The power of peasant poets

Writing rural histories in South India (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries)

Datos Bibliográficos

ID7515541
AutoresGunasekaran (0000-0001-7623-6819), S Gunasekaran (0000-0001-7619-5519, Jawaharlal Nehru University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2026
Volumen63
Número1
Páginas103-132
Fecha de publicación2026-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Indian Economic & Social History Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0019-4646 • E-ISSN: 0973-0893
EditorialSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/00194646251411681
OpenAlexW7119516707
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas12

A few centuries before the onset of colonial rule in South India, the focus of historical narratives underwent a gradual shift from the affairs of courts and temples to those of rural communities—migrations, land settlements and the political life of local chiefs. These narratives, referred to as ‘social documents’ in this article, evolved through a range of social institutions and found expression across diverse literary genres. Building on modern historical scholarship on this subject and focusing on the Kongu uplands of South India, this article explores three interrelated processes: socio-economic transformations in a frontier peasant society; shifts in the ‘social framework’ that shaped diverse modes of remembering the past; and the intersecting roles of bards, poets and scribes in recording and transmitting social memory at the local level. The opening sections examine the social function of the past in upland society, focusing on Pulavars as genealogists and custodians of peasant memory, and on the social negotiations that shaped collective and localised pasts. The subsequent sections discuss the processes of transmission and textualisation of social memory

Colonialism · Custodians · Frontier · Narrative · Negotiation · Peasant · Politics · Power (physics · Scholarship · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Indian and Buddhist Studies