Provincial Pasts and National Histories

Territorial self-fashioning in twentieth-century Bihar

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3625540
AutoresAryendra Chakravartty (Stephen F. Austin State University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2018
Volumen52
Número4
Páginas1347-1374
Fecha de publicación2018-07-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaModern Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0026749x16000561
OpenAlexW2796092012
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas22

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