Pamela Price

Kingship and Political Practice in Colonial India.

List of illustrations Acknowledgements Glossary Introduction 1. Honour, status and state formation in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Maravar country 2. Cosmological fragmentation in the public sphere 3. Domain formation in mid-nineteenth-century Ramnad 4. Human and divine palaces in the fragmentation of monarchical cosmology 5. Ritual performances, the ruling person and the public 6. Raja Baskara Setupati and the emergence of a new political style Conclusion Bibliography Index.

Cosmologies and Corruption in (South) India—Thinking Aloud

Summary Pamela Price, ‘Cosmologies and Corruption in (South) India—Thinking Aloud’, Forum for Development Studies, 1999: 2, pp. 315–327. Some kinds of corruption in bureaucratic and political institutions in India are the function of systems of belief and practice which have historical antecedents. Corrupt actions are part of complex cultural dynamics involving contested notions about the ontology of ranks and statuses and the nature of authority. Based on research from South India, the author argues that political and social segmentary structures play major roles in influencing ordinary peoples notions about the nature of political domains and authoritative responsibility.

Revolution and rank in Tamil nationalism

From the 1920s to the late 1960s, Tamil nationalism in India was characterized by elements of radical innovation which made the Dravidian movement a mobilization for cultural revolution, in Tamil terms, as well as for the defense of Tamil interests vis-a-vis the central government. In the last twenty years concern for the ordinary person has manifested itself in extravagant displays of state largess and the encouragement of personality cults directed toward Chief Ministers of Tamil Nadu. I delineate below major ideological themes of the nationalist cultural revolution and argue that these ideological elements, while representing change in Tamil political culture, were in many ways deeply anchored in prerevolutionary political concerns supported by institutions and symbolic systems with precolonial antecedents. I link these ideological elements to the dissolution of radicalism in Tamil nationalism and to the emergence of a style of governance which has undermined standards of public administration.

Democracy and Ethnic Conflict in India: Precolonial Legacies in Tamil Nadu

India is one of the few nations to become independent of European imperialism that has maintained a basically stable postimperial history of electoral politics. Historians in Europe and North America often explain the success of Indian electoral politics as a result of the long period-about 150 years-of British rule. Local elections began being held under the imperial government in the 1870s. Observers point as well to the fact that the leadership of the Indian National Congress contained many men such as Gandhi and Nehru who were trained in British or Anglo-Indian legal traditions and who were deeply attached to electoral processes. There are, however, reasons indigenous to the subcontinent for the survival of democratic government in India; in the long-term perspective of political culture, we can see that electoral processes have a firm rooting. This is not to suggest that electoral democracy in India is as thoroughly integrated into political processes as many critics would like. Elections to village government, for example, tend to be endlessly postponed by state governments, and major political parties also tend to postpone elections to party leadership. However, the attachment of ordinary Indians to their right to vote in general elections of state and national assemblies appears to be deep and profound. In an action admired throughout the world, voters

Re-Visiting Policy and Political Behavior in India with a View of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act

The author discusses the extent to which appeals to personalities and identities have given way to issues of development in campaigns in Indian electoral democracy. She reviews recent literature on the topic and includes results from her research to suggest that cultural nationalist appeals by politicians coincide in some instances with promises of better governance for development. Also, a focus on development by political elites does not exclude a continuing role for relations of patronage in rural localities.

4: Patrimonial and Programmatic Talking about Democracy in a South Indian Village

How do people in India participate politically, as citizens, clients and/or subjects?1 This query appears in various forms in ongoing debates concerning the extent and nature of civil society, the pitfalls of patronage democracy, and the role of illegality in political practice, to name a few of the several concerns about political spheres in India. A focus for discussion has been the relationship of civil society institutions (with associated principles of equality and fairness) to political spheres driven mainly by political parties and to what Partha Chatterjee designated as ‘political society’.2 Since 2005, with the publication of the monograph, Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality in India (Corbridge et al.), there is growing support for the argument that political cultures and practices in India, from place to place and time to time, to greater and lesser degrees, include

ELECTORAL POLITICS IN HIGHLY SEGMENTED SOCIETIES: AN INTERPRETATION OF INDIAN EXPERIENCES

Abstract Using post-colonial political history in India as a case study, the author presents an argument about the relationship between high degrees of social segmentation in a society of low levels of consumption and the emergence of highly personalised, context-sensitive state and national politics. The author argues that the case of India shows that the introduction of elections is not a quick and sure solution, bringing an end to violence or corruption in politics. She maintains that accommodation to elections in India has occurred with the emergence of a multiplicity of parties of cultural nationalism. However, universal franchise has existed in India for a relatively short time and the process of accommodation is a dynamic one. There are signs from recent elections that an emphasis on development competes successfully with culturally nationalist appeals.

Orientalism, Post-Orientalism and the Study of Government and Politics in Non-Western Societies: A View from South Asian Studies

Summary Pamela Price, ‘Orientalism and the Study of Government and Politics in Non-Western Societies: A View from South Asian Studies’, Forum for Development Studies, 1996:2, pp. 243–257. The article is an attempt to introduce the debate about Orientalism to researchers, particularly in political science and sociology, who may not be familiar with discussions on the topic. The author presents a view of the emergence of the debate in the field of South Asian studies, focusing on the treatment of the colonial period. She discusses trends in recent writing which, arguably, are post-Orientalist.