Provincial Pasts and National Histories

Territorial self-fashioning in twentieth-century Bihar

Bibliographic Data

ID3625540
AuthorsAryendra Chakravartty (Stephen F. Austin State University, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume52
Issue4
Pages1347-1374
Publication date2018-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueModern Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0026749x16000561
OpenAlexW2796092012
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited22

This article explores how local lived experiences and nationalist sentiments converged to shape a regional literati's conception of the province of Bihar in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century colonial India. Following the formation of the separate province of Bihar in 1912, certain very powerful Indian-nationalist and cultural-historical factors were deployed to create a much-needed cultural-historical past for Bihar. In this project of territorial self-fashioning, institutions such as the Bihar and Orissa Research Society (1915) and the Patna Museum (1917) became crucial to the new political-cultural configuration of the region. Additionally, they also made Bihar's ancient past visible in a deliberately nationalist narrative. Projecting its rich ancient past onto a national framework provided Bihar with the possibility of overcoming its characterization as 'backward' and provincial. This article therefore moves beyond analytic frameworks of nationalism which emphasize particularities of regional identity by framing them in perpetual antagonism to the efforts of Indian national integration. By looking at the construction of narratives of an ancient past that straddled the region and the nation, I argue that the emergence of an entity called Bihar was braided into India's nationalist imagination

Archaeology · Art · Colonialism · Framing (construction · Literature · Narrative · National identity · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Gender Studies · History · Law · South Asian Cinema and Culture · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies