Nidān, Volume 4, No. 1, July 2019, pp. 1-18 ISSN 2414-8636 The Cantonment Town of Aurangabad: Contextualizing Christian Missionary Activities in the Nineteenth Century Bina Sengar Assistant Professor, Department of History and Ancient Indian Culture School of Social Sciences Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University,
[email protected] Abstract The cantonment town of Aurangabad has a legacy of being soldier’s territory since the inception of the city of Aurangabad or Khadki/Fatehnagar in the late 13th century (Ramzaan, 1983, Green, 2009). The city’s settlement pattern evolved as per the requirements of cantonment, planned during the Nizamshahi and later, during the Mughal rule in the city. In fact, Aurangabad evolved as a cantonment city even before the British. As we study the city’s networks and its community history, we come across a civic society web, which gathered and settled gradually as service providers or as dependent social groups on the resident military force. In the late eighteenth century when the British allied with the Nizam state of Hyderabad, they were given special place in the Aurangabad cantonment to develop a military base. The British military base in the early decades of the nineteenth century in Aurangabad, thus, worked intensively to cope with the already well-established community connection of a strategic defence town. This research paper will explore and discuss relationships between British soldiers and officers and the well-established societal web of communities living in Aurangabad from early decades of nineteenth century, before the 1857 revolt. Keywords: Aurangabad, British, Cantonment, Defence, English Introduction During July 2018, army cantonments in India constituted the news headlines, and soon entered coffee table discussions among heritage lovers.