Society and Circulation: Mobile People and Itinerant Cultures in South Asia, 1750-1950

The idea of an ‘eternal India’, based on stable and unchanging villages, has been in disarray for at least two decades. However, having demolished this myth, historians have been rather less able to construct an alternative positive vision. This volume sets out to do so, using the idea of ‘circulation’ in relation to South Asia in the colonial period. It comprises a set of complementary essays which deal with merchant circulation, pilgrimages, cartography, policing, labour mobility, and the movement of itinerant groups-from colonial administrators to wandering bards-and demonstrates that the South Asia of this period was made and remade by changing patterns and the logic of circulation. Once this perspective is integrated into the analysis of society, new and disturbing questions emerge on issues such as culture, identity, and ethnogenesis, which are normally treated in the context of fixed and stable societies. The essays in this volume, written by some of the leading authorities in South Asian history, are hence pathbreaking in suggesting the outlines of a different framework for historical analysis. This volume will interest not only South Asianists but also those interested in historical method as well as wider comparative perspectives on early modern and contemporary history.