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020			_a9788178245447
037			_cTextual
040			_aRTL _cRTL
084			_qRTL _aY49(J)v.243 Q8
100			_aBhattacharya, Neeladri _91235320
245			_aGreat agrarian conquest: The colonial reshaping of a rural world
260			_aRanikhet _bPermanent black _c2018
300			_axix,522p. : ill. _bIncludes bibliographical references & Indexes
520			_aThis book examines how, over colonial times, the diverse practices and customs of an existing rural universe – with its many forms of lifelihood – were reshaped to create a new agrarian world of settled farming. While focusing on Punjab, this pathbreaking analysis offers a broad argument about the workings of colonial power: the fantasy of imperialism, it says, is to make the universe afresh. Such radical change, Bhattacharya shows, is as much conceptual as material. Agrarian colonisation was a process of creating spaces that conformed to the demands of colonial rule. It entailed establishing a regime of categories – tenancies, tenures, properties, habitations – and a framework of laws that made the change possible. Agrarian colonisation was in this sense a deep conquest. Colonialism, the book suggests, has the power to revisualise and reorder social relations and bonds of community. It changes the world radically, even when it seeks to preserve elements of the old. The changes it brings about are simultaneously cultural, discursive, legal, linguistic, spatial, social, and economic. Moving from intent to action, concepts to practices, legal enactments to court battles, official discourses to folklore, this book explores the conflicted and dialogic nature of a transformative process. By analysing this great conquest, and the often silent ways in which it unfolds, this book asks every historian to rethink the practice of writing agrarian history and reflect on the larger issues of doing history.
650			_aAgricultural colonies--India--Punjab--History _91235324
650			_aAgriculture and state--India--Punjab--History _91235325
650			_aSocial change--India--Punjab--History _91235326
658			_aAgrarian
942			_2CC _n0 _cTB _hY49(J)v.243 Q8
999			_c1848359 _d1848359