Anand A. Yang

Sacred Symbol and Sacred Space in Rural India: Community Mobilization in the “Anti-Cow Killing” Riot of 1893

The course of events leading up to 1947, when independence and partition came to the Indian subcontinent, has colored retrospectiveassessments of Hindu-Muslim relations in many perceptible ways.Polarities in religion and culture receive inordinate attention as theharbingers of the great divide yet to come, as do political developments asturning points in the eventual separate destinies of many Hindus and Muslims in South Asia.

An Institutional Shelter: The Court of Wards in Late Nineteenth-Century Bihar

THE late nineteenth century was a period of selective institutionbuilding by the British in India. Governments efforts were directed primarily towards the development of a more effective control and communications infrastructure. The initial impetus for such changes in Bengal came during the energetic administration of Sir George Campbell, the Lieutenant Governor from 1871 to I874. Under his auspices, attempts were made to extend the administrative machinery down to the sub-district levels by the creation of sub-deputy collectorships and the revitalization of such local officials as kanungos (registrars), patwaris (village accountants) and chaukidars (village watchmen). Better connections to local society were also sought through institutions which linked government to its allies, such as municipal, local, and district boards,2 and the Court of Wards. This essay examines the workings of the Court of Wards, particularly its effects on local society in late nineteenth-century Bihar, which was then part of the province of Bengal. It shows that this institution figured importantly in the rulers relations with the ruled as it singled out government allies for special consideration. Furthermore, as these allies were mostly landed magnates, the Court of Wards enhanced their controlling position in local society. The emphasis here is on viewing

Asian Studies Past, Present, and Future

P ronouncements about the imminent demise of the field of area studies notwithstanding, area studies is very much alive and well in the United States and elsewhere. In fact, the field’s Asian studies variant is blossoming, particularly in Asia, where research and teaching concentrating on the region as a whole or in part have gained considerable traction in the last two or three decades. Indeed, universities in East and Southeast Asia are investing in the study of their own areas by establishing centers, institutes, and departments, often with the generous support of their governments. In the United States, by contrast, there has been much angst expressed and much ink spilled over the perceived decline of area studies. Many of the field’s proponents believe that they have become marginalized in the academy, their areaand culture-specific concerns overshadowed by the formal and mathematical modeling that has become the stock-in-trade of social science disciplines—particularly economics, and from early on, but also increasingly political science and sociology. Furthermore, the so-called area studies wars that flared in the 1980s and 1990s not only shattered rising expectations about the growth of area studies in the humanities and social sciences but also challenged the field’s founding assumptions about the significance of context-based learning and research. This was a major turnaround from the initial post-Sputnik decades of the 1960s and 1970s, when, for a moment, the field appeared poised to gain considerable standing in a number of disciplines. At many institutions, interests ran high enough that programs and even departments centered on area studies were established. Underwriting this growth were funds that poured in from private foundations and the federal government, the latter taking the form of Title VI appropriations for area and international studies initially authorized by the National Defense Education Act of 1958. Beginning in the 1980s, however, the tide turned against area studies, with intellectual opposition mounting at the same time as funding dried up because key foundations shifted their priorities away from area-based to themeand problem-based research. To make matters worse, the field has had to confront attacks from within and without: from postcolonial and postmodern critics drawn primarily

Images of Asia: A Passage through Fiction and Film

While the world is in the process of becoming a single great mass of humanity-a global community, as it is sometimes called-the very diverse national and cultural groupings that make up the worlds population retain attitudes and habits more appropriate to a different technological age, when the contrasting civilizations existed far removed from one another and the well-being of most individuals was determined within largely self-contained nations, or even smaller communities. The continuance of such parochial attitudes in an independent, closely knit world would probably spell catastrophe. Basically this is an educational problem.

Local Sources for the Study of Rural India: The 'Village Notes' of Bihar

Village notes were compiled during the attestation period, which generally took place in the third year of the survey and settlement operations.3 Attestation, according to official guidelines, was to be carried out within the village to which the records belonged, or in a nearby centre not more than three miles from the village.4 From the text of the village note it can be ascertained whether the note was done on site or at a nearby attestation

Myron Weiner. Sons of the Soil: Migration and Ethnic Conflict in India. Pp. xviii, 383. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978.

Science and technology account for half of China’s post-Mao programsothers being Economy and Defensefor national development. Such programs are as ambitious as they are complex. Our understanding of this process is made all the more difficult, therefore all the more important, by 20-yearold assumptions associated with an equality-based revolution reaching its height in the Cultural Revolution, now repudiated. In its stead, we find emerging in China programs and policies that are