Vinayak Chaturvedi 
Peasant Pasts [PDF ebook] 
History and Memory in Western India

Peasant Pasts is an innovative, interdisciplinary approach to writing histories of peasant politics, nationalism, and colonialism. Vinayak Chaturvedi’s analysis provides an important intervention in the social and cultural history of India by examining the nature of peasant discourses and practices during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Through rigorous archival study and fieldwork, Chaturvedi shows that peasants in Gujarat were active in the production and circulation of political ideas, establishing critiques of the state and society while promoting complex understandings of political community. By turning to the heartland of M.K. Gandhi’s support, Chaturvedi shows that the vast majority of peasants were opposed to nationalism in the early decades of the twentieth century. He argues that nationalists in Gujarat established power through the use of coercion and violence, as they imagined a nation in which they could dominate social relations. Chaturvedi suggests that this littletold story is necessary to understand not only anticolonial nationalism but the direction of postcolonial nationalism as well.

Table of Content

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Maps

Introduction


PART ONE

1. Ranchod

2. The Bhagat and the Miracle

3. Dharala/Koli/Swordsman

4. The Patidars and the Kanbis

5. Becoming a Colonial Emissary

6. The Mukhi and the Fouzdar

7. Monitoring Peasants

8. Prophesy Unfulfilled

9. Defeating the Plague, Controlling Dharalas

10. The Dakore Pilgrimage

11. The King’s Procession

12. Ranchod’s Letter

13. The Book Collection

14. Kashi Patra: A Circulating Letter

15. The Practice of Cutting Trees

16. Official Battle Narratives

17. Dharala Battle Narratives

18. The Arrests

19. Ranchod’s Testimony

20. The Kingship

21. Friends and Enemies of the King

22. Symbols of Legitimacy

23. Oral Culture and Written Culture

24. The Criminal Case

25. The Aftermath


PART TWO

26. Politics Continued

27. Age of Darkness

28. Daduram

29. Surveillance

30. The Politics of Food

31. ‘The Dignity of Labor’

32. The Baraiya Conference Movement

33. Contesting Nationalism

34. Peasant Freedom

35. Police Reorganization

36. The Criminal Tribes Act

37. Underground Activities

38. ‘My Land Campaign’

39. The Labor Strike

40. The Kheda Satyagraha

41. Strikes and Raids

42. Nationalizing Dharala Raids

43. A Second ‘No-Revenue Campaign’

44. Deporting Dharalas

45. The Punitive Police Tax

46. ‘To Forget Past Enmities’

47. Ravishankar Vyas

48. The Last ‘No-Revenue Campaign’

49. The Coming of the Postcolonial

50. Becoming Indian


PART THREE

51. Small Discoveries

52. Chaklasi

53. Daduram’s Legacies

54. Returning to Kheda

55. Kalasinh Durbar

56. Raghupura

57. Local Knowledge

58. Hidden Histories

59. Erasing the Past

60. Narsiram

61. Seeing Daduram

62. Dayaram

63. Narsi Bhagat

64. History without Ends


Conclusion

Abbreviations

Notes

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

About the author

Vinayak Chaturvedi is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Irvine, and editor of Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial.