and staff at Leeds, especially Will Jackson, Shane Doyle, Chris Prior, Ian Wood, Gina Denton, Nick Grant, Vincent Hiribarren, Tom Davies, Pete Whitewood, Henry Irving, Rachael Johnson, Simone Pelizza, Cathy Coombs and Juliette Reboul. However, I am most deeply indebted to William Gould and Andrea Major for supervising this work – they have been a constant source of sound counsel, provided penetrating comments on the style, content and contentions contained within this thesis’s various drafts, and gently prodding and provoking me to consider a number of ideas and materials that may have otherwise escaped my notice. They have been prepared to go above and beyond the remit of normal PhD supervisors, not only offering sound advice on this thesis but also helping me navigate the manifest trials and pitfalls that accompany any postgraduate student within academia. Teaching at both the University of Leeds and the London School of Economics during this period has provided a stimulating diversion from what could have been otherwise a rather solitary existence and allowed me to approach and benefit from discussions around some of the main ideas of my research with undergraduate students. In this regard I am particularly appreciative of the advice and support offered by Taylor Sherman, Antony Best and all the convenors of modules on which I have taught at Leeds. I am also much obliged to the many scholars and students that have attended the various conferences and seminars at iv which I have presented my research, and who have offered sound appraisals of this work. In particular, the careful critiques and comments of Yasmin Khan and Sarah Ansari at Royal Holloway, University of London, Crispin Bates at the University of Edinburgh, and Antoinette Burton, Tony Ballantyne, Jim Masselos, Robert Aldrich, Kirsten McKenzie and the other postgraduate students who attended the ‘Nation, Empire, Global’ World Universities Network Masterclass at the University of Sydney in July 2011, improved the general suppositions and tenets of this thesis. I have also benefited significantly from informal chats over coffee or chai in London, Delhi and Mumbai with Taylor Sherman, Shabnum Tejani, Simin Patel, Niels Brimnes, Santosh Suradkar, Rachel Ball and George Adamson. In all these locations and more I have made extensive use of a range of libraries and archives, and I would like to thank the staff at the Oriental and India Office Collections of the British Library, London; the National Archives of India, Delhi; the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Delhi; the Maharashtra State Archives, Mumbai; the University of Mumbai Library, Mumbai; the Brotherton Library, Leeds; the School of Oriental and African Studies Library, London; the London School of Economics and Political Science Library, London; and the David Wilson Library, Leicester. Trips to conduct archival research in India and present my work in Australia would not have been possible without the assistance of various grants and awards from the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage, the Royal Historical Society and the World Universities Network. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I would not have been able to complete this thesis without the enthusiasm and empathy of various friends and family. In Mumbai, I was beholden to the hospitality and kindness of the Tyabji clan in letting me stay at Jal Darshan, particularly Joanna Tyabji, Imran Tyabji and Suraiya Futehally. Back in the UK, I was extremely fortunate to experience the unswerving support of a whole range of people, but perhaps most importantly, Dave and Maggie Sparrow, Kieran Heaney, Daniel Ward, my grandparents, my brothers Luke and Joe, and my mother Helen. My father first instilled in me a genuine love of history, and I am sure he would have enjoyed seeing this project and my studies come to final fruition. My greatest debt is to my fiancée Joanna, who has tolerated with patience the time we spent apart whilst I completed research in India, and the long, oft penniless and sometimes arduous process that has ultimately resulted in this thesis. She has been my greatest supporter, has afforded me extra time to read, research and write during evenings and at v weekends, and has served as a constant and reliable sounding-board for the duration of this project. This thesis is dedicated to her. vi Abstract This thesis examines how ideas about citizenship emerged out of the mutually constitutive relationship between the ‘everyday’ state and society in the specific region of Maharashtra, western India. By concentrating upon Maharashtra between the 1930s and 1950s, it looks to provide new perspectives upon the construction of citizenship in India during this formative period, thereby complementing, building upon and re-contextualising recent scholarship that has been principally interested in deciphering the repercussions of independence and partition in the north of the subcontinent. This thesis suggests that the reasons why Maharashtrians supported the reorganisation of provincial administrative boundaries on linguistic lines were intrinsically linked to ideas and performances of citizenship that had emerged in the past few decades at the local level. Despite the state’s interactions with its citizens being theoretically based upon accountability, objectivity and egalitarianism, they often diverged from these hyperbolical principles in practice. Because local state actors, who were drawn from amongst regional societies themselves, came to be subjected to pressures from particular sub-sets, groups, factions and communities within this regional society, or shared the same exigencies and sentimental concerns as its ordinary members of the public, the circumstances in which citizenship was conceptualised, articulated and enacted within India differed from one location to the next. Perceptions of the state amongst ordinary Indians, and their sense of belonging to and relationship with it were thus formulated in the discrepant spaces between the state’s high-sounding morals and values, and its regionally specific customs and practices on the ground. vii Table of Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................................. iii Abstract .................................................................................................................... vi Table of Contents .................................................................................................... vii Glossary .................................................................................................................... ix Note on Terminology ............................................................................................. xiii 1: Introduction: Citizenship, the State and Society in Western India ....................... 1 1.1 The Setting ...................................................................................................... 3 1.2 Conceptualising Citizenship ........................................................................... 14 1.3 Citizenship, the State and Society ................................................................. 22 2: Caste, Language and the State in Maharashtra .................................................. 35 2.1 The Pre-Colonial Maratha Polity ................................................................... 37 2.1 Meanings of ‘Maratha’ under Shivaji’s ‘Swaraj’ ....................................... 38 2.2 Patriotism in the Peshwa Period ............................................................... 44 2.2 The Colonial State, Caste and Language in Maharashtra, 1818-1918 ......... 50 2.2.1 The British and the Brahmans in Bombay .............................................. 51 2.2.2 Phule’s Bahujan Samaj and Shahu’s