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Ordering Subjects: Merchants, the State, and Krishna Devotion in Eighteenth-Century Marwar Divya Cherian Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2015 ©2015 Divya Cherian All rights reserved ABSTRACT Ordering Subjects: The Merchants, the State, and Krishna Devotion in Eighteenth-Century Marwar Divya Cherian “Ordering Subjects” argues that the merchants of Marwar led efforts to demarcate a new, exclusive community of elites, one that they conceptualized of as self-consciously ‘Hindu.’ This early modern Hindu community defined itself in opposition not to the figure of the Muslim but to that of the ‘Untouchable,’ a category that included but was not limited to the Muslim. The early modern Hindu identity was thus deeply imagined in caste terms. This elite community organized around Krishna devotion, especially the Vallabh Sampraday, and demarcated itself through cultural markers such as the practice of vegetarianism, teetotalism, and austerity. Merchants, often joined by brāhmaṇs, waged their battles for the demarcation of this new community by petitioning the crown and by successfully deploying the control that they had gained in prior centuries over the state apparatus as bureaucrats. State power, consisting of its judicial, fiscal, recordkeeping, and surveillance mechanisms, played a central role in the implementation of laws and regulations, including spatial, economic, social, and ritual segregation, enforced vegetarianism, and the moral policing of elite subjects’ lives. Most of these petitions and state responses were legitimized with reference to ethics, marking a departure from the until-then prevalent emphasis on custom as the basis for legislating society. “Ordering Subjects” suggests that this marked a shift towards a more universal law and that the turn to ethical principles made possible the disregard for the force of custom that these departures marked. Further, the dissertation demonstrates that these processes capture the ascendance of a mercantile ethos as the preeminent cultural code of the region, displacing that of the warrior and modifying that of the brāhmaṇ. Lastly, it shows the extent to which the state in eighteenth-century Marwar had penetrated society and was capable of intervening in it using surveillance and judicial methods. The dissertation challenges the current scholarly framing of the debate over the existence of religious identities in pre-colonial South Asia, suggesting that it casts modern, binary (‘Hindu-Muslim’) conceptions of religion, as distinct from politics, upon pre-modern history. Instead, “Ordering Subjects” points to the role of caste, as a field of politics, in determining the contours and imagination of early modern Hindu identity. It offers a political and social history of Krishna devotion, extending scholarship on this field beyond the focus on its literary, theological, and cultural aspects that currently dominate the field. In tracing the local effects of the global processes of economic circulation and integration that characterized early modernity upon social and political life of a landlocked kingdom, the dissertation offers a perspective upon the history of early modern South Asia as it unfolded away from, but in connection with, the ports and court cities of the region. Table of Contents LIST OF MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv DEDICATION x INTRODUCTION 1 0.1 Early Modern Religious Identity 2 0.2 Rājā and Rāj 9 0.3 Castes and Outcastes in a Time of Flux 16 0.4 Method and Plan of the Work 21 CHAPTER 1: The Many Lords of Marwar: Kings, Merchants, and 30 Krishna-Devotion until the Eighteenth Century 1.1 Marwar Under the Mughals 42 1.2 Unraveling Ties 46 1.3 Merchants and the State 51 1.4 A Cowherd’s Journey to the Desert 60 1.5 Marwari Merchants and Early Modernity 79 1.6 Conclusion 88 CHAPTER 2: Hindu, Musalmān, and Achhep: Orthopraxy and Statecraft 90 2.1 Political Authority and Krishna Worship 92 2.2 Merchants in Early Modern Marwar 106 2.3 State Patronage and Temple-Centric Devotion 108 2.4 A Politics of Sacred Space 116 2.5 Petitioning for Segregation 130 2.6 Containing the Achhep, Constructing the Hindu 145 2.7 Conclusion 155 CHAPTER 3: Towards a Vegetarian Body Politic: Enforced Vegetarianism 157 and the Construction of the Ethical Subject 3.1 The Many Manifestations of Jīv Haṃsyā 158 3.2 Non-Violence and Vegetarianism in History 162 3.3 Speaking for the Voiceless 169 3.4 Striking at the Root 171 i 3.5 Dietary Diktats and Economic Setbacks 183 3.6 Surveillance, Informing, and Social Conflict 196 3.7 Conclusion CHAPTER 4: On Moral Grounds: Alcohol, Gambling, and Illicit 209 Sex 4.1 Liquor and Gambling 210 4.2 Licit and Illicit Sex 222 4.3 The Double Bind 254 4.4 Conclusion 275 CHAPTER 5: Politics in the Past Tense: Caste, Custom, and the Everyday 276 5.1 Taxes, Land Relations, and Economic Inequality 279 5.2 Rights, Perquisites, and the Defense of Custom 295 5.3 Status and Mobility 314 5.4 Conclusion 322 CONCLUSION 325 SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 336 APPENDIX 351 ii List of Maps and Illustrations Map: The parganās of eighteenth-century Marwar 29 iii Acknowledgments The journey towards the completion of this dissertation has been long and the debts I have accumulated along the way are many. Foremost among these is to my advisor, Nicholas Dirks, who in sifting through the many proposals that surely came his way from many an eager applicant, saw something worthwhile in mine when it was a jumble of inarticulate ideas. Every time I have stood at a crossroads, unsure of which way to go, he has been a source of wise counsel. At other key junctures, he has shaken me out of the limiting frameworks to which I have until then tenaciously clung. His reading of my work has helped me to see in it potential and directions in which I did not realize it could grow. Janaki Bakhle brought just the right mix of tough love and sound advice to force me to put pen to paper. In Janaki I found a teacher who was sensitive to the many extra-curricular challenges and constraints in a student’s life, one who was always available to read a draft or to help solve a quandary. I benefitted from her sharp reading and careful attention to historiographical questions. Partha Chatterjee closely read each of my chapters, offering careful feedback and pushing me towards broadening the horizons of my argument. Conversations with him helped me to reorient my gaze, allowing me to see connections and processes that I would otherwise have missed. The breadth of his knowledge, his analytical skills, and his wit always made meetings with him especially enjoyable. Pamela Smith patiently read through the mass of historical information about early modern India that this dissertation consists of but always kept her finger on the pulse, rarely missing the argument I was trying to make and always pointing me to important parallels and contrasts with early modern Europe. I learnt important lessons from her about historical method and the writing of history that I will always carry with iv me. Samira Sheikh brought greater rigor and historiographical engagement to this dissertation. I thank her for her careful reading of my chapters and for the many comments, questions, and criticisms she generously shared with me. Her expertise in early modern South Asian history, especially of western India, has greatly benefitted this dissertation. At Columbia, Manan Ahmed, whom I got to know in the final stages of writing this dissertation, proved to be an inspiring scholar. His generosity, openness, and big heart set a standard that I hope to live up to. Jack Hawley always made room for me in his busy schedule, meticulously reading my chapters and raising important questions. I thank him also for opening my eyes to the history of religious life in early modern South Asia, something I owe to taking a class with him. Allison Busch’s course on Mughal history was one of the most enjoyable classes I took at Columbia. I savored the discussions on Mughal India that we had each week in her class. I thank Allison for always being available for conversations about work and for her willingness to share helpful advice with me over the years. Val Daniel helped me work my way through the anthropological corpus on caste, proving to be a rigorous but always cheerful interlocutor. My time at the Center for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) deeply shaped me as a thinker, researcher, and student of history. Rajat Dutta set the bar high for us students, made us work hard for his course, and in the process deepened my interest in the eighteenth century. He has remained a source of support and guidance. Najaf Haider forced students to think critically about the stakes underlying the arguments that we read. Of my teachers at JNU, it is Nandita Prasad Sahai to whom my debt is v greatest. It was under her supervision that I wrote my MPhil, benefitting from her gentle criticism, careful reading, and informed commentary. It was she who encouraged me to go to Rajasthan State Archives in Bikaner, a step that seemed so daunting to a Delhi girl ensconced safely in the cocoon of her parents’ home. Yet it was this foray into the archives that revealed to me the wealth of information available for study if only I learnt the script in which it was written. Without that first step, this dissertation would never have materialized. In addition, Nandita Sahai was rare in the respect that she accorded her students, truly listening to their ideas and their thoughts, and engaging with them on an equal plane.